The debate on the subject of self-half images hosted on Instagram seems to have got lost in translation by the Press, MP’, and the incumbent Agencies who are supposed to be empowered to look after the on-line welfare of young people. Here, all of those expressing interest seem to be missing the real point. It is not just Instagram and Facebook who publish such disgusting, warped material, but other so-called platforms as well.
Consider the easy to access Google Image repository – here one has easy access to multiple images of self-harm, and notwithstanding Blue Whale being urban myth or reality, graphic images of self-harm and instructions on and how to harm one’s self in graphic detail can be easily located obtained – Question is, is this acceptable?
One of the main challenges may be, unlike the common conversation and interest expressed in topics of the day, such as GDPR, when it comes to Self-Harm images there is simply no money in it for the Security Industry, and so whilst many express disgust they would seem to be unwilling to commit any real leverage to this issue!
If we are to combat, what would seem to be gross negligence by all those who are culpable of allowing their platforms to be leveraged to publish such material, we must remove the over focused glasses and bring them all to comply with their own, supposed, yet thus far ignored ‘own’ company policies. Maybe legislation, or a domicile specific law would be the answer – one example here is that of the Indian Technology Act of 2000 which is very specific about what can be done, and to who physically on the ground who may be prosecuted or imprisoned.
One thing is for sure, when the MOJ (UK) stated this is not a matter of Public Interest, I entirely disagree – when young people are dying as a direct, or indirect result of what they are seeing hosted on such platforms of International companies, time would seem to have arrived to take some action, rather than to acquiest to the dominance of Billion $ Companies who seem to feel they can ignore the law, and human consequence at will!
John is the Principle at Shadow-Intelligence (Si), partnering with PALISCOPE, BreachAware and iStorage. He is a Visiting Professor at the School of Science and Technology, Nottingham, Trent University (NTU) and holds the appointment of Editor in Chief for the International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations (CFATI). For the last decade he has delivered training courses in the Middle, and Far East to Commercial, Industrial, the Financial Services Sector, and Military Agencies, including the UAE, US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia (KL), Singapore, Argentina, and Sao Paulo
He served in the Royal Air Force 22 years’, specialising in Counterintelligence, working with UK Agencies such as GCHQ/CESG, and others in the fields of SIGINT, COMINT and Satellite Communications, holding appointments such as System ITSO for a CIA SCIF.
In the commercials sectors of IT/Cyber he has worked for/with Logica, Bae, T5, GM, Experian, Betfair, Palace of Westminster, House of Lords/Commons, TSol (Treasury Solicitors) and provided Consultancy to the Saudi Arabian MOD, TRA (Telecommunications Authority (Dubai) and the Military Academy of Malaysia (KL) on SOC, CSIRT, Digital Forensics and OSINT. Within the last 5 years he has focused on Geopolitics, with global expertise around the UAE and Russia, Anti-Terrorist Operations (ATO), Cyber-Warfare, Dezinformatsiya (Disinformation) and Maskirovka (Military Deception).
The opinions expressed in this post belong to the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Information Security Buzz.