Catching Deep-Fake Porn Culprits
Crackdown on deep-fake nudes of real people without consent.
5/27/20262 min read
Early arrests under the Take It Down Act (TIDA) suggest police generally need little effort to identify people illegally posting and selling non-consensual, sexual deepfakes of women online. Good!
One suspect accused of violating TIDA, I’ll call him “Alan”, allegedly posted 113 albums - viewed nearly one million times – of AI-generated sexual images and videos of approximately 50 different women. Victims included both public and non-public figures, including females from his Texas high school.
Geo-location data, as well as a PayPal account, IP addresses, and other accounts, helped cops identify the culprit. The police’s search into “Alan” was likely simplified when their search revealed not only did he follow the Instagram account of one victim, but that he also saved the specific images in question in a folder on his own Instagram account. “Alan” did vaguely try to hide his identity by registering his Gmail account with nothing more than a fake first name, however, he also used that same fake name on his Snapchat account.
Another man, 51-year-old “Bob”, was even less careful. “Bob” is accused of publishing approximately 360 AI-generated albums with more than 2 million views, featuring approximately 90 women, mostly political figures, actresses, and musicians. “Bob” was so stupid, he used his own photo as the profile pic. By cross-referencing public records and surveillance photos, cops determined the man posing in a Mets jersey on the account’s profile... to be “Bob”.
Both “Alan” and “Bob” risk up to two years in prison if cops can prove they violated TIDA. That doesn’t seem like much for violating the rights and dignity of scores of women who never consented to images involving nudity and lewdness.
In a press release announcing the recent arrests, Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, accused the suspects of using “cutting-edge digital technology to create images that degraded and violated victims across the United States.” James C. Barnacle, Jr., assistant director in charge of the New York FBI field office, confirmed his agents would continue investigating similar cases.
Barnacle stated, “This predatory conduct represents a disturbing abuse of technology that inflicts emotional harm on victims, violating their privacy, dignity, and security. The use of this emerging technology to victimize individuals… is criminal and will be pursued with the full force of the law.”
The Federal Trade Commission announced it sent warning letters to 12 companies offering so-called “nudify” tools, in an attempt to lessen such incidents. Violations could carry “civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation.” Social media sites have also been warned. Unfortunately, no law is perfect. It still can’t stop the initial sharing, which means the burden remains with the victim to monitor and flag harmful images across the Internet. In other words, almost impossible unless someone you know sees it and honorably tells you of it.
While I find nudity completely natural, free and liberating, and am not embarrassed by it, society in general, sees otherwise. The privacy of others needs to be respected, fully clothed or otherwise.
Source used: arstechnica.com
