For five years with a Rs. 10 lakh fine
After the amended Information Technology Act made it illegal to publish and transmit obscene material or any sexually explicit act/content last month, a newly passed IT Bill is set to punish offenses revolving around child pornography.
So what exactly has been touted as an offense? The new bill is set to make it illegal to not only create and transmit child pornography in any electronic form, but even to browse it, as reported by The Times of India. Publishing and transmitting material depicting children in a "obscene or indecent or sexually explicit manner" can put you behind bars for a long duration - five years, not to mention the hefty Rs. 10 lakh fine it attracts.
Section 67 of the existing act will now be amended. Section 67B proposes particularly to punish acts of publishing and transmitting any electronic sexually explicit act/content that depicts children as opposed to Section 67, which does not specifically mention children anywhere. Now, it will also be an offence to "cultivate, entice or induce children to have an online relationship with other children for a sexual act," the report added.
Google engineers have adapted a software program to help track child sex predators and search for patterns in images of abuse on the web.
Google has created the technology for the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
It was originally developed to block copyrighted videos on the company's YouTube division.
The program uses pattern recognition to enable analysts to sort and identify files containing child sex abuse.
Google says its aim in teaming up with the centre's Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography is to develop solutions that would make it harder for people to use the web to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.
"You always hope that your work will eventually be used to do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real," said Google research scientist Shumeet Baluja.
Overwhelming task
Mr Baluja, who was also the technical leader of the project, said that as more and more predators use the web to ensnare children, "analysts were getting overwhelmed by all of the data they had to sift through".
Since 2002 the NCMEC has pored over 13 million child sex abuse images and videos in an effort to help police identify and rescue children from harm.
In the last year they have looked at five million pictures.
Google says the new tools will enable the centre's analysts to search their systems more quickly and easily as they try to sort and identify files that contain images of child sex abuse victims.
"The program uses pattern recognition and will work even if the pattern has been modified," explained technology analyst Larry Magid.
"So if police can identify a pattern such as a calendar on the wall or a t-shirt logo, they have a much better chance of finding the exploited child and catching the suspect."
Hi-tech solutions
The technology is an outgrowth of the anti-piracy software Google developed to helps its YouTube division ferret out videos of suspected of being posted without the agreement of copyright holders.
"Criminals are using cutting edge technology to commit their crimes of child sexual exploitation, and in fighting to solve those crimes and keep children safe, we must do the same," said NCMEC President and CEO Ernie Allen.
Google engineers and scientists were able to work on the project on what the company calls "20% time", which allows all employees to dedicate that amount of time to projects they initiate.
Some of those projects benefit stockholders or end users, but in this case the benefit could be to thousands of children.
LUCKNOW: In a horrifying incident reported in the state capital, a one-and-a half-year-old girl was raped by her servant.
The incident was reported in Gomtinagar police circle on Thursday. According to the police the incident came to light when the victim's mother Anita Sharma, a resident of Vivek Khand in Gomtinagar area, lodged an FIR against her servant Narendra Mishra alleging that he raped her daughter.
The complainant owns a general store in the same area, where Mishra, a resident of Vishal Khand, worked as a servant.
Talking to TOI, circle officer of Gomtinagar police circle, Shubhas Chandra Dubey said "Narendra who is a neighbour of the victim was also working as a servant in the shop which was owned by the victim's family."
The police while talking to the media persons also said that on Thursday when the victim's parents were busy Mishra took advantage of the situation and on finding the girl alone Mishra took her with him in the park nearby and raped her.
Dubey also said that the incident would not have come to light had the victim's parents not noticed the girl crying in pain after the incident. Dubey while committing the crime pressed the mouth of the girl so that her cries could not be heard.
It was around 8:30 in the evening on Thursday when Anita could actually figure out what had happened. After the incident, Anita rushed to the police station and lodged the report against Mishra.
Later Mishra was arrested. According to the police Mishra admitted to his crime and was sent to jail under Section 376. However, the medical report of the victim was awaited.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy might be a father for the fourth time. It has been revealed that his fiancee, former supermodel Carla Bruni, is pregnant with his child, less than two months after their high-profile relationship began. Bruni’s pregnancy has been confirmed by doctors in Paris, French website reported last night. Reporter Allain Jules said he received the information from a source at the American Hospital in the Paris where Carla had been last week for a scan. He said: “I am told that she had a scan and the pregnancy was confirmed.” The couple met at a party on November 23, just one month after the president divorced his ex-wife Cecilia, and are said to be getting married on February 9. French reporter Jules added that “They had a whirlwind romance after meeting at a party seven weeks ago, and have been almost inseparable ever since. If she is indeed pregnant it may explain why they are planning to marry so soon after meeting.” It is not at all what the French expect from their head of state. As one Paris-based friend of mine remarked, Sarkozy has “betrayed the national code of honour. Sarkozy has opened the curtains on a country which was happily eating cheese and climbing up the backstairs to visit mistresses. France likes hypocrisy. It does not like sexual openness. We are not Italy.” Sarkozy, of course, has a different interpretation. “I broke with a deplorable tradition in our country, that of hypocrisy and lies,” he said yesterday. With Carla, we decided not to lie. We don’t want to hide.”
London, Dec 30: A leading public health doctor has suggested that sex education lessons should be imparted to schoolchildren as young as five, in an effort to fight the rising levels of teenage pregnancy and sexual diseases.
Dr Charles Saunders, chairman of the British Medical Association's Scottish consultants' committee, cautioned that the safe-sex messages were provided so late by schools, that many teenagers were already exposing themselves to avoidable risk.
Saunders also called for secondary schools to hand out condoms and other forms of contraception to children from the age of 13.
Scotland's sexual health record is one of the worst in the western world, with cases of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases on a constant rise.
"It needs to start at quite an early age, because if you leave it until they are 12 it is too late because some are already experimenting. It probably needs to be started off when children start school. You need to start laying the groundwork to help them and empower them to make decisions and turn things down," the Scotsman quoted Saunders, as saying.
"At five it needs to be a language that they understand and taught in the same way as any other subject. It should start off with relatively simple concepts in the same way as English and science start off with the basics. It could start off with how babies are made and progress from there.
"You need to start somewhere and it makes an awful lot of sense to start long before it's needed, because if you leave it too long you are wasting your time," he added.
He further said that sex education should not be limited to anatomical drawings, but should also include the pros and cons of having sex.
"Basically sex education needs to be a whole lot better. It's not just anatomical drawings but what the risks are from infections and what the pros and cons are of having sex or waiting," he said.
"It's not a simple task to get young people empowered enough to use condoms, but it's the key. You want to ensure people are not having sex when they don't want to have it, and that when they do want to have it they are not putting themselves at risk," he added.
Saunders said that all schools should also provide contraception to pupils.
"Particularly in rural areas, schools may well be the only way that pupils can access contraception. It may well be that as time goes on it would make sense to have emergency contraception in schools," he said.
London, Dec 30: A leading public health doctor has suggested that sex education lessons should be imparted to schoolchildren as young as five, in an effort to fight the rising levels of teenage pregnancy and ...
