In these days the problem of the revenge porn has been brought again to the attention of the italians by the case of Giulia Sarti. For the ill-unaware some intimate photos of the ex five-stars deputee Giulia Sarti has been shared online. Up to today we do not know who did this or why, but the gravity of the action remains.
The problem of the revenge porn is even bigger because it is poorly legislated. American legislation is probably the most advanced when dealing with the problem. According to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, 34 states and Washington DC have laws expressly applicable to revenge porn. But outside US the situation is way worse. Only Canada, France, Germany, UK, Australia and Philippines have specific laws about revenge porn. In the rest of the world the crime is regulated by privacy laws, but in this way it is slower to recognise and prosecute the crime and way more difficult to remove the material.
The removal of the incriminated material is one of the most difficult aspect of this problem. In a world in which each one has a smartphone capable to store and share photos and videos, this material is almost impossible to remove once and for all. Even if the victim could remove all traces from online sites, there would be always a chance that someone stored the material offline in order to upload it in the future. It is the case of Tiziana Cantone, a 31 years old girl who committed suicide in 2016 after a porn video of herself became viral. She promptly removed all the copies of that video from all the sites, but it was re-uploaded later and that video could be seen even today.
Social Networks, that created their business on sharing personal information, are particularly concerned about revenge porn. Facebook launched in Australia a test of a service to intercept sharing of intimate material. This service will work in this way: Anyone who fears an intimate image or video of them will be shared publicly on Facebook submits a form to one of the trusted partners. The victim receives an email containing a secure, one-time upload link, through which they share the images they fear will be shared A specially trained representative from Facebook’s Community Operations Safety Team reviews the report and creates a unique fingerprint, known as a hash, of each image.
The victim is notified via email and the images are deleted from Facebook’s servers, no later than seven days after they are sent. The stored hashes will allow Facebook to block all future uploads of the offending image on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger. Obviously this method create other issues about privacy. The user has to share their own private photos or videos with Facebook and with the Cambridge scandal and other privacy leaks this is something that not all users would like to do.
Like all similar problems the first and most effective way of dealing with this is the education of the users. Everyone has the duty to stop the diffusion of the material and report it to the competent authorities. Even if it could be seen funny to joke about those photos, we always have to remember that that material has been shared without the consent of the owner. It is very probable that they is struggling to deal with this situation and that this can have huge repercussion of their social or working life.
References:
https://tg24.sky.it/politica/2019/03/14/giulia-sarti-foto-private-rete.html
https://www.newsweek.com/revenge-porn-laws-europe-us-and-beyond-499303
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/evkzqa/facebook-revenge-porn-nudes
Francesco Lamonaca
3rdPLACE
