Anonymous ID: 47478e Aug. 29, 2020, 4 p.m. No.10465916   🗄️.is 🔗kun

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/paedophiles-using-cheese-pizza-emojis-secret-code-social-media/

Paedophiles using cheese and pizza emojis as secret code on social media

Cheese and pizza emojis are being used as a secret code by paedophiles to communicate on social media sites such as Instagram and Twitter, online safety groups have warned.

A group of more than 100 volunteer parents has banded together to hunt down and report accounts using the emoji to signal they are sharing sexualised images of children, in a bid to evade detection by the social media giants.

Members of the parents' group told The Telegraph they often found such accounts sharing images of children taken in family settings such on beaches or gardens, which appeared to have been stolen from the parents’ social media profiles.

The development has prompted a former Government child safety advisor to warn parents to avoid sharing images of their children openly on social media in case they are stolen and traded online.

The group of parents was started by India, a 27-year-old executive assistant from London, who asked the paper not to use her surname, and who stumbled across the child image accounts on social media.

Since then she has set up Twitter and Instagram pages, called ProtectPD, dedicated to naming accounts she finds sharing child images so her followers can report them en masse to the social media giants.

She said: “I couldn’t just scroll past it as at the end of the day these are people’s children.

“There are pictures of little boys aged five or six on the beach in their swimming trunks and chances are that picture was taken by their parents on their holiday. Somehow that picture has gotten into their hands.”

India, who has had direct talks with officials at Instagram over the issue, said the accounts often signaled what they were doing by using cheese and pizza emojis, to represent ‘CP’ meaning ‘child porn’.

Following the revelation, John Carr OBE, an online child protection expert who formerly sat on the Government's UK Council for Internet Safety, described the phenomenon as “horrifying” and said social media giants had to do more themselves to hunt down and delete the account.

He said: "It is understandable that parents want to share pictures of their children with friends and relatives, but if their social media accounts are not private these photos can be seen - and taken - by anyone.

“This is about parents not thinking because they are not aware that these bad guys are out there doing this.”

Vaishnavi J, Head of Safety at Instagram, told the Telegraph: “Any content that endangers children is abhorrent and we’re committed to doing everything we can to keep it off our apps.

"We remove accounts that share or solicit this type of content and report them to the police. We also use technology that’s constantly improving to find and remove known child exploitation imagery.

"We’ve been working with India to investigate and remove the accounts she’s identified and we’re grateful for her help.”

A spokesman for Twitter said: "Twitter has a zero tolerance policy for child sexual exploitation content. We aggressively fight online child sexual abuse and have heavily invested in technology and tools to enforce our policy.

"Our dedicated teams work to stay ahead of bad-faith actors and to ensure we’re doing everything we can to remove content, facilitate investigations, and protect minors from harm — both on and offline."

Anonymous ID: 47478e Aug. 29, 2020, 4:09 p.m. No.10465969   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6015 >>6061 >>6221 >>6323 >>6378

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/08/27/state-use-entire-h-freeway-covid-testing-site-next-week/

State to use entire H-3 Freeway to facilitate COVID-19 testing next week

HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) - State and city authorities are planning a full closure of the H-3 Freeway next week to help facilitate surge COVID-19 testing efforts on Oahu, the Department of Transportation announced Thursday.

The multi-agency effort will involve the closure of the freeway in both directions from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 1 and Thursday, Sept 3, officials say.

Testing stations will be set up inside the Harano Tunnel, in both directions of traffic, to maximize the number of individuals who can be tested.

Once individuals have been tested, they’ll be required to continue on to either end of the H-3 before using alternate Koolau routes, if necessary, to continue in transit.

“This surge testing will help us flatten the curve once more,” said Gov. David Ige. “We’re all working together for the health and safety of our whole community. Use of the H-3 will provide space to allow as many people as possible to be tested.”

The drive to use the H-3 as a testing site is part of a new mass COVID-19 testing initiative that was announced earlier this week in conjunction with U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams and the federal government.

Caldwell said 4,800 people were tested as part of the surge testing program on Wednesday alone ― but state and federal officials acknowledged that the increased testing numbers were likely to cause a spike in the number of positive cases reported in Hawaii.

The use of the freeway also appears to be a response to traffic issues that plagued some test sites on Wednesday; people with appointments to get tested at Kaneohe District Park were turned away for a period of time on Wednesday morning, and lines to get into the sit at Leeward Community College stretched for miles.

“Testing on the H-3 is a historic, first ever endeavor that will make a significant difference in getting more people tested,” said Mayor Caldwell. “This will be made possible by all of our Federal, State, and County teams working together to make sure traffic in and out of these sites can flow smoothly.”