To pile on a little bit to what Erik shared here. There were several use cases that we could not have imagined when we set out on our path.
First, there was a case where a high school girl was equipment manager of her school football team. She was gang raped by some of the players. She was talking about that in chat with her friend, talking about committing suicide, and talking about how she couldn't tell her parents. She was afraid of what they would do to her. To her! Our engine caught much of this, and flagged it for the parents. It worked out in the end. We found out about this after the fact when the parents contacted us to let us know how our software probably saved her life.
Then there was the situation where there was a father who was a community fire chief. His child installed the software on his father's computer because his father was abusing him, and was spending time in really really bad chat rooms. The kid was hoping we were monitoring the alerts. The child eventually reached out to us asking why we hadn't sent the police. It was heart breaking.
Lastly, there was a kid who was buying drugs from a contact online. Is this a sexual predator? No. But a predator nonetheless. Our software flagged it.
There are bad people out there. Some of them are the Chris Hanson predator types. They aren't all sexual predators, but they are still looking to gain access to children without parental permission.
Children and young people react with "this software violates my rights!" As a child, under the age of 18, in the US, has no rights. A parent is supposed to parent. They have no right to privacy.
The software was not meant to record chats. It worked as a sort of a sliding window, and only when there was a flagged issue would a parent get a notification. That notification would include some of the chat around the offending line to give context, but nothing more.
With regard to access to kids - parents can look into a living room and ask "who is that?" Well it's Johnny. He lives down the street. The parents can talk to Johnny's parents. When a child is in an MMO and has a "friend" list a mile long, parents can't really ask "who is Fragg3rKill3r225?" Worse, their kid may not really know who that person is either.
At the core, IMSafer was about helping parents manage the relationships their kids were building online. As a parent, it is your job to know who has access to your kids, and how they are influencing them. Most parental control software is billed as keeping porn of the computers. IMSafer was about keeping the bad guys out of the kids lives.
Children and young people react with "this software violates my rights!" As a child, under the age of 18, in the US, has no rights. A parent is supposed to parent. They have no right to privacy.
It's absolutely false that children in the US have no rights or that parents can legally violate any of their rights arbitrarily. It's closer to the truth that children don't have a legal right to privacy from their parents in their parents' home using their parents' computer and internet connection.
This attitude is problematic though. Instead of encouraging a more open dialog between parents and their kids, parents using spyware creates an adversarial relationship. Under those circumstances, the kids will find ways around it, which you describe elsewhere as "unfortunate". I have no doubt there were situations where your software resulted in very good outcomes, but I'm inclined to suspect that in most cases where parents installed it, there was something broken in the parent/child relationship. Unfortunately "No mutual trust with your teenager? Our robot babysitter will let you know if she's talking about suicide online." probably isn't the world's best advertising slogan.
But it seems that only 2 countries haven't formally approved it - Somalia and the US. (And Somalia doesn't have a government, so I guess they get a pass for the moment.)
Articles 3, 5, 12, 13, 15, 16, etc etc would all be relevant. If you had carried on with the software this could have helped sell the product. Compare
"You are under 18. You have no rights" with
"You are under 18. You have rights. We know what they are, and we feel our product helps you enforce your rights, and carefully balances your rights with your parent's rights."
First, there was a case where a high school girl was equipment manager of her school football team. She was gang raped by some of the players. She was talking about that in chat with her friend, talking about committing suicide, and talking about how she couldn't tell her parents. She was afraid of what they would do to her. To her! Our engine caught much of this, and flagged it for the parents. It worked out in the end. We found out about this after the fact when the parents contacted us to let us know how our software probably saved her life.
Then there was the situation where there was a father who was a community fire chief. His child installed the software on his father's computer because his father was abusing him, and was spending time in really really bad chat rooms. The kid was hoping we were monitoring the alerts. The child eventually reached out to us asking why we hadn't sent the police. It was heart breaking.
Lastly, there was a kid who was buying drugs from a contact online. Is this a sexual predator? No. But a predator nonetheless. Our software flagged it.
There are bad people out there. Some of them are the Chris Hanson predator types. They aren't all sexual predators, but they are still looking to gain access to children without parental permission.
Children and young people react with "this software violates my rights!" As a child, under the age of 18, in the US, has no rights. A parent is supposed to parent. They have no right to privacy.
The software was not meant to record chats. It worked as a sort of a sliding window, and only when there was a flagged issue would a parent get a notification. That notification would include some of the chat around the offending line to give context, but nothing more.
With regard to access to kids - parents can look into a living room and ask "who is that?" Well it's Johnny. He lives down the street. The parents can talk to Johnny's parents. When a child is in an MMO and has a "friend" list a mile long, parents can't really ask "who is Fragg3rKill3r225?" Worse, their kid may not really know who that person is either.
At the core, IMSafer was about helping parents manage the relationships their kids were building online. As a parent, it is your job to know who has access to your kids, and how they are influencing them. Most parental control software is billed as keeping porn of the computers. IMSafer was about keeping the bad guys out of the kids lives.