What’s that, you say? There is a magic new USB porn stick that can detect porn on any computer you stick it in? And it is being reported on Time, MSNBC, CBS, Geek.com, InvertorSpot and a lot of gadget blogs?

In The Case Of The Curious Porn Stick, the originating source is Forbes, which you’d think would bring a bit of pedigree to the discussion. Ring the alarm, because everyone’s been taken for a ride on the fact-checking-free porn hysteria train.

The source is: The $100 USB Stick Your Boss Can Use To Find Your Porn. I watched it hit the wires last night and get three reblogs within an hour, while I was still struggling to find facts in the text. I knew it would get regurgitated widely – it’s about porn and tech, after all – and I knew no one would ask a single damn real question about it. Let me break it down for you:

Marc Weber Tobias begins the article with:

If you are among the growing legion of porn addicts that spend your employer’s time or resources viewing and downloading graphic images, be very afraid.

The article about the product begins by relying on the foundation that “porn addiction” has an agreed-on definition outside of Christian anti-porn tracts (it doesn’t) and that it is a disease (it isn’t) and it spreads like a zombie contagion (which would make everything easier, for the sake of argument, if it were true). This alone should have been the red flag for anyone set to repeat anything in the post as fact. Period.

Second sentence: “There is a new tool your boss (or spouse) can use to catch you. It’s a $100 USB stick that plugs into your PC and unmasks abuses and exposes your addictions without leaving a trace it was there.”

I think the real fallacy at this point is the assumption that any decent porn-loving red-blooded human is still reading Forbes beyond this sentence. Though, as someone who might have been a dominatrix were it not for the lure of the blogs, I particularly enjoy the tease-and-denial Tobias uses when he suggests getting caught for pornography – its inherent abuses and sickness. Threats and cruelty. Nice style with the readers, Tobias. The last part – without leaving a trace – feels merely like the fictional highlight.

Yes, it’s only for PCs and many news outlets would do well to highlight this. MSNBC failed this one out the gate. But the main item I keep seeing repeated in (re)press is this:

A new device, literally called the Porn Stick, from Paraben Corp., makes the task of identifying abusers much simpler. It will search for, identify, display, tag and even wipe images from a computer for a fraction of the cost and required expertise of the more sophisticated professional forensic programs. The software will even retrieve deleted images and Internet cache files. With the Porn Stick there is no software installed on the target machine, so there is no evidence of an intrusion and nothing is altered.

And this:

To test the system, I loaded some images onto my desktop and then turned the Porn stick loose to find them. It did, at two levels: low and high suspect photos. It will analyze and then produce reports with thumbnails to make it easy for administrators to zero-in on improper content. The software has been significantly enhanced from earlier versions and is now self-executable on a USB drive. It utilizes a sophisticated algorithm to analyze image data and assess flesh tone, color content, image backgrounds, body part shapes and other information which may be indicative of graphic sexual images. The software vendor reports less than a one percent false positive indication.

The “porn stick” has been available for six months – since last year. It is not new, at all.

Of all the “facts” being repeated, the one that should really bother Forbes – and its reputation – is the “less than a one percent false positive indication.” Not reported by the reporter, but carelessly repeated ver batim from the product manufacturer, who stands to gain greatly from this remaining exactly what it is – an anecdote.

Forbes is playing “news” with anecdotes but can’t be bothered to get either a) an outside opinion or b) anything to anchor this claim with. It’s porn! You don’t need to care too much, everything about porn is black and white. Except a better, more believable anecdote showed up immediately in the form of a comment on the article itself – from someone who has actually used the “porn stick.” An active member of their comment community who seems to care about their content:

Indeed. I still want you to consider the source on this for just a minute more, because clearly no one re-reporting this took a moment to go really deep, deep into the crazy funhouse of horrors that anchors “The $100 USB Stick Your Boss Can Use To Find Your Porn.”

I think we can all agree with “The Travelgeek” that porn doesn’t belong in the workplace, a main point throughout the Forbes article. However, this entire article posits that “Pornography is a serious problem and a menace in the workplace.” The anchor to this statement is a video embed we are encouraged to watch, the author’s own interview with William Janklow, former Attorney General and Governor of South Dakota.

I’m guessing no one has watched this video except me. It’s like a trip into bizzar-o land, complete with intellectual tentacle rape. In it, Janklow explains that pornography viewing is a “communal” practice. (This is not a joke, he really says this.) And that it is a trigger for rape, actually stating that viewers watch porn and must criminally “act on” their urges. Janklow also claims that pornography is a trigger for, outlet and cause/creator of – you guessed it – child molestation.

The same fear and wild, unsubstantiated statements are to be found on the Porn Stick’s product page, where they calmly tell you that your 11-year-old is a porn addict. But hey – we expect that from a company that is trying to sell porn sticks. The truly upsetting part is where they gently suggest that American law enforcement personnel use their product instead of dealing with the hassle of due process.

Well, I don’t know what kind of porn Janklow and Tobias watch, but it’s definitely not what the rest of us are watching. We’re watching legal, adult porn. And we do this thing when we watch it that is universally agreed on as healthy. Masturbating. To legal adult porn, which is inarguably the easiest to find. Even by desperate abusers who use PC’s.

That whole porn makes men rape and into pedophiles thing: much like the claim that the “porn stick” is new – it’s also not true. Forbes kinda really poisoned the tech-gadget news pool with this one.

Maybe I just sound so upset because I’m jealous that clearly Forbes has some superior drug connections.

Post image from Pure CFNM’s Office Exposure scenario (video link).