Europol's working group has met twice a year since 2014 to speed up investigations to identify victims, most recently in November.
Law enforcement agencies around the world are sounding the alarm about offenders communicating with minors and exchanging illegal content on encrypted messaging programs like WhatsApp, Signal and iMessage ,This makes searching for content extremely difficult. WhatsApp, for example, scans photos and user descriptions, but cannot monitor their highly secure messages.
Politico writes about this.
Criminals are getting better at hiding their digital footprints, and law enforcement officials say they don't have the tools they need to keep up. The increasing use of encrypted communications on the Internet is making the job of investigators more difficult, especially as the pandemic, which has kept people at home and online, has increased the flow of offensive images and videos.
In 2022, social media giant Meta Platforms found and reported 26 million images on Facebook and Instagram. Teen favorites Snapchat and TikTok, respectively, have filed more than 550,000 and nearly 290,000 reports to the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an organization that acts as a clearinghouse for U.S. child sexual abuse material (CSAM) laws that tech companies identify. and spot.
In December, the European Commission also ordered Meta to explain what it is doing to combat the spread of illegal sexual images taken by minors and shared via Instagram, under a new rule EU Content Moderation, Digital Services Act (DSA).
Politicians around the world are eager to act. In the European Union and the United Kingdom, lawmakers have drafted laws to dig up more illegal content and expand law enforcement's powers to combat child sexual abuse material.
But these efforts have fueled bitter public debate over priority: giving police new powers to prosecute offenders or maintaining privacy and protection from mass online surveillance by states and digital platforms.
Scale of the problem
A Europol working group has met twice a year since 2014 to speed up investigations to identify victims, most recently in November. Its size has nearly tripled to 33 researchers representing 26 countries, including Germany, Australia and the United States.
“You can recognize things in pictures or sounds in the background or voices. If you do this with several nationalities in the same room, it can be really effective,” said Marijn Schurbiers, head of operations at Europol's European Cybercrime Center (EC3). .
All too often, however, detectives feel like they are swimming against the tide as the amount of child sexual abuse material circulating online skyrockets.
Europol created the database in 2016 and now this system contains 85 million unique photographs and videos of children, many of which are found on pedophile forums on the “dark web” – a part of the Internet where there is no access to general search and viewing which requires special software.
“We can work for hours on end, but we're still scratching the surface. It's terrible,” said Mary, a national police officer from a non-EU country with 17 years' experience. She asked that her last name not be used to protect her during the investigation.
In November, the task force reviewed 432 files, each containing tens of thousands of images, and found the most likely country for the 285 children abused in the images. Police believe they have likely identified 74 victims, three of whom had been rescued at the time of publication. Two offenders have been detained.
“We're making some progress. But I only see those we can't help,” Mary said.
Many Western agencies outside the US are limited by privacy provisions in the software they use, such as facial recognition tools. They often have to make do with a combination of manual analysis and available tools they can get online.
“If you have thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of photos, it is almost impossible to review them manually one after another,” Schurbiers said.
Law enforcement agencies around the world are also sounding the alarm that offenders are also communicating with minors and exchanging illegal content in encrypted programs messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Signal and iMessage, making searching for content extremely difficult. WhatsApp, for example, scans photos and user descriptions, but cannot control their highly secure messages. strong>sexual abuse of my eight-year-old cousin. Now he faces life in prison.
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