Stakeholders join forces at INTERPOL annual meeting on Crimes against Children
15 OCTOBER 2014, GLOBAL
Summary
In cooperation with the 32nd Meeting of the INTERPOL Specialists Group on Crimes against Children, representatives from Industry, Law Enforcement, Civil Society and the Research community met earlier this month to initiate a new collaborative process in the fight against online Child Sexual Abuse.In cooperation with the 32nd Meeting of the INTERPOL Specialists Group on Crimes against Children, representatives from Industry, Law Enforcement, Civil Society and the Research community met earlier this month to initiate a new collaborative process in the fight against online Child Sexual Abuse.
Speaking during the Specialist Meeting, Mick Moran, INTERPOL’s Assistant Director for Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation said, “INTERPOL welcomes this initiative from Industry. There is no doubt that we need to work together to address online child sexual abuse. We would also encourage further input from the technology communityon how they might assist in treating this problem. For example, robust formal and informal procedures exist to manage issues such as Spam and Malware and we would like to see a similar solution developed for Child Abuse Material. Coming together to discuss the issues is a very positive development in itself and we are committed to support the industry in this endeavor through leveraging each other’s strengths.”
The informal cross-disciplinary coalition recognised the significant progress made in recent years by many sub-sectors of Industry to introduction technological and policy measures to disrupt access to Child Abuse Material on the Internet. However, as Internet connectivity and digital technology become faster and cheaper, online crimes against children become increasingly challenging to investigate and prosecute, and the need for close cooperation between all players becomes ever more urgent to stem the tide of online abuse.
Co-organised by Group IB, Hubstream, Netclean and Videntifier, this event gathered Adobe, Bluebear, Facebook, Farsight Security, Trend Micro and ZiuZ, joined by INTERPOL’s Crimes against Children Team, Europol, University of Warwick and NGOs including ECPAT International and the International Association of Internet Hotlines – INHOPE - to initiate a mapping of capabilities against online crimes against children. As part of closer engagement between academia, industry, law enforcement and civil society, advancing the role of computer science and related technologies in fighting crimes against children is more than ever important.
The meeting served as a springboard to identify joint research activities and future actions that can ensure a sustained, effective and highly collaborative response to the sexual exploitation of children online. There is a role for everyone to play in this, and the time to act is now.
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About INHOPE
INHOPE is an active, collaborative and influential network of 51 hotlines in 45 countries worldwide, committed to stamping out child sexual abuse from the Internet.
INHOPE was founded in 1999 under the European Commission Safer Internet Programme.
INHOPE Hotlines offer the public a way of anonymously reporting Internet material including child sexual abuse material they suspect to be illegal.
INHOPE members operate a public hotline to receive complaints about apparent illegal content, they then assess the content in accordance with their national laws and if they consider it to be illegal they trace the material to a hosting country. If the content is illegal in the hosting country then the national Hotline takes steps to have the material ‘taken down’ in consultation with their law enforcement partners.
In the first half of 2014:
170 analysts across the INHOPE network processed 587,674 reports of illegal content.
39,144 reports were assessed to contain unique URLs of child sexual abuse material, a 32% increase compared with the last six months of 2013.
81% child victims were female. 6% child victims were infants.
In Europe, 98% was reported to law enforcement within a day. 91% was removed from the Internet within three days.
Want to know more about the work of INHOPE?
Visit our website www.inhope.org and download our 2013/14 Annual Report