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A14 TECHNOLOGY
Tuesday 23 april 2024

Report urges fixes to online child exploitation CyberTipline before

AI makes it worse

By BARBARA ORTUTAY and as sextortion messaging.
MATT O’BRIEN The FBI recently warned of
AP Technology Writers a “huge increase” in sex-
A tipline set up 26 years ago tortion cases targeting chil-
to combat online child ex- dren including financial
ploitation has not lived up sextortion, where someone
to its potential and needs threatens to release com-
technological and other promising images unless the
improvements to help law victim pays.
enforcement go after abus- Police detectives told
ers and rescue victims, a Stanford researchers they
new report from the Stan- are having a hard time
ford Internet Observatory persuading their higher-ups
has found. to prioritize these crimes
The fixes to what the re- even after they present
searchers describe as an them with detailed written
“enormously valuable” descriptions to emphasize
service must also come ur- their gravity. “They wince
gently as new artificial intel- when they read it and they
ligence technology threat- don’t really want to think
ens to worsen its problems. about this,” Grossman said.
“Almost certainly in the Many law enforcement
years to come, the Cyber- officials said they were not
Tipline will just be flooded Pages from the CyberTipline website are seen on a computer in New York on Friday, April 19, 2024. able to fully investigate all
with highly realistic-looking Associated Press reports due to time and re-
AI content, which is going now and those cracks are day due to a meme that to be very conservative or source constraints. A single
to make it even harder for going to become chasms was spreading on multiple to report potentially border- detective may be responsi-
law enforcement to iden- in a world in which AI is gen- platforms -- which some line content, because if it’s ble for 2,000 reports a year.
tify real children who need erating brand-new CSAM,” people thought was funny found to have been CSAM Outside the U.S., especial-
to be rescued,” said re- said Alex Stamos, using the and others were sharing out and they knew about it and ly in poorer countries, the
searcher Shelby Grossman, initials for child sexual abuse of outrage. they didn’t report it, they challenges around child ex-
an author of the report. materials. Stamos is a Stan- “That day actually led them could receive fines.” ploitation reports are espe-
The service was established ford lecturer and cyberse- to make some changes,” One relatively easy fix pro- cially severe. Law enforce-
by Congress as the main curity expert. Stamos said. “It took them posed in the report would ment agencies might not
line of defense for children The system is behind tech- weeks to get through that improve how tech platforms have reliable internet con-
who are exploited online. nologically and plagued backlog” by making it eas- label what they are report- nections, “decent comput-
By law, tech companies by a constant challenge ier to cluster those images ing to distinguish between ers” or even gas for cars to
must report any child sexu- among government and together. widely shared memes and execute search warrants.
al abuse material they find nonprofit tech platforms: The CyberTipline received something that deserves Pending legislation passed
on their platforms to the the lack of highly skilled en- more than 36 million reports closer investigation. by the U.S. Senate in De-
system, which is operated gineers, who can get paid in 2023, nearly all from on- The Stanford researchers cember would require
by the National Center for far higher salaries in the line platforms. Facebook, interviewed 66 people in- online platforms to report
Missing and Exploited Chil- tech industry. Sometimes Instagram and Google volved with the CyberTi- child sex trafficking and
dren. After it receives the those employees are even were the companies that pLine, ranging from law online enticement to the
reports, NCMEC attempts poached by the same sent in the highest number enforcement to NCMEC CyberTipline and give law
to find the people who sent companies that send in the of reports. The overall num- staff to online platform em- enforcement more time to
or received the material as reports. ber has been dramatically ployees. The NCMEC said investigate child sexual ex-
well as the victims, if possi- Then there are legal con- increasing. it looked forward to “ex- ploitation. Currently, the ti-
ble. These reports are then straints. According to the Nearly half of the tips sent ploring the recommenda- pline doesn’t offer straight-
sent to law enforcement. report, court decisions have last year were actionable, tions internally and with key forward ways to report sus-
While the sheer amount led the staff at NCMEC to meaning NCMEC and law stakeholders.” pected sex trafficking.
of CyberTipline reports stop vetting some files (for enforcement could follow “Over the years, the com- While some advocates
is overwhelming law en- instance, if they are not up. Hundreds of reports plexity of reports and have proposed more in-
forcement, researchers say publicly available) before concerned the same of- the severity of the crimes trusive surveillance laws to
volume is just one of sev- sending them to law en- fender, and many included against children continue catch abusers, Stamos, the
eral problems core to the forcement. Many law en- multiple images or videos. to evolve. Therefore, lever- former chief security officer
system. For instance, many forcement officials believe Around 92% of the reports aging emerging technolog- at Facebook and Yahoo,
of the reports sent by tech they need a search war- filed in 2023 involved coun- ical solutions into the entire said they should try simpler
companies like Google, rant to access such images, tries outside the U.S., a large CyberTipline process leads fixes first.
Amazon, and Meta lack slowing down the process. shift from 2008 when the to more children being “There’s no need to violate
important details, such as At times, multiple warrants majority involved victims or safeguarded and offenders the privacy of users if you
enough information about or subpoenas are needed offenders inside the U.S. being held accountable,” it want to put more pedo-
an offender’s identity, the to identify the same of- Some are false alarms. “It said in a statement. philes in jail. They’re sitting
report said. This makes it fender. drives law enforcement Among the report’s other right there,” Stamos said.
hard for law enforcement It’s also easy for the system nuts when they get these re- findings: “The system does not work
to know which reports to to get distracted. The re- ports that they perceive are The CyberTipline reporting very well at taking the in-
prioritize. port reveals that NCMEC definitely adults,” Grossman form doesn’t have a dedi- formation that currently ex-
“There are significant issues recently hit a milestone of told reporters. “But the sys- cated field for submitting ists and then turning it into
with the entire system right a million reports in a single tem incentivizes platforms chat-related material, such prosecutions.”q