Reports to child exploitation tip line up 40 per cent

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/04/2020 (2014 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When disaster strikes, there are predators who use the new landscape to exploit the vulnerable.

With schools closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and children spending more time online at home, sex predators are pressing their advantage.

In the past two weeks, reports to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s cybertip line have increased by 40 per cent.

“We sort of expected this was going to happen with kids at home on a regular basis now and likely accessing technology more often than they normally would,” said Catherine Tabak, program manager of Cybertip.ca.

“One thing that is quite alarming for us in terms of the tip line is we are having different (online) forums reported… where we actually see the offending community coaching each other on how to target children specifically during COVID-19,” Tabak said. “So it’s really important that parents stay on top of this and remain engaged in monitoring online activity.”

Tabak said the tips include reports of grooming or luring offences, unwanted and repeated communications from strangers, and “sextortion.”

“There is a community out there called “cappers” where essentially their intent is to get a child or youth to go on livestream,” Tabak said “They then (record) the child … and use that recording to extort the child either by asking them to pay a large sum of money, or in other cases there might be extortion to receive other sexual images or videos from that child.”

Sources who understand the issue say that at any given time, as many as 200 Manitobans are online looking at child pornography. Eighty per cent of material found on the “dark web” involves the sexual abuse of children.

While many offenders will be brought to account for their crimes, many more will not be charged.

“The predators out there come from all walks of life,” says Det. Justin Fiebelkorn, a technological crime unit officer assigned to the Winnipeg Police Service’s internet child exploitation (ICE) unit.

“There is no specific profile,” Fiebelkorn said. “You would think there would be, but there isn’t. It could be your neighbour – you have no idea.”

The unit investigates reports of child sex abuse imagery – child pornography – and arrests the offenders, both the people who produce it and, most commonly, the people who look at it.

“The investigation of… children being abused and their images and videos being captured and then shared online, via the internet – that is the largest mandate of our unit,” says unit leader Det. Sgt. Lisa Bryce, adding investigators also look into teen peer-to-peer sharing of self-produced child pornography.

While the number of incidents is impossible to gauge, child pornography reports or tips to police have soared in recent years. From 1998 to 2018, the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received 48 million reports of child sexual imagery, 40 per cent of them or 18.4 million in 2018 alone. Locally, reports or tips to the Winnipeg police ICE unit have increased 200 per cent over the last three years.

“That speaks to the explosion of these types of incidents… it is steadily, steadily climbing,” Bryce said.

“The predators out there come from all walks of life… There is no specific profile. You would think there would be, but there isn’t. It could be your neighbour– you have no idea.” – Det. Justin Fiebelkorn

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat can be both tools for abuse and the source for uncovering child sex predators. Ninety per cent of child sexual abuse imagery complaints come from social media providers, most of them based in the U.S.

“The companies that discover child pornography on their platforms are mandated to report it, so they are improving their technology to capture it,” Bryce said.

Reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that have a Canadian connection are forwarded to its Canadian counterpart in Ottawa, the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre, which then alerts the appropriate local police service.

The balance of cases the ICE unit investigates are sparked by reports from individuals who have become aware of the imagery or a child sex predator or “proactive” investigations of online chat sites known to attract abusers.

“Sometimes when we do a proactive investigation, the tip has come originally from our Canadian centre,” Bryce said, going on to use the example of Xbox Live, an online gaming service popular with children and teens.

“Let’s say there’s a lot of chatting that goes back and forth and from that there are luring aspects,” she said.

“Sometimes it’s very difficult for us to identify the victims. So when we get reports and we know the person involved is in Winnipeg, we can then go online and start an investigation to sort of target that individual and see if they will do the same as has been reported by Xbox Live to the undercover officer.”

Investigations are painstaking, from identifying an online suspect, to securing their IP (internet protocol) address, writing up search warrants, authorizing production orders for cellphone and other records, and analyzing an accused person’s electronic devices, which can take up to a year or more depending on the amount of data that has to be combed through.

“It really depends on the security features and the way we are trying to circumvent them,” said Det. Jason Joseph, a computer forensic examiner with the technical crimes unit. “Technology is always evolving. Companies out there value people’s information and make it more difficult for us to circumvent it.”

While a company such as Facebook may be legally obligated to report child pornography on its platforms, companies such as Apple “are not mandated to ensure that law enforcement can actually get into a device, even with judicial authority,” Bryce said

Another complication is that many offenders who contact local children do so from outside the country, leading to jurisdictional wrangling.

“It gets more complicated when you go outside the jurisdiction of Canada, because then you have to get something called a Mutual Lateral Agreement, which goes through Ottawa,” said Joseph. “If you were trying to serve somebody outside our jurisdiction… there is a lot of bureaucracy involved.

“To go through the process you have to liaise with the RCMP, who then liaises with their counterpart in the U.S., who then liaises with the company you are trying to serve the order to,” he said. “That doesn’t even necessarily mean that because they are an American company that the information you are looking for lives in the U.S. A lot of companies have been storing a lot of their information in Scandinavia because the climate is cooler and they are able to cool their servers naturally, saving money on energy. So a company could have a server farm in Scandinavia, then that order needs to be converted over there to get the information.”

The ICE unit reviews about 30 new files a month. In 2018, the unit investigated 92 cases determined to involve child pornography, with 38 per cent of them resulting in an arrest.

“There are situations where sometimes we’ll have an idea who (the offender) is, but given the evidence and information… we have to cross several hurdles of evidence and sometimes that’s not there,” said Det. Chad Black. Such cases could include instances where multiple people had access to the same computer or cellphone where police had found child sex abuse imagery.

“Sometimes with the evidence given, there might be trouble or ambiguity as to who is fully responsible,” Black said. In such cases, police might “caution” a suspect, “saying this has come up, there’s smoke here, basically we are aware of this,” Black said.

The sheer volume of tips coming in to police means investigators have to prioritize which ones will get attention. Approximately 98 per cent of tips involve offenders in possession of, looking at or distributing child sex abuse imagery that has already been circulating online. Tips that involve the active abuse of a child “would become our number one priority,” Bryce said.

“Those are extremely lengthy investigations, which would also involve the child abuse unit,” Bryce said. “If we had a couple of those in a year, that would take our resources to work on that and some of the other ones we would have to prioritize and decide which ones would get the full investigation. Some (accused offenders) might get a caution, some might get a caution that they have been identified, so there is that avenue too.”

It’s those kinds of hard choices that have some sources familiar with the issue calling for more resources to be allocated to the ICE unit.

“This problem is massive and we just don’t have enough police to investigate it,” said one source. “We aren’t even scratching the surface.”

Winnipeg police would not confirm how many officers are assigned to the ICE unit, but said “staffing levels are often adjusted to reflect changes in workloads.”

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Keeping kids safe from online predators requires both vigilance and persistence, says Tabak.

“The conversations (parents) are having with their kids, it really can’t be a one-time conversation,” she said. “Making your teen or child more comfortable with coming to you when they are facing uncomfortable situations is really key during this time.”

“The conversations (parents) are having with their kids, it really can’t be a one-time conversation.” – Catherine Tabak, program manager of Cybertip.ca

Tabak recommended parents stay on top of what apps their children may be using on their electronic devices, consider imposing screen time limits and have their children, particularly younger ones, only use their devices in a common area of the home where they can more easily be monitored.

“Depending on the age of the child… if they are creating online accounts or using games on their phones, parents might want to consider whether there are different features on the game that wouldn’t be appropriate for the age of the child,” Tabak said. “If there is a chat feature, of course, you want to be monitoring that or restricting access to the chat altogether.”

And be watchful of any changes in your children’s behaviour, Tabak advised parents.

“Offenders know where to target children,” she said. “They are connecting with them on one (social media) platform and moving them to a platform that might be more private and then coaching them to hide communications from their parents.”

Bryce added that parents should ensure the privacy settings on their children’s devices are set such that strangers can’t communicate with them.

“I don’t think people realize with all the digital information on all the social media platforms, how much can be found out about them,” Bryce said. “I think unfortunately when you are dealing with adolescents and teenagers, they think nothing bad is going to happen.”

“Parents really need to know what their children are doing online,” she said.

For information how to protect your children from online predators, visit cybertip.ca or protectkidsonline.ca.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca