Opinion

Bringing attention to child pornography with National Cyber Security Awareness Month

If one pays close attention to the radio ads this month, many are directed towards cyber crime awareness, as October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

The virtual world is full of perpetrators waiting to exploit the vulnerable. Although any kind of crime is worth abhor, it is especially despicable when the innocent are the target. Child pornography is one of such acts, in which the evidence is illegally posted online; however, the same platform this crime circulates on can be the same that it is eradicated on.

Many times, those who offer, possess, transmit or store these illegal photos and videos could face long term prison and a lifetime on sex offender registries. Aside from the threat of incarceration, one needs to also spare a thought for the children depicted in these images and videos, since the images continue to be proliferated and transmitted for long after they go viral on the Internet.

National Cyber Security Awareness Month is a great time to bring attention to the progression of combating child pornography and aiding in the retrieval of missing children.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan established The National Center for Missing & Exploited children, a non-profit organization dedicated to the cause of missing kids. In 2009,Microsoft developed a technology with Dartmouth College called PhotoDNA.

From there, the popularity and effectiveness of this program spread, gaining companies like Facebook and Google. The program reviews images and videos of sexually exploited children reported by law enforcement, backdated since 2002 — which is 65 million as of date.

Bill Harmon, associate general counsel in Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, said the technology finds a digital fingerprint — a unique identifier for digital images. PhotoDNA cannot identify individuals in photos, but by creating that unique mathematical representation of a photo itself, it helps law enforcement then match one photo to another, which helps investigators determine if a specific photo is new or an older shot that’s being recirculated.

The tool also helps law enforcement detect images that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. In the blog post, the associate general counsel said their goal is to help expedite investigations, limit officer exposure to the corrosive effects of viewing child rape images and strengthen law enforcement’s ability to quickly identify and rescue victims and get child abusers off the street.

The need of the hour is not just these stringent measures to combat and even eradicate as we progress ahead, but also better levels of awareness towards these crimes, which when nipped early will contribute to the collective good. One of the ways is to educate and sensitize people about what the punishment for the various cyber crimes are and the liabilities they fall under so people are aware of them.

One could also proactively contribute to this cause by reporting on the abuse or crime they’ve seen or heard of. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children announced the Cyber Tipline, and according to their webpage, they receive leads and tips regarding suspected crimes of sexual exploitation committed against children.

More than 2.5 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation have been made to the CyberTipline between 1998 and June 2014. There are also organizations that are dedicated to the cause, few of which are advertised on the radio, like SafeKids.com and Connectsafely.org.  Connectsafely.com receives financial support from Facebook and is also on its Safety Advisory Board.

It’s better to be equipped with knowledge and tools and it can start with educating people young.

Education is supposed to engage individuals to harness growth and let the growth be sustainable for a better future. Therefore, it becomes the collective responsibility of all citizens to contribute to causes like this.

Opinion columnist Valli Challa is a law graduate student and may be reached at [email protected].

1 Comment

  • My goal is not to diminish the seriousness of child sexual abuse(CSA) but put it in perspective. Statistics report that over 95% of CSA is infamilial and less than 1% is at the hands of a stranger; keep those stats in mind while reading the rest of the article. A person that GIVES images power to influence or control the behavior of people is called VooDoo; Witchcraft. Unknowingly many use their authority for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure to convince you otherwise but they are practicing VOO-DOO nevertheless. While I can appreciate that the actual crime against a child occurred in the creation of a child sexual abuse crime scene image (CACSI), I cannot agree that looking for, viewing, or collecting CACSI victimizes anyone. If you were to apply the same reasoning to any other crime, than looking at a photo of any crime would be re-victimizing someone. Those that watched the twin towers in New York City crumbling would be complicit for the deaths of all those people because they looked; same logic. The problem exists with definition and the use of pre internet vernacular and nomenclature where the truth hinges on perception, Child Pornography(CP) is pornography made by children as in (EXPERIMENTATION such as sexting- webcam or smart phone, mutual masturbation). Adult Pornography is pornography made by adults. Adults who have sex with children and record that abuse with images are called images of abuse and crime scene evidence. Giving CACSI power is called practicing voodoo. Journalist love to use the words child pornography for the SHOCK value they report nothing but what is told to them by law enforcement, because they are not allowed to look at the evidence. The palpable danger is the publics acutely erroneous understanding of the alleged problem. We need accurate information about the true dynamics of the alleged problem because the things that we hear and fear and the things that actually occur are two different issues and may not be the same at all. Until the news media is allowed to look at the evidence which they are currently prohibited form doing the public has to TOTALLY rely on what Law Enforcement tells them and nothing more. We are FORCED to take the governments word for it and we all know the government doesn’t lie !!!

    If the simple act of viewing a CACSI image is harmful perhaps an appropriate punishment would be to simply take a image of the perpetrator in jail, then set them free, but have some look at the image that was taken while they they were in jail; same LOGIC. Legislators have drawn upon pre internet pseudo research without any empirical evidence when people actively had to exert effort and seek out the contraband; However with the INTERNET the contraband is but a click away. Today CACSI can be found for FREE on the INTERNET using person to person ( P2P) software.

    Legislators have passed CP laws based on pedophile drama assuming there was a market for CACSI which causing it to be “intrinsically related” to the underlying abuse and therefore “an integral part of the production of such materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation.”; However today child sexual abuse images can be found for FREE on the INTERNET using P2P software. There is NO market for CACSI and if arrested for possession of CACSI people are at the mercy of the prosecutor. The fear industrial complex, the child abuse industry and the entertainment industry are BILLION dollar corporations composed of politicians, activist groups and child charities who create Gothic Melodramas and monster stories of child molesting by selling us on the idea that they can provide safety from the very dangers they are scaring us about. One should look up the research paper entitled, “Statistics Laundering: false and fantastic figures”. People antipathy towards CACSI is antecedent of their own furtive behavior to hide the depths of their lives’ disparity. People that have researched the topic concede that over 95% of the child sexual abuse is infamilial and less than 1% is at the hands of strangers. Ones antipathy posited as fact about a CACSI is what is driving the current CP witch hunt. The government erroneously believes people under 18 have no sexuality so they must wait until they are magically transformed into sexual beings on their 18th birthday even though in some states a child can legally at 15 drive a three ton bullet; kids younger than 8 are on firring ranges shooting guns. It seems as though children are given adult responsibility rather early compared to sexual responsibility.

    One of the most egregious widespread example of prosecutorial aggression and overreach in the history of the U.S. criminal justice system was the mass moral panic over alleged ritual sex abuse in the 1980s and 1990s, and the wrongful convictions of dozens of innocent people that followed. Prosecutors across the country sent people to jail on horrific allegations of bizarre occult and satanic rituals that included sex with children, penetrating children with knives and orgies with children and animals. But the allegations inevitably stemmed solely from interviews investigators conducted with children, and there was no physical evidence of any abuse. As one hunt for pedos is over, another will surely take its place as the government conflates situations. People have become nothing more than common objects in political sexual witch hunts, easy targets as they are already marginalized and disliked by society they become monsters portrayed as evil in the news. People slip into this category quickly with today’s Internet because its as easy for a person to download CACSI of a minor as it is for law enforcement to track down and identify those doing the downloading. The institutions in charge of going after CSACI have becomes loaded intimidating institution that needs to be crushed.

    The hysteria over CP has persisted for so long because, only those who PROFIT from that hysteria(as always follow the MONEY) have been allowed to frame the debate by playing on people angst. To fund this witch hunt a 300 million dollar BILL was attached to the BANK BAILOUT BILL of 2008. Today CP is the main activity in terms of Internet related sex crime, certainly in terms of convictions. So how is the governments definition of CP a BILLION dollar business? The cost of a social worker is $30.000 dollars a year; the cost of a police officer is $40.000-$75,000 dollars a year; the cost of a Homeland Security agent is $75.000-$150,000 dollars a year; the cost of a lobbying a politician well over $1,000,000 a year; the cost of a “charity worker” is $35.000 a year; The cost of CP conferences over $150,000 a year; the cost of CP Internet filters is in the millions $1,000,000 a year; the cost of the child abuse industry’s bizarre lavish anti CP lifestyles exceed $1,000,000,000 that is how. The major costs of of going after any image of anyone naked under the age of 18 which the government calls CP are the agencies and people in charge of going after it. Most CP is underground, there is no multi-million dollar Hollywood Studio producing it as some want you to believe. The Coalition of Parents estimates that the child abuse industry costs US taxpayers $285 billion/yr. and they get away with it because of people ANGST and NOTHING more. Curiosity energizes and ennobles; Curiosity keeps people coming back whether there is a new piece of software or gadget because people know they might learn something new that’s our nature. Law Enforcement has learned from the social sciences on how to cultivates curiosity which make their, “CP pull marketing” work.

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