Chapter 3 - Crime Areas

3.3 Child sexual exploitation online - Law enforcement considerations

The lack of harmonised investigation capabilities among Member States (MS) creates additional strain on investigations.

Furthermore, the increased use of the Darknet, coupled with many Member States’ lack of investigative powers to perform undercover activities, and lack of technical capabilities to access these environments, brings added difficulties to investigations.

Law enforcement does not usually have enough capabilities or resources to challenge these crimes in a significant way. Lack of cooperation agreements with some countries means that some investigations cannot be pursued, as does the limited or non-existent possibility to perform undercover investigations, for example, on the Darknet.

Also, the large quantity of data collected during operations, and its subsequent analysis, takes a great amount of resources and has implications both on the initiation of new operations as well as on the completeness of the different steps of an investigation such as thorough victim identification.

In addition, a shortage of human resources limits attempts to identify victims. Child sexual exploitation online, and the large amount of CAM available, requires dedicated capacity not only to be employed in investigations per se but also in victim identification (ID) which is sometimes not performed in MS. Victim ID is one of the most relevant aspects of the investigations as each time a victim is identified a child can be taken out of the exploitation environment, starting the recovery process.

In order to support this with effective victim ID platforms are necessary which, by augmenting the cross-matching possibilities, enhance the probability of identifying both victims and offenders.

Decisions concerning privacy and data protection, such as the EU Court of Justice ruling on Data Protection and the Initiatives such as the ‘right to be forgotten’, may bring added challenges to transnational investigations or hamper open source research on suspects.

An increased usage of encryption and anonymity devices bring additional complexity to investigations. A stronger focus on traditional LE work and increased liaison with intelligence services – infiltration, human intelligence (HUMINT), etc. – might be of added value in overcoming some of the challenges LE faces in cyberspace.

Also the use of Big Data – pro-active/predictive approach to identify potential perpetrators [58] – needs to be well balanced with existing legislation and respect the basic principles of justice.

Cyberspace presents many difficulties for investigations but it is also true that CSE in which images are shared online is easier to trace. As long as adequate jurisdiction and investigative capacity is in place, offenders and victims are more likely to be identified in cyberspace than in the offline world.

The Internet can provide an inflated sense of anonymity and security to offenders that can work to law enforcement’s benefit.