Child Rescue Coalition (CRC) technology.
This article profiles a Boca Raton firm, led by former federal prosecutor Greg Schiller, that has developed technology that purportedly tracks individuals currently sharing child sexual abuse material online.
The Florida Action Committee welcomes pioneering efforts to the extent it identifies and stops actual sexual offending. That is precisely the kind of proactive, prevention-based approach FAC supports. In the event this will only be another tool for entrapment and do nothing to take down the CSAM out there, we do not support this effort.
FAC would also like to point out that it’s notable that Mr. Schiller does not talk about the use of static tools like the registry of past offenders. Simply “watching the registry” is a passive practice that does nothing to stop predatory behavior before it begins. Monitoring a list of individuals who had offended years in the past does not prevent new crimes. If anything, it’s a waste of law enforcement resources – especially when tools like CRC’s exist. It also provides the public a false sense of security, which is counter-productive.
Instead of focusing on reactive measures that do nothing other than repeatedly punish people for past crimes, FAC believes resources should be channeled toward innovative, preventive tools which can actively intercept offending behavior as it happens. Such technologies represent a far more effective strategy for protecting children than a failed registry.
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This kind of statement isn’t giving you any additional credibility among those who oppose you. Endorsing the surveillance state in situations that are hard to criticize is the same as endorsing it in situations of government overreach.
All states investigate criminal activity.
That does not automatically make them all “surveillance states,” does it?
I looked at the CRC website and found they are touting questionable statistics such as “For every predator CRC helps law enforcement apprehend, we prevent between 50 and 150 children from being sexually abused. To date, our technology has prevented the abuse of more than 690,000 children worldwide. – based on what info???
and
“Today, child predators have virtually unlimited access to child sexual abuse material due to the easy, anonymous, and on-demand availability of these illicit graphic images and videos of child victims. The vast majority — a staggering 85 percent — have become hands-on abusers.” Really ??? – 85% of CSAM viewers become hands-on abusers? Where do they get these statistics – perhaps the same place the US Supreme Court got the statistic of the “frightening and high” recidivism rate of “sex offenders???
From the info on the site it seems like they are in the business of supplying law enforcement with tools to “catch” people downloading CSAM. There is no mention of law enforcement
hosting websites to disseminate CSAM or reverse sting operations that catch people who would never have looked for kids – until they were literally dropped in their face on adults only websites.
Just my 2 cents worth
Going to edit our Post based on this.
Prevention of crime is the best outcome. Cynical me says this will be used to cast a wide net though. Many hashed images inadvertently end, even if briefly, on sites or image searches where there was no illegal intent. Also cynical thinks that instead of using this technology to shut down the sites and cut off the head of the snake but instead I believe they will intensify their focus on trying to use this to feed the registry and the funding it produces. I’d love to see all CSAM eradicated but I know many law enforcement careers are built around its existence.
Another thing they should do, since apparently, known images have flags on them that the FBI uses to make arrests…. is start removing those images from the internet, so people who didn’t intend to view them don’t get tripped up just for wanting to look at adult porn. If they can flag them, I’m sure they can remove them. But then again, that would hurt their statistics and would bring their arrest numbers down and they wouldn’t be able to flaunt their “success”.
Are we saying that law enforcement agencies have the ability to just go ahead and delete the CSAM that’s out there?
How do we (FAC members) get them to start doing that?
Any form of more surveillance leads to more and more privacy concerns for everyone. Slippery slope theory. More and more of our freedoms and privacy are eroded with these types of tracking software.
Once a new tool is developed for law enforcement to track seemingly “innovative and proactive” concerns it will soon be utilized to track your every purchase, movement, every key press on your computer, your shopping habits, and endless tracking of individuals by the government to total loss of privacy and freedom.
How about law enforcement get off their butts from behind computers all day and get out and do some actual crime prevention on the streets.
This is not the kind of freedom our founders envisioned for America.
Re. “it will be used to track your shopping habits”— we’ve already reached that point, no?
More to the point, are there people who are out there “shopping” for CSAM? Should they be identified?
“Tracking” those sharing CSAM?? Why not simply arrest them? I don’t understand. Furthermore, will this technology also be tracking the FBI and others who covertly use CSAM to ensnare people. Afterall, allegedly, it’s the Feds who have the largest cache of CSAM. 🤷🏻♂️
The feds possess and use CSAM? How?
And how do we (FAC members) stop them from doing so?
In 2015, the FBI seized the servers for a CSAM website called “Playpen”, and then continued to operate the website for a couple of weeks after in order to catch people trading CSAM. It was said to be the largest investigation into the material, however by keeping the site active, along with it’s illegal content, and allowing hundreds of people to access, download, and share thousands of files of the material over the weeks it operated Playpen, it was also one of the largest distributions of the material.