Mandatory reporting of child abuse images
Summary: The Canadian government recently announced that it plans to introduce a new bill that would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to report illegal images of child sexual abuse to the police. While some ISPs already report illegal content to the police, they are not obligated by law to do so, which means that police need to obtain search warrants to obtain information from ISPs when conducting online abuse investigations. The police don’t have the resources to fight this battle on their own. They need the support of the government and the ISPs in order to stop the alarming proliferation of child abuse on the Internet. Click here to read more about the bill.
Summary: There has been a significant shift to accessing the Internet through mobile devices. Popular social networking and instant messaging applications have been specifically adapted for mobile phones. Currently, ISPs do not keep a log of IP addresses assigned to mobile devices, and there is no law requiring them to do so. If a child is lured or goes missing, law enforcement cannot trace him/her to a source if the communication has taken place through a mobile application.
Wireless Networks
Summary: Wi-Fi Zones and Wi-Max environments allow Internet access to anyone within that zone or environment without the necessity of subscribing, and thus without the necessity of providing subscriber identification information. These environments can therefore be attractive venues for online offenders because they provide a measure of anonymity unattainable through an Internet service subscription. As this trend continues, the challenges for law enforcement in identifying online offenders will increase. Accordingly, there is a need for sponsors of widely available free and public Internet access to engage comprehensively with law enforcement about how to address criminal activity by those misusing such networks. Subscribers who create unsecured private wireless networks can present a problem for themselves and for law enforcement. Offenders can access unsecured private networks surreptitiously to conduct online child exploitation. Investigation of that exploitation activity will lead to the subscriber who created the unsecured private network, and not the true offender. Like Wi-Max environments, unsecured private networks permit a higher level of anonymity for offenders. However, unlike Wi-Max environments, unsecured private networks present a risk that a subscriber who has created one will become unnecessarily entangled in a criminal investigation. In this sense the creator of the unsecured private network is an additional victim of the online offender, but he or she is also a victim of his or her own failure to implement appropriate security measures.
Summary: Investigators now see Internet child sexual exploitation issues arising where both victim and perpetrator are children. This phenomenon of child-to-child Internet sexual exploitation is, like adult to child Internet sexual exploitation, committed in many different ways. Child to child internet sexual exploitation does, however, differ in one important respect from adult to child internet sexual exploitation: The simultaneous involvement of children as both offenders and victims requires that a deep understanding of child development issues be integrated into any criminal justice response.