Unexpected pandemic effect: Child abuse proliferates online

In September 2019, The New York Times published an extensive investigation into the hideous world of child porn on the Internet. The paper found that, in 2018, tech companies reported 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused and tortured. This was double the count from 2017.

And now, the coronavirus pandemic has led to a massive surge in child abuse material being uploaded, according to a story from the Fuller Project for International Reporting co-published with the UK Telegraph.

Journalists found that during the months of the pandemic, posts of downloadable child abuse material (90 percent of which depicts girls) went up 200 percent as compared with previous months. Not only that, but the amount of such material being taken offline fell by 89 percent, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK charity that finds and removes images and videos of abused children on the web.

Specialist cybersecurity company Web-IQ told the Fuller Project that in February, it found 2,790 links it believed were “highly likely to point to child abuse material.” In March, Fuller reported, the number more than tripled to 9,255, and there was a total of 40,000 posts on child abuse forums.

From mid-February to mid-March, IWF investigators removed about 15,000 URLs around the world. One month later, the group was only able to take down approximately 1,500. Fuller said there are a few reasons why it’s gotten more difficult to get rid of this material on the web during the coronavirus outbreak: IWF is working at only half capacity because of social distancing, and while the group still sends out Notice and Takedown notifications to people posting child abuse materials, companies are responding more slowly. Also, many hotlines used to report abuse in Europe have temporarily shut down during the pandemic.

“People are processing, recording, and sending off notices but they’re unable to keep chasing up, to keep pushing and reminding: ‘Get this taken down,’” said Fred Langford, deputy CEO of IWF.

The September 2019 Times article already described the system as being at “a breaking point,” with reports of abusive images “exceeding the capabilities of independent clearinghouses and law enforcement to take action.” With such an overwhelming number of abusive images to deal with, U.S. law enforcement told the Times that they were often “besieged,” and that in order to manage the enormous workload, they focused on the youngest victims.

“We go home and think, ‘Good grief, the fact that we have to prioritize by age is just really disturbing,’” said Detective Paula Meares, who has investigated child sex crimes for more than 10 years at the Los Angeles Police Department.

In the time of coronavirus, that overwhelming trove is even harder to combat.

“You’re trying to do a job that you’d normally have 10 screens for and a big terabyte base computer, and now suddenly you're on your own Hewlett Packard laptop sitting in your kitchen,” Neil Walsh, chief of the cybercrime and anti-money laundering section for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told the Fuller Project. “It gets really difficult.”