Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime
Heard. Respected. Victims First.
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Special Report:
What More Needs to be Done—Recommendations
5. Identifying Victims through Image Analysis
Traditionally, police have focused on catching offenders, but with the increase in the creation and distribution of child sexual abuse images and the use of new technologies such as the Internet, police services have new tools they can use to find victims, and are starting to focus more resources in this area. This is especially helpful in the area of child sexual abuse, where many victims do not report crimes to police.
The identification of victims is achieved by image analysis—a highly specialized, exacting and time-consuming process that is conducted by individual law enforcement officers who must devote countless hours to deciphering the clues in the pictures. It is, in effect, good “old fashioned” police work, but done with high-tech tools in a digital environment.
Image analysis has resulted in the rescue of hundreds of children worldwide. In 2003, Toronto police began investigating a series of hundreds of images of the same child. Through a tiny wrist band she had on and a one-millimetre blurred photograph of a logo on a uniform, they traced the child to North Carolina. Authorities there identified her and arrested her father, who is now serving a sentence of 100 years.99
The same year, Winnipeg police reviewed a 14-minute video that involved the abuse of two young girls and noticed several clues. They heard a radio station’s call letters, saw tattoos on the abuser and noticed a 1996 U.S. election poster. Winnipeg police notified the U.S. Customs Service International Child Pornography Investigation and Coordination Center, which traced the radio station to Connecticut. Customs had an older video of one of the girls (which meant she had suffered abuse for years) and age-enhanced the photos, which led to the girls’ identification and rescue.100
More recently, in 2008, Toronto police arrested a former children’s store employee after discovering 30,000 computer child sexual abuse images on his computer. Police were able to identify three of the victims, whose parents were not aware of the alleged abuse before police intervened.101
Image databases
To help coordinate efforts to identify children through image analysis and manage huge volumes of evidence, law enforcement agencies around the world are developing databases of known child sexual abuse images.
INTERPOL, the world’s largest international police organization, created a database called the INTERPOL Child Abuse Image Database (ICAID). ICAID has been endorsed by the G8 and has hundreds of thousands of images which are submitted by member countries, including Canada. The ICAID uses image recognition software to compare details of where the abuse took place, to connect images from the same series of abuse, or to identify images taken in the same location with different victims. Once a country of origin can be established, the images are sent to police in the countries concerned for follow-up. Investigators have been able to identify and rescue several hundred victims using this system.102
By sharing images, law enforcement across the country and around the world have a chance to speed up rescue efforts. In one case, images found in Germany were placed in an international INTERPOL database. A Canadian law enforcement officer noticed a cap from a school in New Brunswick, which eventually led to the identification of victims. Without the database, this identification may never have occurred or it might have taken months.
Another way these databases help is by providing information on those victims who have already been identified and rescued, even if their images continue to circulate and be shared. Marking these images with this information could save other law enforcement agencies countless hours and resources, which are better spent on looking for children who are still being abused.
The U.S. has incorporated the building of these databases directly into its investigative process. Law enforcement agencies are required to send all images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC’s Child Victim Identification Program, created in 2003, serves as the national clearinghouse for child pornography cases across the country and is the main point of contact for international agencies.103 Its analysts work to identify victims and individuals who sell, trade and distribute the images. To date, NCMEC has processed at least 15 million images and videos and has helped identify over 1,600 children. In one case, a series of images involving one young girl was tracked to over 13,000 individual investigations in the U.S. alone.
In the U.K., the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has also created an image database, which has directly contributed to the rescue of more than 18 children.104
Canada is also making strides to create a similar database. The RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre (NCECC) is the clearinghouse and coordination centre for international requests to conduct investigations in Canada related to child sexual exploitation on the Internet. NCECC is working to have a database operational shortly. Ultimately, the success of the database will depend on law enforcement agencies forwarding all images to the NCECC.105
Building expertise
Since image databases cannot automatically identify the children in the images, it is important that both the time-consuming and specialized work of image analysis as well as the development of databases and information-sharing tools be well supported.
The Ontario coordinated provincial strategy, led by the Ontario Provincial Police, includes victim identification/background analysis teams that analyze child abuse images for clues of the children’s whereabouts. The integrated model coordinates the increased identification, provides support services to child victims (and their families) of Internet sexual abuse and exploitation, and assists in preventing the cycle of recurring victimization.106
The expansion and strengthening of “corporate knowledge” in the area of victim identification is crucial and fundamental to a meaningful response to victims of sexual abuse; without it, the children simply go on in their suffering. The NCECC has, as part of its mandate, the responsibility to identify victimized children. The centre can provide a number of services to law enforcement, including expertise in victim identification techniques. This expertise must be supported and built upon.
Responsible image management
While image databases have obviously proven useful, there is an obligation to remain conscious of the impact that the storage and sharing of these documents may have on the victims. The international organization End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes warns, “Knowledge of the existence of images in police databases may be just as harmful to the child.”
107 For victims, it may not matter who is looking at their photos or why they are being used. They have no control over who has access to them, if they are ever removed, etc.
The NCECC is aware of the privacy implications for victims of having their photos included in law enforcement databases and is preparing a Privacy Impact Assessment for the Federal Privacy Commissioner. The centre will continue to dialogue with the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime as policies are developed.
RECOMMENDATION 5—That the federal government, in partnership with the provinces, develop a national strategy to identify victims found in child sexual abuse images and that the strategy includes an expansion of the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre’s National Victim Identification Unit and support for the national image database.