In the last decade, Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) has increased exponentially and has become a global epidemic. In 2023, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children received 36 million reports of child sexual abuse material online, a drastic increase from 2014, when it received 1 million reports (National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, 2023). Along with this, the risk to children from sexual predators in society has also increased at an alarming rate.

In the United Kingdom, according to the National Strategic Assessment up to 835,000 individuals currently represent a sexual risk to children (UK Parliament, 2024). The assessment went on to state that 85% of online offenders are hands-on abusers as well. One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually assaulted before the age of 18. CSAM is abundant online, so much so that almost 30 million unique CSAM files are known to UK law enforcement, and the number is growing all the time.

With only around 95,000 people currently on the UK Sex Offenders Register (Full Fact, 2024) how do UK law enforcement agencies identify the remaining 740,000 unknown individuals in the UK who continue to pose a risk to children?

Whilst identification of an additional 740,000 individuals may represent a seemingly impossible task, an opportunity exists to make meaningful progress to identify individuals from that number who seek to travel to commit their crimes or traffic individuals.

To put the challenge into perspective latest figures from the UK Government show 195.6 million air passengers travelled internationally to or from UK airports, 14.3 million passengers travelled internationally by sea and 15.9 million rail passengers used the Channel Tunnel. (UK Government, 2023).

Points of entry into any country provide a natural choke point where society comes into contact with law enforcement or border officials. This affords investigators with an excellent opportunity to detect and detain individuals and safeguard children.

Law enforcement must look for opportunities that allow them to screen individuals for evidence of offending, but these opportunities must be lawful and respect individual’s rights to privacy. Traditional methods of digital device examination can no longer be relied upon to tackle this problem. They are time consuming, which means large numbers of devices cannot be screened effectively leading to missed opportunities to detect offenders. They also rely on downloading data from individual devices leading to significant privacy concerns both from legislators and the public alike.

Due to its speed, Cyacomb has overcome these issues by allowing investigators to scan data in situ, removing the time consuming need to extract and download data from digital devices. Our secure by design Contraband Filter also removes any chance of collateral intrusion, searching the device solely for evidence of offending and nothing else. It is no longer necessary for investigators to manually examine devices, reading personal messages, or viewing personal images of no relevance to criminal activity.

With new powers being introduced into UK legislation, the UK Border Force could go from having a limited impact on detecting offenders, to playing a critical role in the UK’s fight against the sexual abuse of children. As a result of their choice to adopt innovative tools, UK Border Force have the ability to rapidly screen suspect digital devices with little or no collateral intrusion, identifying material on those devices which match any of the 30 million files known to UK law enforcement.

This provides the starting point for a multi-agency approach to the identification, investigation and prosecution of individuals actively engaged in the sexual abuse of children within the UK and beyond.

This approach clearly works. When comparable powers were introduced in New Zealand, their Border Force saw a 100% increase in intelligence-led interdictions against travelling sex offenders. (UK Parliament, 2024).

In order to detect unknown individuals who present a risk to children or seek to traffic individuals for the purposes of exploitation and disrupt their ability to move with impunity, internationally new tactics at borders are required. Existing methodologies are time consuming and present privacy issues. Rapid scanning of digital devices in a secure and privacy compliant way can allow governments to secure their borders and have a meaningful impact on the ongoing battle against Child Sex Tourism and Human Trafficking.

If you'd like to explore how Cyacomb can help save you time so you can save lives, please get in touch. 

Email - sales@cyacomb.com 

Call - +1 214-218-0630 (US) | +44 131 608 0195 (UK & EU)

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Reference List

National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, 2023. Impact. [online] Available at: https://www.missingkids.org/ourwork/impact [Accessed 22 May 2024].

UK Parliament, 2024. Child Sexual Abuse Material (Digital Devices). [online] Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-05-15/debates/C79F2223-A099-46F2-AF00-2569F4CF18D8/ChildSexualAbuseMaterial(DigitalDevices)?highlight=border%20force#contribution-0AD8EB98-F9EA-4E41-8EF1-618081A40DB5 [Accessed 22 May 2024].

Full Fact, 2024. Sex Offenders Registry. [online] Available at: https://fullfact.org/online/sex-offenders-registry/ [Accessed 22 May 2024].

UK Government, 2023. Transport Statistics Great Britain 2022 Summary. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-statistics-great-britain-2023/transport-statistics-great-britain-2022-summary [Accessed 22 May 2024].

UK Parliament, 2024. Child Sexual Abuse Material (Digital Devices). [online] Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-05-15/debates/C79F2223-A099-46F2-AF00-2569F4CF18D8/ChildSexualAbuseMaterial(DigitalDevices)?highlight=border%20force#contribution-0AD8EB98-F9EA-4E41-8EF1-618081A40DB5 [Accessed 22 May 2024].