Australian Taskforce Argos tracks offenders behaviour online and comments on the findings in the 2017 NetClean report, highlighting that the best thing we can do for children is to teach them to be safe online.

Police officers say year on year that they are getting busier fighting online child sexual abuse crime. in the NetClean 2017 report two new factors were mentioned as reasons – the wider use of the internet and increased number of reports from industry. We asked Europol’s Steven Wilson to comment.

Even though we have an understanding of where child sexual abuse happens, we cannot say for sure how frequently it occurs and how much abuse is shared on the internet. Björn Sellström from Interpol comments on the findings from the NetClean 2017 report.

Following on from the last blog post, our next expert, Reg. Psychologist Hanna Harnesk Hjortsberg, argues that the correlation between the two crimes can be viewed differently.

Michael Bourke from the United States Marshall Service, comments on the finding from the NetClean 2017 report that showed that there is a correlation between viewing online child abuse material and hands-on sexual abuse.

There is much talk about increasing sizes of caseloads and number of child sexual abuse images in circulation – something we sought to contextualize in the NetClean 2017 report by finding out how big a “normal” case is. We asked Taskforce Argos to comment on the findings.

In the NetClean 2017 report we found that anonymization technologies, encryption and cloud storage are increasingly being used to share online child sexual abuse material. However, it is important to also realise that technology is advancing detection and collaboration, which aids us in fighting this crime. Arnold Guerin elaborates.

Ulrika Rogland: “It is the Police that are struggling to find sufficient resources and build an organisational structure that suits the crime.”

Steven Wilson, Head of European Cybercrime Centre, Europol: The problem of child sexual exploitation needs to be tackled on a global level. If we try to tackle it on a national level we will only have partial success. As a pan-European organisation, Europol has a position that enables a larger overview than a more limited national perspective.