Inside the surveillance software tracking child porn offenders across the globe.
The Child Protection System helps police triage child pornography cases. But as the system expands, it's facing growing privacy concerns. nbcnews.to/3eJs5WH (1/7) #NBCNewsThreads
The Child Protection System helps police triage child pornography cases. But as the system expands, it's facing growing privacy concerns. nbcnews.to/3eJs5WH (1/7) #NBCNewsThreads
In Dec. 2016, law enforcement agents seized computers and hard drives from the home of Tay Christopher Cooper in Carlsbad, California. On the devices, experts found more than 11,600 photos and videos depicting child sexual abuse, according to court documents. (2/7)
Police were led to Cooper's door by a forensic tool called Child Protection System, which scans file-sharing networks and chatrooms to find computers that are downloading photos and videos depicting the sexual abuse of prepubescent children. (3/7)
Now, the Child Rescue Coalition, the developer of the tool, is seeking partnerships with consumer-focused online platforms to determine whether people who are downloading illegal images are also trying to make contact with or work with minors. (4/7)
But some civil liberties experts have raised concerns about the mass surveillance enabled by the technology — even before it's connected with social platforms. (5/7)
"There's a danger that the visceral awfulness of the child abuse blinds us to the civil liberties concerns," said Sarah St.Vincent, a lawyer who specializes in digital rights. "Tools like this hand a great deal of power and discretion to the government…” (6/7)
Sometimes, images flagged by the software are not on a device once police obtain a search warrant. Critics of the software say that indicates that it could be searching parts of the computer that aren't public, which would be a potential Fourth Amendment violation. (7/7)
