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View Han Dong Profile
Lib. (ON)
You mentioned that industry has to voluntarily report this. However, as you heard earlier, there have been a lot of questions about whether the law is sufficient in making those requirements on industry and their responsibility of protecting the kids. Going forward, my suggestion is that, as we complete this study, if you have any suggestions on how to strengthen the legislation in that aspect, we'd be happy to hear about it.
My other question is that it's been reported that since mid last year, the RCMP has received in excess of hundreds of reports related to Pornhub through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Obviously I'm not looking for specifics of an investigation if there's one, but what is the process when the RCMP receives these reports?
Brenda Lucki
View Brenda Lucki Profile
Brenda Lucki
2021-04-12 12:25
Obviously the [Technical difficulty—Editor] work through the RCMP National Child Exploitation Crime Centre. When they receive those reports, as we also do internationally through the national crime centre in the United States, we take those and ensure that they are referred to a Canadian law enforcement agency. Often we'll put together an investigative package if we can and bring that to our agencies. Once they get that, then they can initiate an investigation.
View Han Dong Profile
Lib. (ON)
We heard from a lot of members. There are obviously questions about jurisdictional responsibilities. Is this a Canadian company subject to Canadian law?
In your opinion, is there anything we can do to make it clearer so that these investigations can take place? Obviously, we've heard there's a lot of evidence out there, but an investigation hasn't been launched.
Brenda Lucki
View Brenda Lucki Profile
Brenda Lucki
2021-04-12 12:27
It's such a complicated issue because, as you know, the application of domestic criminal laws and territorial limits [Technical difficulty—Editor] jurisdiction has been a challenge given the global nature of the Internet, which is not bound by traditional borders. International conflict law is such a complex matter. It's very difficult for the RCMP to monitor and ascertain compliance with the mandatory reporting act, particularly in the cases where the companies have a complex international structure and the data is stored in multiple jurisdictions. Those services flow through the Internet and transcend international borders.
However, that's where having strong partnerships internationally, including with the Virtual Global Taskforce, allows us to exchange intelligence and data. That is where we can maximize and get rid of some of those borders, so to speak, because we have to make sure it falls within our protocol.
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
Okay. If you're sitting in an office building in Canada and you come across child sexual exploitation, do you not have a duty to report it, regardless of where it originated?
Brenda Lucki
View Brenda Lucki Profile
Brenda Lucki
2021-04-12 12:37
Yes. Any citizen, not just employees but any person in Canada, any person anywhere, should be reporting it. Absolutely.
View Bill Blair Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll accept your remarks with respect to charm, but I'm afraid, with respect to looks, it's contrary to the evidence before us.
I'd like to thank the committee for the invitation today, and I'm pleased to present the 2021 supplementary estimates (C) and the 2021-22 main estimates for the public safety portfolio.
I'm very ably joined today by a number of my colleagues. Respectfully, in the interest of time, I will not introduce them, but I'd like to take the opportunity to acknowledge that, during these incredibly difficult and challenging times over the past year, they've all stepped up to the plate. They've been working diligently to keep our borders, communities and correctional institutions safe as well as to protect our national security.
Today, Mr. Chair, I believe these estimates reflect that work.
I'll go through the supplementary estimates (C) for 2021 in order to present these items chronologically. The approval of these estimates will result in funding approvals of $11.1 billion for the public safety portfolio, and that represents an increase of 3.3% over total authorities provided to date. I will briefly share some of the highlights here as they relate to how we manage our critical services during the pandemic.
The first is $135.8 million for the Correctional Service of Canada for critical operating requirements related to COVID-19.
The second is $35 million for Public Safety Canada, to support the urgent relief efforts of the Canadian Red Cross during the pandemic. Mr. Chair, as you know, the many volunteers and staff of the Canadian Red Cross have been there to support Canadians from the outset of this pandemic, including at long-term care homes right across the country.
I would ask this committee to join me in thanking them for all their service and for providing help where it was needed most. I’ll also note that this funding is in addition to the $35 million of vote 5 funding to Public Safety from Health Canada to support rapid response capacity testing being deployed to fill gaps in surge and targeted activities, including remote and isolated communities.
Included in these supplementary estimates is funding to enhance the integrity of our borders and asylum system while also modernizing the agency’s security screening system. This funding will ensure that security screening results are made available at the earliest opportunity under a reformed system.
I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight that CBSA employees have done a remarkable job in keeping our borders safe in response to COVID-19. I'd like to take the opportunity as well to thank them for their continued hard work in keeping Canadians safe.
We're also working through these supplementary estimates to increase funding to end violence against indigenous women and girls and to provide essential mental health services.
For the RCMP, we are investing significant funds through both the supplementary and main estimates to support improvements to the federal policing investigative capacity by bolstering its capability with additional policing professionals, investigators and scientists. This will be used to deal with federal policing initiatives, which include responding to money laundering, cybercrime such as child sexual exploitation, and national security such as responding to terrorism and foreign-influenced hostile activities.
Mr. Chair, if I may, I'll turn to the 2021-22 main estimates. The public safety portfolio, as a whole, is requesting a total of approximately $10 billion for this fiscal year. As I’ve previously noted, the portfolio funding has remained stable over the last few years. I will endeavour to break down the numbers by organization.
Public Safety Canada is seeking a total of $1.1 billion in the main estimates. This represents an increase of $329.9 million, or 45.5%, over the previous year. The bulk of this increase is due to the grants and contributions regarding the disaster financial assistance arrangements program, or DFAA. It’s an increase in funding based upon forecasts from provinces and territories for expected disbursements under the DFAA for this fiscal year. This represents a critical part of my portfolio as minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
In these main estimates, increases also include $15 million for incremental funding to take action against gun and gang violence. As this committee knows, I introduced Bill C-21 in the House not very long ago, a bill designed to protect Canadians from firearm violence and to fulfill our promise of strengthening gun control.
Mr. Chair, I know that this committee will have the chance to review that legislation at some future date, and I look forward to discussing it with them at that time.
I want to focus on a number of ongoing issues and our responses to them, starting with Correctional Service of Canada, which is seeking $2.8 billion this fiscal year, which represents an increase of $239.8 million or 9.4% over the previous year. This net increase is primarily due to a net increase in operating funding, which includes an increase for transforming federal corrections as a result of the passage of the former Bill C-83, which introduced the new structured intervention unit model.
That bill represents a major change in the way our correctional institutions operate, and recent reports have been clear that more work must be done. Funding is just one part of the solution. With the creation of data teams, efforts to replicate best practices nationally and enhanced support from independent, external decision-makers, I am confident we will deliver on this transformational promise.
I want to again acknowledge the troubling findings that were made in the Bastarache report, which I know this committee has examined and reviewed with concern. We are seeking funds to establish the independent centre for harassment resolution. This will be responsible for implementing the full resolution process, including conflict management, investigations and decision-making.
Mr. Chair, we know more work needs to be done. I'd like to conclude by noting the importance of our oversight agencies. You will see in the main estimates that we are seeking to increase funding for the Office of the Correctional Investigator, the CRCC and the ERC, the latter by close to 100%.
With that, Mr. Chair, I thank you and the members of the committee for your patience as I delivered my opening remarks. I'm happy to answer questions that members may have about these estimates and the collective work of our portfolio.
Alex Kamarotos
View Alex Kamarotos Profile
Alex Kamarotos
2021-03-11 15:44
Good afternoon.
Let me first of all thank you warmly for the invitation to Defence for Children International. I'll start with a few words about the organization. I think we are the only non-Canadians here.
Defence for Children International is a leading child rights-focused and membership-based grassroots movement and is currently composed of 35 national sections across five continents. It was created in 1979, the International Year of the Child, in Geneva, Switzerland.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, reported the following at the current session of the UN Human Rights Council here in Geneva:
Much of the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been exacerbated by a failure to address previously existing structural causes of inequality, social exclusion and deprivation, and the inability of many countries, rich and poor alike, to meet the basic needs of a sizeable proportion of their populations.
This is equally applicable to children and the rights of the child, in particular during this pandemic. DCI has had the chance to count on some very relevant experience from such other health emergencies as the 2015 Ebola emergency in west Africa, where DCI-Sierra Leone and DCI-Liberia were particularly involved. In February 2020, the international secretariat and the entire movement mobilized in front of this pandemic. We very quickly gave alerts regarding the risk of violations exacerbated by the pandemic or even created by mitigation measures taken by states.
In my intervention, in complementarity with your earlier hearings, I want to touch upon two issues related to children. The first one concerns the impact of the pandemic on violence against children, including gender-based violence. The second is the impact on access to justice, in particular for children deprived of liberty. That touches upon the issue we just heard.
UNICEF reports that violence prevention and response services have been disrupted in 104 countries during the COVID pandemic. I believe we still only see the top of the iceberg regarding the impact of the COVID pandemic on violence against children, but it seems to be already well documented that COVID-19 and some of the mitigation measures taken by the governments have increased the exposure of children to different forms of violence, exacerbating such human rights violations as stigmatization, discrimination and xenophobia; child labour and unpaid work; child pregnancy; and harmful acts that include child marriage and female genital mutilation, as well as online abuse, bullying and exploitation. As the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children emphasized in her report to the UN Human Rights Council earlier this week, “What began as a health crisis risks evolving into a broader child-rights crisis.”
I also want to share our experience and results in the area of justice for children, in particular children deprived of liberty. DCI has been part of the origin—we are currently the co-chair together with Human Rights Watch—of a wide civil society coalition on children deprived of liberty. The NGO Panel for the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty is composed of 170 civil society organizations worldwide. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, has urged authorities since the beginning of the pandemic to look at releasing detainees and in particular low-risk child offenders. UNICEF data indicate that at least 31 countries have released children from detention because of concerns about the spread of COVID-19. This is certainly insufficient, and even lower than the number of adult detainees released.
Honourable members, I cannot finish this very short and certainly incomplete presentation without speaking about the impact of COVID-19 measures on the mental health of children and the importance of ensuring the meaningful participation of children on mitigation measures that concern them. Last year DCI organized child- and youth-led online debates on the impacts of COVID-19. We had very, very concrete results.
We also participated, together with a great number of other civil society organizations, in #CovidUnder19, an initiative to meaningfully involve children in responses to the pandemic, with participation from more than 26,000 children from 137 countries.
I want to quote from two of the children who participated in the initiative. The first one comes from a Bolivian girl: “I think the government should understand that children are not dumb and easily manipulated. Children should feel that trust and not feel like they have to remain silent. This would increase their confidence and [motivate them] to report injustice.”
Last but not least, a 16-year-old Canadian girl said, “Even though there is a pandemic going on, there are people out there who experience abuse daily. The awareness, even in Canada, on how to access the resources is not explained in the best way. Finding that information should be basic knowledge for any human being.”
I thank you.
Lianna McDonald
View Lianna McDonald Profile
Lianna McDonald
2021-02-22 11:11
Good morning, Chairperson and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to present.
I am Lianna McDonald, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a charity dedicated to the personal safety of children. Joining me today is Lloyd Richardson, our director of technology.
By way of background, our agency operates Cybertip.ca, which is Canada’s tip line for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children. The tip line has been operating for over 18 years and currently receives, on average, 3,000 or more public reports per month.
Our agency has witnessed the many ways in which technology has been weaponized against children and how the proliferation of child sexual abuse material, otherwise known as CSAM, and non-consensual material fosters ongoing harm to children and youth. Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of digital media platforms hosting user-generated pornographic content. This, coupled with a complete absence of meaningful regulation, has created the perfect storm whereby transparency and accountability are notably absent. Children have been forced to pay a terrible price for this.
We know that every image or video of CSAM that is publicly available is a source of revictimization for the child in that image or video. For this reason, in 2017 we created Project Arachnid. Processing tens of thousands of images per second, this powerful tool detects known CSAM for the purpose of quickly identifying and triggering the removal of this illegal and harmful content. Project Arachnid has provided our agency with an important lens into how the absence of a regulatory framework fails children. To date, Arachnid has processed more than 126 billion images and has issued over 6.7 million takedown notices to providers around the globe. We keep records of all these notices we send, how long it takes for a platform to remove CSAM once advised of its existence, and data on the uploading of the same or similar images on platforms.
At this point, we would like to share what we have seen on MindGeek’s platforms. Arachnid has detected and confirmed instances of what we believe to be CSAM on their platform at least 193 times in the past three years. These sightings include 66 images of prepubescent CSAM involving very young children; 74 images of indicative CSAM, meaning that the child in the image appears pubescent and roughly between the ages of 11 to 14; and 53 images of post-pubescent CSAM, meaning that sexual maturation of the child may be complete and we have confirmation that the child in the image is under the age of 18.
We do not believe the above numbers are representative of the scope and scale of this problem. These numbers are limited to obvious CSAM of very young children and of identified teenagers. There is likely CSAM involving many other teens that we would not know about, because many victims and survivors are trying to deal with the removal issue on their own. We know this.
MindGeek testified that moderators manually review all content that is uploaded to their services. This is very difficult to take seriously. We know that CSAM has been published on their website in the past. We have some examples to share.
The following image was detected by Arachnid. This image is a still frame taken from a CSAM video of an identified sexual abuse survivor. The child was pubescent, between the ages of 11 and 13, at the time of the recording. The image shows an adult male sexually assaulting the child by inserting his penis in her mouth. He is holding the child’s hair and head with one hand and his penis with the other hand. Only his midsection is visible in the image, whereas the child’s face is completely visible. A removal request was generated by Project Arachnid. It took at least four days for that image to come down.
The next example was detected also by Project Arachnid. It is a CSAM image of two unidentified sexual abuse victims. The children pictured in the image are approximately 6 to 8 years of age. The boy is lying on his back with his legs spread. The girl is lying on top of him with her face between his legs. Her own legs are straddling his head. The girl has the boy’s penis in her mouth. Her face is completely visible. The image came down the same day we sent the notice requesting this removal.
We have other examples, but my time is limited.
While the spotlight is currently focused on MindGeek, we want to make it clear that this type of online harm is occurring daily across many mainstream and not-so-mainstream companies operating websites, social media and messaging services. Any of them could have been put under this microscope as MindGeek has been by this committee. It is clear that whatever companies claim they are doing to keep CSAM off their servers, it is not enough.
Let's not lose sight of the core problem that led to this moment. We've allowed digital spaces where children and adults intersect to operate with no oversight. To add insult to injury, we have also allowed individual companies to decide the scale and scope of their moderation practices. This has left many victims and survivors at the mercy of these companies to decide if they take action or not.
Our two-decades-long social experiment with an unregulated Internet has shown that tech companies are failing to prioritize the protection of children online. Not only has CSAM been allowed to fester online, but children have also been harmed by the ease with which they can easily access graphic and violent pornographic content. Through our collective inaction we have facilitated the development of an online space that virtually has no rules, certainly no oversight and that consistently prioritizes profits over the welfare and the protection of children. We do not accept this standard in other forms of media, including television, radio and print. Equally, we should not accept it in the digital space.
This is a global issue. It needs a global coordinated response with strong clear laws that require tech companies to do this: implement tools to combat the relentless reuploading of illegal content; hire trained and effectively supervised staff to carry out moderation and content removal tasks at scale; keep detailed records of user reports and responses that can be audited; be accountable for moderation and removal decisions and the harm that flows to individuals when companies fail in this capacity; and finally, build in, by design, features that prioritize the best interests and rights of children.
In closing, Canada needs to assume a leadership role in cleaning up the nightmare that has resulted from an online world that is lacking any regulatory and legal oversight. It is clear that relying upon the voluntary actions of companies has failed society and children miserably. The time has come to impose some guardrails in this space and show the leadership that our children deserve.
I thank you for your time.
Daniel Bernhard
View Daniel Bernhard Profile
Daniel Bernhard
2021-02-22 11:19
Madam Chair, honourable members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear today.
My name is Daniel Bernhard, and I am the executive director of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, an independent citizens' organization that promotes Canadian culture, values and sovereignty on air and online.
Last September, Friends released “Platform for Harm”, a comprehensive legal analysis showing that under long-standing Canadian common law, platforms like Pornhub and Facebook are already liable for the user-generated content they promote.
On February 5, Pornhub executives gave contemptuous and, frankly, contemptible, testimony to this committee, attempting to explain away all the illegal content that they promoted to millions of Canadians and millions more around the world.
Amoral as the Pornhub executives appear to be, it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to treat their behaviour as a strictly moral failing. As Mr. Angus said on that day the activity that you are studying is quite possibly criminal.
Pornhub does not dispute having disseminated vast amounts of child sexual abuse material, and Ms. McDonald just confirmed that fact. On February 5, the company's executives acknowledged that 80% of their content was unverified, some 10 million videos, and they acknowledged that they transmitted and recommended large amounts of illegal content to the public.
Of course, Pornhub's leaders tried to blame everybody but themselves. Their first defence is ignorance. They claim they can't remove illegal content from the platform because until a user flags it for them, they don't know it's there. In any case, they claim that responsibility lies with the person who uploaded the content and not with them. However, the law does not support this position. Yes, uploaders are liable, but so are platforms promoting illegal content if they know about it in advance and publish it anyway or if they are made aware of it post-publication and neglect to remove it.
This brings us to their second defence, incompetence. Given the high cost of human moderation, Pornhub employs software to find offending content, yet they hold themselves blameless when their software doesn't actually work. As Mark Zuckerberg has done so many times, Pornhub promised you that they'll do better. “Will do better” isn't a defence. It's a confession.
I wish Pornhub were an outlier, but it's not. In 2018, the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received over 18 million referrals of child sexual abuse materials, according to the New York Times. Most of it was found on Facebook. There were more than 50,000 reports per day. That's just what they caught. The volume of user-uploaded, platform-promoted child sexual abuse material is now so vast that the FBI must prioritize cases involving infants and toddlers, and according to the New York Times, “are essentially not able to respond to reports of anybody older than that”.
These platforms also disseminate many illegal contents that are not of a sexual nature. These include incitement to violence, death threats, and the sale of drugs and illegal weapons, among others. The Alliance to Counter Crime Online group regularly discovers such content on Facebook, YouTube and Amazon. There is even an illegal market for human remains on Facebook.
The volume of content that these platforms handle does not excuse them from disseminating and recommending illegal material. If widespread distribution of illegal content is an unavoidable side effect of your business, then your business should not exist, period.
Can you imagine an airline being allowed to carry passengers when every other flight crashes? Imagine if they just said that flying is hard and kept going. Yet Pornhub and Facebook would have you believe just that: that operating illegally is fine because they can't operate otherwise. That's like saying, “Give me a break officer. Of course I couldn't drive straight. I had way too much to drink.”
The government promises new legislation to hold platforms liable in some way for the content that they promote and this is a welcome development. But do we really need a new law to tell us that broadcasting child sexual assault material is illegal? How would you react if CTV did? Exactly.
In closing, our research is clear. In Canada, platforms are already liable for circulating illegal user-generated content. Why hasn't the Pornhub case led to charges? Perhaps you can invite RCMP Commissioner Lucki to answer that question. Ministers Blair and Lametti could also weigh in. I'd be curious to hear what they have to say.
Don't get me wrong. The work that you are doing to draw attention to Pornhub's atrocious behaviour is vital, but you should also be asking why this case is being tried at committee and not in court.
Here's the question: Does Pornhub's CEO belong in Hansard or in handcuffs? This is a basic question of law and order and of Canada's sovereignty over its media industries. It is an urgent question. Canadian children, young women and girls cannot wait for a new law and neither should we.
Thank you very much. I welcome your questions.
John F. Clark
View John F. Clark Profile
John F. Clark
2021-02-22 11:25
Good morning, Madam Chair Shanahan and honourable members of the committee.
My name is John Clark. I am the president and CEO of the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, sometimes known as NCMEC.
I am honoured to be here today to provide the committee with NCMEC's perspective on the growing problem of child sexual exploitation online, the role of combatting the dangers children can encounter on the Internet, and NCMEC's experience with the website Pornhub.
Before I begin with my testimony, I'd like to clarify for the committee that NCMEC and Pornhub are not partners. We do not have a partnership with Pornhub. Pornhub has registered to voluntarily report instances of child sexual abuse material on its website to NCMEC. This does not create a partnership between NCMEC and Pornhub, as Pornhub recently claimed during some of their testimony.
NCMEC was created in 1984 by child advocates as a private, non-profit organization to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation and prevent child victimization. Today I will focus on NCMEC's mission to reduce online child sexual exploitation.
NCMEC's core program to combat online child sexual exploitation is the CyberTipline. The CyberTipline is a tool for members of the public and electronic service providers, or ESPs, to report child sexual abuse material to NCMEC.
Since we created the CyberTipline over 23 years ago, the number of reports we receive has exploded. In 2019 we received 16.9 million reports to the CyberTipline. Last year we received over 21 million reports of international and domestic online child sexual abuse. We have received a total of over 84 million reports since the CyberTipline began.
A United States federal law requires a U.S.-based ESP to report apparent child sexual abuse material to NCMEC's CyberTipline. This law does not apply to ESPs that are based in other countries. However, several non-U.S. ESPs, including Pornhub, have chosen to voluntarily register with NCMEC and report child sexual abuse material to the CyberTipline.
The number of reports of child sexual exploitation received by NCMEC is heartbreaking and daunting. So, too, are the many new trends NCMEC has seen in recent years. These trends include the following: a tremendous increase in sexual abuse videos reported to NCMEC, reports of increasingly graphic and violent sexual abuse images, and videos of infants and young children. These include on-demand sexual abuse in a pay-per- view format, and videos showing the rape of young children.
A broader range of online platforms are being used to access, store, trade and download child sexual abuse material, including chats, videos and messaging apps, video- and photo-sharing platforms, social media and dating sites, gaming platforms and email systems.
NCMEC is fortunate to work with certain technology companies that employ significant time and financial resources on measures to combat online child sexual abuse on their platforms. These measures include large teams of well-trained human content moderators; sophisticated technology tools to detect abusive content, report it to NCMEC and prevent it from even being posted; engagement in voluntary initiatives to combat online child sexual exploitation offered by NCMEC and other ESPs; failproof and readily accessible ways for users to report content; and immediate removal of content reported as being child sexual abuse.
NCMEC applauds the companies that adopt these measures. Some companies, however, do not adopt child protection measures at all. Others adopt half-measures as PR strategies to try to show commitment to child protection while minimizing disruption to their operations.
Too many companies operate business models that are inherently dangerous. Many of these sites also fail to adopt basic safeguards, or do so only after too many children have been exploited and abused on their sites.
In March 2020, MindGeek voluntarily registered to report child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, on several of its websites to NCMEC's CyberTipline. These websites include Pornhub, as well as RedTube, Tube8 and YouPorn. Between April 2020 and December 2020, Pornhub submitted over 13,000 reports related to CSAM through NCMEC's CyberTipline; however, Pornhub recently informed NCMEC that 9,000 of these reports were duplicative. NCMEC has not been able to verify Pornhub's claim.
After MindGeek's testimony before this committee earlier this month, MindGeek signed agreements with NCMEC to access our hash-sharing databases. These arrangements would allow MindGeek to access hashes of CSAM and sexually exploitive content that have been tagged and shared by NCMEC with other non-profits and ESPs to detect and remove content. Pornhub has not taken steps yet to access these databases or use these hashes.
Over the past year NCMEC has been contacted by several survivors asking for our help in removing sexually abusive content of themselves as children that was on Pornhub. Several of these survivors told us they had contacted Pornhub asking them to remove the content, but the content still remained up on the Pornhub website. In several of these instances NCMEC was able to contact Pornhub directly, which then resulted in the content being removed from the website.
We often focus on the tremendous number of CyberTipline reports that NCMEC receives and the huge volume of child sexual abuse material contained in these reports. However, our focus should more appropriately be on the child victims and the impact the continuous distribution of these images has on their lives. This is the true social tragedy of online child sexual exploitation.
NCMEC commends the committee for listening to the voices of the survivors in approaching these issues relating to Pornhub. By working closely with the survivors, NCMEC has learned the trauma suffered by these child victims is unique. The continued sharing and recirculation of a child's sexually abusive images and videos inflicts significant revictimization on the child. When any website, whether it's Pornhub or another site, allows a child's sexually abusive video to be uploaded, tagged with a graphic description of their abuse and downloaded and shared, it causes devastating harm to the child. It is essential for these websites to have effective means to review content before it's posted, to remove content when it's reported as child sexual exploitation, to give the benefit of doubt to the child or the parent or lawyer when they report content as child sexual exploitation, and to block the recirculation of abusive content once it has been removed.
Child survivors and the children who have yet to be identified and recovered from their abuse depend on us to hold technology companies accountable for the content on their platforms.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee. This is an increasingly important topic. I look forward to answering the committee's questions regarding NCMEC's work on these issues.
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
CPC (AB)
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
2021-02-22 11:34
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Once again, as every day on this committee, I am shocked and sick to my stomach and haunted by the amount of time this has all gone on. I thank you all for your work and your efforts and your expertise. I can't even imagine the level and the years of frustration you must have experienced. Thanks for being here today.
I hope that at the end of all of this there's actually content to combat this scourge, rather than what happens sometimes, where reports are written and then nothing occurs.
Again, I hardly even know where to start.
Ms. McDonald, you mentioned in your 2020 report about the various platforms, including Pornhub, that now I think many people's minds are being blown, that they include child sexual assault material. Could you tell us whether or not there are features that actually allow the reporting specifically of child sexual abuse material on those platforms you reviewed?
Lianna McDonald
View Lianna McDonald Profile
Lianna McDonald
2021-02-22 11:36
Thank you very much. I'm going to turn this over to Lloyd Richardson, our director of technology, in one second.
The point I want to make before he gives those concrete examples is that we took that review on when we were examining the now signed-on voluntary principles to address this, which the Five Eyes countries are signatories to. Our agency wanted to find out how easy it was for a user or a victim to report CSAM on very well-known platforms. We were absolutely shocked at how difficult it was often even to find the term CSAM.
We noticed a number of tactics that were used to actually discourage, if you can imagine, the reporting of CSAM. We can only surmise it's because many of those companies didn't necessarily want the numbers, didn't want to show how much of this was on their platforms, because of the volume of it coming in.
Before Lloyd speaks to the examples, I also want to note the number of survivors who, as our colleague and friend John Clark mentioned, are coming into organizations such as ours right now. We have a tsunami of these victims who either want to get their illegal material down or are having a difficult time reporting. The review was intended to shed light on a number of platforms and the inability of people to effectively and easily report.
Lloyd.
Lloyd Richardson
View Lloyd Richardson Profile
Lloyd Richardson
2021-02-22 11:37
It's important to note when looking at these different platforms that this is only one dynamic of the way these companies operate in the space, the ability of people to report, “Hey, this is my material. Please remove it.” We need to know that many people aren't even necessarily doing that.
When we look at reports that we send in, typically industry will use the term “trusted flagger program” and what have you. Essentially, that just means they pay more attention to child protection charities when they send a notice in. When a member of the public does it, it generally has a much lower priority. This is typical across most tech companies, including MindGeek.
Another piece that's a bit of an issue is that to actually remove something is not a one-click option. The idea that these companies allow for the upload of this material—or historically have—and that you can upload it with no sort of contact information and away you go.... The process you need to go through to actually get something removed is quite heavy. In some cases you need to provide identification. If you have your material up there, would you really want to provide your email address or contact information to a company such as MindGeek?
Certainly, some of these things have changed. MindGeek fared well compared with some of the big tech companies, but that certainly doesn't mean it's doing very well in this space.
Lianna McDonald
View Lianna McDonald Profile
Lianna McDonald
2021-02-22 11:39
There's one last point I want to make. It's really important also, when we look at all the reports, and even the information and the data that organizations such as ours or NCMEC have, that we only come across what we know.
What we know—and we all understand this—is that for a young adolescent girl who has had a sexual image of her land on such sites as this, the fear and humiliation in coming forward to organizations and even approaching organizations for help are incredibly difficult. What we know for sure is that our numbers for this type of victimization vastly underestimate it.
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