Child abuse software

He was an entrepreneur and founder of several companies that developed tools to aggregate data about people and businesses, including a program called Accurint, for use by law enforcement.

Asher had what Yoost describes as a "rough childhood" in Indiana involving physical and verbal abuse by his father, which motivated him to "rid the world of bullies and people who picked on women and children," Yoost said.

In the early s, Asher became friends with John Walsh, the co-founder of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and for the next two decades he donated his data products and millions of dollars to the nonprofit. In , Asher invited a handful of law enforcement investigators to Florida to work alongside a team of software developers at his company, TLO.

Together they built the Child Protection System. During the tour in February, Carly Yoost demonstrated the system, starting with a dashboard that showed a list of the "worst IPs" in the United States, ranked by the number of illegal files they had downloaded in the last year from nine peer-to-peer networks. The material typically comes from the seized devices of suspects or reports from technology companies.

That, police say, rules out some material that either isn't illegal in every jurisdiction or isn't a priority for prosecution. Once the images have been reviewed by authorities, they are turned into a digital fingerprint called a "hash," and the hashes — not the images themselves — are shared with the Child Protection System.

The tool has a growing database of more than a million hashed images and videos, which it uses to find computers that have downloaded them. The software is able to track IP addresses — which are shared by people connected to the same Wi-Fi network — as well as individual devices. The system can follow devices even if the owners move or use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to mask the IP addresses, according to the Child Rescue Coalition.

The system also flags some material that is legal to possess but is suspicious when downloaded alongside illegal images. That includes guides to grooming and molesting children, text-based stories about incest and pornographic cartoons that predators show to potential victims to try to normalize sexual assaults. Clicking on an IP address flagged by the system lets police view a list of the address' most recent downloads.

The demonstration revealed files containing references to a child's age and graphic descriptions of sexual acts. On top of scanning peer-to-peer networks, the Child Protection System also monitors chatrooms that people use to exchange illegal material and tips to avoid getting caught. The information exposed by the software isn't enough to make an arrest. It's used to help establish probable cause for a search warrant.

Before getting a warrant, police typically subpoena the internet service provider to find out who holds the account and whether anyone at the address has a criminal history, has children or has access to children through work. With a warrant, officers can seize and analyze devices to see whether they store illegal images. Police typically find far larger collections stored on computers and hard drives than had appeared in the searches tracked by the Child Protection System, Pounder and other forensic experts said.

Police also look for evidence of whether their targets may be hurting children. Studies have shown a strong correlation between those downloading such material and those who are abusive. Canadian forensic psychologist Michael Seto, one of the world's leading researchers of pedophilia, found that 50 percent to 60 percent of those who consume child sexual abuse material admit to abusing children.

Yoost said: "Ultimately the goal is identifying who the hands-on abusers are by what they are viewing on the internet. The fact that they are interested in videos of abuse and rape of children under 12 is a huge indicator they are likely to conduct hands-on abuse of children. Over time, the children depicted in the material circulating online have become younger and younger, law enforcement officials say. While law enforcement agencies are enthusiastic about the capabilities of tools like the Child Protection System, some civil liberties experts have questioned their accuracy and raised concerns about a lack of oversight.

In a open letter to the Justice Department , Human Rights Watch called for more independent testing of the technology and highlighted how some prosecutors had dropped cases rather than reveal details of their use of the Child Protection System. Vincent, the lawyer who wrote the letter. Forensic expert Josh Moulin, who spent 11 years in law enforcement specializing in cybercrime, agreed. The Child Rescue Coalition said it has offered its technology, including the source code, for testing by third parties at the request of federal and state courts.

Sometimes, images flagged by the software turn out not to be 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.

But the Child Rescue Coalition and its defenders say the files could have been deleted or moved to an encrypted drive after they were downloaded. The recipients of those emails received a code to decrypt the emails and make them readable. As a result, DHS is now unable to read thousands of emails dealing with some of the most sensitive and controversial aspects of its work. In addition to those internal emails, DHS also shared public documents with reporters using the Virtru-encrypted email system.

More: The Iowa Legislature is returning for its session. Here are 5 issues to watch. The lawsuit that led to the disclosure of the encryption problem involves Alyson Rasmussen of Marshalltown. She alleges that in , she ran an in-home day care service and was wrongly blamed by DHS for injuries sustained by one of the children in her care. DHS eventually issued a formal finding of abuse by Rasmussen through the denial of critical care.

After Rasmussen appealed that finding, DHS allegedly offered to alter its conclusions if she signed a form agreeing not to sue the state for its actions. Conlin said she believes DHS has an obligation to retain its records and prevent their wholesale destruction through encryption.

The messaging, however, comes at a time of increased distrust and scrutiny of tech firms, coupled with hyper sensitivity around surveillance or perceived surveillance. The lack of details on how the full operation would work contributed to the muddled messaging, too. When asked about the human review team on one press call, for example, Apple said it wasn't sure what that would entail because it will need to learn what resources are required based on a testing phase.

Apple is far from alone in building child abuse detection tools but other major tech companies do not do so on the device itself.

For example, Google and Microsoft have systems that help detect known images of child exploitation and Facebook has tested tools such as a pop-up that appears if a user searches for words associated with child sexual abuse or if they try to share harmful images.

Mary Pulido, executive director of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children NYSPCC , called these technologies important, noting they can "help the police bring traffickers to justice, accelerate victim identification, and reduce investigation time. Where Apple went wrong. Apple declined to share why the new tool was not presented at WWDC. Renieris also said Apple erred by announcing other seemingly related though fundamentally different updates together.

This controversial real-time crime alert app is now selling access to its safety agents. The new iMessage communication feature, which has to be turned on in Family Sharing and uses on-device processing, will warn users under age 18 when they're about to send or receive a message with an explicit image.

Parents with children under the age of 13 can additionally turn on a notification feature in the event that a child is about to send or receive a nude image.

Apple said it will not get access to the messages, though people still expressed concerns Apple someday might do so. These are different functionalities with different technology," O'Leary said. Federighi agreed , saying "in hindsight, introducing these two features at the same time was a recipe for this kind of confusion.

Big names in tech added fuel to the fire. Cathcart said it was "troubling to see them act without engaging experts that have long documented their technical and broader concerns with this. Some security experts like former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos — who also co-bylined an op-ed in the New York Times on Wednesday detailing the tools' security concerns — said Apple could have done more, such as engaging with the larger security community during the development stages.

Threading the needle of protecting user privacy and ensuring the safety of children is difficult, to say the least.