As reported on The BFD, Twitter has a strange habit of blatantly ignoring child abuse material on its platform, even when the victims directly report it. Apparently, child porn doesn’t go against their “community standards” in the same way that conservative politics does. Facebook is almost as assiduous as Twitter in expunging wicked conservatives, but its record on child abuse material is at least better.
But that may be about to change.
Facebook has been accused of choosing to shield paedophiles for profit by ignoring police warnings that its plans to toughen encryption will make the platform a safe haven for abusers.
The warning came as one of the UK’s worst child abusers, David Wilson, was jailed for 25 years at Ipswich crown court after being convicted of 96 child sexual abuse charges, with more suspected.
This is not just your ordinary catfisher.
Wilson, 36, from King’s Lynn in Norfolk, trawled social media platforms, predominantly Facebook, for victims, and was branded “sadistic” by the sentencing judge.
Wilson posed online as a girl, targeting boys so they would send images of themselves. His victims were as young as four, and some were so traumatised they wanted to kill themselves. Wilson’s response to one such traumatised child was to say “bye”.
As the grooming turned into abuse, some were threatened with blackmail if they did not do what Wilson demanded. Some were so terrified they abused and recorded their attacks on younger children[…]
The National Crime Agency said 500 children had sent Wilson images over a period of four years, and 5,000 had been targeted.
Here’s where Facebook deserves some credit for doing what Twitter apparently will not.
Wilson mainly used Facebook and the company’s safety systems spotted suspicious activity and reported it to law enforcement[…]
Facebook made 15.8m global referrals about child sexual abuse material in 2019 and Jones said it was crucial law enforcement worked with them.
But, police argue, that window of co-operation is about to slam shut.
Senior police chiefs say that chance to spot similar highly dangerous offenders online would be lost if the tech company switches its messaging services popular with children to end-to-end encryption[…]
Rob Jones of the National Crime Agency, which caught Wilson, said he would have got away with his offending if end-to-end encryption had been in place, adding: “They [Facebook] appear to be putting the pursuit of profit above the safety of people, especially children on their platform.”
To be fair, Facebook is in a bind here. The platform has long been castigated for abusing its users’ privacy. Offering end-to-end encryption can be seen as a response to that. The problem is that bad actors tend to abuse such technology.
Jones added: “Facebook’s plans are a disaster for child safety and law enforcement and mean the very many other David Wilsons out there will not be caught. Their plans will create a haven for child sex offenders to congregate to target children.”
Facebook is concerned its commercial rivals have end-to-end encryption, which it believes users want. It vows to continue helping police, and in a statement said: “We will continue to work with law enforcement to combat criminal activity. End-to-end encryption is already the leading technology used by many services to keep people safe online and, when we roll it out on our other messaging services, we will build on our strong anti-abuse capabilities.”
The big problem is that paedophiles are nothing if not devious. They’re not called “rockspiders” for nothing. These people revel in hiding in the shadows to pursue their revolting crimes and they’ll gleefully exploit any technology that enables them.
Wilson used pay-as-you-go phones, and hid behind fake identities online. Detectives had to prove Wilson was the person connected to the phones and false identities. It took three years to bring the former roofer to justice.
The majority of Wilson’s offending was committed while he was on bail as law enforcement desperately tried to get the evidence a court would accept to convict him.
The Guardian
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