Anushka Gupta

11 January 2019

Artificial Intelligence

Peersman, Claudia. “Catching Child Abusers with Artificial Intelligence.” ​10th Edition​, Mosby,

1 Dec. 2016,

www.elsevier.com/connect/catching-child-abusers-with-artificial-intelligence.

Law Enforcement on Media Platforms

The boom of social media brought more connectivity among people and facilitated the free flow

of ideas, images, and knowledge. However, it also proved to be yet another medium for crime. Human

traffickers, pedophiles, and other perpetrators of child sexual abuse have never had an easier way to lure

in unassuming, young victims and share documentations of their crimes with their “peers”. Child sexual

abuse media can spread through “peer-to-peer networks” as quickly as wildfire thus making it harder to

the sources. The volume becomes too large to have manual systems scouring through media data and

effectively catch these criminals. This article details how a toolkit called iCOP helps police track down

cyber crime more efficiently due to this automated artificial approach.

iCOP flags new child abuse media without having to go through files manually. It filters and

distinguishes with a false positive rate of 7.9% for images and 4.3% for videos. The possibility for false

positives is inevitable, especially with such a new method to flagging cyber crimes, however, it is one that

poses a huge issues. Identifying the wrong person can ruin their reputation even though they are being

investigated under inaccurate charges and identifying the wrong media can create more work for the

police that deviates from progress. And though the false positive rates seem small, it is important to

remember that iCOP filters through a massive amount of media, so proportionally the 7.9% and 4.3% is

constituted of a significant number of people that could be wrongfully accused.

 The growth of globalized content-sharing platforms also allowed for the emergence of cyber

crimes, which is something law enforcement tries their best to keep up with, but it is near impossible

without the right tools and the right mindset. There are many different types of entertainment, news, art,

and literature that have emerged and created a unique culture. These platforms have generated new

colloquialisms and extended access to education to a broader spectrum of people. It is important for all

consumers of media to realize that these platforms are essentially virtual societies, and every society

needs to have laws as well as entities to enforce them. Cyber crimes have to be seen as battles between

technology. Criminals have the capability of spreading media rapidly, so law enforcement must also have

the tools to flag illegal material rapidly. Most people are already engrossed in the online world, so why

not try to make it a safer place in the same way we hope to make the physical world a safer place?