Online child abuse topic of seminar at GHS
Last Wednesday, Oct. 30, Greybull High School hosted Ty Nieters of the Wyoming National Guard and Daniel Brown, a special agent from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program [ICAC]. They were invited by Principal Ty Flock to address parents and community members about the unique challenges facing children in the 21st century online. The agenda focused primarily on the perils of child sex abuse online and the risks posed to underage social media users.
Brown walked the attendees through the work done by ICAC to intervene and capture offenders as well as the apps and websites where children are often the most vulnerable. He explained that in his three years with ICAC, the program has seen a jump in online abuse, mostly targeting underage boys, from 617 annual cases to over 800.
Brown named Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Monkey and Telegram as apps parents, guardians and educators should know when looking on their children’s phones. The last, he noted, is a red flag for concerned parents to signify something is wrong. The Russian-owned application allows users to speak privately with end-to-end encryption, and a number of criminal activities have been reported as being carried out on the platform, from drugs to sexual abuse. Because Telegram is owned by a Russian firm, it regularly refuses to comply with search warrants sent by overseas law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and ICAC. Its CEO, Pavel Durov, was arrested on charges of obstruction in France in August.
He also noted the risks of Snapchat, a photo-sharing platform where a user is able to send their friends images and messages that will expire and become unreadable after a set period of time.
“I had a suspect one day,” Brown recalled of his experience with the app, “[and] he’s like, ‘It’s pretty easy. I add 100 new people, 100 new children who are under the age of 18. Within five minutes, 99 of them might say no, but one might start a conversation. That’s all I need.’”
Brown told the audience that many of the perpetrators were financially motivated and would attempt to extort underage children by threatening to publish compromising images of them online. He also mentioned the burgeoning threat of generative artificial intelligence, or AI. He described a case in Cheyenne in which a student created a nude image of a classmate as blackmail for less than a dollar and distributed it online. The image was so convincing, said Brown, that it wasn’t until the team at ICAC blew it up and began to inspect its pixels that they realized it was not real.
“We don’t have to worry about this on the grand level of a ChatGPT or Adobe because they have measures to prevent this,” Brown told the assembly. “What we have to worry about are homegrown programmers that are creating AI to do this. It’s already happening. […] These guys have built their own AI with the main focus of generating child pornography and exploiting kids.”
Brown noted that both the state of Wyoming and the federal government are currently behind in regulating AI technology and social media. He told the audience that the European Union has recently made strides to protect underage users online by implementing photo ID requirements and restricting access to parts of the web.
He stressed that even if a parent feels comfortable and secure in how they communicate with their child about the risks of online exploitation, anything can happen.
“It blows my mind how many times I show up to [someone’s] door, lay out the case, say, ‘Yes, your daughter, your son has fallen victim to this,’ and [a parent is] like, ‘No, that’s not true.’ Here’s all my evidence, okay? I can point back to your house, I can point back to your child, I can almost point to the room that this happened in, in your house. No, that’s not my child? It is your child.”
He ended the night by telling parents and guardians in the audience about several apps that will allow them control over their children’s smartphone app usage. Both Apple and Samsung phones have built-in parental control software under their general settings while third-party applications like Kaspersky Safe Kids and Qustodio offer subscriptions and additional control for parents.