Cooperation is the key – From downloads to CSAM groups

Authors: Carolina Christofoletti (FDRP-USP)

Víctor Gabriel Rodríguez (FDRP-USP)

❏ When CSAM material seizured, law enforcement authorities are only able to promptly stop their sharing regarding only this specific player, who is now subjected to a criminal procedure.

❏ When members of a CSAM clubs are arrested, the club survives.

❏ We don’t know, after all, where else the images were (if they ever were) distributed.

❏ If the material was stored on a cloud or virtual gallery and that was the tea-room for criminals (remember Freedom Hosting or Wonderland Club), then arresting its member cannot stop material circulating.

❏ Literature keeps adverting us of the Bop Bag problem of CSAM material.

❏ Seizure of CSAM, specially if downloaded material is to be found, have a great potential of network disruption (which may be much easier than arresting its key players).

❏ If we negotiate how much sanction is to be imposed for possession of CSAM for relevant information of where the images were downloaded or where the sources of CSAM are, we may turn criminal prosecution of CSAM possessors into a deal of public (and transnational) interest.

❏ Providing people already subjected to criminal procedural rules with material incentives for leaking out CSAM clubs may increase the risk of being a member of a CSAM club.

❏ Once this activity is perceived as more risky, we shall expect clubs to become more local and less transnational, specially if “deals” are incorporated into a worldwide pattern of legislation.

❏ If clubs are, as they are actually expected to be, protected by password or disguised somehow, cooperation with law enforcement authorities through a policy of incentives is the only legal and “technical” way of solving the cryptography vs. right of non-incrimination problem.

Think about it.