One point that had always drew and still draws my attention is what I call the unopenables. Unopenables are, from my own terminology, files that whoever is accessing it cannot open it, either because they are password protected, or because the file does not exist any more in this location.

I keep the password protected for another occasion and share with you know some thoughts about cases where the files are not existent any more. As a researcher, I am someone who identify myself as a recycler. That means that, for me, the 254382 number of inaccessible URLS, out of 1038268 Exchanged content URLs mentioned in INHOPE’s 2020 Annual Report is what interests me. After all, whoever deals with Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) deals with contents that tend to be temporary.

First question for me is what about this inaccessible: What happened to them? As I mentioned before, password protected must be kept aside from inexistent links, and other datasets that I will not mention in this opportunity, to keep the focus where I want it to be. The thing I want to keep in mind is that, very possibly, we have a matching report that hadn’t had enough time to be accessed. Where do they come but from? First point.

Imagine that a CSAM trader is using an open account in YouTube (where is data fortunately appears) to trade, solely, new material. Somehow, despite technologies (another point for discussion), the CSAM files can survive for about… 10 minutes. People report it desperately. 10 minutes after, the files simply disappear. And you know that the user, and not YouTube, removed it because those two cases display very different messages.

The URL is inaccessible, and the file is gone. The account one probably recovers, but what about the file?

Once, I heard of a great professor of mine something that I couldn’t agree more: If the problem is our country, why will you let the data go out so to be obliged to get it through law enforcement request or mutual agreement cooperation treaties? You are losing time. He was right.

Sure, doing anything with the file itself is, from the whistleblower perspective, out of question. But with its metadata it is not.

How many files are uploaded, per second, on YouTube? Well, many. How many inaccessible files are sent back to YouTube to figure out what is going on? Never heard about it. Could we move from the find the public image rationality to the found the account one? Yes, we could.

We have a way to deal with this whistleblower (that is, whoever is reporting those temporary CSAM files) in a meaningful way, provided that, we ask him the right questions.

I won’t tell it what they are (ongoing research project) but, as someone with a compliance look inside the CSAM research, I can give a piece of advice for anyone managing it: To have a look at those CSAM reporting formulary.

Beyond the two mentioned cases here (password and inexistent), we do have still a possible look at the metadata case, in its forensic definition. Happily, the rationality applies to them also.

Decline to agree that things are lost from the law enforcement point of view. Oh, they are not. Instead, pick up the argument and start, carefully, thinking about it.