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<\/p>\nPictures of child sexual abuse have long been produced and shared to satisfy twisted adult obsessions. But it has never been like this: Technology companies reported a record 45 million online photos and videos of the abuse last year.<\/p>\n
More than a decade ago, when the reported number was less than a million, the proliferation of the explicit imagery had already reached a crisis point. Tech companies, law enforcement agencies and legislators in Washington responded, committing to new measures meant to rein in the scourge. Landmark legislation<\/a>\u00a0passed in 2008.<\/p>\n Yet the explosion in detected content kept growing \u2014 exponentially.<\/p>\n An investigation by The New York Times found an insatiable criminal underworld that had exploited the flawed and insufficient efforts to contain it. As with hate speech and terrorist propaganda, many tech companies failed to adequately police sexual abuse imagery on their platforms, or failed to cooperate sufficiently with the authorities when they found it.<\/p>\n Law enforcement agencies devoted to the problem were left understaffed and underfunded, even as they were asked to handle far larger caseloads.<\/p>\n The Justice Department, given a major role by Congress, neglected even to write mandatory monitoring reports, nor did it appoint a senior executive-level official to lead a crackdown. And the group tasked with serving as a federal clearinghouse for the imagery \u2014 the go-between for the tech companies and the authorities \u2014 was ill equipped for the expanding demands.<\/p>\n A paper recently published <\/a>in conjunction with that group, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, described a system at \u201ca breaking point,\u201d with reports of abusive images \u201cexceeding the capabilities of independent clearinghouses and law enforcement to take action.\u201d It suggested that future advancements in machine learning might be the only way to catch up with the criminals.<\/p>\n In 1998, there were over 3,000\u00a0<\/strong>reports of child sexual abuse imagery.<\/em><\/p>\n Just over a decade later, yearly reports soared past 100,000<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n In 2014, that number surpassed 1 million<\/strong> for the first time.<\/em><\/p>\n Last year, there were 18.4 million<\/strong>, more than one-third of the total ever reported.<\/em><\/p>\n Those reports included over 45 million<\/strong> images and videos flagged as child sexual abuse.<\/em><\/p>\n The Times reviewed over 10,000 pages of police and court documents; conducted software tests to assess the availability of the imagery through search engines; accompanied detectives on raids; and spoke with investigators, lawmakers, tech executives and government officials. The reporting included conversations with an admitted pedophile who concealed his identity using encryption software and who runs a site that has hosted as many as 17,000 such images.<\/p>\n In interviews, victims across the United States described in heart-wrenching detail how their lives had been upended by the abuse. Children, raped by relatives and strangers alike, being told it was normal. Adults, now years removed from their abuse, still living in fear of being recognized from photos and videos on the internet. And parents of the abused, struggling to cope with the guilt of not having prevented it and their powerlessness over stopping its online spread.<\/p>\n Many of the survivors and their families said their view of humanity had been inextricably changed by the crimes themselves and the online demand for images of them.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t really know how to deal with it,\u201d said one woman who, at age 11, had been filmed being sexually assaulted by her father. \u201cYou\u2019re just trying to feel O.K. and not let something like this define your whole life. But the thing with the pictures is \u2014 that\u2019s the thing that keeps this alive.\u201d<\/p>\n The Times\u2019s reporting revealed a problem global in scope \u2014 most of the images found last year were traced to other countries \u2014 but one firmly rooted in the United States because of the central role Silicon Valley has played in facilitating the imagery\u2019s spread and in reporting it to the authorities.<\/p>\n While the material, commonly known as child pornography, predates the digital era, smartphone cameras, social media and cloud storage have allowed the images to multiply at an alarming rate. Both recirculated and new images occupy all corners of the internet, including a range of platforms as diverse as Facebook Messenger, Microsoft\u2019s Bing search engine and the storage service Dropbox<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/09\/29\/multimedia\/29child-01\/merlin_161543394_fdd2337a-9616-4dcd-af6a-50ae0e99ff55-master1050.jpg)
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