At one time or another, law enforcement agencies find themselves investigating child sexual abuse material. Now more than ever there are a variety of ways in which this material is distributed amongst persons and online. It has become a priority to provide investigators with the tools necessary to identify and report on these materials.
ICCAM is a secure platform that allows for the exchange of illegal material on child sexual abuse between hotlines in different jurisdictions with the goal of quickly removing the materials from the internet [1]. It also assists these hotlines in classifying images and videos according to INTERPOL’s standards. ICCAM collects, exchanges, and classifies reports. The goal of the ICCAM system is to reduce CSAM online and address worldwide sexual abuse and the exploitation of children.
The process of using ICCAM involves hotline analysts inserting the URL of a suspected page into the ICCAM. The system will crawl through the information in the search for illegal material on the page. Analysts will classify each picture and video as nationally illegal, baseline, or not illegal. Images meeting the criteria of baseline or nationally illegal will get uploaded into the International Child Sexual Exploitation Image Database (ICSE Database) run by INTERPOL [1].
ICCAM Platform Features
- Exposure Reduction: Images that have already been reviewed will be flagged as previously assessed content. This assists in reducing an analyst's exposure to the CSAM numerous times.
- Automated Tracing: ICCAM platform automatically identifies IP addresses, hosting provider details, registrar, and registrant information
- Automatic CDN Lookup: Users have an automatic look-up option to identify where the content is hosted.
- ICCAM can detect and download thousands of content items on demand. During the eight-month period from January to August 2021, 700,000 unique content URLs were handled by the ICCAM platform [2].
ICCAM helps to reduce the impact CSAM has on victims and investigators. According to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, 67% of child sexual abuse material survivors are impacted differently by the distribution of their images rather than hands-on abuse. The continuous distribution of their images remains permanent, further affecting the victim. ADF Solutions software is used to speed CSAM investigations starting from on-scene investigations to back in the forensic lab. ADF provides digital forensic image recognition and classification software that makes it easier for ICAC task forces to investigate images and videos of child sexual exploitation.
Learn more about ADF’s role in the fight against child exploitation.
