Online Child Sex-Abuse Linked to Falling Phone Prices

Wider access to smartphones and super-fast internet access are giving rise to a disturbing trend: a surge in on-demand, live-streaming online child sexual abuse, according to Bloomberg.

The report by a children’s welfare group founded by former Facebook executive Joanna Shields, WeProtect, shows such advances have led to a drop in the cost of accessing a live video stream of child abuse to as little as $15 from about $50 just a few years ago. According to research group Statista, the global average selling price of a smartphone has fallen from $349 in 2011 to $229 in 2018.

“These criminals are feeling emboldened,“ said Shields. “They can speak to many other people like them and they feel safe. “The report was compiled with input from Interpol, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.K.’s National Crime Agency and Swedish software firm NetClean.

The circulation of child sexual exploitation imagery has risen enormously as a result of consumer technology. In 1990, the Internet Watch Foundation reported that the U.K. was estimated to have about 7,000 images in circulation; in 2017, it wasn’t uncommon for police to seize hundreds of thousands of images from individuals.

Images analyzed in a separate report by the IWF that depict children aged 10 years or younger has declined, from 80 percent in 2014 to 53 percent in 2016. But the number has risen for children 11 years to 15 years old from 18 percent in 2014 to 45 percent in 2016. This is partly attributed to the greater likelihood that people will report the abuse of much younger children, but also that teenagers are “self-producing“ content.

Shields said this has resulted in pedophiles increasingly creating fake profiles on networks that appeal to children in order to pose as a minor. “There are organized crime entities that do this and extort money from children,“ she said, adding that these images are often now used as a form of “currency“ to exchange for entry into hidden pedophile rings hosted on the dark web.