Police: We need tools to find vulnerable children online

Björn Sellström is one of the invited to the Royal Family's high-level conference at Stockholm Castle on Wednesday. 40 leading experts and researchers in the tech companies, the police and internet operators will try to find solutions to the growing problem of spreading images of sexual abuse to children. It is hoped that AI, artificial intelligence, can be helpful in finding the perpetrators.

It is difficult to describe the problem of exact numbers. According to a New York Times review, 45 million images and videos of child abuse in the United States were spread in 2018. With the development of the Internet, it has become increasingly easy to manufacture, disseminate and hide sexual abuse material against children with the help of encryption and cloud services.

In the hidden network, the police cannot intervene because the actors there demand that they share abuse images in exchange for admitting new users.

- We concentrate on the cases where we see that we have the greatest chance of identifying and rescuing a child who has been exposed. The abuses usually occur in the home environment of perpetrators who are close to the children. Usually it is the younger children - young boys - who are subjected to the most serious abuses of violence and torture, says Björn Sellström to SVT Nyheter.

Björn Sellström calls for more intelligent software that can help the police to analyze and remove images with abuse. With better text analysis technology, the authorities could be better at finding those who are trying to attract children online with sexual intent, so-called grooming.

- You would also like instruments to monitor the flow of money in these circles, with more cooperation with the financial institutions, says Björn Sellström. from the police's IT crime center.

He thinks that Queen Silvia and the work of her organization Childhood have done a lot to raise this difficult issue.

But stricter punishment for the perpetrators he thinks has no effect.

- High penalties are imposed in the United States, but this has not reduced the abuse. There are so many children who are affected. But we must believe that we can achieve success even in this difficult social problem, he says.