THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a disturbing development that reveals the extent of online child exploitation, the Counter Child Sexual Exploitation Centre (CCSE) of the state police has identified two terabytes (TB) of sexual abuse content involving children from Kerala in cyberspace in the past three years.
CCSE, a dedicated team that exclusively handles matters related to child pornography, identified the huge cache of abusive materials in cyberspace from 2020 to 2022. The obscene videos and pictures of minor children were later taken down from the internet.
Intelligence IG P Prakash said abusive content of local children is being regularly uploaded to encrypted sites and a bulk of them was removed from cyberspace by the CCSE. “We had removed two terabytes of such content. Sharing child sexual abuse materials is a worrying trend that needs to be dealt with firmly. Because of the sort of vigilance we maintain, we are able to detect such abusive content and get them removed as soon as possible,” he said.
The state police have been adopting an iron-fisted approach against the circulation of child sexual abuse content. For that purpose, they formed CCSE, which operates in close contact with Interpol Crimes against Children, and the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC).
The police have been using the software provided by the Interpol as well as the ones developed in-house for identifying groups and individuals that view, share, upload and browse child abuse content.
State police wing gets 13,000 tipline reports
The Counter Child Sexual Exploitation Centre (CCSE) of the state police said it received 13,000 tipline reports from National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) on sexually offensive content involving children in 2022. Prakash said 962 of them were actionable reports.
“The tipline reports were on the contents available over open social media platforms. That did not include content being circulated via WhatsApp, Telegram, and torrent sites. We monitor the encrypted sites and platforms on our own. It’s on the basis of the information garnered that we mount raids under Operation P-Hunt,” he added.
Nip it in the bud
CyberTipline is a reporting mechanism for cases of child sexual exploitation including child pornography
13,000
Tipline reports CCSE got in 2022 from NCMEC on sexually offensive content involving children
Counter Child Sexual Exploitation Centre (CCSE) is a dedicated wing of the Kerala police that handles matters related to child pornography