The AviaTor Project took off in 2019 with the goal to assist law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in managing and prioritising the rising volume of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) reported by industry. As the project nears its end, participants from both private and public sectors gathered at the AviaTor Forum in Brussels to discuss the reshaping of the reporting workflow, reflect on the accomplishments and challenges of the past five years and to chart a course for the future of AviaTor.

Keynote Address: Transforming Law Enforcement Operations

The Forum commenced with a keynote address by Ben van Mierlo, Chief Superintendent at the Dutch National Police (Project Lead). Five years ago, the Dutch police faced an exponential increase in NCMEC reports, far surpassing their capacity of handling 600 reports. Today, they receive over 100,000 reports, creating significant prioritisation challenges. While AviaTor offers a technological solution to these challenges, Ben particularly emphasised that technological solutions must go hand-in-hand with preventative measures to sustainably tackle CSAM. He stressed how learning to understand perpetrator behaviour, and prioritising a proactive whole-of-society appraoch is critical to developing effective mitigation strategies.

From NCMEC Report to Police Investigation

Robert Grieve, Detective Inspector at the Kent Police detailed the process of handling a NCMEC report, from its arrival at the investigations team to the identification and arrest of an offender. Currently, around 60-70% of the Paedophile Online Investigations Teams’ workload involves processing NCMEC reports. As Kent Police is not yet an AviaTor user, they rely on the NCMEC report data to prioritise cases themselves. Through case studies, Robert illustrated the importance of swiftly handling these reports, which can be instrumental in prosecuting offenders. He concluded with a positive outlook, emphasising the importance of events like the AviaTor Forum in fostering collaboration between tech, industry, and LEAs to develop effective and sustainable approaches against CSAM.

The Positive Side of AI: Aiding Trust and Safety Professionals

Margaux Liquard, Head of Trust and Safety at Yubo, shared how AI moderation systems support their safety-by-design principles. Yubo employs proactive machine learning algorithms to detect and prevent illicit activities such as hate speech, threats, and inappropriate content. The platform also provides customised moderation options, empowering users to manage their online experiences. Margaux acknowledged that simply removing users isn't always effective, as they might migrate to other platforms. Therefore, Yubo prioritises user education and awareness of responsible online conduct. When AI detects harmful behaviour, users receive notifications alerting them to the risks and impact of their actions. This proactive approach has successfully stopped harmful behaviour in 30% of reported cases.

European Commission Initiatives: Shaping the Future of LEAs

Emerick Lovasz from the European Commission outlined some of the short and long-term EC initiatives aimed at preventing and tackling child sexual abuse and CSAM. Key initiatives include:

The E-Privacy Directive

• Enables service providers to voluntarily detect, remove, and report CSAM online.
• Acts as a temporary solution until a long-term framework is established.
• Extended until April 3rd, 2026, to allow time for the development of long-term regulation.
  
  

The CSAM Regulation

• Will obligate online service providers to detect report and remove CSAM.
• Establishment of EU Centre to prevent and combat CSA/CSAM.
  
  

Recast of the 2011 CSAM Directive

• Ensures the criminalisation of all forms of child sexual abuse and exploitation.
• Improves prevention and assistance to victims.
• Enhances coordination across Member States.
  
  

At the end of his presentation, Emerick stressed the importance of events like the AviaTor Forum in fostering collaboration between the private and public sectors to develop whole-society approaches.

An Interactive Demo of the AviaTor Tool

Annemarie Brockmöller from Web-IQ presented an exclusive demonstration of the AviaTor tool. Developed in collaboration with INHOPE, ZiuZ Visual Intelligence, Timelex, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and the Dutch and Belgian, AviaTor has transformed the reporting workflows of national LEAs since its launch.

The tool uses visual intelligence and hash matching to identify duplicated reports, known and new material as well as viral material, and can enrich reports with crucial data using open-source intelligence (OSINT). This makes it possible to prioritise reports based on factors such as the suspect's occupation, age, and location to ensure high-risk cases are handled immediately. AviaTor will also find and bundle reports that are likely to involve the same perpetrator. All of these features combined will save law enforcement valuable time in their investigations and improves the quality of the data they use to determine which report to prioritise.

During the second part of this session, attendees split into small groups to discuss the most useful features of AviaTor and how the tool can be enhanced in the future. Key Takeaways from the groups included:

• LEA connects with the INTERPOL ICSE database to determine whether material is new.
• While technology should aid in prioritising reports and flag those it regards as higher risk, it should never replace human assessment, as even the best technology can be flawed.
• Interconnecting AviaTor systems to share data across jurisdictions would be a useful addition.
• Instead of prioritising, it could also be useful if the tool could indicate those reports that don’t have any actionable data to start an investigation, thereby moving cases down that currently cannot be solved.
• There is a need for one central hash list to replace the several different ones that exist at the moment.
  
  

Panel Discussion: Addressing Sector-Specific Challenges

We continued the day with an engaging panel discussion moderated by Mark Wijsman. Offering insights from their respective fields, our panel included Ben van Mierlo from the Dutch National Police, Margaux Liquard from Yubo, Emerick, Lovasz from the European Commission and Grete Raidma from INHOPE. Conversations surrounded the increasing numbers of industry reports of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and the specific challenges faced by each sector in addressing this issue. We discussed how the proposed legislative changes might impact the process of reporting and tackling CSAM, and how the future EU Centre could facilitate and streamline the process in the European Union. Lastly, the panel addressed audience questions, particularly concerning the EU Centre and proactive searching.

Launch of AviaTor Annual Report 2023 and Future Outlook

As the day drew to a close, Jos Flury from ZiuZ Visual Intelligence presented a look into the future of AviaTor and the tool’s sustainability. Reflecting on the journey of AviaTor, Jos shared their greatest achievements, successful partnerships, and lessons learned. Jos presented the first copy of AviaTor Annual Report 2023 to Edina Reitinger, AviaTor’s Project Officer from the European Commission. Jos summarised key takeaways and outlined the logistics behind the tool's sustainability going forward. He highlighted continued collaboration with Web-IQ and thanked all the project partners and the European Commission, whose funding has been instrumental in the development and success of AviaTor for their support.


The AviaTor Report 2023 is now available for download.