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Encryption technologies have become ubiquitous for both individual and commercial sectors. Perhaps no realm of law enforcement is so acutely affected by encryption than cybercrime, including internet crimes against children (ICAC) personnel. There exist a variety of encryption-based tools and authentication measures available to help online child sexual abusers and consumers of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) hide their activities and obstruct law enforcement efforts to gather evidence of criminal activity. Established here is the idea that ICAC investigative practice is ultimately shaped by these technologies as well as the relationship between the distributors of these technologies and private platforms on which investigators have to rely; therefore, this study asked: (a) what are ICAC investigator perspectives toward encryption and related data protection technologies, and (b) how might the relationship between ICAC investigators and private companies affect policing CSAM cases? Interviews of 47 ICAC investigators and similar personnel were conducted over two years. Four main themes emerged from the data in exploring the attitudes of ICAC investigators: (a) investigators made clear that encryption is something that would severely hamper law enforcement, (b) investigators spoke of a general reliance on the private sector, (c) this general reliance was supplanted by overall frustration where investigators cited ESPs and social media platforms as a source of investigative hindrance, and (d) the culmination of challenges presented here lends support to the idea that investigators tend to pursue the “low-hanging fruit.” Our results indicate a symbiotic relationship in which law enforcement somewhat reluctantly benefits from the purveyors of these digital tools and metadata access while the private sector gains legitimacy and regulatory positioning in this era of surveillance capitalism.
Brewer et al. (Wed,) studied this question.