The University of Toronto Centre for Innovation Law and Policy
Symposium on Online Child Exploitation
Monday, May 2, 2005
Flavelle House, University of Toronto Faculty of Law
78 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
To see full powerpoint conference presentations by the speakers, click on "Speaker Biographies, Abstracts and Presentations" below.
9:00-9:15am Opening Remarks
Michael Eisen (Vice President, Law and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Canada Co.)
Richard Owens (Executive Director, Centre for Innovation Law & Policy, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law)
9:10-10:30am
Child Exploitation in Context: Images of Children Online and Offline
Confirmed Speakers:
David Butt (Beyond Borders, Inc., Toronto)
Patricia Holland (Author of Picturing Childhood, UK)
Alex Corpus Hermoso (PREDA Foundation, Philippines)
10:30–11:45 AM
Behavioral Profiles of Offenders and Child Victims of Online Exploitation
Confirmed speakers:
David Finkelhor (Director, Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, US)
Ethel Quayle (Dept. of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Ireland)
Janis Wolak (Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, US)
Confirmed Canadian commenter:
Dr. Howard Barbaree (Clinical Director, Law and Mental Health Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto)
11:45-12:00 Refreshments
12:00am-1:15pm
Problems and Efforts to Improve Reporting, Investigation and Prosecution of Online Child Exploitation
Confirmed speakers:
Tony Krone (Australian Institute of Criminology)
Andrew Oosterbaan ( U.S. Dept. of Justice, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section)
Andrea Slane ( University of Toronto, Faculty of Law)
Confirmed Canadian commenter:
Jennifer Strachan (National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, RCMP)
1:15-2:15pm Luncheon
2:15-3:30pm
Freedom of Expression, Privacy and Child Pornography on the Internet
Confirmed speakers:
Jane Bailey ( University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law)
Brenda Cossman ( University of Toronto, Faculty of Law)
Hamish Stewart ( University of Toronto, Faculty of Law)
International Commenter:
Yaman Akdeniz (Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, Department of Law, University of Leeds, UK)
3:30-3:45pm Refreshments
3:45-5:00pm
National, Regional and International Efforts to Combat Online Child Exploitation
Confirmed speakers:
Yaman Akdeniz (Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, Department of Law, University of Leeds, UK)
Cormac Callahan, Secretary General, INHOPE ( United Kingdom)
Frédéric Mégret ( Univ. of Toronto, Faculty of Law)
5:00-5:15pm Closing Remarks
Dr. Yaman Akdeniz - is a lecturer at the School of Law, University of Leeds where he teaches and writes mainly about Internet related legal and policy issues. He is also the director of the LLM in CyberLaw programme. Akdeniz is also the founder and director of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) (http://www.cyber-rights.org), a non-profit civil liberties organisation since 1997. Dr. Akdeniz has recently been an international policy fellow of the Open Society Institute working on a project entitled Civil Society Participation to the policy making process of the Turkish Government in relation to the development of an Information Society in Turkey between March 2003-May 2004. He has given oral evidence on a number of occasions in front of governmental bodies including at the European Union (including in front of the European Parliament Temporary Committee on the Echelon interception systems and its threats to human rights), United Nations, and OSCE level, most recently at the UNESCO level. His publications include Sex on the Net? The Dilemma of Policing Cyberspace (South Street Press, 1999) The Internet, Law and Society (ed. with C. Walker and D. Wall, Longman, 2000). His forthcoming publications include Internet Child Pornography and the Law: National and International Responses, Ashgate, (to be published in late 2005).
Regulating Internet Child Pornography: National, Supranational, and International Responses
In this presentation, the legal and policy developments related to the regulation of Internet child pornography will be outlined. This will involve an overview of recent UK & US law and policy as well as developments at the European Union (supranational), Council of Europe (regional international), and United Nations (international) level. The impact of the supranational, and international policy developments on national policies will be analysed. A comparative analysis of prosecution statistics from the UK and US will also be part of this presentation.
Jane Bailey is an assistant professor of law at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. Her teaching interests include regulation of internet communications and cyberfeminism. Jane completed her LL.M. at the University of Toronto in 2002, supported by a Centre for Innovation Law and Policy scholarship. Before returning to legal studies, she practised civil litigation at Torys LLP in Toronto, where she acted as co-counsel on the first Canadian hate speech case before a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. She also served as a law clerk to the Honourable Mr. Justice John Sopinka of the Supreme Court of Canada. Her written work focuses on technology's impacts on equality and free expression, including existing and forthcoming publications on the topics of internet hate speech, women's e-quality and the equality impacts of technology in the legal workplace. Her ongoing research focuses on the impact of evolving technology and inter-jurisdictional pressures relating to online hate, pornography and copyright on Canada's commitments to equality, freedom of expression, privacy and multiculturalism, as well as the societal and cultural impact of the Internet and emerging forms of private technological control, particularly in relation to members of socially disadvantaged communities.
Scalars and Matrices: Approaching the Issue of "Virtual" Child Pornography
We stand on the precipice of potentially monumental decision-making with respect to our digitally networked society. As we consider whether Canada must do more in order to respond to challenges associated with digital networks, such as the online trade in child pornography, we should first confront more directly and precisely what is at stake. This presentation will suggest that the first step in developing responses should be to revisit the value choices that led us to regulate child pornography in the offline world, and ask whether we continue to be satisfied with those choices. An essential part of the inquiry will be to consider whether and, if so how, the reality of digitized networks has altered pre-existing material challenges and/or created new ones. The example of prohibiting the computerized possession of "virtual" child pornography - pornography that uses no real children in its creation - will be used as a basis for identifying the complex matrix of fundamental democratic commitments to equality, bodily integrity, and to free expression, conscience and thought underlying potential regulatory choices. It will be suggested that making least-rights infringing choices depends upon consideration of all of these values.
Dr. Howard Barbaree is currently Professor and Head, Law and Mental Health Program in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, and Clinical Director, Law and Mental Health Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He has devoted much of his professional career to research, teaching and clinical practice related to sexual aggression and sexual deviance. Dr. Barbaree has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on the topic and he is co-editor of the Handbook of Sexual Assault: Issues, Theories, and Treatment of the Offender (Plenum), and The Juvenile Sex Offender (Guildford). Dr. Barbaree has served as a member of the NIMH Violence and Traumatic Stress Grant Review Committee. In 2000, Dr. Barbaree received the Significant Achievement Award from the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. In 2004, Dr. Barbaree began a four-year term as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment.
David Butt is a trial and appellate lawyer with the Toronto firm of Torkin Manes Cohen Arbus LLP. He is also an experienced former prosecutor. Called to the Bar in 1989, he has been lead counsel more than two dozen times in the Supreme Court of Canada, and hundreds of times in the Court of Appeal for Ontario. He has served as counsel to three high profile independent judicial inquiries or reviews. As an Assistant Crown Attorney he conducted numerous lengthy and complex trials, and for more than ten years focused in particular on child pornography and the internet. He has advised investigators and Crown prosecutors across the country on ground breaking child pornography investigations and is considered a leading legal expert in the area.
Mr. Butt holds law degrees from Queen's University, where he graduated at the top of his class, and from Harvard Law School, which he attended as the sole recipient of Canada's 1988 Viscount Bennett Scholarship. He has clerked for both the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada. A former Harvard teaching fellow, he remains active across Canada teaching and speaking on a variety of topics to countless professional and community organizations, including the National Judicial Institute and the federal Department of Justice. Building on his experience as a prosecutor, Mr. Butt actively promotes reforms that better protect children from sexual exploitation.
Abstract
Traditionally, prosecutors and police conducting internet child exploitation cases worked at the practical intersection of many different fields of expertise: law, child-oriented social work, pedophilia as a psychiatric phenomenon, and of course criminal investigations. The recent explosion of internet related child exploitation has obliged prosecutors and police to draw as well from various technological disciplines, international commerce, international relations, and a host of disciplines that examine the social impact of the emerging cyber-world. This is a daunting task for prosecutors and police, and illustrates well the radical change in the face of child exploitation that the internet has wrought. We are not far along in adjusting to this radical change. Success in addressing internet child exploitation will arrive only through creative multi-faceted responses that mirror the multifaceted nature of the internet itself.
Cormac Callanan, BA, MSc, MICS is Secretary General and past-president of INHOPE - the association of Internet Hotline Providers (www.inhope.org). The mission of Inhope is to facilitate and co-ordinate the work of Internet hotlines responding to illegal use and content on the Internet. Inhope has 20 member hotlines in 18 countries around the world.
He was founding Chairman of the Internet Service Provider Association of Ireland (www.ispai.ie) and Secretary General of the European Service Provider Association (www.euroispa.org) until February 2003. He was founding Director of the Irish www.hotline.ie service responding to reports about illegal child pornography and hate speech on the Internet. In addition to representing INHOPE, he has represented the Irish and European Internet Service Provider's at Irish government and at EU level. Following work on international assignment in the USA and Japan, he established the first commercial Internet Services Provider business in Ireland in 1991 - EUnet Ireland - which was sold in 1996. He has presented seminars throughout Western, Central & Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia and has lectured on a wide range of technology issues for many years.
Cormac is a board member of the Copyright Association of Ireland (www.cai.ie). He served on the Rightswatch (www.rightswatch.com) UK & Ireland Working Group developing best practice guidelines for Notice and Takedown procedures as they relate to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).
The role of INHOPE in fighting online illegal content
The INHOPE association was five years old in November 2004 and, starting from 8 hotlines, grew to 21 hotlines located in 19 countries. INHOPE has members from 17 European Union states and outside Europe has members from Australia, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States of America. INHOPE provides a central coordination function to the work of Internet hotlines fighting illegal content and use of the Internet. During the period from March 2003 to February 2004 the INHOPE network processed more than 263,000 reports on illegal content and use of the Internet.
Internet Hotlines provide a mechanism for receiving complaints from the public about alleged illegal content and/or use of the Internet; Hotlines must have effective transparent procedures for dealing with complaints and Hotlines must have the support of government, industry, law enforcement, and Internet users in the countries of operation.
http://www.inhope.org
Alex Corpus Hermoso. As a student activist during the Martial Law regime he helped to establish the PREDA Foundation, Inc. in 1974 with Fr. Shay Cullen, a Columban Missionary from Ireland. The organization is now known as the People's Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance Foundation. His work with Preda and with Fr. Shay Cullen is a recipient of prestigious International recognition and awards and a nominee to the Nobel Peace Prize in the year 2001 and 2003. Preda received the Human Rights Awardee from the City of Ferrara, Italy and Weimar, Germany, Caritas Switzerland Award, Canadian Betinhoe Finalist and several other recognitions abroad. As the founding Programme Director he directly manages the Social Welfare Programmes and Services of the PREDA Foundation.
He is one of the founding Board Members of the Philippine section of ECPAT, a global movement seeking to End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for sexual purposes. The organization is active in more than 20 countries. In 1992 he was a panelist during the first ECPAT Global conference held in Bangkok.
In 1999 he was invited to the International Experts Meeting in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and there he presented a paper on Child Abuse and Pornography on the Internet before the UN representatives.
He has represented the Philippines and the work of the PREDA Social Development Foundation in various national and international Conferences, Workshops and Seminars. As a resource person, delegate and advocate, he frequently travels to European countries and Asia. He has made presentations and lectures on Philippine contemporary social problems, human rights issues, and child and youth welfare issues. At present he is one of the three (3) permanent NGO Representatives to the Regional Committee on the Welfare of Children.
David Finkelhor, Ph.D. is Director of Crimes against Children Research Center, Co-Director of the Family Research Laboratory and Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire. He has been studying the problems of child victimization, child maltreatment and family violence since 1977. He is well known for his conceptual and empirical work on the problem of child sexual abuse, reflected in publications such as Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse (Sage, 1986) and Nursery Crimes (Sage, 1988). He has also written about child homicide, missing and abducted children, children exposed to domestic and peer violence and other forms of family violence. In his recent work, he has tried to unify and integrate knowledge about all the diverse forms of child victimization in a field he has termed Developmental Victimology. He is editor and author of 11 books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters. He has received grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, and the US Department of Justice, and a variety of other sources. In 1994, he was given the Distinguished Child Abuse Professional Award by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children.
Internet-initiated Sex Crimes against Minors: Implications for Prevention on Findings from a National Study
This talk will describe the characteristics of episodes in which juveniles became victims of sex crimes committed by people they met through the Internet, based on a national survey of a stratified random sample of law enforcement agencies that yielded 129 sexual offenses against juvenile victims that originated with online encounters. Victims in these crimes were primarily 13- through 15-year-old teenage girls (75%) who met adult offenders (76% older than 25) in Internet chat rooms. Most offenders did not deceive victims about the fact that they were adults who were interested in sexual relationships. Most victims met and had sex with the adults on more than one occasion. Half of the victims were described as being in love with or feeling close bonds with the offenders. Almost all cases with male victims involved male offenders. Offenders used violence in 5% of the episodes. Health care professionals and educators, parents and media need to be aware of the existence, nature and real life dynamics of these online relationships among adolescents. Information about Internet safety should include frank discussion about why these relationships are inappropriate, criminal, and detrimental to the developmental needs of youth.
Patricia Holland has worked as a film editor and television producer. She is currently a writer and researcher in Media Studies, and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bournemouth, UK. She specialises in television, popular culture and visual imagery, and is the author of What is a Child? London: Virago 1992 and Picturing Childhood: the Myth of the Child in Popular Imagery London: I.B.Tauris 2004. She has contributed articles to many books and journals, most recently 'Little Ali and other rescued children' in David Miller (ed) Tell Me Lies, Propaganda And Media Distortion in The Attack On Iraq London: Pluto 2004.
Picturing childhood
In contemporary Western culture visual representations play an increasingly important part in everyday experience. But a burgeoning commercial imagery of childhood in which attractive children are at the centre of advertising and promotional material, and in which children themselves are the targets of marketing strategies- has been paralleled by an intense anxiety about the status of childhood itself and the role of children in society. As the image of both girl and boy children becomes increasingly sexualised, we have seen media panics around children¹s own developing sexuality; and the need to protect children is set against children¹s new awareness of their independence and their rights. I shall be illustrating these points with pictures from the popular imagery of childhood from birthday cards to baby catalogues. I will not be arguing that there is a direct and easy link between popular imagery and child exploitation, but that the changes in imagery have created a 'sexualisation of looking', a continuum within which exploitation can flourish.
- See the Powerpoint presentation
Dr Tony Krone is a research analyst at the Australian Institute of Criminology. He is currently working on a project with the Australian High Tech Crime Centre to research high tech criminal activity in Australia. Tony has taught evidence and criminal law at the University of Technology, Sydney and worked as a lecturer at the University of New South Wales where he completed his PhD on the independent prosecution of criminal cases. Prior to coming to academia, Tony was employed in senior positions for criminal prosecution and defence services. He was Lawyer Manager of the regional office of the NSW DPP in western NSW and Principal Solicitor of the Western Aboriginal Legal Service Ltd.
Responding to online child exploitation: A review of recent developments in Australia
Operation Auxin was the Australian component of Operation Falcon and it led to the arrest of over 200 suspects. The attention given to this operation accelerated the process of legislative reform already underway and this resulted in significant legislative changes in some states. Federally, a national online child sexual exploitation taskforce has been established by the Australian Federal Police and the Australian High Tech Crime Centre continues to work with the Virtual Global Taskforce. Attention is also being given to the problem of online grooming, which the Queensland police have been actively pursuing through online stings. This paper reviews these developments and asks how far have we advanced in our capacity to deal with online child victimisation?
Frédéric Mégret is an Assistant-Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto where he teaches a course on "Global Human Rights". Professor Mégret holds an LL.B. from King's College London 1994, a Diplôme d'études approfondies from the Université de Paris I and is a graduate of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris. He is the co-editor with Professor Philip Alston of the second edition of "The United Nations and Human Rights: A Critical Appraisal" (Oxford University Press, 2005, forthcoming). He has published various articles on the challenges of globalization to the international protection of human rights.
The Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography: Challenges Ahead.
Adopted in , the Optional Protocol aims to prescribe consistent laws across borders to deal with the problem of child pornography. As such, it can be seen as an attempt to establish a sophisticated transnational regime to deal with the problem of dissemination of child porn on the internet. This paper seeks to analyze the impact of the Protocol, taking into account the work of the UN Special rapporteur on the issue. It will focus on a comparative review of various implementing legislations and court decisions to show how the Protocol may affect the framing of the rights of the child, particularly in relation to issues such as freedom of speech.
Drew Oosterbaan received a B.A. in political science and business from Valparaiso University in 1981, and a J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1985. From 1986 to 1990, Oosterbaan served as a prosecutor and appellate counsel in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General=s Corps. Subsequently, from 1990 to 1999, Oosterbaan served as an Assistant United States Attorney, Deputy Chief and Unit Chief in the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida.
On November 20, 2001, Oosterbaan was selected for the Senior Executive Service position of Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS); the position he presently holds. As Chief of CEOS, Oosterbaan created a High Tech Investigative Unit (HTIU) within the Section, which is staffed with computer forensic experts and specialized prosecutors working together to meet the difficult challenges presented by the misuse of emerging Internet technology in the commission of child exploitation and obscenity crimes. Under Oosterbaan=s leadership, CEOS has conducted numerous nationwide child pornography operations, netting hundreds of defendants; implemented a national, multi-disciplinary investigation/prosecution strategy against child prostitution, resulting in a substantial increase in federal prosecutions; developed a national undercover operations targeting international tourists traveling for sex with children, resulting in ever-increasing prosecutions across the country; and conducted numerous major investigations/ prosecutions involving child exploitation and obscenity offenses committed over the Internet. Oosterbaan has also taken the lead in creating the National Child Victim Identification Program, which is a national effort to identify victims of child pornography and save them from further sexual abuse. Additionally, Oosterbaan and CEOS were substantially involved in the drafting of major legislation targeting child exploitation, including the new Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003 (the APROTECT Act@).
Meeting the Law Enforcement Challenges of Online Child Victimization in the United States.
In the United States, federal laws are in place to seriously punish predators using the Internet to victimize children, but enforcing these laws is enormously challenging. The Internet's complex, dynamic and expansionist qualities make it an ideal and progressive vehicle for child victimization in many forms. These same qualities, however, make the Internet a very difficult environment for enforcement of laws that may protect children from such victimization. U.S. laws designed to uphold constitutionally protected privacy and free speech interests make enforcement even more difficult. Nevertheless, increasingly investigators and prosecutors in the United States are recognizing the unique and growing problems of online child victimization and finding more effective ways to address them.
- See the Powerpoint presentation
Dr. Ethel Quayle, B.Sc.; M.Sc.; PsychD is a lecturer in the Department of Applied Psychology. University College Cork and a researcher and project director with the COPINE project. She trained as a clinical psychologist with a special interest in sexual offending and has focused for the last six years on victimisation of children through Internet abuse images. Recent research has led to the development of a CBT website for offenders and the development of guidelines for working with young people who engage in problematic sexual behaviour in relation to the new technologies. She is co-author of 'Child Pornography: An Internet Crime' (2003), Brunner and Routledge and has published in academic and professional journals.
Dr. Andrea Slane is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy, Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, and an Associate at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. As the co-chair of the symposium and the lead researcher of the Microsoft Program in Safe Computing, she has collaborated with the Ontario Attorney General's Task Force on Internet Crimes Against Kids, providing research support and facilitating discussions between members of the task force and representatives from the Internet Service Provider industry. Her research examines the role of law in addressing social problems on the Internet by analyzing the differences between public perceptions of the problems and legal solutions to them. Her larger project extracts the images of democracy at play in the process of addressing online problems, with a particular focus on the negotiation of the boundaries between public and private concerns. This project is an outgrowth of her life before becoming a lawyer, when she earned a Ph.D in cultural studies and wrote her book, A Not So Foreign Affair: Fascism, Sexuality and the Cultural Rhetoric of American Democracy (Duke University Press, 2001).
Abstract
Solutions to problems with investigating and prosecuting online child exploitation crimes in Canada tend to call for greater levels of cooperation between law enforcement and Internet Service Providers. Because ISPs are private companies, the cooperative roles ISPs are playing or being asked to play raise some concerns about turning private entities into agents for public bodies. This paper considers two approaches to ISP involvement in combating online child exploitation that draw a finer line between these concerns and the current practices of ISPs: as an aspect of shared responsibility reflected in acts of corporate citizenship, and as an aspect of contractual relationships between ISPs and their subscribers, aimed to ensure both the safety of the Internet as a whole and the integrity of the ISPs own networks.
Hamish Stewart is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Toronto, where he has taught criminal law and related subjects since 1993. Professor Stewart received the B.A. and LL.B. degrees from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. He clerked at the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1992-93 and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1998. He is the principal author of Sexual Offences in Canadian Law (2004) and is the author of Evidence: A Canadian Casebook (2002) and of numerous scholarly papers in criminal law, evidence, legal theory, and economic methodology.
Professor Stewart will discuss the concept of "possession" in criminal law and some of the difficulties of applying that concept to electronically stored images.
Janis Wolak, J.D., is a research assistant professor at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in the United States and an attorney. She was the director of the Youth Internet Safety Survey, a national survey focusing on unwanted sexual solicitation and exposure to pornography among 10-17 year old youth and a Principal Investigator of the Second Youth Internet Safety Survey, which is currently in data collection phase. She was the Principal Investigator for the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study, a study that includes over 600 interviews with law enforcement investigators about Internet-related sex crimes against minors in the U.S. criminal justice system. These projects were funded by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the U.S. Department of Justice. She is the author and co-author of many articles about youth Internet use and victimization.
Child Pornography Production: Findings and Implications from a National Study of US Criminal Cases
This presentation will describe 122 cases from the US National Juvenile Online Victimization Study in which offenders who were arrested for Internet sex crimes against minors produced child pornography of victims. Most of these cases arose as child sexual abuse cases at local levels of law enforcement. We hope to generate discussion about law enforcement policies for handling cases where child pornography has been produced, including the importance of training local police to recognize the implications for victims of finding photographs and determining whether images have been distributed online.