Framework for a Single Global Repository of Child Abuse Materials

Against the tide of a huge amount of data, law enforcement agencies barely manage to focus on undiscovered child abuse materials (CAMs) to identify victims, abusers, and crime scenes. Currently, to alleviate this burden to some extent, there are international and national repositories of CAMs in place, such as Interpol’s International Child Sexual Exploitation Database (ICSE DB), NCMEC’s Child Recognition and Identification System (CRIS), and the UK’s Child Abuse Image Database (CAID). This article introduced these global, regional, and national repositories and other related transnational initiatives comprehensively and also critiques the current trend of setting up more repositories and additional initiatives at local and regional levels. Later, the author elaborates on a plan for a single global repository governed by an international organization. Despite a significant decrease in the costs for a country to be actively involved in the fight against online child sexual abuse and emergence of new possibilities for more effective prevention strategies and investigational methods, such an idea of global centralization might face insurmountable opposition from current stakeholders, particularly because of organizational concerns and technological challenges.

It would be unreasonable to devise a completely new organizational and technical scheme for the global fight against online child sexual abuse because there are already many good practices with proven records of impressive results. Therefore, the main focus is to transition the strong points of the current workflows into a more centralized system, further strengthen it by equipping it with additional features and leave the weaknesses aside.