TCSO - Web-IQ

Web-IQ Impact Study
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Objectifying Transnational Child Sex Offences (TCSO)
TCSO is a phenomenon that results in tens of thousands of children being abused abroad by travellers every year. International Law
Enforcement agencies organised themselves into a Virtual Global Taskforce to fight this phenomenon. They reached out to Web-IQ
to look at opportunities to use Open Internet Data to objectify this phenomenon and provide a dynamic monitor to support both
strategic and tactical decisions.
Before we started
Impact and Results
Knowledge of so called “Push and Pull” factors or Cause & Effect of TCSO has
been built by several organisations like ECPAT and International Law Enforcement
agencies. Most of them are done in the field. This takes a lot of time and effort to
provide a comprehensive view of this activity taking place in regions where
researchers have a direct connection or are physically present. After a field study
it can take more than a year to update results and start analysing trends. The
online data elements of this phenomenon were previously unknown. Paedophiles
are known to connect online before they travel and are likely to share their
experiences within online communities.
TCSO Monitor enables VGT
members to point out existing
and potential hotspots. It also
shows trends & newly
threatened countries.
How did we help?
Web-IQ was asked to build an “objectifying” monitor that would support strategic
decisions and build awareness in a dynamic way. Web-IQ Intelligence and data
scientists identified needs, international experiences and assessed opportunities.
Together with a first design this led to a specification document within 4 weeks. After a
few iterations Web-IQ started:
TCSO Monitor combines and
connects On & Off line
information leading to a unique
combined view, new insights
like the popularity of Indian
children online AND a
confirmation of assumptions
like poverty and language
adoption being key drivers.
- Crawling and gathering data from several open sources such as the World Bank,
- Targeting suspicious areas of Clear Web and
- Several hidden services on DarkNet that we knew distributed child abuse images.
“This very intuitive Monitor closes
the gap between our strategic
process and the real world. It has
been a missing tool that provides
us with a tactical view on this and
other phenomena”
LEA representative in Europe.
Results of this on-going process were available to all involved in this project. The TCSO
prototype was presented at the Virtual Global Taskforce meeting in Abu Dhabi. The
Taskforce immediately saw the merits of this tool and decided to accept Web-IQ as a
private member in order to support this world wide Law Enforcement central
collaboration.
EU countries use this tool to
feed the decision making
process on where to send
liaison officers to help out local
Law Enforcement agencies.
Currently several Law Enforcement Agencies worldwide are using their TCSO Monitor
to combat international child abuse. As a result Web-IQ built a generic monitoring
platform allowing agencies to manage data and projections themselves.
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