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Towards the Prevention and Detection of Grooming Content Online, through AI-based technologies, Training and Awareness Raising Activities

The CESAGRAM solution

Co-funded by

the European Union

Theoni Spathi, CERTH-ITI

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION SYMPOSIUM FOR EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENSE 2023 | MAY 29TH – MAY 31ST | RHODES, GREECE

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SETTING THE SCENE

  • “Child Sexual Exploitation refers to the sexual abuse of a person below the age of 18, as well as to the production of images of such abuse and the sharing of those images online”
  • Europol, 2022-2025 priority

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  • “Grooming is where an individual builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person in order to manipulate, exploit and abuse them.
  • Online grooming is when this process is facilitated, partly or entirely, by the internet or other wireless communications.”
  • WeProtect Global Alliance

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  • Offenders can send a thousand requests in a matter of days and receive 999 declines. It takes just one accepted chat or friend request to open the door (Thorn, 2021)

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GETTING THE FACTS

  • 59,4% of the global population are social media users
  • 75% of the internet users are young people (age: 15-24)
  • 1 in 5 children experience at least one form of online sexual exploitation and abuse
  • Online sexual abuse material reports increased by 35% to 29.3 million in comparison to 2020 - EU parliament report
  • Over 60% of online Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is hosted in EU
    • Most CSAM is accessed through the Web, E2EE apps, or via P2P sharing
  • COVID-19 crisis has added to the proliferation of the phenomena - Europol’s Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2021
  • Hotlines are reporting grooming as an increasing factor in disappearances - Anecdotal info from the 116 000 hotlines of MCE

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CESAGRAM OVERVIEW

Programme

Internal Security Fund

Topic

ISF-2021-TF1-AG- CYBER

On the prevention of child sexual abuse, assistance to victims of child sexual abuse and tools to detect child sexual abuse online

Project No: 101084974

Duration: 01/2023-12/2024 (24 months) – M5 (currently)

Partners: 11 expert organisations (1 Federation, 3 Research organisations, 4 NGOs, 1 University, 1 Ministry and 1 LEA) from 5 countries

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CESAGRAM OBJECTIVE

CESAGRAM aims to enhance the understanding of the process of grooming, and more particularly how it is facilitated by technology and how it can lead to child sexual abuse and missing cases

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CESAGRAM GOALS

Research: Links between missing and grooming for sexual purposes to advance existing knowledge on prevention and

responses

Identify: Key risk indicators of grooming along with relevant legislation and regulatory framework

Develop: Tools and material to increase awareness among young people and their carers

Design: AI-based tools facilitating the prevention and detection of grooming content online

Train: Frontline workers to enhance their skills to better identify and respond to victims of grooming

Create knowledge hub to share knowledge on grooming and missing children with professionals and experts to further develop and build on existing expertise and resources.

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CESAGRAM AI-BASED TECHNOLOGIES

CESAGRAM TOOLKIT

Monitoring of online spaces to gather relevant material

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  • Web & social media monitoring

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Linguistic analysis towards the detection of such phenomena

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  • Concept extraction & named entity recognition
  • Sentiment & Emotion identification
  • Authorship analysis

Risk assessment for decision support and early warning generation

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  • Change (turning) point detection for early warning
  • Overall risk assessment

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CESAGRAM TRAINING

Identify gaps, needs and requirements

Develop Training Curriculum for Young People

Design and develop online gamified educational platform

Pilot, test and adapt the training material to adjust on the needs of relevant target groups

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CESAGRAM AWARENESS RAISING

Online anti-grooming knowledge hub:

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CESAGRAM HUB

Expert

network

EU level policy briefing papers

Advocacy training at national level

Provide effective interventions for grooming victims who have gone missing

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CESAGRAM IMPACT

  • Provide effective interventions for grooming victims who gone missing
  • Shape better informed and trained young people on the issue of grooming, the related risks and preventative actions
  • Raise awareness and co-operation amongst frontline professionals to quickly identify and respond to grooming victims at all stages of the process

Young People/ Carers/ Educators

Experts on missing/ grooming throughout the EU

Frontline Professionals (NGOs, LEAs, etc.)

Policy makers

  • Provide dedicated trainings for frontline professionals
  • Ensure the early identification and prevention of online grooming through AI-based tools
  • Recommend improved national/EU policy and legal frameworks through advocacy

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QUESTIONS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The work presented in this presentation received funding from the European Commission, under the Internal Security Fund -ISF-2021-TF1-AG- CYBER-

entitled CESAGRAM (Towards a Comprehensive European Strategy Against tech-facilitated Grooming And Missing)

under Grant Agreement number 1084974

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https://cesagramproject.eu/

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION SYMPOSIUM FOR EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENSE 2023 | MAY 29TH – MAY 31ST | RHODES, GREECE