Technology Spawned a Child Porn Boom. Can It Now Help Catch Abusers?
By Shira Ovide | The Washington Post | Updated June 24, 2025
The rapid expansion of digital technology—smartphones, social media platforms, and encrypted chat apps—has inadvertently fueled an unimaginable surge in the circulation of sexually explicit images and videos of children. Last year alone, more than 60 million such files, often referred to by experts as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), were reported to be circulating online.
In response, law enforcement agencies are turning to cutting-edge technology in an effort to combat this harrowing problem. Cellebrite, a tech company known for providing forensic tools to police for extracting and analyzing data from seized mobile devices and computers, is rolling out a new software feature designed to automate the detection of child exploitation imagery. This advancement promises to accelerate investigations, but it also raises significant concerns around privacy, accuracy, and constitutional rights.
The Grim Reality of Investigating Child Abuse Material
Investigating CSAM cases is often a gruesome and painstaking process. After law enforcement seizes a suspect’s device, officers typically spend weeks manually sifting through the extensive digital content to locate illicit images and videos. This not only delays justice but also prolongs investigators’ exposure to horrifying material.
Jared Barnhart, Cellebrite’s head of customer advocacy and a former law enforcement officer, explains the urgency: “In that case, you leave evil out there.” The hope is that technology can dramatically shorten this process by quickly flagging child abuse material, enabling faster arrests and interventions.
Cellebrite’s new technology leverages a database maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which contains around 10 million verified digital “hallmarks” of CSAM. By connecting a device to Cellebrite’s system, officers can rapidly scan photos, videos, and files to detect matches with images already identified as exploitative.
Barnhart and John Shehan, who leads NCMEC’s operations targeting child exploitation, say the shared goal is to hasten investigations and reduce the emotional toll on law enforcement personnel forced to review these disturbing files.
Potential Benefits in a Vastly Under-Resourced Fight
Experts in the field of child protection acknowledge the enormous scale of the challenge: law enforcement can only investigate a small fraction of reported child sexual abuse materials. Alicia Kozak, a survivor of internet-related child abduction and now a child safety advocate, stresses the importance of technological tools like Cellebrite’s for “immediately flagging material that’s already been identified, building stronger cases, and rescuing victims who may still be in danger.”
Other companies in the digital forensics space, including Magnet Forensics, offer similar capabilities to flag potential CSAM on seized devices, underscoring the growing reliance on technology to assist overwhelmed investigators.
The Risk of Overreach and Errors
Despite its potential, the new scanning technology also ignites longstanding debates about privacy, constitutional protections, and the limits of digital surveillance.
Typically, law enforcement requires either the device owner’s consent or a judicial warrant to examine the contents of a computer or smartphone. However, there are exceptions, such as at U.S. border crossings, where customs agents generally have authority to search travelers’ devices without a warrant. It is believed that technologies like Cellebrite’s have been used extensively in these contexts, cataloging data from thousands of devices.
Civil liberties groups and criminal defense lawyers warn that such expansive device searches risk violating the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches. Jumana Musa and Michael Price from the Fourth Amendment Center highlight the temptation for government agencies to overuse these tools with minimal public scrutiny.
Moreover, the potential for technological errors could have devastating consequences. Automated scans used by internet companies to detect child abuse material have, at times, mistakenly flagged innocent parents and caregivers. Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, cautions that a single flagged image—perhaps dormant in a spam email or long-forgotten file—could unwittingly entangle an innocent person in a child predation investigation.
Balancing Crime-Fighting and Civil Liberties
Cellebrite stresses that its enhanced scanning feature is disabled by default and can only be activated by investigators who have judicial authorization to conduct such searches. The company places the onus on law enforcement agencies to ensure compliance with legal standards.
Riana Pfefferkorn, a Stanford University researcher specializing in law enforcement technologies, points out that tools initially designed to tackle the most heinous crimes often find their way into use for less severe offenses. “These are justified on the worst of the worst crimes,” she notes, “they trickle down to being used in graffiti cases.”
Such concerns underscore the delicate balance society must strike between harnessing technology to protect children and safeguarding individuals’ privacy and rights.
A Complex Path Forward
The fight against child sexual abuse material is one of the darkest and most complex challenges of the digital age. Technology, while partly responsible for the explosion of CSAM, now provides unprecedented tools for detection and enforcement. Yet, experts caution that these tools are not silver bullets. Their effective and ethical use demands vigilant oversight, ongoing dialogue between technologists, legal experts, advocates, and law enforcement, and a steadfast commitment to upholding constitutional protections.
As Cellebrite and other companies continue to develop sophisticated solutions to aid in this battle, society must carefully weigh the unquestionable need to protect the most vulnerable against the equally important imperative to preserve civil liberties. The promise and peril of technology in this arena remain deeply intertwined, demanding thoughtful stewardship in the years ahead.
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