When you report something to a hotline in your country you may wonder what impact this has. In the majority of cases our member hotlines work indirectly/directly with law enforcement officials and internet service providers. This means that when you report content you believe to contain Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) online to your local hotline, this information will be passed to the police who do have the power to investigate the crime that is being committed. In some instances, the hotline can even report the content to the internet service provider and have the content removed directly from the internet.

On an organizational level, INHOPE is part of the AviaTor project, aimed at developing automation and intelligence tools to greatly reduce the time spend by Law Enforcement assessing and prioritising these reports.

We believe that it is essential that hotlines are able to work with Law Enforcement Agencies, both on the local level and internationally, which is where INTERPOL comes in. As one of our partners, INTERPOL’s role is to enable police around the world to work together. With their high-tech infrastructure of technical and operational support, they help meet the growing challenges of fighting crime in the 21st century. Our tool ICCAM - used by our global network of hotlines - follows INTERPOL (as well as national laws) in regards to international legislation when it comes to the worldwide clarification of images and videos.

ICCAM enables the secure exchange of illegal material portraying child sexual abuse between hotlines located in different jurisdictions, with the aim of quick removal from the internet. There are many elements and organisations involved in the removal of CSAM from the internet using the process of Notice and Takedown - please view our 2018 Annual Report to see the full process.

Our members help law enforcement save time by ensuring only relevant reports are referred to national and international law enforcement, so that efforts can be concentrated on investigating confirmed cases of CSAM and working to identify and rescue victims.

Find your country's hotline HERE.

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