Cracking Down on the Sharing of Child Sex Abuse Images in an Unlikely Place: Our Own Government Networks.

• Author: Bunn, Nelson O., Jr.

For far too long, Department of Defense (DoD) computers have been used to distribute child pornography involving an unknown number of victims. As prosecutors, we have grappled to find the right solution to address this horrific problem and ensure that federal government networks do not serve as a platform for abusers. Fortunately, the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act included key elements of the END Network Abuse Act which will upgrade the training and technical capacity of the DoD to combat the ongoing exploitation of children on the agency's servers.

Dangers involving the DoD network were first revealed back in 2009 through Project Flicker, a nationwide, multi-agency investigatory effort, that found that potentially hundreds of DoD affiliated individuals had subscribed to or engaged with child pornography websites. This revelation promoted an internal inquiry by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, which in turn identified well over a hundred individuals as suspects in cases involving online child exploitation. et, only 20 percent of these cases were investigated, finding that those suspects had used their government devices and the DoD network to share child pornography. This means a majority of this suspected child exploitation has not been prosecuted, delaying justice for hundreds of victims.

According to a 2018 review by the National Criminal Justice Training Program, the DOD network ranked 19th out 2, 891 computer networks for peer to peer sharing of pornographic images of children, proving that abuse has continued to persist on the federal agency's servers. These investigations led Congress to team up with prosecutors, advocates, and others in the law enforcement community to produce a legislative solution that provides...