Executives of Facebook on Tuesday claimed that the social media platform was able to remove more than five million sexual images of children during the last quarter of 2020.
Amber Hawke, Facebook’s Head of Safety in Asia-Pacific (APAC), told the Senate women and children’s panel tackling child pornography and sexual exploitation that they were able to delete 5.4 million pieces of child-related online exploitation, with 98.8 percent of these removed before it was reported.
"In the last quarter of 2020, we removed about 5.4 million images of child nudity and sexual exploitation content; 98 .8 percent of that was removed before it was reported to us," Hawke told the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality.
“It’s important to note that as we share this large numbers, the prevalence of these content is thankfully still very low. So out of every 10,000 views of content on Facebook, we would estimate that no more than five out of those views contained content that would violate this policy,” she said.
However, when asked by Sen. Francis Pangilinan how much of the figures came from the Philippines, Hawke could not elaborate, saying they do not have actual figures to validate per country.
Pangilinan, who earlier called out Facebook's absence in the Senate hearings, pointed out hat the number “may look small” considering that the 5.4 million worth of content that were removed takes up “the entire world” that uses Facebook.
“Because the information that we are receiving is that the Philippines is actually the leading entity or country in terms of trafficking and exploiting children. Precisely, that 5.4 million (that were) removed may look small in the context of the entire world…but if 30 percent or 50 percent of that would be from the Philippines…then that is not a small number,” Pangilinan pointed out.
But Hawke explained it is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) that does release figures of these information per country. According to her, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other Philippine law enforcement agencies, have actual access to the NCMEC’s case management tool, which sits with the DOJ.
She explained that when an incident occurs and is detected online, the NCMEC cybertip line system immediately prioritizes cases “base on severity and urgency and the value of it” and will try to find the location of the “reported user.” The NCMEC system will then find the appropriate jurisdiction it relates to and then report it to the local jurisdiction. “In the Philippines, that sits currently with the DOJ, they have access to that through the NCMEC case management tool,” Hawke stressed.
But Sen. Risa Hontiveros, chair of the Senate women and children’s panel, recalled that during the previous hearing, local law enforcers claimed the NCMEC do not automatically report to Philippine authorities and have expressed their desire for NCMEC to report directly to local authorities rather than in the United States “so that the important data should immediately be at our fingertips.
Hawke reiterated that data is currently accessible to Philippine law enforcement authorities through the NCMEC case management tool which is currently being handled by the DOJ.
Nevertheless, she said Facebook is proactively seeking ways on how to improve reporting of online sexual abuse and exploitation cases (OSAEC), accepting “take down” requests to prevent an offensive digital print image from being shared online and “getting out of control.” Rob Abrams, Facebook’s Law Enforcement Outreach Manager, also suggested that the Philippine government find ways on how to cut down the need to obtain search warrants before addressing a clear cybercrime threat.
“The frustrations I think we all have in the Philippines is that the laws in your country is such that agencies like the PNP, and NBI, require a full search warrant to act on a subscriber’s information,” Abrams told the Senate committee.
“A summons would do, a subpoena, and some instances a police letter would do, and we can use this explicitly for (cracking down on) child exploitation and human trafficking cases. It allows the police to be more nimble,” he said.
“Handing out ISP addresses doesn’t necessarily provide the silver bullet but it does allow law enforcement agencies to move their cases and progress more quickly,” the Facebook official also said.