Transcripts For CSPAN3 Fmr. 20240704

Good morning thank you everyone for joining us today. Im glad to be here. I vested gentle lady from florida to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of america. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you representative lee. We are here today to discuss an important, a very important vulnerable part of our population. The exploitation of children through child sexual abuse material. That is what has come to be known as csam will refer to it today as csam . Defined as pictures and videos that capture the sexual abuse of children below the age of 18. The term child pornography mysteries by the public is more accurate to call it what it is, evidence of child sexual abuse. The exploitation of children through kamala materials is a serious issue is growing and the United States and abroad. Reports of csam continue to grow with 3000 reports in 1998 growing to more than 1 million in 2014 18. 4 million in 2019. United states has a duty to protect her children from becoming victims of these despicable acts. Our subcommittee conducted a hearing on this subject in september we heard from many experts and survivor advocates in the field. We are concerned that discussion a shining light on the heroic efforts of identifying, roster restaurant giving a voice to these countless victims. It seemed as if something happens in Foreign Countries or in someone elses neighborhood, its much closer than we think. Identifying children depicted is crucial to stop the ongoing victimization captured the offenders producing it and rescuing the victims. The work cannot be done by federal government, joint efforts among federal, state, International Nongovernmental partners are essential for the identification of rescue victims. Youll hear more today about operation renewed hope from our witnesses. I would like to briefly touch on what it is and its impact. Operation renewed helper in july through august 4, 2023 the operation of the first of its kind in the United States joining federal Law Enforcement agencies with nongovernment organizations to identify, locate rescue victims of Child Exploitation. I understand operation renewed hope is ongoing i hope more victims continue to be rescued and provided with the care they need and deserve. Our Company Continues with him on security investigations to enhance our knowledge and understanding of investigations related to Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation. We present the work and gunter b vivek and some Government Entities such as hsi nonprofits such as the Tim Tebow Foundation for these are leading the charge identify rescue children. For that we thank them. Sunshine is the best disinfectant the best way to rid them of these predators who abuse and display children but we must bring attention to the innocent victims children living in the shadows longing to be discovered and rescued. We must not shy away from hard topics and hard conversations we have got to do better. This hearing is a continuation of efforts we started last fall i look forward to drink more to protect children in the United States and abroad. With that i yield back i now recognize the gentle lady missed dean for her opening statement. I think the chairman and thank you for convening this hearing. Chairman biggs i think the Ranking Member who could not be here. Because of her important work in the space. I thank her for asked me too sit in the chair in her absence. This hearing today on the identification of victims of child sexual abuse materials or videos or photos, i am here as a legislator is a member of congress but you might imagine im here more importantly as a mother and a grandmother to four grandchildren. The presence of child sexual abuse images and videos online is not new, its not a new issue for this committee. The current scale and scope and complexity of the problem has now reached epidemic status globally requiring a search for new solutions. That market for csam child sexual abuse material sometimes i worry it could be some other agency. We have to sate what is child sexual abuse material exceeds existing resources necessary to bring consumers of the images to justice. Moreover we have yet to fully address the quantum of resources and the manpower necessary to identify and rescue child of victims of these heinous crimes. The internet and digital devices have become tools of the trade for child predators including those who produce process and distribute material or groom, extort or coerce children to produce images and videos themselves. Perpetrators of this repulsive set of crimes frequently operate with impunity. Recording the commission of unthinkable acts of the young victims and trading the images for sports. Often knowing their identities and locations are cloaked behind a wall of encryption. Identifying all victims seen in child sexual abuse materials as of the utmost importance. Behind these images videos and live streams or children who may still be the victim of continuing abuse and suffering. Hoping to be found, hoping to be rescued. While Congress Certainly has the authority to enact more federal legislation, victims and survivors need help today. That is why we must fully support the various federal initiatives and partnerships already in place to help identify, locate and rescue victims. In other words is member of this body truly care about the safety of our children truly care about csam victims and the need to prevent the victimization of more children we will provide the necessary resources the funding to Law Enforcement into nonprofits who were in this critical space. We have to support prosecutorial offices. Everybody was on the front line when there are so many of you and im thanking you for being here today. For example the Internet Crime against Children Task force have become essential to investigating crimes committed against children on the internet and identifying victims. Although this program and list the service of more than a 5400 Law Enforcement agencies and prosecutors offices, Task Force Members are often stretched to a breaking point due to resource shortages. Task force members face the arduous task of reviewing thousands of images a year searching not only for some clue about the identity of the child depicted in the image, or their location but also for the location of thousands of ip addresses uploaded, downloaded or shared the images online. At the same time Task Force Members must sift through thousands of tips received to the saybrook tip line at the National Center for missing and exploited children determine which tips are actionable it seems clear we must evolve our focus to stress more on the victim centered prosecution. Although that were required dedicated additional resources, Law Enforcement should not have to choose between rescuing children and finding criminals. As i said as a member of congress, as a grandmother i think each of you witnesses are being here today. I thank you for the work you do. It must take an extraordinary toll on you. We all have a responsibility to all of our children and eradicate every form of Child Exploitation. I hope that through your experiences in advocacy and work todays conversation will lead to a victim centered solutions and i yield back thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you the gentle lady yields back i reckon is a gentleman the Ranking Member from new york. Let me start by saying Ranking Members subcommittee Ranking Member Sheila Jackson lee sensor regrets. She was delayed as a result of his or her own primary yesterday you the gentle lady yields back i reckon is a gentleman the Ranking Member from new york. Let me start by saying Ranking Members subcommittee Ranking Member Sheila Jackson lee sensor regrets. She was a delayed as a result of his or her own primary yesterday and super tuesday and was on a flight to d. C. As we speak. Thank you, mr. Chairman for holding this important hearing and shining a light of efforts to combat the Sexual Exploitation of children. Law enforcement experts and victims advocates have reported advancements in technology have led to an explosion of child sex abuse material known as csam available distributed online. Horrific photographs and videos depicting depraved acts against children are now increasingly readily available to virtually every incident based Technology Including social networking platforms, filesharing sites, gaming devices and mobile apps. The demand for new and more egregious images and videos drives the market for this material part resulting in the continued abuse and exploitation of children. Since he Sexual Violence the see depicted in his images and videos was a record of the victimization suffering of a child its important Law Enforcement make identification victims of child sexual abuse material a priority. Too that end Congress Must provide sufficient resources and funding for those agencies and organizations charged with identifying, locating and rescuing these children. The importance of victim identification is multifaceted. To begin with because child sexual abuse material tangible evidence of victim identification enables a rescue of the victimized child. Not only victims remove from hostile environments, following removal they can be connected to the Services Support and care they need to heal and rebuild their lives. Victim identification also facilitates justice for victims. Tracing digital footprint back and distribute hers of the images as well as perpetrators of the abusive. Ensuring their prosecutor and held accountable for their crimes. Federal Law Enforcement agencies including the department of Human Security and the department of justice combats cases through targeted Enforcement Actions investigative initiatives and victim assistance programs. While these agencies work tirelessly in their investigation to attract and perpetrators involved in the production and distribution of this material, the committee to identifying and locating victims. However despite their best efforts federal Law Enforcement agencies cannot tackle this problem alone. The collaborative efforts of federal, local, state Law Enforcement agencies along with private and Nonprofit Organizations supported by federal funding and Grant Programs reached identifying rescuing victims of child sexual abuse material. Was supposed to bring offenders to justice and providing essential support to victims of Sexual Exploitation. Sixtyone coordinate Internet Crimes against Children Task forces across the country have been crucial to preventing, investigating, prosecuting and developing effective responses to Internet Crimes against children. Through their competence of efforts the task force represents over 5400 local, state, federal Law Enforcement and the prosecutorial agencies are making significant strides in identifying and rescuing victims of child sex abuse material. The growth of the problem continues to outpace the Resources Available to identify and locate victims when a Law Enforcement prosecutors the Tech Industry and other organizations must continually contend with the emergence of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence with further complicates their efforts. Today the National Center for missing and exploited children reports the cyber tip line has received more than 92 million reports. Child Victim Identification Program is reviewed over 331 million images and videos. Reviewing more than 25 million images annually, most of the children reflect in the images remain unknown, over 19300 victims have been identified. We should certainly commend the successes of other Law Enforcement agencies and identifying address when victims we cannot be satisfied while so many victims remain unidentified. I hope there is a discussion today it will focus primarily what congress can do to help identify more victims with the goal of reaching all of them. During a hearing last september exam the threat of Child Exploitation in the u. S. And abroad, we heard about the various struggles of Law Enforcement when confronting the edict of do more with less. Considering the plight of victims this is clearly unacceptable. The collaboration for it local, state, federal Law Enforcement and the nongovernmental entities is fundamental to addressing the complex challenges posed by investigating child sexual abuse material and identifying victims. It is our duty to fully support each of these entities and ensure they have the resources they need to accomplish the various missions which undoubtedly should be centered around victim identification. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and i yield back. A gentleman yields. I think everyone for the opening staves of that objection all other Opening Statements will be included in the record. Im going to now introduce todays witnesses and i appreciate each of you for being here today and taking time out to talk about this important topic. Mr. Tim tebow is a former football quarterback have received awards such as the Heisman Trophy and being a 2023 inducted to the College Football hall of fame. His foundation the Gentoo Foundation brings faith, hope, love to those needing a brighter day in their darkest hour of need. In addition to other efforts as Foundation Works with dhs, hsi Cyber Crime Center on operation renewed hope to identify previously unidentified victims of child Sexual Exploitation and rescue the children of possible rate thank you for being here today. Mr. Jim cole, as the chief of Law Enforcement Enterprising Technology at operation light shine and Organization Works to combat Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking. He is a former supervisory special agent with dhs, hsi served previously as the chair of the Interpol Specialist Group on crimes against children. He also served as the chair of the victim identification subgroup from 2016 until 2019 thank you for being here with us. Mr. Jon madsen board president of raven nonprofit Organization Works to prevent Child Exploitation. He also serves as a chief operating officer a Software Company focus on visual media analysis to support victim identification and other Law Enforcement activities. He was previously detective at the Gainesville Police department served 10 years at north florida as Task Force Commander served as the chair of emerging Technologies Working Group rethink you for being with us. Ms. Camille cooper serves as Vice President of antihuman antn trafficking and Child Exploitation at the Tim Tebow Foundation. She has worked for over 20 years on child protection, Child Exploitation and child trafficking. She previously served for 13 years as a director of Government Affairs at the National Association to protect children a Nonprofit Organization dedicated to protecting children from abuse, neglect and exploitation brightness cooper, thank you for being here today. Everyone, we are glad to have all the folks in the gallery as well but we appreciate you being here in this important hearing were going to begin now by swearing in our witnesses each of you would please rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury the testimony about to give us true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information and belief so for god . Of lacquer reflect the witnesses have each answered in the affirmative you may be seated. Please know your written testament will be entered into the record in its entirety accordingly we ask you summarize your testimony in five minutes. If you get the five minutes you will probably start hearing this that is what you want to hear rather than a big massive gavel just so you know that will be a cue for you to wrap up as soon as possible after that. We will begin now with mr. Tim tebow. For your five minutes per. Chairman biggs, Ranking Member nadler, honorable members of the committee thank you guys so much for having me. So grateful for you guys and so honored to be here with you and humbled to be beside you. My name is tim tebow and as chairman biggs stated i was fortunate to be and humbled to be the chairman and founder of the Gentoo Foundation we exist to bring faith, hope, love to the brightest day we strive to fight for people cannot fight for themselves. Some of you may know me from sports but honestly more of you probably know me from getting cut from sports teams as ms. Dean mentioned earlier so thanks. We can talk about that later, it is all good. [laughter] honestly, while we are here today is to talk about mvp. Not the mvp i chased most of my life, did not get by the way but chaste. Not the mvp most of your probably thinking no not the most valuable player. More important mvp the most vulnerable people. That is why we are here today a year end a half ago this also led to my left Camille Cooper joined our team i asked camille i said what breaks your heart the most . She wrote down the number 20000. I said what is that mean . She said it is a problem i said what problem is that . Its the 20000 boys in that have been abused and raped, their images and videos have been captured but nobody has been able to identify them. They are unknown. Until someone knows them, how could someone rescue them . I know that day my heart was broken and my eyes were opened and we had to do something but i said camille, what he think the best approach and she said bring the best teams and players together so we convened a meeting and with amazing frontline heroes. Homeland security, interpol, europe, google, so many people and many more came to the table with two goals the first one, how many boys and grocer unknown or unidentified . It was not 20000 it was over 50000. The second goal is how do we protect them and that is were operation renewed hope was born led by hsi just a few miles away from here. So many partners from around the world. In 15 days they were able to identify three to 16 boys and girls club. 316 boys and girls club. It was an incredible operation, but that is a tiny dent. And what we are called to get too. It was amazing at work but it was so small in comparison. So while we are here today is to be able to ask you to say yes to a bill that we are going to present this bill really has one goal to build a rescue team. Because there are so many front line of warriors and heroes but theres just not enough we need to support them and we need more of them to get to these 50000 boys and girls club. Front line heros that are going after the most vulnerable boys and girls on the planet. Out of all those rescued more than half of them were right here in the u. S. And when you yu extrapolate the numbers, we have the chance to bring hope to those that are starving to it if we are willing but honestly my words will probably false flat today. Instead of hearing from me i would rather you hear from one of my heros, a going girl who went through extreme abuse for 7 years and almost every night she got raped for 7 years and in the middle of her abuse this is what she writes. Rescue me, help me, monsters are chasing, cant you see, monsters are whispering, cant you hear . Monsters are shouting, you are nothing. Can you feel my pain . Monsters are pushing and just hear, youre all alone in this . Can someone please rescue me. This girl and thousands of boys and girls just like her, they are calling out to you and to me and how many times in my life have i missed the call, have i missed the mark unfortunately too many. Would today be the day that we wouldnt miss the mark, that we would answer the call because every single one of us is worth answering the call, everything we can so that they can experience the love that they deserve. I believe we rescued team. I got a message last night from a girl. She said thank you so much for speaking up for us. I know its humbling to get that. All i do is speak. I also miss the mark. We have to do more than just talk about it. We have to act on it. Thank you for having me. Thank you mr. Tebow. Mr. Cole youre welcome to your five minutes. Nonprofit organization that raises Law Enforcement agency so that they can dedicate resources to protect our children. I stand my ground for tims passionate opening today. It is unwavering commitment to these issues. Ive seen firsthand tim is the real deal. I spent my 20year career in the hsi combating Sexual Exploitation. That case inspired approach, focus on victim rescue rather than solely arresting child sexual abuse material distributors. The methodology focuses shifting priority to finding and safeguarding victims instead of putting fundraisers in jail. Hsi Victim Identification Program and laboratory at the hsi crime center. Some of you and your staff visited that very lab and saw firsthand the incredible work. Its one of my proudest legacies. One notable case was operation sunflower. After several images depicting girl found by specialist overseas we began urgent efforts to safeguard her. The young victim in the back of the car. With this information we set out across kansas driving down every highway starting with 2 going east and west looking for the sign. On the second day of the search i happened to be with the agent from kansas city, highway 20 and found that sign. The focus was near the highways end and as we got closer we could see the tree, expedited the worlds victim identification rescue from ongoing abuse that very day. Through discovery on the dark net the childs rescue only 13 days had elapsed. During my 7 years Running Program and lab, its not near enough. As tim stated earlier, tens of thousands of unsolved series, unidentified victims that are waiting to safeguard them. Theres incredible blueprint in hsi and we need to not look further to see the path forward. A document laying out a viable strategy for consideration. Victim identification requires global collaboration. Every case i worked in my 20 years has a global nexus. Offenders do not care about lines on the map. Rape of 3yearold on video by her own father and minutes available on dark net Child Exploitation site with a million members. In under an hour the childs worst moments are downloaded in 24 hours tens of thousands. Vital role in victim identification database. The platform brings together victim experts from 68 countries in a secure collaborative portal and realtime collaborative analysis. The global collaboration is crucial for identifying and rescuing victims. The system is old and requires updates. Shortly, you will hear from my league and john matson in combating Child Exploitation. I would like to briefly contribute to this topic. I joined operation, nonprofit working with tim and ttf and ttf, we empower with resources to fight Human Trafficking via traffic forces. We secure private funding can local and state agencies like detective salaries, vehicles, resources they desperately they need but lack funding for. The mission of ols underscores the federal support for the crucial battle. Ols should not have to exist. Leveraging skills and equipping them with tools and Training Congress can significant enhance ability to protect children from exploitation and abuse. We urge congress to support the final initiative he will only aid in the fight against Child Exploitation but provide meaningful Career Opportunities for those who have served our country. Thank you for your time and attention. Thank you, mr. Cole. Mr. Madison, youre recognized for your five minutes. Chairman biggs, distinguished members of congress. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today for the voice of the voiceless. Having dedicated the majority of my career to investigating crimes against children is truly an honor to be here today and advocate for resources for men and women of Law Enforcement on the front lines. Thats the purpose that raven was created. To give attention to those who are not heard and voice to those who cannot speak. Rave informs Mission Statement to transform the nations response to Child Exploitation and today is my hope that the opportunity to increase Law Enforcements response is ceased. The crime against u Children Task force is program that supported state and local agencies with funding, training and investigative tools since 1998. The program is authorized to protect our children reauthorization act and remains an impactful force against Child Exploitation, successfully unifies the i had the privilege of being member of task force. Through that capacity i was privilege today have the opportunity to cocreate conference plan and execute undercover operations, two victim id operations, in partnership with Homeland Security, the National Center for missing exploited children and interpol and multiyear effort to adopt victim approach. Victim identification is essential and where the child has connection to the offender that relationship is discovered within that investigation. The problem arising when images and videos are shared with offenders who did not create them and had no connection to the victim depicted. In those situations the government becomes a listed victim and for reasons such as backlog and staffing issues its often that no further effort is taken to identify the children in the pictures. Outside of individual state and local agencies, Homeland Security and fbi both maintain victim identification unit and support request for victim id assistance. Since 2002 the National Center for missing and exploited children has acted as house maintaining database with over a hundred analysts identifying victims at different stages of media review. The child Victim Identification Program is critical piece of domestic effort maintaining horrific images and videos beyond what you can imagine. Through the investigative and operational standards all affiliates are required to submit files through child Victim Identification Program. This in turn allows panelists to continues to compare incoming information against unsolved cases. That is why i ask that you support the report ask so that the Necessary Authority can be given to allow for online and immediate submission of material for review and action. Already in 2024 investigative tools have observed over 85,000 unique ip addresses in the United States associated with users offering to share known child sexual abuse material but only 367 of those cases have been claimed as under investigation. A single file group readily available for download contains thousands of images and hundreds of videos of toddlers being raped. At a minimum these offenders use grooming. I ask that you endorse protect children act and 160 million to make sure they get full authorized amounts. If you ask why additionally to fund this effort, a former Task Force Commander from arizona once phrased motivation like this, after being asked why he would focus on child crimes when he could eastern the same or more in a different bureau he answered because they believe in santa claus. To continue i would ask are we really numb to this horror to where these are just numbers to us, are we really unwilling to rescue those who live in it. Is that the america i enlist today serve and are those the ideals we swore to uphold . In this world there are causes worth fighting for regardless of the pain, we are sacrificing for, regardless of the risk. There are moments that define us as people and society and this is one. Please fund the itac task forces. Thank you for your testimony. I recognize ms. Cooper for her five minutes. Can you press microphone please, thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman, inside dean, Ranking Member, thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Camille Cooper. Youve heard about the mvps today, youve heard tim talk about how important these unidentified children are, youve heard jim talk about how important hsi and interpoll are and youve heard john talk about how important the icac s and today i want to talk about how important you are. They explain today the world if left uncheck the solicit demand for rape of children will result in new victims. There are now 61icac task forces in every single one of your districts and arrested over 134,000 Child Exploitation offenders and according to research of dr. Michael burke we know now that 85 of those offenders also have real victims, they are actual contact offenders. As investigations increased so did forensic demands and this created backlog that in some agencies it was two years long. In 2009 thompson was abducted on her way home from school and she was raped and murder. Her lifeless body dumped in a landfill but her death was preventible because her murderers laptop sat on shelf for two months and on the desk top of his laptop was a file called toddler and rape of 3yearold girl. We created a solution with all of you here in this committee called the hero child rescue corp. It was this committee and the members that wrote both hero acts, tens of thousands of children have been rescued as a result of that so we thank you. This brings me to why we are here today just as we predicted in 2008 as investigations increased images that had never been seen before also increased at alarming rate. Its important for you to know how this happened so that you can appreciate the importance of why we are here. Im going to take you up stream past the distribution of the images to the source of the actual abuse. For decades before the internet the only way to know if a child was being sexually abused if the child disclosed. Reports of sexual abuse in the United States have two tracks, if you are raped by your neighbor, your case goes to Law Enforcement. If you are raped by a parent or a caretaker your case goes to social services and you get a social worker instead of a cop. This is a Diversion Program for child rapists and it was established in federal law in 1974 under the child abuse prevention act under the Social Security act for child sex abusers this law acted as incentive to grow your own victims so that you wouldnt go to jail. Thanks to the dedicated work that the National Center for missing and exploited children we now for the first time have a glimpse of whose actually producing these images and the most startling finding in their research was that most of the images are being produced by fathers, family members and child offenders within the child circle of trust. You can see from this one of the charts over here, that chart over there is that these offenders are people in your communities, these are your neighbors, these are people you work with, maybe play golf with them. This is your daughters best friends daughter that you send your daughter over to their house for a sleepover. These are the offenders we are talking about and that is why victim identification is so critical because these offenders have come out into the light of day for the first time in history we dont have to rely on childrens outcries, we can follow the digital trail of evidence right to the childs doorstep and we can rescue them. Congress recently held a lot of hearings around tech accountability and thats incredibly necessary and important but i would be remised if i missed the opportunity today to highlight one company that is doing this well. Its google. They have a dedicated Victim Identification Team within their company and they are literally rescuing thousands of children and they need to be a model for how Tech Companies in this country do this work. Youve heard jim and tim talk a lot about interpol and youre probably wondering why we are asking you to support a database in france, the interpol database is the most important database because not all u. S. Victims abuse images are going to be found on u. S. Offenders computers. The father that rapes their child in ohio is going to send that image to someone in germany or brazil or italy and its the work of those international Law Enforcement agencies when they catch that offender and do the forensic on their computer that they are going to find american victims in all the new victim images from countries around the world go to interpol. They have a worldclass Training Program and they have the best analyst in the world but they simply dont have enough of them. Theyve been overrun and need our support. Homeland security investigations is well positioned Law Enforcement agency to support the work of interpols team, they are the tip of the spear in the world when it comes to Child Exploitation investigations but we are talking about finding 50,000 children. Its a city of children that we need to go find and theyre fighting with the platoon. They need a brigade. We have 3 important requests for you today. One as tim said, we need to build a rescue team. We need dedicated especially trained victim identification analysts and we need hundreds of them. We need to invest in their training and give the absolute best tools that we have to go rescue these kids and we need to modernize the database so that as images pour in they can keep up with it. A lot of people told me not to come up here and ask for your help because its a president ial year, its too partisan, we wont get anything done but ive been up here with you before and weve done great things together during president ial years. So i would just ask that everyone put their partisan differences aside in pursuit of saving lives. These children need all of us to fight for them on one team, one mission, lets go rescue these kids. Thank you for your Opening Statements. I recognize the gentleman from florida, mr. Gaetz for five minutes. Im intrigued by the concept of rescue team. Seems like hsi, Homeland Security is preferred partner and i want to delve into why because in this congress we had an fbi agent sitting where youre all sitting right now steve friend and he was working these cases in our beloved florida and he was pulled off of those cases to go and take down peoples license plates at School Board Meetings over parents protesting and so i guess i want to understand how to assemble the kind of rescue team that youre talk about and maybe thinking about some to have asset that is exist like at the fbi in addition to those at Homeland Security. So, you know, perhaps mr. Cole, mr. Mason, your Law Enforcement experience, you could draw an that and how to assemble the right equities to solve the problem. Traditionally hsi is actually one of the first agencies to work this crime type. So prior to the internet this material was smuggled into the country from foreign sources through our ports of entry and through the mails. U. S. Custom service which is the predicate agency for Homeland Security investigations work those investigations by seizing those materials as they came into the country across our borders. That gives us a legacy and longterm subject matter expertise in this crime type and so we worked closely with the u. S. Postal service in that endeavor and really the fbi didnt start using the working with these cases until much later. Yeah, but were in a different era now as ms. Cooper laid out. We have to follow the digital footprint right back to the source so that we can make the rescues and i guess im a little worried about Homeland Security because im holding the Inspector General report that analyzed how theyre dealing with the number of unaccompanied children that are coming over the border and, i mean, in 16 of these cases Homeland Security isnt even doing the documentations for where theyre placing children and we have over 8,000 children that are un we dont know where to put them that are in the custody of Homeland Security now. Mr. Matson, do you have a perspective on maybe how to pull together the right equities to build the type of rescue team that we are discussing . Thank you, mr. Gaetz, as the former Task Force Commander for north florida we work very well with pure agency, agencies within the all the way from the pan panhandle to rockledge which is the area that i covered. With fbi, hsi and we felt that was the appropriate way to collaborate and to work on these types of cases with the ability to prosecute federally when needed or at the state level when needed. And i just think as the sub subcommittee with oversight we can give them the right encouragement and right authority to do that. Ive also been reviewing the stanford internet observatory report on identifying and eliminating csam, Machine Learning Training Data and models and im sort of interesting how ai interfaces with all of this because the report seems to say its trial troubling when you have these child expletive material that are part of training models for ai and the report goes onto say maybe its a, they would help us do what ms. Cooper is chargingtous do and get to the core of the problem and so to any of you here how do you see ai interfacing with both the the perpetration of these crimes but also perhaps the investigations and the prosecutions and the resolutions. Im happy to take that answer. You know, a couple of things are important about ai. You have ai for good so you have tools that have been developed that are changing the game in terms of being able to find and locate the kids and its really important that we allow Law Enforcement to use those tools. Ai can be used for bad too. So you have nefarious people on the web that are taking pictures of your childs instagram account, your childs face and they are adding nudity and unclothing the children and extorting the children. So the times have changed where a child doesnt even need to be taking selfies anymore. They can just have a soccer page or gymnastics page up and you have pedophiles trolling them and extorting them. The one thing that is really important i think congress has a role to play in this, there are ways to determine a fake image and real image and that Technology Needs to improve, it needs to be invested in. There are watermarks that need to be required by congress. So any company that is developing an ai tool needs to have a type of watermark so that Law Enforcement as they are reviewing images can distinguish between the fake and the real. I would love to follow up with you on that. Unanimous consent question, unanimous consent to enter the record the report of unaccompanied children at the border. Without further objection. Publication into the record as well. Without objection. And mr. Tebow the last time i saw you in person you were beating my nose. Good to see you again in person. Good to see you as well. I cant repeat the last part but i guess sorry im not sorry. I dont know. Time expired now recognizing the member of the committee for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Matson you were the commander of the florida Internet Crimes against Children Task force. What type of cases did you investigate and what percentage of your cases were related to the identification of child sexual abuse material victims . The type of case that is we dealt was anything that had Child Exploitation and the internet related originally, but computer forensics, file sharing investigations, also under cover chat type of investigations, people play be familiar with the show to catch a predator. Similar to that type of setup. We did a lot of those investigations. A couple of Human Trafficking operations as well. And how many Law Enforcement officers were under your command and how many officers were dedicate today the identification of victims depicted in child sexual abuse material . The task force covered about about 220 so investigators that were connect today the task force at some varying levels of fte or hours her week. There was a distribution between prosecutors and examiners and investigators specifically for victim identification. Victim id is a subset of regular investigations. You do what you can as youre investigating a crime certainly if you have to if there is a physical victim involved in it. But i would say that we had no people at the time solely dedicated to identifying victims within images or movies that werent related to the active case. No people solely dedicated. Not solely, no, sir. Do you believe the task force had the resources of funding it needed to carry out its mission particularly in identifying child sexual abuse material victims . I believe that we could do a lot more with more resources and more funding. We had the funding, we had and we may do with what we had but in terms of buying equipment for people, we got the best prices we could to be able to afford as much rollout as possible. In a perfect world, how much bigger a budget would you want . For the entire icac program or the mec budget . Yeah. So calculation was done by another raven member that put it around 500 million per year. Compared to what right now . Right now authorized at 60. I believe that we get icac get 32, 34 million. You get 32, 34 and you could use 500 . That would be to include staffing year over year. The problem with Grant Funding if its not certain that you will get it year over year its agencies are hesitant to hire people on its basis. I see. Why is it important to dedicate investigative resources to identifying the victims depicted in child sexual abuse material . I believe its the reason we do the job to begin with. And what can congress do to help Law Enforcement victims more often and more effectively beyond giving you a bigger budget . The two keys the ability to conduct more investigations at the front lines and the second piece is the international and National Cooperation for a bigger budget. Anything else . Yes, sir. The collaborative effort like the technology that underlies the way we communicate with the National Center program. The speed which we can deliver information and the richness of that information, metadata files, that sort of thing and then also the International Component that has been mentioned by the other witnesses. And harms are created when Law Enforcement focuses solely on prosecuting offenders rather than identifying victims . What are the benefits of shifting to focus on victims when it comes to combating child sexual abuse material . For one i believe it is our obligation. Certainly the benefit is that we are able to extract that victim from the ongoing abuse that they might be experiencing. But additionally, i believe it is our obligation and the primary reason we do the investigation and certainly when youre dealing with file sharing investigations, its easy to be what we call suspect centric because the suspect may not have a relationship with that victim depicted. They are merely sharing or distributing media back and forth between offenders so its easy to make that arrest end at that point but what we are all asking for is there be additional effort and funding given to the ability to follow up on those images for one ensure that we can extricate the victims from ongoing abuse and also in organized manner that every investigator who may have identified later on so we have and track identities. The gentlemans time has expired. Im going to let you ask that last question. To spend the extra time it takes to liaisi with other entities, homeland, fbi, the National Center, interpol, it takes additional time. As you brought up earlier lack of victim identification specialists make it harder for the regular investigator to take time out to do that when you have a significant backlog and you have other cases coming and you have a cyber tip increases that are quite high year over year. Thank you, mr. Madison and thank you, mr. Chairman for your indulgence. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank you all for tackling this problem and first of all, i would like to ask mr. Cole,ia hearing correctly that this problem is growing exponentially or it has over the last decade or two, is that accurate . Yes, sir, absolutely. In with regards to i believe it was ms. Cooper that cited google is really making some efforts to get after this. Why has snapchat become so prevalent in the spread of csam . Because snapchat is a platform thats very popular with children and so any platform where children will congregate offenders will also congregate. Ms. Cooper, so this is growing and were trying to get to the enforcement end of this, correct . Is there is there something missing in society that were not get to go the root of this problem . What is driving this . Are there other efforts that so i want to thank you for what youre doing here and the efforts that youre putting forward but is there a root problem here that we really need to get after also . I will answer that briefly and then hand it over to timmy. I think that theres some recent research that was done by one of the largest medical journals and theres a myth that people think if you sexually abused as a child particularly as a boy that youre going to grow up and become an offender, right, and thats actually not true. Boys that are survivors of this are probably less likely to become offenders than the general population. But theres one study that was study actually studied over i think 60 years and what they found was that the increase risk is actually physical violence against boyses. So boys that are beaten up in childhood tend to have a much higher risk of sexual offending. Im going to go ahead and let timmy answer the rest. If i could, i just want to touch on what was just mentioned and why homeland is so important to this. So for those 50,000 boys and girls when theyre doing an investigation, they have no idea where that is, they have no idea if that is in jacksonville, florida, if its minneapolis, if its in chile. And so why Homeland Security working with interpol is so important is because of all the sac offices and the 93 offices and interpol working at 68 countries and so many countries working together its wherever that leads they have the opportunity to then act on the other end and if not, then youre the boundaries and jurisdiction stop you from being able to follow where that lead is and thats one of the reasons why operation renewed hope is so success is because they have so many people from all over working together to wherever that leads, they have the opportunity to be able to rescue a boy and girl and maybe put a bad guy away. Mr. Coal or mr. Madsen, do you believe there needs to be changes to the code . The lack of liability on the Tech Companies is troubling. I think that i understand the provision why that was created but what its turned into its not meant to be and when platforms can turn a blind eye to the content, then thats troubling. And so i think we need to have regulation that requires that the Tech Companies are searching for and and protecting children who are on these platforms. If the same things were happening in a physical world environment, then we would shut that down. Theres all kinds of things that would happen but because its in a virtual space and because of section 230 parents are helpless to hold anybody accountable. Mr. Chairman, we heard the same thing months ago perhaps it was in this subcommittee perhaps before the full committee where we heard from that a Vice President for facebook was deliberately evading the law to enable illegal immigration into this country. And we continue to see this where theres these great concerns and mr. Gaetz touched on it briefly that our intelligence agencies are failing us here in america whether its the fbi, the department of justice or others, they are simply failing america and going after these problems and i give great credit to the four folks for making a positive impact in regards to this, but the fbi and doj rather than going after catholics in various dioses across the country, they should be going across these type of people. Thank you all for joining us today. The gentlemans time has expired. The chair recognizes miss dean for her five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank you all for your powerful testimony and i cant stop thinking about the toll it must take on you personally to do this work and so thank you for that. I know you could convince us that the children are worth it, they are worth rescuing. So mr. Madsen, maybe i can start with you, thank you for reminding us of the innocence whether they are children who write letters to santa claus or await the tooth fairy like my own grandchildren, they desperately need us and we cannot fail. Im pleased to cosponsor alongside representative lee the report act. I hope it will make life better for a child, victims and survivors. Could you speak to the report act, what you think could be and would be effective about it for both victims and for Law Enforcement . Thank you, ms. Dean. For us or the icac community it is the ability to send information to the National Center with urgency, speed over the internet from what im told that has been one of the issues that weve been dealing with over the years. Their ability to receive that information. Also immunity related to that transaction. How often is a child rescued . I appreciate all your focus on this. That is sure Law Enforcement hunting down criminals, how often are we connecting using these resources to rescue a child, maybe mr. Madsen . So as i mentioned earlier in an investigation there, where theres no file sharing or isnt need for International Collaboration it happens quite often with every exploitation case that occurs at the federal level all the way to municipal level. In term of how often children from the list that mr. Tebow referenced i would turn that over to mr. Cole. In the 7 years that i ran the Victim Identification Program and laboratory to hsi when i first started i did i went to our systems in a manual way to figure out how many child victims we were rescuing annually as an agency and in the start of 2011, we rescued 262 child victims. Seems like a lot but its nothing. The following year when we implemented other technology and focus on identifying and rescuing children instead of only arresting offenders we saw the number go up dramatically to over little over a thousand victims in a year. Currently, we rescue anywhere a thousand to 1200 victims a year just from hsi, thats globally, all over the world. Vast majority of child victims are right here in the United States. I thank you for that. I heard your estimate of what is needed, 500 million in a sustained, not year after year deciding and tweaking and reducing and not instead of the 32 to 34 million a year. Mr. Tebow and ms. Cooper, what do you say, give me the takeaway, what specifically is needed from congress and maybe you could blend into that ms. Cooper im intrigued what you said about google . What do you want us to do more than words, what do you Want Congress to do . So right now at c3 there are ten victim identification specialists, right. These are the best of the best. These are like the probowlers at what they do. Theres ten for 50,000. Thats what were asking for is to build that team. What if we had a 100. Now how successful could all of the teams if there were people nonstop being able to identify boys and girls and all the amazing frontline warriors once identify go rescue them. If we built that team and we are able to modernize database so that its not 22 years old but something modernize so that it speeds the process up i think the backlog, we would be able to get to so many kids so much faster and one story toy lust rate that. One of our team members was teaching at a school not long ago and she was teaching about exploitation and if this happens, please tell someone and one of the second graders comes up and he says, where were you two years ago and thats the problem. Thank you. We are too late. Im going to get granular for you. So for fy25 what would be helpful if we put no less of 10 million of amounts appropriated and direct it specifically over to the Cyber Crime Center so that it doesnt get diverted to the board, that would be super helpful. We also need 6 million. You have a statement on the record from interpol and they are asking 6 million, thats not much. They get funded under the department of Justice Legal Services bucket of money, so if we can take 6 million in the report language and through a programmatic request and put it to the department of justice but make sure you say specifically for the database because we dont want to it get diverted. These are the things that would get us started. Its going to take us while to finish crafting the bill with hsis Technical Assistance and built to congress and we can get it started by putting everything that we need in the report language and thats what i would ask. Thank you. Could you tell us how is that child who wrote the poem . Shes doing incredible. Shes truly a hero to me and she is not just surviving but she is thriving. Tell her were touched and were happy. I yield back. The gentle ladys tiled expired. Ms. Lee. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for convening this critical hearing and to all of our witnesses we appreciate so much you being willing to be here today to help draw attention to this critical attention for us, the work that you do to advocate and represent the most vulnerable is so important and we appreciate you being here. Ive spent much of my career focused on this issue as a federal prosecutor in the middle district of florida. I led the Child Exploitation task force and now as a member of Congress Want to ensure that we are doing all of the things that we need to do to support you in this important work. Ms. Cooper, i would like to come back to you, we touched earlier on the report act. Im very proud to be working on that legislation with my colleague representative dean, you noted that there are, in fact, ways that we can work in a bipartisan fashion even in an Election Year and this is one of them. This issue is something that republicans and democrats all care about. Tell me about how the report act and the legislation youre developing with hsi will help you combat this problem and rescue more children. Yeah, the report act is a really important bill because it helps really modernize the process of submission to the National Center for missing and exploited children and allows them to build some Technology Solutions so they can handle the volume of images they are receiving from the field but makes it easy for Law Enforcement in the field to be able to transmit those images. I think right now they are mailing them in. We are on the pony express but we should be able to use api and the cloud, Solutions Like that so that they can keep up with the volume so its a really important bill. Another important bill is the project safe childhood reauthorization bill so thats also a really critical bill because it prioritizing child rescue. Thats another good bill. Its in front of you. It already passed the senate, its bipartisan. In terms of our legislation that we want to work on, obviously we are working with you, thank you so much for stepping forward and taking the lead on this. We are looking forward to working with you and what we are going to do is authorize just like we did for the hero child rescue corps, we are going to authorize a rescue team and we are going to house it over at Homeland Security because they really are the best. Thank you, and mr. Tebow i would like to turn to you, please. You mentioned renewed hope. One of the things that is important that we convey today is a sense of whether theres urgency to the problem. Would you share with us a little bit more about the project and why it is important that we take action now as congress . Well, because so many boys and girls just like this sweet girl are waiting and suffering and going through the worst days of their lives and so many people are watching it and replaying it and memorializing their worst moments that theyre going through it. This girl was going through it every single night and theres why theres urgency. One of the things i love about operation renewed hope is so many people putting the mission above the credit. Hsi, its interpol, so many countries coming together for it and i love that because our fourth nonnegotiablable foundation is theres power when we come together and so many reasons we dont because we are worried about the credit. We could find a solution and i think this is a great example of so many people from all over the world putting the mission first, putting the kids first and i love what they called it, operation renewed hope because how many of these boys and girls right now do not have hope . They do not have any hope. You know, im not just talk about the way we use hope in our society flipping a coin i hope it lands on head im wishing upon a star, i love using the biblical definition of hope to look forward with confidence, expectation, how many of these boys and girls do not get to look forward with any form of confidence, expectation and anticipation because they believe their tomorrow is going to be just as bad as today but maybe because of all of you theyll be able to look forward with true confident, expectation and anticipation and thats why i love the name operation renewed hope. Thank you, mr. Tebow and your family for your commitment to this very important issue. Mr. Cole i would like to direct a question to you. Earlier we had some comment about we obviously have a serious problem with you shall accompanied children at the southern border but would you please explain the distinction between hsi and Border Patrol and how that operationally is different and separate . Yes, thank you for that. A chance to clarify. So Homeland Security investigations are the special agents, the criminal investigators. We are not down at the border, we are not the folks handling that specific issue. Thats a Different Agency although under the umbrella of the department of Homeland Security. It is important for that because hsi is really at the forefront of Child Exploitation crime and we are extremely technically savvy. Our Cyber Crime Center is outfit today some of the best tech in the world and our Victim Identification Lab was outfitted with some of the best tech in the world to focus. Its just really an issue of the personnel resources. Thats where were falling short and just to give one perspective in this global issue for the United States, if you look at our counter drug budget just for 20243, that budget was 42. 5 billion with a b. If you look at the amount of money thats spent from the federal government to combat Child Exploitation its under 200 million. Look at the disparity there and i would argue that the two have a correlation. The victims of this horrendous crime of Child Exploitation i personally met these victims and i specially stay in touch with the several of the survivors of these cases. When theyre not brought out into the light, when they dont have a chance to heal, then what happens . Oftentimes they turn to Substance Abuse issues to deaden the pain, to to survive, to cope. Also when you look at the issue of Human Trafficking and even for Child Exploitation narcotics are utilized as a mechanism to control and subvert our victims. And so theres a correlation. If we just peeled off 1 billion what we could do with a billion dollars would absolutely blow your minds. Thank you, mr. Chairman, i yield back. Thank you. Ive been very lenient with the time today. I appreciate that. Thank you very much, chair biggs and Ranking Member Sheila Jackson lee, we are glad to have her back again. Thank you for holding this hearing today. You know, im a mom to my core. So our children are one of the most vulnerable groups in our Global Community and it is our job to do everything that we can to protect them from the evils of this world so i want to thank every one of you in the panel today. You are truly to be commended for your passion and your willingness to serve the most vulnerable in our community which is our children and children globally. And i do want to say, mr. Tebow, thank you so much. I bump intoed you last night and, yes, i was star struck but thank you so much for using your celebrity and putting it for the good of our children, to the use of protecting and serving our children. I cant think of anything that is more honorable and admirable. It is our job to do everything that we can to track down, arrest and prosecute anyone who would want to cause them harm and exploit our children in any way. A step in the right direction is developing well tested and wellresearched Identification Technology and prolls to help us identify the children in csam. Child sexual material is far too easily accessible and prevalent. We have several bills here in congress to combat the spread of the horrible content as has been mentioned a little earlier but it will take collaboration and continued dedication to save the countless children who are trafficked and exploited. We need to support Law Enforcements efforts to combat the proliferation of csam which is why i have introduced the end Child Exploitation act. My bill would require the contents of reports regarding the online Sexual Exploitation of children provided to cyber tip line be preserved by the provider for over one year. My bill would also assist Law Enforcements investigative process by giving them more time to properly gather evidence to find the childrens subject to this abuse and their perpetrators. The reports will assist in the identification process and preserving records for a longer period of time which will result in more opportunity for our Law Enforcement to use the valuable information they provide to identify trafficking and Abuse Victims and their offenders. Im here before you today as a concerned mother who lost my own child as a victim of crime. So now im dedicating my entire life to protecting the safety and the wellbeing of all of our children. We know Law Enforcement and groups dedicated to the elimination of csam need our help and deserve the necessary resources to continue fighting for our missing and our abused children. A child would never be ever subject today the horrors faced by children exposed to these sick exploitation schemes. And i sit before you today proud of what our Law Enforcement agencies have done thusfar to eliminate csam and bring perpetrators to justice. Thank you to each and every one of you for dedicating your time and finding these children and bringing them safely home. Mr. Madsen and mr. Cole, my colleagues and i are here to make sure that Law Enforcement has what it needs to be successful in these tasks. But mr. Madsen, as now a retired commander for north florida Internet Crimes against Children Task force, can you explain the differences between proactive and reactive investigations . Thank you, ms. Mcbath. Generally, we refer to reactive investigations as those that come through a normal channel such as the cyber tip line. 911 dispatch centers, any call for service that arrives on the detective ice desk to followup on. Proactive investigations are those that are selfinitiated by that detective when that detective has time such as file sharing type investigations, the numbers i refer today earlier with about 86,000ips that are offering ccm material right now, that would be proactive investigation to begin the identification process of who the user is. It would also be undercover operations where youre investigating solicitations of a minor or a parent. Okay, thank you, and im going to try to take liberty for a second question. Mr. Madsen, how often do Internet Crimes against Children Task force members conduct reactive investigations . How reactive would be daily, constantly due to influx of leads that come from the National Center and from their local jurisdictions. The proactives are the ones the first ones to suffer. Thank you so much. Im out of time. I appreciate you. Thank you, general ladys time expired. The chair recognized the gentleman from South Carolina. Thank you to the witnesses for being here. This is an incredibly important topic that expands, it is bipartisan, its not a black or white issue or red or blue, its an issue that this country should lead on and continue should lead on. I appreciate the advocacy to the issue here today. In South Carolina prior to my service here, ive led a bill and it was considered South Carolina was considered to be the most improved state in the country in dealing with Human Trafficking. And it is amazing when you look at the county where i live, myrtle beach, South Carolina, myrtle beach, rural communities, its in urban settings, its everywhere, 30 Million People worldwide. And, of course, the United States is no stranger to that. Here weve talked about a lot of these important bills. I also have one, the trafficking survivors relief act which would allow victims of Human Trafficking to tell their story and to really get to the perpetrators, Law Enforcement love it. Victims rights organizations love it. It unites somebody like a conservative like me with a liberal like ted lou of california. That never happens but i think this issue you see great bipartisan support so its really important to focus on this and what you said today was really impactful particularly the note that you received, tim. Tim, im going to turn to you real quick. In your experience at the Tim Tebow Foundation, how do you all partner with Law Enforcement . Explain to me like the process or the mechanisms in which you work with these gentlemen . In a different ways. We believe theres power when we come together. We have 26 official partners and we work with so many different forms of Law Enforcement in a bunch of different ways. Me and jim are heavily involved and Intercept Task forces which theres five in the southeast that are working on these exact crimes. We are fortunate to be able to support c3 and hsi, interpol and so many different groups working together. So for us its more about a calling. Its one message. But what i would say is every Single Person has a chance to make an impact. Every single one of us can make a difference. Every one of us have different gifts, different abilities, different platforms, different backgrounds, different opportunities to use it. Some are gifted and longterm restoration for people brought out of trafficking or exploitation to leaven them really well summer trauma counselors summer on the front lines like these amazing men. We also something to give, something to offer it would bring it to put on the table i think special things can happen. Thank you. Thank you for that. Mr. Cooper a winter turn to you briefly. You talked earlier about steps. Things that we can do better imagine watermark on pictures certainly funding you talked about that. What are some other specific steps are what pitfalls our current legal structure that you think this Congress Needs to address . I think the most important thing is to talk about two things. One, children are disclosing sex abuse and there not been believed. The been put into a court system that brutalize as them and does not believe them, gas lights them. Sometimes puts them right back into the custody of their abusers. We have a Diversion Program for child and that is to be fixed we have to prevent that from continuing. So, believing children, supporting children and amending. We cannot just rhyme childrens outcries most the time theyre intimidated, theyre threatened, told not to tell some are subject to some really intense violence in these images are sadistic. The more that we can work on the child rescue side of this the more children we can get to we dont have to wait for them to cry out so we really need to do those two things together at the same time. Are there any areas ngos can may be more effectively contribute to the collaboration between ngo and government offices . Guess. We see a lot of it. We are fortunate to have incredible partners Like Operation light shine on hsi and interpol, and the Canadian Center for child protection. The one advantage should be able to partner with private ngos is we can move fast we can flex, we can pay that we can meet the demands of the challenges that come in government moves very slow its very bureaucratic there is an advantage to working. But we cannot make arrests we do not have arrest authority you do not want to be putting csam and hands of ngos we do not want them during the lawenforcement part. We went through the part we can pivot, we can build technology. We could move quickly we can supplement them or they needed to go ask the gentlemans time is expired. Fair. I can add up that if thats okay . Yes what dhec. [laughter] ive got the gavel here im not sure what its for. [laughter] i am going to give you 30 seconds to respond to that thank you for your grace. I think another thing that is so important as when a boy or girl is brought out of trafficking or exploitation to be able to have such a clean handoff so there it first moments of freedom are also with people that are a loving them or caring for them trauma informed counselors so they are not just going to a location and sitting by themselves for a while they are being loved, the ring cared for in that healing starts instantly. Its also really important handoff. Thank you for that. Thank you, mr. Chairman prevent the chair working as a chairman of the entire committee from ohio progress think the chairman. I think our witnesses for this important hearing. Its the kind that is subject to we need to address and i appreciate the community doing so. I would yield to the chairman of the subcommittee for the questions and yelled back. Thanks mr. Chairman. So lets talk a little bit about the interface between the Tim Tebow Foundation and a Law Enforcement to make sure we understand. I want the granular level. It is my understanding that when a victim is found and rescued, the federal government is not providing her there is not a mechanism in place to necessarily provide resources that you guys provide housing, trauma counseling, et cetera. Would you elaborate on that please . It totally depends on the area of the country, the location but yes, that is one of the things we do our best to provide we are fortunate with her team of partners to a 42 say poems in nine more in progress right now or we are trying to care for boys and girls but have been abused, trafficked or exploited we are passionate about that its importantly handoff or we can work sidebyside with Law Enforcement and doing that so there is an efficient handoff in that moment. Child were going to rescue . You are then able to step in and help out, is that right . Yes or different Law Enforcement different opportunities. Not all the time but if we have the opportunity to do so than yes, sir. Thanks ms. Cooper i went to ask you a question. You said something that was intriguing. I note that in arizona for instance thats were i am from. If a child has been abused not virtually but certainly that we find real time, that child is taken from the parents the chilo child with the felonies not reunited with their parent at least thats a normal plan was representing children. My question for you is what is the distinction for the federal on the state law thats providing essentially a hole in the law thats reuniting a victim with its abuser . We have states rights. We have a patchwork of state laws. Sometimes the states do it differently. They might pass a bill that allows them to have some nuance but under taft under the Social Security act i think it section 629b you are required to states are required to receive funding to come up with the state plan under estate plan requires reunification. Even if a child was raped in their own home. Great by the father the father is removed goes to prison thats a best case scenario. When he gets out he is led to petition the court to have custody of that child again and if you can imagine being raped by someone and being forced to have to go back and spend time with them, what that does to that child. That is a loophole. Thank you and of course we will have to look at that. Ive added that to my action items following this hearing we are going to talk again i dont know which one of you wants to address this when i note the Tim Tebow Foundation help bring together International Organizations like interpol with hsi and others to try to internationalize this tells how that works and how the international what resources are being used by interpol . Specifically operation renewed hope a lot of the victim identification specialists are not allowed to numb the budget is to build a fly here and work on operation renewed hope. We are able to help bring all of those victim id experts in so they can work sidebyside because if not they would not have the Collaboration Team approach. With operation renewed hope thats a big area we come into play bring the victim id specialist right here so they can work together. Great, thanks for that week go to mr. Cole, had a chance to go to the facility in fairfax it is an incredible facility. Tell me i saw some demonstrations of ai in some cases with results using ai. Please tell us has been using positively to resolve cases. Are intelligence its important a broad term but it is important to fight exploitation we are buried in an ocean of data. Both textual, visual, et cetera pick up some are separate there quick. Mr. Jordan your five minutes has expired thank you i know i recognize myself or my at five minutes. Please continue with your answer. [laughter] we are buried in this ocean of data that is impossible for human beings manually to go through. To find the relationships, find the victims and find the offenders the goal of Victim Identification Lab and c3 is on Mission Statement to conduct advanced analytics on multimedia files of child Sexual Exploitation material to identify and rescued the child or children, identify and apprehend and locate the crime scene. It is a daunting task there so much that goes into that. Theres indepth data that surrounds all of this material. Its incredibly important and will use ethically stay within that left and right guide limits we have established and have accountability for that. I am afraid of entities or governments have outright banned the use of certain ai. I understand the concerns behind it. But i think its a guided in we are using ai it is rescuing children. Without that ai children would go on rescued without a doubt. We have seen operation renewed hope is a wonderful example of that. The its important that capability is maintained but it is also important to establish the left and right limits so its used appropriately pretty pursuant ask really quickly about this. How do you train . You dont be specific about how you train with the number of people you are able to train and the necessity at hhi you think the numbers need to be tim talked about having 10 its actually 10 positions only seven are filled. Theres really only seven people currently working and again trying to solve date to date the new cases coming in. They could not last very long. This is three five Year Position i would guess because it did it my whole 20 years. I think everybody is different its important to have Mental Wealth safeguards as well. We improved upon that dramatically but it is important to scale that as we scale the personnel who would be working this. Only 10 positions at hsi we have 250 field offices around the country. They are in your districts they are in your hometowns, they are out there. They are working the cases alongside very much like they are. They are mostly reactive. They do not have the time to conduct a victim identification nor oftentimes the training and resources. We would want a two week victim identification course that i developed back in my time there. That is an intense two weeks. But you can only get so many people into those courses and they are expensive to run because of the equipment we have to issue those folks and software. Thank you. And mr. Madsen, i met with some of your colleagues today and you have been there is been authorization for instance for 16 million if im not mistaken. That is been pretty consistent. But the highest you guys if scene appropriated is 34 million if i remember that right. I was presented with some numbers different than your 500 million i think the 500 million sounds like ideal. But what can we do more shortterm to put some pedal to the metal on this . Obviously for me having budget yearoveryear after the d. O. J. Having sustainable funding is the gold standard. Certainly they could be earmarked funding to support one or more taskforces briefly. For them to benefit from that over Time Training someone to enhance victim identification getting someone out of the office for two weeks is very difficult generally. I think what we have asked for his numbers closer between 101 and 60 milliondollar mark. Certainly hoping we can get to that in the short term. But the ideal number is much higher and we fully understand that the unlikely thing to achieve today. Thank you for that. I just want to summarize real quickly appreciate again all the witnesses for being here and the members here to ask questions. I am looking here at my scrolled notes on action items and i want to go over those if i miss any please catch me after words and tell me what else he felt we need to do but number one as we are talking about making potential markup of the report act so we can make it go forward if possible and i would say we want to make sure its as clean and close too as perfect as possible. Second thing is to authorize with the appropriate resources for the victims units and also to make sure we rescue these perpetrators apparently we also have holes with the victims after they have been rescued. I want to see if we can find that part number three is continued highlight awareness to policymakers influencers and to the public. I went to myth google to find out what dhec theyre doing this seems to be right and see how we can make that a little bigger with that i will just say i have documents to conclude one is intervals crimes against children unit. I would like to submit that for the record. And also a document called Safety Institute report on child Sexual Exploitation and so without objection those to be admitted into the record. With that again i thank everyone for being here today without the committee is adjourned. [background noises] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]