4.1.3. Lack of Resources

Many participants in the current study discussed the lack of resources facing law enforcement. Participants highlighted that there is an insufficient number of investigators and that caseloads are too high to be able to investigate and prosecute any meaningful amount of CSAM. Similarly, Bissias et al. (2016) noted that while there may be a downward trend on some P2P networks due to successful law enforcement actions, the numbers are still so high that the population of CSAM traffickers overwhelms the number of law enforcement agents who can address these crimes. With limited resources and staff, law enforcement must decide how best to triage resources they have without clear information on the most effective strategy for combatting CSAM (Bissias et al. 2016). Further, institutional pressures to arrest and prosecute can lead law enforcement officials to seek "low-bearing fruit" (US9, 1), a sentiment heard both in the current study and other research literature (Bissias et al. 2016; Henzey 2011). This often leads law enforcement to identifying "inexperienced pedophiles" or those using unsophisticated technological methods (Henzey 2011, p. 53). Finally, a lack of resources adds to the difficulty in technological training for law enforcement officers

(Seigfried-Spellar 2018). If law enforcement, ISPs, tech companies, and other organizations combatting CSAM worked collaboratively together, some of these resource (and technological) challenges could be better addressed. Certain industry or researcher created technologies, such as Microsoft's PhotoDNA, are freely available to eligible customers and was donated to NCMEC, the organization that receives CSAM reports in the United States (Lee et al. 2020). The Internet Watch Foundation's Hash List, or list of digital fingerprints to identify CSAM, is freely available to ISPs and is utilized by platforms such as Google and Facebook (Lee et al. 2020). With the lack of resources being highlighted by law enforcement, and the increase in reports of CSAM, Bursztein et al. (2019) highlight the potential for various technological tools to enhance the detection process and automatically detect actionable or priority cases. Enhancing the collaboration and utilization of technology could be an essential step in supporting under-resourced CSAM investigators.
