VANCOUVER – The massive internet change brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has coincided with an explosion in so-called “extortion scams,” new data from Statistics Canada suggests.
As authorities aim to educate young people and parents about online sex crimes, experts are calling for more regulation, education and enforcement.
Sexual blackmail or extortion occurs when someone threatens to distribute private, often sexually explicit, material online if the victim does not comply with their demands, usually for money.
The crime gained national attention nearly a decade ago when 15-year-old Amanda Todd of Port Coquitlam, BC, took her own life after posting a video of herself using flash cards to describe being tormented by an anonymous cyberbully. It has been viewed more than 14 million times.
The trial of her harasser, Dutch national Aydin Coban, began in the Supreme Court of BC. in June.
He pleaded not guilty to extortion, harassment, contacting a young person to commit a sexual offense and possession and distribution of child pornography. He has not been charged in connection with Todd’s death.
A jury unanimously convicted him of all five charges he faced on Saturday after a day of deliberations.
Signy Arnason, deputy executive director at the Canadian Center for Child Protection, said the issue has grown exponentially since Todd took her own life in October 2012.
“It’s out of control,” she said in an interview.
Police across the country have issued warnings to the public about sex exploitation scams targeting youth.
“Unfortunately, police around the world have tragically seen some of these incidents end with victims taking their own lives,” said Nova Scotia RCMP Internet Child Exploitation Unit Cpl. Mark Sobieraj said in a press release last week. “We urge parents and guardians to talk to children about the potential dangers, stressing that they can come to you for help.”
Statistics Canada released Tuesday show that police-reported extortion cases in Canada have increased by nearly 300 percent over the past decade, but crime has increased significantly during the pandemic.
Incidents of non-consensual distribution of personal images involving adult or child victims increased by 194 cases in 2021, representing a nine percent jump from the previous year and a 52 percent increase compared to the previous five-year average.
“These relative increases are facilitated by social media platforms and other online service providers,” Canadian Child Protection Center executive director Lianna McDonald said in a news release. “It should be a wake-up call.”
Cybertip.ca, a national tip line for reporting child sexual abuse online, said it has received “an unprecedented volume of reports from young people and their sometimes alarmed parents that they have been victims of aggressive and systematic blackmail,” amounting to about 300 cases of online extortion per month. .
Wayne MacKay, emeritus professor of law at Dalhousie University, said the increase can be partly explained by awareness and better policing of cybercrime, but noted that research also shows that online child sexual abuse often goes unreported.
A review of 322 extortion cases received by Cybertip.ca in July found that when the gender was known, 92 per cent of them involved boys or young men.
“The review also showed an emerging tactic where the victim is sent nude images of children by the person behind the fake account. The perpetrator will then threaten to report the victim to the police, claiming to be in possession of child sexual abuse material. Demands for money immediately follow,” the child protection center said in a press release this week.
David Fraser, internet and privacy lawyer at Canadian law firm McInnes Cooper in Halifax, said a main reason some young people may not come forward is that they believe they could be accused of child pornography of their own image. He said this is a big misunderstanding, sometimes even among law enforcement.
“We have to be very careful about the messages we send to young people, just to make sure there are safe places they can go and get support before things escalate,” Fraser said.
He cited a 2001 Supreme Court of Canada decision that established a “personal use” exception to child pornography provisions. It said young people have the right to create personal images of themselves as long as they do not depict illicit sexual activity, are kept for private use only and were created with the consent of the people in the image.
Fraser would like to see more police resources and training on the issue.
“I’ve generally seen a general lack of skill and ability on the part of the police to take existing laws and translate them into the online context,” he said.
“Blackmail is blackmail whether you’re blackmailing someone by threatening to reveal nude photos you’ve blackmailed them into providing, or blackmailing someone through other forms of more conventional blackmail.”
Molly Reynolds, a lawyer at Torys LLP in Toronto, said her civil sexual harassment caseload has grown significantly.
“The demand is huge. It’s a crisis that’s at least 10 years old and we’re just starting to understand it more broadly across Canada,” he said. “There are still a lot of people who really don’t come to the attention of the police when they report this criminal behaviour.”
He said civil court tends to be a better option for adult victims who know their offender.
“You’re more likely to see a law enforcement response if it can fall under child pornography offenses, rather than just non-consensual distribution or voyeurism,” he said.
“(Children) are, in some ways, better served through the criminal process, whereas adults, I think, should more often turn to the civil process.”
Darren Lorre, head of training at White Hatter, a cyber security and digital literacy training company, said the law had not kept pace with technological developments.
He said so-called deep fakes, in which an existing image or video is used to create fake but credible video footage, will create new challenges because extortionists will no longer need to coerce a person into taking explicit actions.
“The reality is that people will use the goodness of technology and sometimes weaponize it. That’s the problem with deep fakes. I realize deep fakes are going to be weaponized, especially when it comes to technology-facilitated sexual abuse,” said Laur, who is a retired Victoria Police sergeant.
Reynolds agreed, but said she doesn’t think the law will ever be able to “keep up with the technology and the harms it can create.”
“There’s a really big role, I think, for the courts to interpret what we already have and allow it to evolve just as technological risks evolve. We need to be able to make it easier for people to take these cases to court, whether criminal or civil, and control the boundaries,” he said.
McDonald, with the Canadian Center for Child Protection, has begun calling for more regulation of social media companies, including Snapchat and Instagram, where the agency has found most of the harm to children occurs.
“This is an ongoing problem that’s getting worse, so it really begs the question of what are these companies doing to keep kids safe? It is unbelievable that social media platforms allow adult strangers to directly reach out and target our children without any consequences,” he said in a press release Thursday.
Laur said he had been calling for an online regulatory agency like Australia’s eSafety Commissioner for years.
“Basically they have the blueprint for how to do that,” he said. “We need something similar here in our country.”
The Department of Canadian Heritage said in a statement that the federal government is “currently developing an approach to address harmful content online, which includes the possible creation of a regulatory body.”
As part of that process, it said Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez “is currently holding roundtables across Canada to hear from victims of online harm, including children and youth.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 6, 2022.
