OSINT Training Log: Supporting French Child Protection Agencies

French law enforcement officers from two major government-affiliated child protection agencies took a vital OSINT Training course with OSINT Industries to better guard the most vulnerable against harm in online and offline spaces.

French law enforcement officers from two major government-affiliated child protection agencies took a vital OSINT Training course with OSINT Industries to better guard the most vulnerable against harm in online and offline spaces.

Mission Objective: OSINT Training for Child Protection

Inside the Paris Centre Police Headquarters, 12 law enforcement officers from French anti-trafficking and cyber safety organizations met to begin a game-changing initiative. Here, officers from OCRTEH (Central Office for the Repression of Human Trafficking) and OFMIN (Office for the Fight Against Cybercrime) undertook advanced OSINT Training with OSINT Industries to strengthen their child protection capabilities.

During this two-day course ‘OSINT Training: Child Online Safety & Digital Investigations’, these two French organizations bolstered their safeguarding efforts against child sexual exploitation and abuse - with the power of OSINT, and OSINT Industries’ Training. 

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Challenge: OSINT Against the Digitisation of Child Exploitation 

‘The facts are unbearable, the context sordid, the phenomenon’s progression alarming… and the French response wholly insufficient.’ - Éditorial, Le Monde [Source: Le Monde, trans. OSINT Industries]

French child protection and anti-trafficking organizations face uniquely French challenges in fighting child exploitation. President Emmanuel Macron made online child protection a central priority in his 2022 re-election campaign, overseeing the signing of the Elysée Palace’s Children Online Protection Laboratory Charter by all major social networks, including French video hoster DailyMotion. However, many do not see this commitment borne out in reality.

Child exploitation and abuse continues to proliferate, increasingly digitized.

Reported online pedophilia offences have skyrocketed by 30% in three years. The IWF found 21,651 reported CSAM sites contained Category A material – the most extreme abuse, including rape, bestiality, sadism and sexual torture – a 54% increase on the previous year. France’s Children’s Minister, Charlotte Caubel, raised that a French child is victimised by rape, assault or incest every three minutes. Victim ages are dropping lower and lower, bottoming out in September 2022 to a horrifying average: eight months old.

French agencies cannot cope. The overwhelmed OCRVP (Central Office for the Repression of Violence Against Persons) faces a 300-case backlog concerning only French-Filipino victims in the Western suburbs of Paris. 

This overload occurs because levels of trained, specialized officers fall tragically short. The OCRVP has only 18 officers delegated to these crimes, hoping to expand to 50. Equivalent officers in the UK and Netherlands number 351 and 150 respectively; yet the Netherlands is about 13 times smaller than France. 

‘The pandemic, in exacerbating inter-family violence and inhibiting pedophiles’ travel, gave impetus to developing technologies that facilitate exploitation without the need for organized gangs. Contact can be made without specialized sites or encrypted messaging, but on Skype and Facebook Messenger… Payments are made through Paypal or Western Union.’’ - Éditorial, Le Monde [Source: Le Monde, trans. OSINT Industries]

This is a rise in highly trackable ‘clearweb’ online abuse patterns; the patterns that OSINT analysis excels at mining for evidence. An OSINT-trained law enforcement officer can outperform several untrained counterparts.

‘If these were warehouses full of drugs, or weapons, there would be instant action… it should be no different with child sexual abuse material… The situation risks spiraling out of control.’ - Susie Hargreaves OBE, IWF Chief Executive [Source: Internet Watch Foundation]

Meanwhile, France faces a major trafficking crisis: the suffering of migrant children. Vulnerable migrant children are forced to sleep on the streets of Marseille, lacking any protection from exploitation. These already victimized children are subject to a system of inadequate age checks - misclassification means they’re treated as adults, homeless and helpless, deprived of services supposed to keep children safe.

‘When you see a boy sleeping on the street…in the process of clearly destroying his health, and the department knew about it the whole time and did nothing… as a doctor, that truly traumatized me…’ - Doctor treating E., a misclassified refugee child with untreated tuberculosis and hepatitis B. [Source: Human Rights Watch]

Almost all of these children are accurately age-assessed if they appeal the mistake. In the meantime, misclassified children will suffer illness, psychological harm, and physical and sexual abuse including underage prostitution. What is needed is reliable age verification methods - this is, again, a digital problem. French authorities can safeguard these at-risk children from exploitation if they have effective command of data.

In the worldwide fifth-ranked country for CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) hosted online, a digitally-literate approach is vital. Poor data handling is causing a crisis for migrant children. OSINT Training is key in combating France’s online child exploitation epidemic.

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OSINT Training: ‘Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’

Course: ‘Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’

Duration: 2 Days

Equipment: iPhones and SIM Cards

• iPhones’ robust encryption and privacy protections make them the best hardware for sensitive investigations. Most OSINT tools are optimized for iOS (including OSINT Industries). iPhones smoothly integrate with cloud and live communication services, and most officers can use them without extra training.
• SIM cards offer the secure communications that sensitive investigations need, enabling encrypted voice and data transmission and use of SIM boxes. Seamlessly swapping between devices, these compact and versatile chips are adaptable for anonymous OSINT fieldwork.

Skills Developed:

This targeted course focuses on Training OSINT strategies that are most applicable to the challenges faced by French officers protecting children. The aim is to equip officers with a toolkit of essential techniques; from GeoINT to SOCMINT and a hand-picked selection of advanced OSINT methodologies to trace CSAM, dismantle offender networks, and identify potential victims.

• Fundamentals of OSINT: The foundational OSINT skills - often already known to some officers - including how to identify a valuable open data source, and research effectively and ethically. Officers learned when and where OSINT will make the biggest difference in investigations.
• Digital Footprint Analysis for Offender Tracking: Like footprints in the sand, both offenders and victims leave tracks with their online activity. ’Digital footprints’ are evidence that can profile a predator, and form the core of a successful prosecution. Mastering the art of spotting suspicious social media posts, site visits, and metadata enables these officers to identify grooming tactics, and flag anonymization techniques that commonly indicate illicit behavior.
• Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT): Poor moderation and a lack of corporate responsibility make monitoring and infiltrating social media often the crux of a modern child protection operation; SOCMINT is also key in identification and people searching efforts. Officers are trained in parsing and utilizing data from platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok with the help of OSINT tools.

• Dark Web Intelligence: The dark web is the source of most CSAM and child abuse content - including child trafficking activity. Officers were trained in how to safely navigate the shadows and hunt down bad actors while utilizing encrypted communication channels. Officers learned the importance of investigator anonymity to prevent detection, and the hunters becoming the hunted.
• OSINT Tools for Evidence Gathering: Officers found out about the range of advanced OSINT solutions that are available to gather and analyze investigative data, including OSINT Industries’ real-time tool. Training emphasized how OSINT tools feature built-in compliance checks and robust data reporting, preserving the chain of custody that’s so vital to pursue future legal proceedings.
• Cybersecurity and OpSec: Officers learned how to build a stronger Operational Security (OpSec) foundation with VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), SIM cards, encryption, and more to safeguard their identities and protect their findings.

Exercises: Applying OSINT in Child Protection Cases

Our training, as always, focuses on practical applications and real-world scenarios.

A key part of our OSINT Training courses is establishing a strong grasp of practical application. For this reason, officers were presented with real-world scenarios based on actual child exploitation cases; tasked with conducting hands-on simulated OSINT investigations, they honed their OSINT skills in reflections of scenarios that they’re likely to encounter in their professional lives. 

Prioritizing the OSINT chain-of-custody, officers learned how to use OSINT tools - and features like OSINT Industries’ export process - to robustly document evidence collection processes. Evidential integrity is all-important in child protection cases. Officers learned how to follow foolproof and challenge-proof ethical guidelines for OSINT investigation, tailored to France’s specific legal context, and practiced safely handling precious data that could crack even the toughest case. 

• Real-World Case Simulations. In a controlled, safe environment, officers worked through simulated child protection cases. This allowed them to implement OSINT techniques they had learned, replicating the real-life process of investigating online predators, identifying potential victims, and gathering necessary (and admissible) evidence for prosecution - with support from a professional Trainer.
• Using OSINT Equipment. Officers practiced hardware skills for covert operations and secure data handling. Our training covers managing SIM boxes, organizing effective dummy accounts (or "sock puppets") for investigative use; additionally, reverse-engineering for iOS and exploring advanced phone data extraction tools with OSINT Industries API, including OCR techniques for protected devices.
• Inter-Agency Collaboration. OCRTEH and OFMIN learned that inter-agency collaboration and teamwork are essential for law enforcement using OSINT. By sharing two days of OSINT Training, these agencies developed lasting interdepartmental connections that will aid future child protection cases, where predators often operate across jurisdictions.

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#OSINT4Good: More Than Just a Slogan

This course was delivered to OCRTEH and OFMIN officers free of charge. #OSINT4Good isn’t just a slogan for us, but a movement that can make a profound impact in the real world.

OSINT Industries already offers free access and API support to law enforcement, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, but we wanted to do more.

By committing to this free provision to facilitate #OSINT4Good, we reach out to help France’s child protection agencies do their best work. As child exploitation digitizes, we recognize the significant overload of casework, the growing number of increasingly serious cases, and the increased focus and pressure on those trying to keep France’s children safe. 

When demands on these overstretched and understaffed agencies exceed capacity, officers are in need of specialized support. We think comprehensive OSINT training at no cost can provide this much-needed helping hand. As OSINT Industries empowers French officers with essential OSINT tools and techniques, they become able to more efficiently handle sensitive cases, doing more work in less time - and overcoming high caseloads and resource constraints.

Already, the OCRTEH and OFMIN officers who attended this course are bringing OSINT skills to real-world investigations. We're proud to back those who do vital work for children. OSINT Training can make sure there’s always incredible support available for France’s most vulnerable.

Training Evaluation:

These 12 officers excelled in their sessions, displaying OSINT skills that position France’s law enforcement as a formidable force in the fight against child exploitation: online pattern tracking, digital footprint mapping, use of hardware and geographical data analysis. By fostering crucial inter-agency collaboration, they helped to ensure that no predator can escape capture by slipping between jurisdictions. 

They left this OSINT Training course with actionable practical knowledge; OSINT methodologies that could revolutionize their handling of France’s online child protection crisis. Considering the good we can do together, OSINT Industries hopes to continue our OSINT Training relationship, and provide more support to France’s agencies in the future. 

Curious about OSINT Training? Explore the OSINT Industries Academy.

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