OSINT Training Log: Training Serbian Officials to Combat Child Exploitation

Key members of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior recently completed a vital OSINT Training with OSINT Industries, strengthening Serbia’s online and offline child protection capabilities. This free initiative equipped officers with the skills to fight child exploitation more effectively across digital and physical spaces.

Mission Objective: OSINT Skills for Better Government Safeguarding

Ten officers from Serbia's Ministry of Interior joined OSINT Industries for a specialized, three-day OSINT Training course that aimed to revolutionize the way these officers, and their government department, tackled online and offline child exploitation. Marking a significant milestone in building Serbia’s international credibility in child protection, joining this initiative - held in a government department - emphazised the Serbian government’s dedication to staying at the forefront of not only national, but international safeguarding efforts. 

Designed to strengthen these officers’ Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) skills and methodologies for safeguarding, the course taken was titled ‘OSINT Training: Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’. This was an intensive hands-on OSINT Training program, utilizing hardware like iPhones, 4G routers, multiple servers (including an AI-powered GPU server), and SIM cards. 

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Challenge: OSINT Can Address Child Exploitation Challenges in Serbia

‘The problem has reached alarming proportions… the countries of the former Yugoslavia [are] a very attractive destination for trafficking women and girls into the sex industry.’ - ECPAT, Global Monitoring Report: Serbia. [Source: ECPAT]

Serbia’s child protection efforts historically evolved as the nation aligned itself with international standards. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, child protection was under-resourced, held back by economic instability and limited social services. Serbia responsively adopted international frameworks to protect its young people: collaborations with NGOs like UNICEF, joining the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Union, and ratifying the Council of Europe’s Lanzarote Convention in 2010. 

Despite Serbia recognizing the importance of legal protections, welfare reforms, and specialized training in child abuse prevention, challenges remain. Organized crime, human trafficking, online child exploitation and rural deprivation - often in tandem - persist. 

Due to Serbia’s position as a key migration route, trafficking in particular is a wound still yet to heal. Serbia’s specialized units to prevent the trafficking of children for sex and forced labor are hamstrung by limited resources and low awareness.

Successes do occur. Serbia’s Center for the Protection of Victims of Human Trafficking collaborated with Europol to smash a Serbian human trafficking ring exploiting children for sex and more: forced “marriage”, forced begging and forced participation in organized crime. The investigation led to the arrest of 13 individuals, and the identification of 10 potential victims aged 5 to 17; officers rescued seven minors, all subjected to exploitation in various forms. 

However, without European aid, the situation is such that the US Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed Serbia on its 2023 Tier 2 Watch List, stating the Government of Serbia ‘does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.’  

These desperate efforts are complicated as the threat of trafficking is joined by another threat to Serbia’s children, in the rise of online child exploitation, fuelled by lack of oversight. 

‘The more popular the platform, the more cases of… online sexual violence against children there will be’ - Altin Hazizaj, Executive Director of Children’s Human Rights Centre (CRCA) [Source: Balkan Insight]

Serbia’s young people overwhelmingly access the internet from vulnerable access points.  86% of 9-to-17-year-olds daily access the internet on smartphones. Underage use of social media and gaming platforms is also widespread, with 41% of 9-to-10-year-olds and 72% of 11-to-12-year-olds creating and maintaining profiles on nominally age-restricted platforms. Internet cafes and shared access points are also still popular, particularly in Serbia’s poor rural areas - already deprived of safeguarding resources - where economic challenges mean children are more likely to be unsupervised online. 

This creates an ideal ecosystem for grooming and online child abuse: harder for caregivers to monitor, these access points offer minimal oversight, and greater exposure to predators. 

‘Due in great part to lack of coordination, many good local policies and initiatives do not progress beyond the initial decision-making level in Serbia, and suffer from a lack of follow up and operationalisation.’ - ECPAT, Global Monitoring Report: Serbia. [Source: ECPAT]

Serbia faces unique child protection challenges, but OSINT Training provides hope of a solution. At the heart of Serbia’s challenge is an ineffective government and law enforcement response, despite significant work. OSINT Training is a reliable way to increase effectiveness in combating child exploitation, and has proven success in streamlining and improving trafficking investigations. As a suite of knowledge requiring no costly new equipment, OSINT skills are easy for law enforcement departments to acquire and operationalise, allowing Serbia’s safeguarding ‘net’ to be spread wider. Beginning at the Ministry, Serbia could be starting an OSINT revolution.

Interior of the Palace of Serbia

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OSINT Training: ‘Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’

Course: ‘Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’

Duration: 3 days 

Equipment: 

• iPhones’ encryption and privacy features are ideal for sensitive safeguarding investigations. Most OSINT tools are optimized for iOS (including OSINT Industries) and iPhones smoothly integrate with cloud and live communication services. Most officers can use them without extra training, particularly in Serbia where smartphones are the most common internet access point.
• SIM cards are also secure for sensitive investigations. Encrypted voice and data transmission, the use of SIM boxes, and seamless swapping between devices make these compact and versatile chips perfect for anonymous OSINT fieldwork.
• 4G routers provide secure, reliable internet on-the-go. With multiple-device support, portability and flexibility, these routers facilitate anonymous real-time data collection and anonymous fieldwork.
• Servers store data, and allow large-scale data processing and analysis. When investigators need centralized data management, multiple data streams, complex analytics, protection for sensitive information, these are ideal. Speed, efficiency, and reliability combine with scalability.
• Servers with AI GPUs possess immense processing power for rapid data analysis, pattern recognition, and machine learning. As high-performance machines, these servers analyze vast datasets, detect anomalies, and automate complex tasks with AI capabilities that enhance image and text processing, and therefore data sifting.

Skills Developed:

‘Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’ is a specialized OSINT Training course to equip law enforcement and government workers with critical OSINT skills for child protection investigations. By training in methods to analyze public data from social media, websites, blogs, and other open sources, it becomes easier and more efficient to track CSAM distribution, uncover offender networks, and identify children at risk. Our Serbian trainees received targeted instruction to ensure they developed the most relevant investigative techniques for these challenges, enhancing their ability to protect vulnerable children and tackle complex cases in real time.

• Fundamentals of OSINT: Officers began their journey with the OSINT essentials. Covering basics like how to identify valuable sources, how to research effectively, how to adhere to ethical standards, and how to understand legal implications, they learned when OSINT methodologies can best be implemented to protect victims.
• Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT): In their current state, hugely popular social media and gaming platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok present a threat to Serbia’s young people. Monitoring and infiltrating social media can be the beginning or the end of a modern child protection operation. It’s vital officers are trained in parsing data, tracking interactions and collating intelligence from these platforms, and these officers learned how.
• Digital Footprint Analysis for Offender Tracking: ‘Digital footprints’ are usually evidence that forms the crux of a successful offender profile, or even prosecution, especially in trafficking cases that require GeoINT. Officers trained their pattern recognition, learning to trace posts, visits and metadata for common indications of child exploitation - including GeoINT strategies for anti-trafficking.
• OSINT Tools for Evidence Gathering: Officers explored advanced OSINT tools available to aid data gathering and analysis, including OSINT Industries. Training emphasized how OSINT tools can allow officers to collect intel with built-in compliance checks and robust data reporting, and how features like OSINT Industries Export can help preserve the OSINT chain of custody.
• Dark Web Intelligence: Child trafficking networks operate through the dark web, where illicit forums and marketplaces - including CSAM distribution - can be concealed beneath layers of encryption. Officers trained in navigating the dark web securely, focusing on using safe channels, encryption and anonymity tools to observe, infiltrate and disrupt criminal networks without detection. 
• AI-Powered OSINT: Officers found out about advanced, AI-powered OSINT tools, focussing on AI's ability to automate functions, ensure robust data reporting, and handle large-scale data. 
• Cybersecurity Best Practices: Officers learned to bolster their Operational Security (OpSec), keeping themselves secure with SIM cards, encryption, servers, VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), practical strategies and more, particularly when handling sensitive data

Exercises: Operationalizing OSINT for Child Protection

If you’re unable to exercise your new OSINT skills in a supportive, secure environment beforehand, facing your first OSINT investigation ‘in the wild’ can be overwhelming. Our OSINT Training, as always, focuses primarily on practical applications and real-world scenarios. This focus on implementation and operationalization is especially important in terms of Serbia’s unique challenges.

For this reason, officers were tasked in the latter part of their OSINT Training with scenarios based on actual child exploitation cases. Faced with these simulated OSINT investigations, officers could consolidate their new OSINT skills in real-time. This element of our courses is why OSINT Industries trainees leave their programs better prepared for professional challenges.

In anti-trafficking cases tailored for Serbia, officers could practice tracing trafficking networks in real-time, while applying best practices for evidence preservation. Officers could rehearse methods to keep up the digital evidence chain-of-custody. Making sure evidence is admissible in court is paramount in child exploitation cases, particularly in regions often facing legal and political instability. Prioritizing survivor outcomes and refining sensitive and comprehensive OSINT response strategies, officers practiced here how to conduct an investigation that could change the course of a victim’s life in the real world.

• Real-World Case Simulations. Officers worked through simulated cases, implementing in a controlled, supportive environment the OSINT techniques they had learned. These scenarios situated OSINT in a real-life context, simulating the process of investigating criminal rings, identifying potential victims, and gathering necessary (and admissible) evidence for prosecution. 
• Strategic OSINT Integration. For government departments, adopting OSINT practices immediately reshapes how strategic decisions are made. This often drastically improves the effectiveness of child protection efforts. In collaborative OSINT exercises, officers practiced interdepartmental data-sharing and coordination to drive informed policy-making; they learned how OSINT can enhance situational awareness, and create a more proactive and responsive strategy from the top down. Officers can now go forward to build a network of inter-agency relationships, continuous knowledge exchange, and operationalize their new knowledge. This will be essential for complex child protection cases that often cross administrative boundaries.

#OSINT4Good: More Than Just a Slogan

For us, #OSINT4Good isn’t just a corporate slogan. We want to translate this movement into real-world change, and there’s no better way to do this than provide OSINT solutions to those that make world-changing policy. For that reason, this OSINT Training program was provided to Serbia’s Ministry of the Interior free of charge.

OSINT Industries offers free platform and API access to government agencies, law enforcement, and nonprofit organizations - and OSINT Training too. 

Recognizing that child exploitation, including child trafficking, is a growing threat in the Balkan region, our commitment to #OSINT4Good factors in Serbia’s unique challenges as digital advancements create new avenues for exploitation. Serbia’s Ministry of the Interior  encounters financial and logistical hurdles in accessing cutting-edge investigative tools and resources to keep Serbia’s young people safe, especially when it comes to countrywide implementation. 

OSINT Industries’ free OSINT Training programs could help bridge this gap, ensuring Serbia’s frontline officers and officials have access to the latest OSINT techniques and tools needed to combat child safety crises. Open-source intelligence is a low-cost, applicable solution that begins with education; education that OSINT Industries is proud to make accessible to all who need it. 

Our OSINT Training program was productive for all 10 officers and officials who participated. They have already begun applying their newly acquired OSINT skills, and we are proud to support them in proving OSINT can make Serbia a safer place for children.

Training Evaluation:

Now equipped with the latest OSINT methodologies they need to bolster their country’s child protection efforts — analyzing GeoINT, monitoring online behavior, and tracking digital footprints — Serbian Ministry of Interior officers excelled in their Training. 

These 10 officers demonstrated exceptional skill in identifying potential trafficking threats and formulating sensitive, effective responses. They left our course with applicable practical OSINT know-how that can directly enhance their approach to child safety. Thanks to this OSINT Training, Serbia's vulnerable are better protected.

Curious about OSINT Training? Explore the OSINT Industries Academy.

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