Brazil falling behind in its fight against pedophilia

On March 28, 2019, São Paulo’s civil police knocked on the front door of a professor and engineer in a coastal town. In order to avoid fanfare, law enforcement informed the building’s staff that they were there to investigate a case of corruption in state-owned companies. But the real reasons were different: police were there as part of Operation Light on Childhood, one of Brazil’s most extensive police probes into child abuse rings, which ended with hundreds of people arrested and more than 761,000 child abuse images seized.

After entering the apartment, the officers split up and blocked the windows and entrance to the kitchen. These actions are standard procedure in such operations, to stop suspects from committing suicide. One of the agents who took part in the arrest and spoke to The Brazilian Report under condition of anonymity, explains that “pedophiles, realizing that they will be arrested, often try to kill themselves to avoid causing shame to their family.”

This case illustrates the fight against pedophilia in Brazil, where it is a police issue and not a public health matter. The primary tool to combat the crime is the same that is used to propagate perpetrators’ illegal content: technology. While peer-to-peer systems allow pedophiles to share child abuse images—in what is one of the fastest-growing businesses online, with estimated annual revenue of USD 3 billion—authorities use tracks left behind on these platforms to catch the criminals.

The most common strategy is using hashes, which are functions created from alphanumeric expressions, consisting of what is essentially DNA of content online. Using these series of numbers and letters, authorities can track where these materials are, who sends them, and who receives them.

In Brazil, investigations are carried out by the Federal Police, with the assistance of state police forces and the Ministry of Justice, which keeps a database of these hashes, which are shared internationally to help combat the spread of child abuse images.

In the Justice Ministry headquarters in Brasília, there is a big screen with a map of Brazil, showing the downloading and uploading of child abuse media in real time. However, the volume is substantial, as is the number of people who access this content.

Sources heard by The Brazilian Report that asked not to have their names disclosed stated that the police don’t have the infrastructure to arrest all pedophiles in Brazil. They said that even if law enforcement were to receive support from the Armed Forces, it would be impossible to...