[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


             A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS_CSAM IDENTIFICATION

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

       SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                        WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2024
                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-64
                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                  
               Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
55-050                     WASHINGTON : 2024   


                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                        JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair

DARRELL ISSA, California             JERROLD NADLER, New York, Ranking 
KEN BUCK, Colorado                       Member
MATT GAETZ, Florida                  ZOE LOFGREN, California
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                  SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
TOM McCLINTOCK, California           STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin               HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., 
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky                  Georgia
CHIP ROY, Texas                      ADAM SCHIFF, California
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina           ERIC SWALWELL, California
VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana             TED LIEU, California
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin          PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon                  J. LUIS CORREA, California
BEN CLINE, Virginia                  MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota        JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
LANCE GOODEN, Texas                  LUCY McBATH, Georgia
JEFF VAN DREW, New Jersey            MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
TROY NEHLS, Texas                    VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
BARRY MOORE, Alabama                 DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
KEVIN KILEY, California              CORI BUSH, Missouri
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming             GLENN IVEY, Maryland
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas               BECCA BALINT, Vermont
LAUREL LEE, Florida
WESLEY HUNT, Texas
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina

                                 ------                                

                   SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME AND FEDERAL
                        GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE

                       ANDY BIGGS, Arizona, Chair

MATT GAETZ, Florida                  SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas, Ranking 
TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin                   Member
TROY NEHLS, Texas                    LUCY McBATH, Georgia
BARRY MOORE, Alabama                 MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
KEVIN KILEY, California              CORI BUSH, Missouri
LAUREL LEE, Florida                  STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina          HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., 
                                         Georgia

               CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Majority Staff Director
         AARON HILLER, Minority Staff Director & Chief of Staff

                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                        Wednesday, March 6, 2024

                                                                   Page

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

The Honorable Andy Biggs, Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime and 
  Federal Government Surveillance from the State of Arizona......     1
The Honorable Madeleine Dean, a Member of the Subcommittee on 
  Crime and Federal Government Surveillance from the State of 
  Pennsylvania...................................................     2
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Chair of the Committee on the 
  Judiciary from the State of New York...........................     4

                               WITNESSES

Tim Tebow, Chairman, Tim Tebow Foundation
  Oral Testimony.................................................     6
  Prepared Testimony.............................................     9
Jim Cole, Chief Law Enforcement Enterprise and Technology, Former 
  Homeland Security Investigations Supervisor
  Oral Testimony.................................................    13
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    15
John Madsen, Retired Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) 
  Commander, Board President, RAVEN
  Oral Testimony.................................................    24
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    26
Camille Cooper, Vice President, Anti-Human Trafficking & Child 
  Exploitation, Tim Tebow Foundation
  Oral Testimony.................................................    28
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    31

          LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

All materials submitted for the record by the Subcommittee on 
  Crime and Federal Government Surveillance are listed below.....    50

Materials submitted by the Honorable Matt Gaetz, a Member of the 
  Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance from 
  the State of Florida, for the record
  A report entitled, ``Gaps in Sponsor Screening and Followup 
      Raise Safety Concerns for Unaccompanied Children,'' Feb. 
      2024, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of 
      Inspector General
  A report entitled, ``Identifying and Eliminating CSAM in 
      Generative ML Training Data and Models,'' Dec. 23, 2023, 
      Internet Observatory, Cyber Policy Center, Stanford
Materials submitted by the Honorable Andy Biggs, Chair of the 
  Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance from 
  the State of Arizona, for the record
  A report entitled, ``INTERPOL's Crimes Against Children Unit,'' 
      International Criminal Police Organization
  A report entitled, ``Data Driven Action to Sagefuard Children 
      Globally,'' CHILDLIGHT, Global Child Safety Institute

                                APPENDIX

A statement from the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, Ranking Member 
  of the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government 
  Surveillance from the State of Texas, for the record

 
             A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS--CSAM IDENTIFICATION

                              ----------                              


                        Wednesday, March 6, 2024

                        House of Representatives

       Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance

                       Committee on the Judiciary

                             Washington, DC

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., in 
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Hon. Andy Biggs 
[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Biggs, Jordan, Gaetz, Tiffany, 
Kiley, Lee, Fry, Nadler, McBath, Dean, and Johnson.
    Mr. Biggs. Good morning. Thank you, everyone, for joining 
us today. We're glad to be here.
    I've asked the gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Lee, to lead us 
in the Pledge of Allegiance.
    All. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States 
of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one 
Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for 
all.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Representative Lee.
    We're here today to discuss an important, a very important 
vulnerable part of our population, the exploitation of children 
through child sexual abuse material. That's what has now come 
to be known as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and we'll 
probably refer to it today as CSAM.
    CSAM is defined as pictures and videos that capture the 
sexual abuse of children below the age of 18. The term ``child 
pornography'' is still widely used by the public, but it is 
more accurate to call it what it is: Evidence of child sexual 
abuse.
    It is the exploitation of children through CSAM materials 
remains a serious issue and is actually growing both in the 
United States and abroad. Reports of CSAM continue to grow, 
with 3,000 reports in 1998, growing to more than one million in 
2014, and 18.4 million in 2019. The United States has a duty to 
protect our children from becoming victims of these despicable 
acts.
    Our Subcommittee conducted a hearing on this subject in 
September, and we heard from many experts and survivor 
advocates in the field. Today, we are continuing that 
discussion by shining a light on the heroic efforts of 
identifying, rescuing, and giving a voice to these countless 
victims.
    While it seems like this evil is something that happens in 
foreign countries or in someone else's neighborhood, it is 
actually much closer than we think. Identifying children 
depicted in CSAM is crucial to stop their ongoing victimization 
and capture the offenders producing it and rescuing the 
victims.
    The work cannot be done just by our Federal Government. 
Joint efforts among Federal, State, international, and 
nongovernment partners are essential for the identification and 
rescue of victims. You'll hear more today about Operation 
Renewed Hope from our witnesses, but I'd like to briefly touch 
on what it is and its impact.
    Operation Renewed Hope ran from July-August 4, 2023. The 
operation was the first of its kind in the United States, 
conjoining Federal law enforcement agencies with nongovernment 
organizations to identify, locate, and rescue victims of child 
exploitation. I understand Operation Renewed Hope is ongoing, 
and I hope more victims continue to be rescued and provided 
with the care they need and deserve.
    Our Committee continues with Homeland Security 
Investigations to enhance our knowledge and understanding of 
investigations related to human trafficking and child 
exploitation.
    We appreciate the work being done to identify victims from 
government entities such as HSI and nonprofits such as NCMEC 
and the Tim Tebow Foundation. These groups are leading the 
charge to identify and rescue children, and for that we thank 
them.
    Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and it's the best way to 
rid the world of these predators who abuse and exploit 
children. We must bring attention to these innocent victims, 
these children who are living in the shadows longing to be 
discovered and rescued. We must not shy away from hard topics 
and hard conversations. We have got to do better.
    This hearing is a continuation of efforts that we started 
last fall, and I look forward to doing more to protect children 
in the United States and abroad.
    With that, I yield back.
    I now recognize the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Dean, 
for her opening statement.
    Ms. Dean. I thank the Chair. Thank you for convening this 
hearing, Chair Biggs. I thank the Ranking Member who could not 
be here, Sheila Jackson Lee, because of her important work in 
this space. I thank her for asking me to sit in the Chair in 
her absence.
    This hearing today on the identification of victims of 
child sexual abuse materials, videos, or photos, I'm here as a 
legislator, as a Member of Congress, but you might imagine I'm 
really here, more importantly, as a mother and a grandmother to 
four grandchildren.
    While the presence of child sexual abuse images and videos 
online is not new, it's not a new issue for this Committee, the 
current scale and scope and complexity of the problem has now 
reached epidemic status globally, requiring a search for new 
solutions.
    The market for CSAM, child sexual abuse material--sometimes 
I worry CSAM could be some other agency, but we have to say 
what it is, child sexual abuse materials--far exceeds existing 
resources necessary to bring purveyors and consumers of the 
images to justice.
    Moreover, we have yet to fully address the quantum of 
resources and the manpower necessary to identify and rescue 
child victims of these heinous crimes. The internet and digital 
devices have become the tools of the trade for child predators, 
including those who produce, process, and distribute child 
sexual abuse material or groom, extort, or coerce children to 
produce images and videos themselves.
    Perpetrators of this repulsive set of crimes frequently 
operate with impunity, recording the commission of unthinkable 
acts on their young victims and trading the images for sport, 
often knowing that their identities and locations are cloaked 
behind a wall of encryption.
    Identifying all victims seen in child sexual abuse 
materials is of the utmost importance. Behind these images, 
videos, and live-streams are children who may still be the 
victim of continuing abuse and suffering, hoping to be found, 
hoping to be rescued.
    While Congress certainly has the authority to enact more 
Federal legislation, victims and survivors need help today. 
That is why we must fully support the various Federal 
initiatives and partnerships already in place to help identify, 
locate, and rescue victims.
    In other words, if Members of this body truly care about 
the safety of our children, truly care about CSAM victims and 
the need to prevent the victimization of more children, we will 
provide the necessary resources, the funding to law enforcement 
and to nonprofits who are in this critical space.
    We have to support prosecutorial offices, everybody who is 
on the front line. There are so many of you, and I'm thanking 
you for being here today. For example, the Internet Crimes 
Against Children, ICAC Task Forces have become essential to 
investigating crimes committed against children on the internet 
and identifying victims.
    Although this program enlists the service of more than 
5,400 law enforcement agencies' and prosecutors' offices, task 
force members are often stretched to a breaking point due to 
resource shortages.
    Task force members face the arduous task of reviewing 
thousands of images a year, searching not only for some clue 
about the identity of the child depicted in the image or their 
location, but also for the location of thousands of IP 
addresses that uploaded, downloaded, or shared the images 
online.
    At the same time, task force members must sift through 
thousands of tips received through the Cyber Tip Line at the 
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and 
determine which tips are actionable.
    It seems clear that we must evolve our focus to stress more 
on the victim-centered prosecution. Although that will require 
dedicated additional resources, law enforcement should not have 
to choose between rescuing children and finding criminals.
    As I said, as a Member of Congress, as a grandmother, I 
thank each of you witnesses for being here today, and I thank 
you for the work you do. It must take an extraordinary toll on 
you.
    We have all a responsibility to all our children and to 
eradicate every form of child exploitation. I hope that, 
through your experiences and advocacy and work, today's 
conversation will lead to victim-centered solutions.
    I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you. The gentlelady yields back.
    I now recognize the gentleman from--the Ranking Member from 
New York, Mr. Nadler.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Let me start by saying that Ranking Member--Subcommittee 
Ranking Member Sheila Jackson Lee sends her regrets. She was 
delayed as a result of her own primary yesterday on Super 
Tuesday but is on the flight to D.C. as we speak.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair, for holding this important hearing 
and for shining a light on efforts to combat the sexual 
exploitation of children. Law enforcement experts and victims' 
advocates have reported that advancements in technology have 
led to an explosion of child sex abuse material, known as CSAM, 
available and distributed online.
    Horrific photographs and videos depicting depraved acts 
against children are now increasingly readily available through 
virtually every internet-based technology, including social 
networking platforms, file-sharing sites, gaming devices, and 
mobile apps. A demand for new and more egregious images and 
videos drives the market for this material, resulting in the 
continued abuse and exploitation of children.
    Since the sexual violence depicted in these images and 
videos is a record of the victimization and suffering of a 
child, it is important that law enforcement make the 
identification of victims of child sexual abuse material a 
priority. To that end, Congress must provide sufficient 
resources and funding to those agencies and organizations 
charged with identifying, locating, and rescuing these 
children.
    The importance of victim identification is multifaceted. To 
begin with, because child sexual abuse material is tangible 
evidence of sexual abuse crime, victim identification enables 
the rescue of a victimized child. Not only are victims removed 
from harmful environments, but following removal they can be 
connected to the services, support, and care they need to heal 
and rebuild their lives.
    Victim identification also facilitates justice for victims, 
tracing digital footprints back to producers and distributors 
of the images as well as perpetrators of the abuse, ensuring 
that they are prosecuted and held accountable for their crimes.
    Federal law enforcement agencies, including the Department 
of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice combat CSAM 
cases through targeted enforcement actions, investigative 
initiatives, and victim assistance programs. While these 
agencies work tirelessly in their investigations to track down 
perpetrators involved in the production and distribution of 
this material, they are also committed to identifying and 
locating victims.
    However, despite their best efforts, Federal law 
enforcement agencies cannot tackle this problem alone. The 
collaborative efforts of Federal, local, and State law 
enforcement agencies, along with private and nonprofit 
organizations, supported by Federal funding and grant programs, 
are instrumental in identifying and rescuing victims of child 
sexual abuse material as well as bringing offenders to justice 
and providing essential support to victims of sexual 
exploitation.
    The 61 coordinated Internet Crimes Against Children, or 
ICAC, Task Forces across the country have been crucial to 
preventing, investigating, prosecuting, and developing 
effective responses to internet crimes against children.
    Through their comprehensive efforts, the ICAC Task Forces, 
which represent over 5,400 local, State, and Federal law 
enforcement and prosecutorial agencies, are making significant 
strides in identifying and rescuing victims of child sex abuse 
material. The growth of the problem continues to outpace the 
resources available to identify and locate victims when law 
enforcement prosecutors, the tech industry and other 
organizations must continually contend with the emergence of 
new technologies, like artificial intelligence, which further 
complicates their efforts.
    Today, the National Center for Missing and Exploited 
Children, NCMEC, reports that the Cyber Tip Line has received 
more than 92 million reports. Its Child Victim Identification 
Program has reviewed over 331 million images and videos, 
reviewing more than 25 million images annually. While most of 
the children reflected in the images remain unknown, over 
19,300 victims have been identified.
    We should certainly commend the successes of NCMEC and 
other law enforcement agencies in identifying and rescuing 
victims, but we cannot be satisfied while so many CSAM victims 
remain unidentified. I hope that our discussion today will 
focus primarily on what Congress can do to help identify more 
victims with the goal of reaching all of them.
    During our hearing last September, which examined the 
threat of child exploitation in the U.S. and abroad, we heard 
about the various struggles of law enforcement when confronting 
the edict of do more with less. When considering the plight of 
CSAM victims, this maxim is clearly unacceptable.
    The collaboration between local, State, and Federal law 
enforcement and nongovernmental entities is fundamental to 
addressing the complex challenges posed by investigating child 
sexual abuse material and identifying victims. It is our duty 
to fully support each of these entities and to ensure that they 
have the resources they need to accomplish their various 
missions, which undoubtedly should be centered around victim 
identification.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, and I yield 
back.
    Mr. Biggs. The gentleman yields.
    I thank everyone for their opening statements and, without 
objection, all other opening statements will be included in the 
record.
    I'm going to now introduce today's witnesses, and I 
appreciate each of you for being here today, taking time out to 
come talk about this important topic.
    Mr. Tim Tebow. Mr. Tebow is a renowned former collegiate 
and professional football quarterback, having received awards 
such as the Heisman Trophy and being a 2023 inductee to the 
College Football Hall of Fame.
    His foundation, the Tim Tebow Foundation, works to bring 
faith, hope, and love to those needing a brighter day in their 
darkest hour of need. In addition to other efforts, his 
foundation works with DHS HSI's Cyber Crimes Center on 
Operation Renewed Hope to identify previously unidentified 
victims of child sexual exploitation and rescue the children, 
if possible.
    Thank you for being here, Mr. Tebow.
    Mr. Jim Cole. Mr. Cole is the Chief of Law Enforcement 
Enterprise and Technology at Operation Lightshine, an 
organization that works to combat child exploitation and human 
trafficking. He's a former supervisory special agent with DHS 
HSI, and served previously as the Chair of the Interpol 
Specialist Group on Crimes Against Children. He also served as 
the chair of the victim identification subgroup from 2016-2019.
    Thank you for being here with us, Mr. Cole.
    Mr. John Madsen is the Board President of RAVEN, a 
nonprofit organization that works to prevent child 
exploitation. He also serves as the Chief Operating Officer of 
Griffeye, Inc., a software company focused on visual media 
analysis to support victim identification and other law 
enforcement activities.
    He was previously a detective with the Gainesville Police 
Department, served 10 years at the North Florida ICAC as task 
force commander, and served as the Chair of the ICAC Emerging 
Technologies Working Group.
    Thank you for being with us, Mr. Madsen.
    Ms. Camille Cooper. Ms. Cooper serves as Vice President of 
Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation at the Tim Tebow 
Foundation. She has worked for over 20 years on issues 
including child protection, child exploitation, and child 
trafficking. She previously served for 13 years as the Director 
of Government Affairs at the National Association to Protect 
Children, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting 
children from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
    Ms. Cooper, thank you for being here today.
    Everyone, we're glad to have all the folks in the gallery 
as well, and we appreciate you being here for this important 
hearing.
    We're going to begin now by swearing in our witnesses. If 
each of you would please rise and raise your right hand.
    Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the 
testimony you are about to give is true and correct to the best 
of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you God.
    Let the record reflect that the witnesses have each 
answered in the affirmative. You may be seated.
    Please know that your written testimony will be entered 
into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you 
summarize your testimony in five minutes. If you get to five 
minutes, you'll probably start hearing this, and that's what 
you want to hear rather than a big massive gavel so just so you 
know. That will be a cue for you to wrap up as soon as possible 
after that.
    We're going to begin now with Mr. Tebow, please, your five 
minutes.

                     STATEMENT OF TIM TEBOW

    Mr. Tebow. Chair Biggs, Ranking Member Nadler, Ms. Dean, 
honorable Members of the Committee, thank you guys so much for 
having me.
    Camille, Jim, John, so grateful for you guys and so honored 
to be here with you and humbled to be beside you.
    My name is Tim Tebow and, as Chair Biggs stated, I am 
fortunate to be the--and humbled to be the Chair and the 
founder of the Tim Tebow Foundation. We exist to bring faith, 
hope, and love to those needing a brighter day in their darkest 
hour of need.
    To sum it up, we strive to fight for people that can't 
fight for themselves. Some of you may know me from sports, but, 
honestly, more of you probably know me from getting cut from a 
bunch of sports teams, as Ms. Dean mentioned earlier. So, 
thanks, Ms. Dean. We can talk about that later. It's all good.
    Honestly, why we're here today is to talk about the MVP. 
Not the MVP I chased most of my life--couldn't get, by the way, 
but chased. Not the MVP most of you are probably thinking. No, 
not the most valuable player. A more important MVP, the most 
vulnerable people. That's why we're here today.
    A year and a half ago, this awesome lady to my left, 
Camille Cooper, joined our team. I asked Camille, I said, 
``Camille, what breaks your heart the most?'' She wrote down 
the number 20,000. I said, ``What does that mean?'' She said, 
``It's a problem.'' I said, ``What problem is that?'' It's the 
20,000 boys and girls that have been abused and raped and their 
images and videos have been captured, but nobody has been able 
to identify them. They're unknown until someone knows them, how 
could somebody rescue them?
    I knew that day that my heart was broken, and my eyes were 
open, and we had to do something. So, I said, ``Camille, what 
do you think is the best approach?'' She said, ``Bring the best 
teams and players together.''
    So, we convened a meeting in Leon, France, with amazing 
frontline heroes: Homeland Security, Interpol, Europol, NCMEC, 
ICMEC, Onemi, and Google. So many people and many more came to 
the table with really two goals. First, how many boys and girls 
are unknown, are unidentified? It wasn't 20,000; it was over 
50,000. Second, how do we protect them? That's where Operation 
Renewed Hope was born, led by HSI just a few miles away from 
here and so many partners from around the world.
    In 15 days, they were able to identify 316 boys and girls, 
316 boys and girls. It was an incredible operation, but that's 
a tiny dent in what we're called to get to. It was amazing 
work, but it was so small in comparison.
    So, why we're here today is to be able to ask you to say 
yes to a bill that we're going to present. This bill really has 
one goal: To build a rescue team. Because there are so many 
frontline warriors and heroes, but there's just not enough. We 
need to support them, and we need more of them to get to these 
50,000 boys and girls. So, this bill is strictly to create a 
rescue team that has the funding, the support, training, and 
technology, so that they can get to these 50,000.
    I've had the privilege of playing for a lot of sports teams 
in my life. In almost all of them, we've had incredible 
resources to give us a better chance at winning a game, 
something that ultimately, as much as we care about it, doesn't 
matter. Why would we not give as much if not more resources to 
the frontline heroes that are going after the most vulnerable 
boys and girls on the planet?
    You see, when Operation Renewed Hope identified that 316 
and out of all those that were rescued, more than half of them 
were right here in the U.S. When you extrapolate those numbers, 
that means that there's thousands of boys and girls that are 
starving for hope in our backyard. We have the chance to bring 
hope to those that are starving for it if we're willing.
    Honestly, my words will probably fall flat today. So, 
instead of hearing from me, I would rather you hear from one of 
my heroes, a young girl who went through extreme abuse for 
seven years, and almost every night she got raped for seven 
years. In the middle of her abuse, this is what she writes:

        Rescue me. Help me. Monsters are chasing. Can't you see? 
        Monsters are whispering. Can't you hear? Monsters are shouting, 
        ``You're nothing.'' Can't you feel my pain? Monsters are 
        pushing--end it all--just jump. Can't you hear all the whys I'm 
        asking? Monsters are laughing. You're all alone in this. Can 
        someone please rescue me?

    This girl and thousands of boys and girls just like her, 
they're calling out to you and to me. How many times in my life 
have I missed the call, have I missed the mark? Unfortunately, 
too many. Would today be a day that we wouldn't miss the mark, 
that we would hear her cries, that we would hear her call, and 
we would answer the call, because every single one of those 
boys and girls is worth us answering the call and doing 
everything we can so that they can experience the faith, hope, 
and love that they deserve, not the bondage and torture that 
they're in right now.
    I believe, if we build that rescue team, we will have a 
chance of getting to every one of those boys and girls. I got a 
message last night from a girl who has been rescued, and she 
said, ``Thank you so much for speaking up for us.'' It was 
humbling to get that, but if all we do today is speak, if all I 
do is speak, I also miss the mark. We have to do more than just 
talk about it. We have to act on it and be about it.
    Thank you for having me and God bless.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Tebow follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Tebow.
    Mr. Cole, you are now recognized for your five minutes.

                     STATEMENT OF JIM COLE

    Mr. Cole. Good morning, Chair Biggs, Ms. Dean, and the 
honorable Members of the Committee. My name is Jim Cole and I 
appear before you today as a retired Supervisory Special Agent 
with Homeland Security Investigations, Chair Emeritus of the 
Interpol Specialist Group on Crimes Against Children, founding 
partner of Onemi-Global Solutions, and the Chief of Law 
Enforcement Enterprise and Technology at Operation Lightshine, 
a nonprofit organization that raises funds for law enforcement 
agencies so they can dedicate resources to protecting our 
children.
    I extend my gratitude for Tim's passionate opening today 
and his unwavering commitment to these issues. As I've gotten 
to know Tim over the past few years, I've seen firsthand that 
Tim is the real deal. He puts his money where his mouth is, 
both literally and figuratively.
    I spent my 20-year career at HSI on the forefront of 
combating child sexual exploitation, an endeavor that has 
become my life's mission. I've had the opportunity to conduct 
several career cases, one that changed my life and career 
forever. That case inspired a new approach focused on victim 
rescue rather than solely arresting child sexual abuse material 
distributors.
    This methodology emphasizes uncovering new material and 
focusing on innocuous clues hidden within the vast arrays of 
seized multimedia content, shifting the priority to finding and 
safeguarding victims instead of just putting offenders in jail.
    I was recruited to establish HSI's Victim Identification 
Program and Laboratory at the HSI Cyber Crimes Center. Some of 
you and your staff recently visited that very lab and saw 
firsthand the incredible work that goes on in it. It is one of 
my proudest legacies.
    One notable case that garnered national media attention was 
Operation Sunflower. After several images depicting the 
exploitation of a young girl were shared on a dark net child 
exploitation site found by a Danish victim identification 
specialist overseas, we began an urgent effort to identify and 
safeguard her.
    One of the images depicted the young victim in the back 
seat of a car with a blurry highway sign out through the 
window. This sign we determined was in Kansas, starting with a 
``2'' and running east and west. A round hay bale, a hedgerow, 
and a tree near the sign made it unique. With this information, 
we set out across Kansas, driving down every highway starting 
with a ``2'' and running east and west looking for that sign. 
On the second day of the search, I just happened to be with the 
agent from Kansas City. We drove down Highway 20, and we found 
that sign.
    It came into focus as we neared the highway's end. As we 
got closer, I could see the hay bale, the hedgerow, and the 
tree. This discovery expedited the 11-year-old victim's 
identification and rescue from ongoing abuse that very day. 
From the discovery of the CSAM on the dark net to the child's 
rescue, only 13 days had elapsed.
    During my seven years running the program and lab, I had 
four personnel conducting victim identification. It's not near 
enough. As Tim stated earlier, there are tens of thousands of 
unsolved series, unidentified victims out there who are waiting 
on us to safeguard them.
    There's already an incredible and successful blueprint to 
increase victim identification personnel within HSI and support 
our Nation's military veterans at the same time. We need to 
look no further than the HSI HERO Program to see the path 
forward. I've submitted a document laying out a viable strategy 
for consideration.
    Victim identification requires global collaboration. Every 
case I worked in my 20 years had a global nexus. Offenders do 
not care about lines on a map. The horrific rape of a three-
year-old girl is memorialized on video by her own father and in 
minutes is available on a dark net child exploitationsite with 
over a million members. In under an hour, that child's worst 
moments are downloaded by thousands of offenders around the 
globe. In 24 hours, that number is tens of thousands.
    Interpol plays a vital role in victim identification 
through the International Child Sexual Exploitation database. 
The platform brings together victim identification experts from 
over 68 countries in a secure collaborative portal, enabling 
realtime collaborative analysis of unidentified CSAM.
    This global collaboration is crucial for swiftly 
identifying and rescuing victims. However, the system is old 
and requires updates to enhance its effectiveness. Shortly, you 
will hear from my colleague and friend John Madsen, who will 
address resource constraints in combating child exploitation.
    I would like to briefly contribute to this topic. After 
retiring from HSI in March, I joined Operation Lightshine, a 
nonprofit. Working with Tim and TTF and OLS, we empower law 
enforcement with necessary funds, resources, technology, and 
training to fight CSAM and human trafficking via our INTERCEPT 
Task Forces. We secure private funding to equip local and State 
agencies with essentials like detective salaries, vehicles, 
forensic tools, and the resources they desperately need but 
lack funding for.
    The mission of OLS underscores the glaring shortfall in 
Federal support for this crucial battle. OLS should not have to 
exist. The proposed funding for the creation of victim 
identification specialist positions with HSI represents a 
critical investment in the Nation's efforts to combat child 
sexual exploitation. By leveraging the skills and dedication of 
our veterans and equipping them with the tools and training 
they need, Congress can significantly enhance our ability to 
protect children from exploitation and abuse.
    We urge Congress to support this vital initiative, which 
will only aid in the fight against child exploitation, will 
also provide meaningful career opportunities to those who have 
served our country.
    Thank you for your time and attention.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Cole follows:]

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    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Cole, appreciate your testimony.
    Mr. Madsen, you are now recognized for your five minutes.

                    STATEMENT OF JOHN MADSEN

    Mr. Madsen. Chair Biggs, Ms. Dean, and distinguished 
Members of Congress, thank you for the opportunity to testify 
today on ``A Voice for the Voiceless--CSAM identification.''
    Having dedicated the majority of my career to investigating 
crimes against children, it is truly an honor to be here today 
and to advocate for resources for the men and women in law 
enforcement who are still on the front lines. That is the very 
purpose for which RAVEN was created, through the collective 
experience of its members, to educate and advocate at the 
highest levels of government for the resources necessary for 
our Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces, to give 
attention to those who are not heard and a voice to those who 
cannot speak.
    RAVEN's mission statement is to transform the Nation's 
response to child exploitation, and today it is my hope that 
the opportunity to increase law enforcement's response is 
seized. The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is a 
nationwide DOJ program that has supported State and local 
agencies with funding, training, and investigative tools since 
1998.
    The ICAC program is authorized through the PROTECT Our 
Children Reauthorization Act and remains an impactful force in 
the fight against child exploitation. The ICAC Task Force 
Program successfully unifies the jurisdictions of nearly 5,500 
agencies and 11,600 investigators, examiners, prosecutors, and 
educators covering the entire United States.
    As a detective with the Gainesville, Florida, Police 
Department, I had the privilege of being part of the Internet 
Crimes Against Children Task Force for 12 years as an 
investigator, forensic examiner, and for the last 10 years as a 
task force commander. Through that capacity, I was privileged 
to have the opportunity to co-create a statewide annual 
training conference, plan and execute nearly 50 multiagency 
undercover operations, eight SCAM categorization operations, 
two victim ID operations, in partnership with Homeland 
Security, the National Center for Missing and Exploited 
Children and Interpol, and implement a multiyear effort to 
adopt an overall victim-centric approach in CSAM investigations 
through training and funding support.
    Victim identification is central to all investigations. For 
most cases where a child has a connection to the offender, that 
relationship and identity is discovered within that 
investigation.
    The problem arises when CSAM images and videos are shared 
between offenders who did not create them and had no connection 
to the victim depicted. In those situations, the government 
becomes the listed victim and, for reasons such as backlog and 
staffing issues, it is often that no further effort is taken to 
identify the children in the pictures except for a submission 
to the National Center. Outside of individual State and local 
agencies, Homeland Security and FBI both maintain victim 
identification units and support requests for victim ID 
assistance.
    Since 2002, the National Center for Missing and Exploited 
Children has acted as the national clearinghouse, maintaining a 
database of known and unknown exploited children, with over a 
hundred analysts assigned to identifying victims at different 
stages of media review. The Child Victim Identification Program 
is a critical piece of the U.S. domestic effort, maintaining a 
repository of the most horrific images and videos beyond what 
you can imagine.
    Through the ICAC investigative and operational standards, 
all ICAC Task Forces and affiliates are required to submit 
their CSAM files to NCMEC's Child Victim Identification 
Program. This, in turn, allows NCMEC's CVIP analysts to 
continuously compare incoming information against unsolved 
cases in a central location. Unfortunately, the process is 
cumbersome and dated. That is why I ask that you support the 
REPORT Act and COSMA, so that the necessary authority can be 
given to allow for online and immediate submission of CSAM 
material for review and action.
    An equally important group are the victims we know exist 
yet unable to discover without additional funding to support 
long-term staffing and support.
    Already in 2024, ICAC investigative tools have observed 
over 85,000 unique IP addresses in the United States associated 
with users offering to share known child sexual abuse material, 
but only 367 of those cases have been claimed as under 
investigation.
    A single torrent, or file group, readily available for 
download contains thousands of images and hundreds of videos of 
toddlers being raped. At a minimum, these offenders use known 
CSAM for inspiration, normalization, and grooming. I ask that 
you endorse the PROTECT Our Children Reauthorization Act and 
fund the MEC budget at $160 million with fenced-off language to 
ensure that both ICAC and NCMEC get their full authorized 
amounts.
    If you ask why additionally to fund this effort, a former 
task force commander from Arizona once phrased his motivation 
like this: After being asked why he would focus on child crimes 
when he could earn the same or more in a different bureau, he 
answered, ``Because they believe in Santa Claus.''
    To continue, I would ask, are we really numb to this horror 
to where these are just numbers to us? Are we really unwilling 
to rescue those who live in it? Is that the America I enlisted 
to serve and are those the ideals we swore to uphold?
    In this world, there are causes worth fighting for, 
regardless of the pain, worth sacrificing for regardless of the 
risk. There are moments that define us as people and society, 
and this is one. Please fund the ICAC Task Forces. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Madsen follows:]

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    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Madsen, for your testimony.
    Now, I recognize Ms. Cooper for her five minutes. Will you 
press the microphone button there, please. Thank you.

                  STATEMENT OF CAMILLE COOPER

    Ms. Cooper. Thank you. Mr. Chair, Ms. Dean, Ranking Member 
Nadler, and honorable Members of the Committee, thank you for 
allowing me to speak today. My name is Camille Cooper. I'm Vice 
President of Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation at 
the Tim Tebow Foundation.
    You've heard about the MVPs today. You've heard Tim talk 
about how important these unidentified children are, you've 
heard Jim talk about how important HSI and Interpol are, and 
you've heard John talk about how important the ICACs are, but 
today I want to talk about how important you are.
    In 2008, my former boss Grier Weeks and Flint Waters sat at 
this very table and before this same Subcommittee, and they 
showed you a map filled with red dots. Those dots represented 
500,000 offenders sharing images of infants and toddlers being 
raped and tortured.
    They explained to the world that, if left unchecked, this 
illicit market demand for the rape of children would result in 
new victims. They asked you to establish and support the ICAC 
Task Forces, and you did. There are now 61 ICAC Task Forces in 
every single one of your districts, and they've arrested over 
134,000 child exploitation offenders. According to the research 
of Dr. Michael Bourke, we know now that 85 percent of those 
offenders also have real victims. They're actually contact 
offenders. As investigations increased, so did forensic 
demands. This created a backlog that in some agencies was two 
years long.
    In 2009, Somer Thompson was abducted on her way home from 
school, and she was raped and murdered. Her little lifeless 
body was dumped in a landfill. Her death was preventable, 
because her murderer's laptop sat on an evidence shelf for two 
months. On the desktop of his laptop was a file called Toddler 
Insertion, and it was the rape of a three-year-old girl.
    At that time, that acted as a catalyst for Homeland 
Security and Special Operations Command and the organization 
that I was previously with, PROTECT, and we created a solution 
with all of you here in this Committee called the HERO Child-
Rescue Corps.
    It was this Committee and the Members of this Committee 
that wrote both HERO Acts. Tens of thousands of children have 
been rescued as a result of that, so we thank you.
    This brings me to why we are here today. Just as we 
predicted in 2008, as investigations increased, images that had 
never been seen before also increased at an alarming rate.
    It's important for you to know how this happened so that 
you can appreciate the importance of why we're here. I'm going 
to take you upstream past the distribution of the images to the 
source of the actual abuse.
    For decades before the internet, the only way to know if a 
child was being sexually abused was if that child actually 
disclosed. Reports of sexual abuse in the United States have 
two tracks. If you are raped by your neighbor, your case goes 
to law enforcement. If you are raped by a parent or a 
caretaker, your case goes to social services, and you get a 
social worker instead of a cop.
    This is a diversion program for child rapists, and it was 
established in Federal law in 1974 under the Child Abuse 
Prevention Act under the Social Security Act. For child sex 
abusers, this law acted as an incentive to grow your own 
victims so that you wouldn't go to jail.
    Thanks to the dedicated work of the National Center for 
Missing and Exploited Children, we now for the first time have 
a glimpse of who's actually producing these images. The most 
startling finding in their research was that most of the images 
are being produced by fathers, family members, and offenders 
within the child's circle of trust.
    You can see from this--one of the charts over here, that 
chart over there is that these offenders are people in your 
communities. These are your neighbors. These are the people you 
work with. Maybe you play golf with them. This is your 
daughter's best friend's father that you send your daughter 
over to their house for a sleepover. These are the offenders 
we're talking about.
    That is why victim identification is so critical, because 
these offenders have come out into the light of day for the 
first time in history. We don't have to rely on children's 
outcries. We can follow the digital trail of evidence right to 
the child's doorstep, and we can rescue them.
    Congress has recently held a lot of hearings around tech 
accountability and that's incredibly necessary and important, 
but I would be remiss if I missed the opportunity today to 
highlight one company that is doing this well. It's Google. 
They have a dedicated victim identification team within their 
company, and they are literally rescuing thousands of children, 
and they need to be a model for how tech companies in this 
country do this work.
    You've heard Jim and Tim talk a lot about Interpol, and 
you're probably wondering why we're asking you to support a 
database in France. The Interpol ICSE database is the most 
important database, because not all U.S. victims' abuse images 
are going to be found on U.S. offenders' computers. The father 
that rapes their child in Ohio is going to send that image to 
someone in Germany, Brazil, or Italy.
    It's the work of those international law enforcement 
agencies when they catch that offender and do the forensics on 
their computer that they're going to find American victims. All 
those new victims' images from countries around the world go to 
Interpol. They have a world-class training program, and they 
have the best analysts in the world, but they simply don't have 
enough of them. They've been overrun, and they need our 
support.
    Homeland Security Investigations is the most well-
positioned law enforcement agency to support the work of 
Interpol's ICSE team. They are the tip of the spear in the 
world when it comes to child exploitation investigations, but 
we're talking about finding 50,000 children. It's a city of 
children that we need to go find, and they're fighting with a 
platoon. They need a brigade.
    We have three important requests for you today:
    (1) As Tim said, ``we need to build a rescue team.''
    (2) We need dedicated specially trained victim 
identification analysts, and we need hundreds of them. We need 
to invest in their training, and we need to give them the 
absolute best tools that we have to go rescue these kids.
    (3) We need to modernize the ICSE database so that as these 
images pour in, they can keep up with it.
    A lot of people told me not to come up here and ask for 
your help because it's a Presidential year. It's too partisan. 
We won't get anything done. I've been up here with you before, 
and we've done great things together during Presidential years. 
So, I would just ask that everyone put their partisan 
differences aside in the pursuit of saving lives. These 
children need all of us to fight for them on one team, one 
mission. Let's go rescue these kids.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Cooper follows:]

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    Mr. Biggs. Thank you for your opening statement.
    Now, it's time for the Member questions, and I recognize 
the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Gaetz, for his five minutes.
    Mr. Gaetz. Thank you for holding this hearing, Mr. Chair.
    I'm intrigued by this concept of a rescue team. It seems 
like HSI and Homeland Security is the preferred partner there, 
and I want to delve into why, because in this Congress we had 
an FBI agent sitting right where you're all sitting right now, 
Steve Friend. He was working these cases in our beloved 
Florida, and he was pulled off of those cases to go and take 
down people's license plates at school board meetings over 
parents protesting.
    So, I guess I want to understand best how to assemble the 
type of rescue team that you're talking about, and then maybe 
thinking about some of the assets that exist like at the FBI in 
addition to those at Homeland Security.
    So, perhaps, Mr. Cole and Mr. Madsen, your law enforcement 
experience, you can draw on that and talk about how to assemble 
the right equities and the right capabilities to attack the 
problem.
    Mr. Cole. Yes, Mr. Gaetz. So, Homeland Security 
Investigations, surprisingly to most people, actually is 
responsible for more than 60 percent of child exploitation 
prosecutions, Federal prosecutions in the United States.
    Traditionally, HSI is actually one of the first agencies to 
work this crime type. So, prior to the internet, this material 
was smuggled into the country from foreign sources through our 
ports of entry and through the mail.
    U.S. Customs Service, which is the predicate agency for 
Homeland Security Investigations, worked those investigations 
by seizing those materials as they came into the country across 
our borders. That gives us a legacy and long-term subject-
matter expertise in this crime type.
    So, we work closely with the U.S. Postal Service in that 
endeavor. Really, the FBI didn't start working these cases 
until much later.
    Mr. Gaetz. Yes, but we're in a different era now. As Ms. 
Cooper has laid out, we've got to follow that digital footprint 
right back to the source so that we can make these rescues.
    I guess I'm a little worried about Homeland Security 
because I'm holding this Inspector General report that analyzed 
how they're dealing with the number of accompanied children 
that are coming over the border. In 16 percent of these cases 
Homeland Security isn't even doing the documentation for where 
they're placing children. We have over 8,000 children that we 
don't even know where to put them that are in the custody of 
Homeland Security now.
    Mr. Madsen, do you have a perspective on maybe how to pull 
together the right equities to build the type of rescue team 
that we're discussing?
    Mr. Madsen. Thank you, Mr. Gaetz.
    As the former task force commander for North Florida, we 
worked very well with a lot of peers agencies all the way from 
the Panhandle down to Rockledge, which was the area that I 
covered, both from Federal and State and local, so between 
FDLE, FBI, and his.
    We felt that was the appropriate way to collaborate and to 
work on these types of cases, with the ability to prosecute 
federally when needed or at the State level when needed.
    Mr. Gaetz. I just think as the Subcommittee with oversight 
over a lot of these equities that they're trying to pull 
together, we can give them the right encouragement and the 
right authority to do that.
    I've also been reviewing this Stanford Internet Observatory 
report on identifying and eliminating CSAM in generative 
machine learning training data and models. I'm interested in 
how AI interfaces with all this, because the report seems to 
say it's really troubling when you have these child 
exploitative materials that are part of the training models for 
AI, but the report goes on to say maybe it's AI that will help 
us do what Ms. Cooper is charging us to do and get to the core 
of the problem.
    So, to any of you here, how do you see AI interfacing with 
both the perpetration of these crimes but also perhaps the 
investigations, the prosecutions, and the resolutions of them?
    Ms. Cooper. Yes, I'm happy to take that answer. A couple 
things are really important to understand about AI. You have AI 
for good, right? So, you have some tools that have been 
developed that are changing the game in terms of being able to 
find and locate these kids. It's really important that we allow 
law enforcement to use those tools.
    AI can be used for bad too. So, you have some nefarious 
people on the web that are taking pictures of your child's 
Instagram account, your child's face, and they're adding nudity 
and unclothing those children and then extorting those 
children.
    So, the times have changed, where a child doesn't even need 
to be taking selfies anymore. They can just have a soccer page 
or a gymnastics page up, and you have these pedophiles trolling 
them and extorting them.
    The one thing I think that's really important, I think 
Congress has a role to play in this. There are ways to 
determine between a fake image and a real image, and that 
technology needs to improve. It needs to be invested in. There 
are watermarks that need to be required by Congress.
    So, any company that is developing an AI tool needs to have 
a type of watermark so that law enforcement, as they're 
reviewing these images, can really distinguish between the fake 
and the real.
    Mr. Gaetz. I'd love to followup with you on that.
    Mr. Chair, I have a couple unanimous consent requests. I 
seek unanimous consent to enter into the record the OIG 
Inspector General's report on some of these accompanied 
children at the border.
    I further seek unanimous consent to enter the Stanford 
Internet Observatory publication into the record as well.
    Mr. Biggs. Without objection.
    Mr. Gaetz. Just, Mr. Tebow, the last time I saw you in 
person, you were beating my Noles in Tallahassee. So, while I 
know this is a very challenging dynamic, it's good to see you 
again in person. Go Noles.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Tebow. Good to see you as well. I can't repeat the last 
part, but I guess, sorry I'm not sorry. I don't know.
    Mr. Biggs. The gentleman's time has expired.
    I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Full Committee, 
Mr. Nadler, for five minutes.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Madsen, you were once the Commander of the North 
Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. What type 
of cases did your unit investigate, and what percentage of your 
cases were related to the identification of child sexual abuse 
material victims?
    Mr. Madsen. So, the type of cases that we dealt with was 
anything that had child exploitation and the Internet related 
originally. Computer forensics, proactive file-sharing 
investigations, also undercover chat-type investigations. 
People may be familiar with the show ``To Catch a Predator,'' 
similar to that type of setup. We did a lot of those 
investigations, a couple of human trafficking operations as 
well.
    Mr. Nadler. How many law enforcement officers were under 
your command, and how many officers were dedicated to the 
identification of victims depicted in child sexual abuse 
material?
    Mr. Madsen. So, the task force covered about 220 or so 
investigators that were connected to the task force at some 
varying levels of FTE or hours per week. There was a 
distribution between there of prosecutors, examiners, and 
investigators.
    Specifically for victim identification, victim ID is sort 
of a subset of regular investigations. You do what you can as 
you're investiga-
ting a crime. Certainly, if there is a physical victim involved 
in it.
    I would say that we had no people at the time solely 
dedicated to identifying victims within images or movies that 
weren't related to the active case that we were working on.
    Mr. Nadler. No people solely dedicated?
    Mr. Madsen. Not solely, no, sir.
    Mr. Nadler. OK. Do you believe that your task force had the 
resources and funding it needed to carry out its mission, 
particularly in identifying child sexual abuse material 
victims?
    Mr. Madsen. I believe that we could do a lot more with more 
resources and more funding. We had the funding we had, and we 
made do with what we had. In terms of buying equipment for 
people, we got the best prices we could to be able to afford as 
much rollout as possible.
    Mr. Nadler. In a perfect world, how much bigger a budget 
would you want?
    Mr. Madsen. For the entire ICAC program or for the MEC 
budget or--
    Mr. Nadler. For you, yes.
    Mr. Madsen. So, a calculation was done by another RAVEN 
member that put it around $500 million per year.
    Mr. Nadler. Compared to what now?
    Mr. Madsen. Oh, right now, I think we're--ICACS are 
authorized at around 60 million per year. I believe that the 
ICACs get about $32-$34 million per year.
    Mr. Nadler. You get about $32-$34 million per year, and you 
could use $500 million per year.
    Mr. Madsen. That would be to include actual staffing year 
over year. The problem with grant funding is, if it's not 
certain that you will get it year over year, agencies are 
hesitant to hire people on its basis.
    Mr. Nadler. I see. Why is it important to dedicate 
investigative resources to identifying the victims depicted in 
child sexual abuse material?
    Mr. Madsen. I believe it's the reason we do the job to 
begin with.
    Mr. Nadler. What can Congress do to help law enforcement 
identify victims depicted in child sexual abuse material more 
often and more effectively beyond giving you a bigger budget?
    Mr. Madsen. The two keys are: (1) The ability to conduct 
more investigations at the front lines, and (2) the 
international and national cooperation.
    Mr. Nadler. The first piece means a bigger budget. Does it 
need anything else?
    Mr. Madsen. Yes, sir. The collaborative effort, like the 
technology that underlies the way we communicate with the 
National Center CVIP program, the speed at which we can deliver 
information, and the richness of that information, metadata 
files, that sort of thing; then also the international 
component that has been mentioned by the other witnesses.
    Mr. Nadler. What harms are created when law enforcement 
focuses solely on prosecuting offenders rather than identifying 
victims? What are the benefits of shifting to a focus on 
victims when it comes to combating child sexual abuse material?
    Mr. Madsen. Well, for one, I believe it is our obligation. 
Certainly, the benefit is that we are able to extract that 
victim from the ongoing abuse that they might be experiencing. 
Additionally, I believe it is our obligation and the primary 
reason we do the investigation.
    Certainly, when you are dealing with file-sharing 
investigations, it's easy to be what we call suspect-centric, 
because the suspect may not have a relationship with that 
victim depicted. They are merely sharing and distributing media 
back and forth between offenders.
    So, it's easy to make that arrest, sort of end at that 
point, but what we all are asking for is there be additional 
effort and funding given to the ability to followup on those 
images, for one, ensure that we can extricate the victims from 
the ongoing abuse, but also in an organized manner to where 
every investigator who may identify them later on doesn't 
revictimize them with another visit, so that we have a domestic 
central repository that can track and maintain those 
identities.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you. Finally--
    Mr. Biggs. The gentleman's time has expired. I'm going to 
let you ask that last question, Mr. Nadler.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you.
    What operational changes or resources might be needed to 
shift from an offender-focused model to a victim-focused model 
of combating the spread of child sexual abuse material?
    Mr. Madsen. Well, to spend the extra time it takes to 
liaise with other entities, whether at Homeland, FBI, the 
National Center, or Interpol, it takes additional time.
    As you brought up earlier, the lack of specifically 
dedicated victim identification specialists make it harder for 
the regular investigator to take time out to do that. When you 
have a significant backlog, you have other cases coming in, and 
you have Cyber Tip increases that are quite high year over 
year.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Madsen.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair, for your indulgence. I yield back.
    Mr. Biggs. Absolutely. The gentleman yields.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. 
Tiffany.
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I want to thank you all for tackling this problem.
    First, I'd like to ask Mr. Cole, am I hearing correctly 
that this problem is growing exponentially, or it has over the 
last decade or two? Is that accurate?
    Mr. Cole. Yes, sir, absolutely.
    Mr. Tiffany. In regards to--I believe it was Ms. Cooper 
that cited Google as really making some efforts to get after 
this. Why has Snapchat become so prevalent in the spread of 
CSAM?
    Mr. Cole. Because Snapchat's a platform that is very 
popular with children, and so any platform where children will 
congregate, offenders will also congregate.
    Mr. Tiffany. Ms. Cooper, so this is growing, and we're 
trying to get to the enforcement end of this, correct? Is there 
something missing in society that we're not getting to the root 
of this problem? What is driving this?
    Are there other efforts that you--so I want to thank you 
for what you're doing here and the efforts that you're putting 
forward, but is there a root problem here that we really need 
to get after also?
    Ms. Cooper. I'll answer that briefly and then hand it over 
to Timmy. I think that there's some recent research that was 
done by one of the largest medical journals. There's a myth 
that people think that, if you are sexually abused as a child, 
particularly as a boy, that you're going to grow up and become 
an offender, right? That's actually not true. Boys that are 
survivors of this are probably less likely to become offenders 
than the general population.
    There's one study that was a longitudinal study. It was 
actually studied over I think 60 years. What they found was 
that the increased risk is actually physical violence against 
boys. So, boys that are beaten up in childhood tend to have a 
much higher risk of sexual offending.
    I'm going to go ahead and let Timmy answer the rest.
    Mr. Tebow. If I could, I just want to touch on what was 
just mentioned and why Homeland is so important to this.
    So, for those 50,000 boys and girls, when they're doing an 
investigation, they have no idea where that is. They have no 
idea if that is in Jacksonville, Florida, if it's in 
Minneapolis, or if it's in Chile.
    So, why Homeland Security working with Interpol is so 
important is because of all the SAC offices and the 93 attache 
offices and the Interpol working in 68 countries and so many 
countries working together is wherever that leads, they have 
the opportunity to then act on the other end. If not, then the 
boundaries and jurisdictions stop you from being able to follow 
where that lead is.
    That's one of the reasons why Operation Renewed Hope is so 
successful is because they have so many people from all over 
working together to wherever that leads, they have the 
opportunity to be able to rescue a boy and girl and maybe put a 
bad guy away.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Cole or Mr. Madsen, do you believe there 
should be changes made to Section 230 of the Telecommunications 
Code?
    Mr. Cole. I think liability--or the lack of liability on 
the tech companies is troubling. I understand the provision and 
why that was created, but what it's turned into is something it 
was not meant to be. When platforms can turn a blind eye to the 
content then that's troubling.
    So, I think we need to have regulation that requires that 
the tech companies are searching for and protecting children 
who are on these platforms.
    If the same things were happening in a physical world 
environment, then we would shut that down. There are all kinds 
of things that would happen. Because it's in a virtual space 
and because of Section 230, parents are helpless to hold anyone 
accountable.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Chair, we saw the same--we heard the same 
thing months ago, perhaps it was in this Subcommittee, perhaps 
before the Full Committee, where we heard that a vice president 
for Facebook was deliberately evading the law to enable illegal 
immigration into this country. We continue to see this, where 
there's these great concerns.
    Mr. Gaetz touched on it just briefly, that our intelligence 
agencies are failing us here in America. Whether it's the FBI, 
the Department of Justice, or others, they are simply failing 
America in going after these problems.
    I give great credit to the four folks that are before us 
today for making a positive impact in regard to this. The FBI 
and DOJ, rather than going after Catholics in various dioceses 
around the country, rather than going after school board 
members, they should be going after these types of people. This 
should be a priority of theirs, and it's not. Thank you all for 
joining us today.
    Mr. Biggs. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The Chair recognizes now Ms. Dean for her five minutes.
    Ms. Dean. I thank you, Chair.
    I thank you all for your powerful testimony. I can't stop 
thinking about the toll it must take on you personally to do 
this work, and so thank you for that. I know you convinced us 
that the children are worth it. They're worth rescuing.
    So, Mr. Madsen, maybe I could start with you. Thank you for 
reminding us of the innocence, whether they are children who 
write letters to Santa Claus or await the Tooth Fairy, like my 
own grandchildren. They desperately need us, and we cannot 
fail.
    I'm pleased to co-sponsor, alongside Representative Lee, 
the REPORT Act. I hope it will make life better for child 
victims and survivors.
    Could you speak to the REPORT Act, what you think could be 
and would be effective about it for both victims and for law 
enforcement?
    Mr. Madsen. Thank you, Ms. Dean. For us or for the ICAC 
community, it is the ability to send information to the 
national center with urgency, with speed, over the Internet. 
From what I'm told, that has been one of the issues that we've 
been dealing with over the years, their ability to receive that 
information, also immunity related to that transaction.
    Ms. Dean. How often is a child rescued? I appreciate all 
your focus on this that, sure, law enforcement and hunting down 
the criminals is important. How often are we connecting, using 
these resources to rescue a child? Maybe Mr. Madsen.
    Mr. Madsen. So, as I mentioned earlier, in an investigation 
where there is no file sharing or there isn't necessarily the 
need for the international collaboration, it happens quite 
often, with every exploitation case that occurs at the Federal 
level way down to the municipal level.
    In terms of how often children from the list that Mr. Tebow 
referenced, I would turn that over to Mr. Cole.
    Ms. Dean. OK.
    Mr. Cole. So, in the seven years that I ran the Victim 
Identification Program and laboratory to his, when I first 
started, I went into our systems in a manual way to figure out 
how many child victims we were rescuing annually as an agency.
    In the start of 2011, we rescued 262 child victims. It 
seems like a lot, but it's nothing. The following year, when we 
implemented things like Project VIC and other technology and a 
focus on identifying and rescuing children instead of only 
arresting offenders, we saw that number go up dramatically to a 
little over 1,000 victims in the year. Currently, we rescue 
anywhere between 1,000-1,200 victims a year just from his. 
That's globally. That's all over the world. The vast majority 
of those child victims that we rescue are right here in the 
United States.
    Ms. Dean. Thank you for that.
    I heard your estimate of what is needed, $500 million a 
year in a sustained way, not year after year deciding and 
tweaking and reducing and not, instead of the $32-$34 million a 
year.
    Mr. Tebow and Ms. Cooper, what do you say? Give me the 
takeaway. What specifically is needed from Congress? Maybe you 
could blend into that, Ms. Cooper, I'm intrigued by what you 
said about Google. What do you want us to do? More than words, 
what do you want Congress to do?
    Mr. Tebow. So, right now, at C3, there are 10 victim 
identification specialists, right? These are the best of the 
best. These are like the pro bowlers at what they do. There's 
10 for 50,000.
    That's what we're asking for, is to build that team. What 
if we had 100? Now, how successful could all the rest of the 
teams in ICAC be if there were people that were nonstop being 
able to identify these boys and girls and then all the amazing 
frontline warriors were then able to--once they're identified--
go rescue them.
    If we built that team and we were able to modernize the 
ICSE database so that it's not 22 years old but it's something 
that is modernized so that it speeds this process up, I just 
think the backlog we would get to be able to get to so many 
kids so much faster. I'll just tell one story to illustrate 
that.
    One of our team members was teaching at a school not long 
ago, and she was teaching about exploitation and, if this 
happens, please tell someone. One of the second graders comes 
up, and he says, ``Where were you two years ago?'' That's the 
problem.
    Ms. Dean. Thank you.
    Mr. Tebow. We're too late.
    Ms. Dean. Ms. Cooper.
    Ms. Cooper. Yes. I'm going to get really granular for you. 
So, for Fiscal Year 2025, what would be really helpful is if we 
put no less than $10 million of the amounts appropriated and 
direct it specifically over to the Cyber Crime Center so that 
it doesn't get diverted to the border. That would be super 
helpful.
    We also need $6 million. You have a statement on the record 
from Interpol, and they're asking for $6 million. I mean, 
that's not much, right? So, they get funded under the 
Department of Justice's legal services bucket of money. So, if 
we can take $6 million in the report language and through a 
programmatic request and put it to the Department of Justice, 
but make sure you say specifically for the ICSE database. 
Because, again, we don't want it to get diverted.
    So, those are the two things that would help us get started 
so we can start to build the rescue team. It's going to take us 
a little while to finish crafting the bill with HSI's technical 
assistance and, obviously, get that bill through Congress. We 
can get it started by just putting everything that we need into 
the report language. So, that's what I would ask for.
    Ms. Dean. Thank you.
    Could you tell us, how is that child who wrote the poem?
    Mr. Tebow. She's doing incredible. She's truly a hero to 
me, and she is not just surviving, but she is thriving.
    Ms. Dean. Tell her we're touched and we're happy.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Biggs. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    I recognize now the gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Lee.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for convening this 
critical hearing.
    To all of our witnesses, we appreciate so much you being 
willing to be here today to help draw attention to this 
critical issue for us. The work that you do to advocate and 
represent the most vulnerable is so important, and we 
appreciate you being here.
    I've spent much of my career focused on this issue. As a 
Federal prosecutor in the Middle District of Florida, I led the 
child exploitation task force. Now, as a Member of Congress, 
want to ensure that we are doing all the things we need to do 
to support you in this important work.
    Ms. Cooper, I'd like to come back to you. We touched 
earlier on the REPORT Act. I'm very proud to be working on that 
legislation with my colleague, Representative Dean. You noted 
that there are, in fact, ways that we can work in a bipartisan 
fashion even in an election year, and this is one of them. This 
issue is something that Republicans and Democrats all care 
about.
    Tell me about how the REPORT Act and the legislation you're 
developing with his will help you combat this problem and 
rescue more children.
    Ms. Cooper. Yes. The REPORT Act is a really important bill 
because it helps really modernize the process of submission to 
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and 
allows them to build in some technology solutions so that they 
can handle the volume of images that they're receiving from the 
field. It also makes it easier for law enforcement in the field 
to be able to transmit those images.
    I think right now they're mailing them in, so we're on the 
pony express over here, but we should be able to use an API in 
the cloud and solutions like that for NCMEC so that they can 
keep up with the volume. So, it's a really important bill.
    Another important bill is the Project Safe Childhood 
reauthorization bill. So, that's also a really critical bill 
because it prioritizes child rescue. So, that's another good 
bill. It's in front of you. It already passed the Senate's 
bipartisan.
    In terms of our legislation that we want to work on, 
obviously, we're working with you. Thank you so much for 
stepping forward and taking the lead on this. We're looking 
forward to working with you. What we're going to do is we're 
going to authorize--just like we did for the HERO Child-Rescue 
Corps, we're going to authorize a rescue team, and we're going 
to house it over at Homeland Security because they really are 
the best.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you.
    Mr. Tebow, I'd like to return to you, please. You mentioned 
Operation Renewed Hope. One of the things I think is important 
that we convey today is a sense of whether there's urgency to 
this problem.
    Would you share with us a little bit more about that 
project and why it is important that we take action now as 
Congress?
    Mr. Tebow. Well, because so many boys and girls, just like 
this sweet girl, are waiting, and they're suffering, and 
they're going through the worst days of their life. So many 
people are watching it, replaying it, and memorializing their 
worst moments that they're going through. This girl was going 
through it every single night. That's why there's urgency.
    One of the things that I love so much about Operation 
Renewed Hope is it was so many people putting the mission above 
the credit. It's his, it's Interpol, and it's NCMEC. It's so 
many people, so many countries all coming together for it, and 
I love that. Because our fourth nonnegotiable at our foundation 
is there's power when we can come together. So many reasons why 
we don't is because we're so worried about the credit, not the 
mission. If we put the mission first, which is these boys and 
girls, then I believe we would come together, and we could find 
a solution.
    I think this is a really great example of so many people 
from all over the world putting the mission first--putting the 
kids first. I love what they called it, Operation Renewed Hope. 
Because how many of these boys and girls right now do not have 
hope? They do not have any hope.
    I'm not just talking about the way we use hope in our 
society of I'm flipping a coin, I hope it lands on heads or I'm 
wishing upon a star. No, I love using the biblical definition 
of hope, to look forward with confidence, expectation, and 
anticipation.
    How many of these boys and girls do not get to look forward 
with any form of confidence, expectation, or anticipation 
because they believe their tomorrow is going to be just as bad 
as today? Maybe, because all of us, because all of you, maybe 
one day they'll be able to look forward with true confidence, 
expectation, and anticipation. That's why I love the name 
Operation Renewed Hope.
    Ms. Lee. Well, thank you, Mr. Tebow, and your family, for 
your commitment to this very important issue.
    Mr. Cole, I'd also like to direct a question to you. 
Earlier, I knew we had some comment about we, obviously, have a 
very serious problem with unaccompanied children and the 
Southern border. Would you please explain for us the 
distinction between his and Border Patrol and how that 
operationally is different and separate?
    Mr. Cole. Yes. Thank you for that--a chance to clarify. So, 
Homeland Security Investigations are the special agents, the 
criminal investigators. We are not down at the border. We're 
not the folks that are handling that specific issue. That is a 
different agency, although under the umbrella of the Department 
of Homeland Security.
    So, it is important for that distinction because his is 
really at the forefront of child exploitation crime, and we are 
extremely technically savvy. Our Cyber Crime Center is 
outfitted with some of the best tech in the world, and our 
Victim Identification Lab was outfitted with some of the best 
tech in the world to focus. It's just really an issue of 
personnel resources. That's where we're falling short.
    Just to give one perspective in this kind of global issue 
for the United States. If you look at our counter-drug budget 
just for 2023, that budget was $42.5 billion, with a ``B.'' If 
you look at the amount of money that's spent from the Federal 
Government to combat child exploitation, it's under $200 
million. Look at the disparity there.
    I would argue that the two have a correlation. The victims 
of this horrendous crime of child exploitation, I have 
personally met these victims, and I personally stay in touch 
with several of the survivors of these cases. When they're not 
brought out into the light, when they don't have a chance to 
heal, then what happens? Oftentimes, they turn to substance 
abuse issues to deaden the pain, to survive, and to cope.
    Also, when you look at the issue of human trafficking, and 
even for child exploitation, narcotics are utilized as a 
mechanism to control and subvert our victims. So, there's a 
correlation.
    If we just peeled off one billion--what we could do with a 
billion dollars would absolutely blow your minds.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you. I've been very lenient with the time 
today.
    Ms. Dean. Appreciate that.
    Mr. Biggs. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from 
Georgia, Ms. McBath.
    Ms. McBath. Thank you very much, Chair Biggs, and to our 
Ranking Member, Sheila Jackson Lee, who is not with us today 
because she actually won her primary. So, we're so glad to have 
her back again. Thank you for holding this hearing today.
    I'm a mom to my core. So, our children are one of the most 
vulnerable groups in our global community, and it is our job to 
do everything that we can to protect them from the evils of 
this world. So, I want to thank every one of you on the panel 
today. You are truly to be commended for your passion and your 
willingness to serve the most vulnerable in our community, 
which is our children and children globally.
    I do want to say, Mr. Tebow, thank you so much. I bumped 
into you last night and, yes, I was star-struck. Thank you so 
much for using your celebrity and putting it for the good of 
our children, to the use of protecting and serving our 
children. I can't think of anything that is more honorable and 
admirable.
    It is our job to do everything that we can to track down, 
arrest, and prosecute anyone who would want to cause them harm 
and exploit our children in any way. A step in the right 
direction is developing well-tested and well-researched 
identification technology and procedures to help us identify 
the children in CSAM. Child sexual abuse material is far too 
easily accessible and prevalent.
    We have several bills here in Congress to combat the spread 
of this horrible content, as has been mentioned a little bit 
earlier, but it will take collaboration and continued 
dedication to save the countless children who are trafficked 
and exploited. We need to support law enforcement's efforts to 
combat the proliferation of CSAM, which is why I have 
introduced the END Child Exploitation Act.
    My bill would require the contents of reports regarding the 
online sexual exploitation of children provided to Cyber Tip 
Line be preserved by the provider for over one year. My bill 
would also assist law enforcement's investigative process by 
giving them more time to properly gather evidence to find the 
children subject to this abuse and their perpetrators.
    The reports will assist in the identification process and 
preserving records for a longer period of time, which will 
result in more opportunity for our law enforcement to use the 
valuable information they provide to identify trafficking and 
abuse victims and their offenders.
    I'm here before you today as a concerned mother who lost my 
own child as a victim of crime. So, I am now dedicating my 
entire life to protecting the safety and the well-being of all 
our children.
    We know law enforcement and groups dedicated to the 
elimination of CSAM need our help and deserve the necessary 
resources to continue fighting for our missing and abused 
children. A child should never ever be subjected to the horrors 
faced by children exposed to these sick exploitation schemes, 
and I sit before you today proud of what our law enforcement 
agencies have done thus far to eliminate CSAM and bring 
perpetrators to justice.
    Thank you to each and every one of you for dedicating your 
time and finding these children and bringing them safely home.
    Mr. Madsen and Mr. Cole, my colleagues and I, we are here 
to make sure that law enforcement has what it needs to be 
successful in these tasks. Mr. Madsen, as now a retired 
commander for North Florida Internet Crimes Against Children 
Task Force, can you explain the differences between proactive 
and reactive investigations?
    Mr. Madsen. Thank you, Ms. McBath. Generally, we refer to 
reactive investigations as those that come through a normal 
channel, such as the Cyber Tip Line, 911 dispatch centers, or 
any call for service that arrives on the detective's desk to 
followup on.
    Proactive investigations are those that are self-initiated 
by that detective when that detective has time, such as file 
sharing type investigations. The numbers I referred to earlier 
with about 86,000 IPs that are offering CSAM material right 
now, that would be a proactive investigation to begin the 
identification process of who the user is. It would also be 
undercover operations where you're investigating solicitations 
of a minor or a parent.
    Ms. McBath. OK. Thank you. I'm going to try to take liberty 
for a second question.
    Mr. Madsen, how often do Internet Crimes Against Children 
Task Force members conduct reactive investigations?
    Mr. Madsen. Reactive would be daily, constant, due to the 
influx of leads that come from the national center and from 
their local jurisdictions. The proactives are the first ones to 
suffer.
    Ms. McBath. Thank you so much. I am out of time. I 
appreciate you.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. 
Fry.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you, Chair Biggs, for having us today.
    Thank you--thank you to the witnesses for being here. This 
is an incredibly important topic that spans--it is bipartisan, 
it is not a Black or White issue or a red or blue. It is an 
issue that this country should lead on, and we should continue 
to lead on. So, I appreciate the work that you do and the 
advocacy to the issue here today.
    Look, in South Carolina, prior to my service here, I led a 
bill, and it was considered--South Carolina was considered to 
be the most improved State in the country in dealing with human 
trafficking. It is amazing; when you look at the county where I 
live, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Myrtle Beach, Horry County, 
is in the top three counties of reported human trafficking. 
It's in rural communities, it's in urban settings. It's 
everywhere, 30 million people worldwide. Of course, the United 
States is no stranger to that.
    Here, we've talked about a lot of these important bills. I 
also have one, the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, which 
would allow victims of human trafficking to tell their story 
and to really get to the perpetrators. Law enforcement love it. 
Victims rights organizations love it. It unites somebody like a 
conservative like me with a liberal like Ted Lieu of 
California. That never happens. This issue, I think you see 
great bipartisan support. So, it's really important to focus on 
this. What you said today was really impactful, particularly 
the note that you received, Tim.
    Tim, I want to turn to you really quick. In your experience 
at the Tim Tebow Foundation, how do you all partner with law 
enforcement? Explain to me the process or the mechanisms in 
which you work with these gentlemen.
    Mr. Tebow. Well, in a bunch of different ways. We believe 
in partnership, like I was sharing a little bit earlier. We 
believe there's power when we come together. We have 26 
official partners, and we work with so many different forms of 
law enforcement in a bunch of different ways.
    Me and Jim are both heavily involved in intercept task 
forces, which there's five of them around the Southeast that 
are working on these exact crimes. We're so fortunate to be 
able to support C3 and his, Interpol, and so many different 
groups working together.
    So, for us, it's more about a calling. When we feel called 
into it, we want to step in and find any way that we can 
possibly help.
    Mr. Fry. I would echo Ms. McBath's comment earlier about 
using your celebrity for good. It's really important. I'm glad 
that you're doing that.
    What is the most crucial message to you that you would like 
to share with people across the country about preventing and 
identifying this material?
    Mr. Tebow. I think it's hard to say what is one message. 
What I would say is that every single person has the chance to 
make an impact. Every single one of us can make a difference. 
Every one of us has different gifts, different abilities, 
different platforms, different backgrounds, and different 
opportunities to use it.
    Some are gifted in long-term restoration for people that 
are brought out of trafficking or exploitation to love on them 
really well. Some are trauma counselors, some are on the front 
lines, like these amazing men. We all have something to give 
and something to offer. When we bring it and put it all on the 
table, I think special things would happen.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you for that.
    Ms. Cooper, I want to turn to you briefly. You talked 
earlier about steps, right, things that we can do better. You 
mentioned a watermark on the pictures. Certainly, funding, you 
talked about that.
    What are some other specific steps or what are some 
pitfalls in our current legal structure that you think this 
Congress needs to address?
    Ms. Cooper. The most important thing is to talk about two 
things.
    (1) Children are disclosing sex abuse, and they're not 
being believed. They're being put into a court system that just 
brutalizes them and doesn't believe them, gaslights them, 
sometimes puts them right back into the custody of their 
abusers.
    So, we have to fix CAPTA. We have a diversion program for 
child rapists under CAPTA, and that needs to be fixed. We have 
to prevent that from continuing. So, believing the children, 
supporting children, and amending CAPTA.
    (2) We can't just rely on children's outcries because most 
of the time they're intimidated, they're threatened, told not 
to tell, and some of them are subject to some really intense 
violence. Some of these images are really sadistic.
    So, the more that we can work on the child rescue side of 
this, the more children we can get to, and we don't have to 
wait for them to cry out. So, we really need to do those two 
things together at the same time.
    Mr. Fry. Are there any areas where NGO's can maybe more 
effectively contribute to the collaboration between NGO's and 
government offices?
    Ms. Cooper. Yes. We see a lot of it. So, we're really 
fortunate to have some incredible partners like IJM and 
Operation Light Shine and his and Interpol and the Canadian 
Center for Child Protection.
    So, the one advantage to being able to partner with private 
NGO's is that we can move fast. We can flex, we can pivot, and 
we can meet the demands and the challenges as they come in. 
Government moves very slowly. It's very bureaucratic. So, 
there's an advantage to working.
    We can't make arrests. We don't have arrest authority. You 
don't want to be putting CSAM in the hands of NGO's, right? So, 
we don't want them to be doing the law enforcement part, but we 
can do the part where we can pivot, we can build technology, we 
can move quickly, and we can supplement them where they need 
it.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you for that.
    Mr. Biggs. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Fry. Fair.
    Mr. Tebow. Can I add on to that, if that is OK?
    Mr. Biggs. Yes. Well, what the heck. Yes. I've got the 
gavel here. I'm not sure what it's for.
    Mr. Tebow, I'm going to give you 30 seconds to respond to 
the question.
    Mr. Tebow. Thanks for your grace.
    I think another thing that's so important is, when a boy or 
girl is brought out of trafficking or exploitation, to be able 
to have such a clean handoff so that their first moments of 
freedom are also with people that are loving them, are caring 
for them, trauma-informed counselors. So, they're not just 
going to a location and sitting by themselves for a while, but 
they're being loved, they're being cared for, and that healing 
starts instantly. That's also a really important handoff.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
    The Chair now recognizes the Chair of the entire Committee, 
Mr. Jordan from Ohio.
    Chair Jordan. I thank the Chair. I thank thank our 
witnesses for this important hearing. It's the kind of subject 
that we need to address, and I appreciate the Committee doing 
so.
    I would yield to the Chair of the Subcommittee for further 
questions, and would yield back.
    Mr. Biggs. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
    So, I'm going talk a little bit about the interface between 
the Tebow Foundation and law enforcement and make sure that we 
understand. I want the granular level, because it's my 
understanding that when a victim is found and rescued, that the 
Federal Government is not providing or doesn't--there's not a 
mechanism in place necessarily to provide resources that you 
guys provide: Housing, trauma counseling, et cetera.
    So, would you elaborate on that please, Mr. Tebow?
    Mr. Tebow. Yes. It totally depends on the area of the 
country, the location. Yes, that is one of the things that we 
do our best to provide. We're fortunate with our team of 
partners to have 42 safe homes and nine more in progress right 
now where we're trying to care for boys and girls that have 
been abused, trafficked, or exploited. That is something we're 
extremely passionate about. It's also so important that 
handoff, where we can work side by side with law enforcement in 
doing that, so that there is an efficient handoff in that 
moment.
    Mr. Biggs. So, you liaison with the law enforcement, they 
liaison with you. They say we have a child that we're going to 
rescue, and you guys are then able to step in and help out. Is 
that right?
    Mr. Tebow. Yes, sir. With different law enforcement, 
different opportunities, not all the time. If we have that 
opportunity to do so, then, yes, sir.
    Mr. Biggs. Thanks.
    Ms. Cooper, I want to ask you a question about CAPTA. So, 
you said something that was intriguing. I know that in Arizona, 
for instance--that's where I'm from. So, if a child has been 
abused, not virtually, but certainly, that we find in real 
time, that child is taken from the parents, the child
    [sic] is actually charged with a felony and is not reunited 
with their parents, at least that's the normal plan, at least 
when I was representing children.
    So, my question for you is, what is the distinction between 
the Federal law CAPTA and the State law that is providing, 
essentially, a hole in the law that is reuniting a victim with 
the abuser?
    Ms. Cooper. Yes. We have States' rights, right? So, we have 
sort of a patchwork of State laws, and sometimes the States do 
it differently. They might pass a bill that allows them to have 
some nuance.
    Under CAPTA, under the Social Security Act--I think it's 
Section 629(b)--you're required--the States are required, if 
they receive CAPTA funding, to come up with what's called a 
State plan. Under that State plan, it requires reunification.
    So, even if a child is raped in their own home, raped by 
their father, the father is removed and goes to prison; that's 
the best-case scenario. When he gets out, he's allowed to 
petition the court to have custody of that child again. If you 
can imagine being raped by someone and then being forced to 
have to go back and spend time with them, what that does to 
that child, right? So, that is a loophole under CAPTA.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you. Of course, we'll have to look at 
that. I've added that now to my action items following this 
hearing.
    Wanted to talk again about--and maybe--I don't know which 
one of you wants to address this one. I know that the Tebow 
Foundation helped bring together international organizations 
like Interpol, Europol with his and others to try to 
internationalize this. So, tell us a little bit about that, how 
that works, and how the international--what resources are being 
used by, I want by Interpol, by Europol?
    Mr. Tebow. Well, with specifically Operation Renewed Hope, 
a lot of the victim identification specialists aren't allowed 
and don't have the budgets to be able to fly here and work on 
Operation Renewed Hope. So, we're able to help bring all those 
victim ID experts in so that they can work side by side. 
Because, if not, they wouldn't be able to have that 
collaboration team approach.
    So, with Operation Renewed Hope, that's a big area where we 
come into play, is bringing those victim ID specialists right 
here to C3 so that they can work together.
    Mr. Biggs. Great. Thanks for that.
    I'm going to go down to Mr. Cole. I had a chance to go to 
the facility in Fairfax, and it's an incredible facility. Tell 
me about AI. I saw some demonstrations of AI and how some cases 
were resolved using AI. Please tell us how it's being used 
positively to resolve cases.
    Mr. Cole. Yes. So, artificial intelligence is an incredibly 
important--and it's a broad term, as you're aware--but it's 
incredibly important to the fight against child sexual 
exploitation. Because we are buried in an ocean of data--both 
textual, visual, et cetera--
    Mr. Biggs. I'm going to stop you right there really quick.
    Mr. Jordan, your five minutes has expired. Thank you.
    Now, I recognize myself for my five minutes, and please 
continue with your answer.
    Mr. Cole. So, we're buried in this ocean of data that is 
just impossible for human beings manually to go through to find 
the relationships, to find the victims, and to find the 
offenders.
    The goal of the Victim Identification Lab at C3, our 
mission statement is to conduct advanced analytics on 
multimedia files of child sexual exploitation material, to 
identify and rescue the child or children, identify, apprehend 
the offender or offenders, and identify and locate the crime 
scene. It is a daunting task. There's so much that goes into 
that. There's in-depth data that surrounds all this material.
    So, artificial intelligence is incredibly important, but 
it's also important to use it ethically. It's also important 
that we stay within the left and the right guide limits that 
we've established and have accountability for that to use the--
I am afraid of entities or governments that have outright 
banned the use of certain AI. I understand the concerns behind 
it, but I think it's misguided in that we're using AI, and it 
is rescuing children. Without that AI, children would go 
unrescued, without a doubt.
    We've seen it--Operation Renewed Hope is a wonderful 
example of that. So, it's important that this capability is 
maintained, but it's also important that we establish those 
left and right limits, so it's used appropriately.
    Mr. Biggs. So, I want to ask you just really quickly about 
this. How do you train--you don't need to be specific about how 
you train.
    Mr. Cole. Yes.
    Mr. Biggs. Let's talk about the number of people that you 
are able to train and the necessity at his that you think the 
numbers need to be for the victim identification team.
    Mr. Cole. Yes. So, Tim talked about having 10 people at the 
Victim ID Lab currently. Well, that's actually 10 positions. 
Only seven are filled. So, there's really only seven people 
that are currently working victim identification. Again, trying 
to solve day to day the new cases that are coming in--
    Mr. Biggs. They can't last very long. This is a 3-5-year 
position, I would guess.
    Mr. Cole. I did it my whole 20 years. I think everybody is 
different, and I think it's important to have, again, mental 
welfare safeguards as well.
    Mr. Biggs. Sure.
    Mr. Cole. We've improved on that dramatically. It's 
important to scale that as we scale the personnel that would be 
working this.
    With only 10 positions at his conducting victim 
identification--we have 250 field offices around the country, 
right? They're in your districts. They're in your hometowns. 
They're out there, of his agents. They're working the cases 
alongside the ICACs, very much like the ICACs are. So, they're 
mostly reactive.
    They don't have the time to conduct victim identification, 
nor oftentimes the training and the resources. The train--we 
would run a two-week victim identification training course that 
I helped develop back in my time there. That's an intense two 
weeks.
    You can only get so many people into those courses, and 
they're expensive to run because of the equipment we have to 
issue those folks and software.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
    Mr. Madsen, I met with some of your colleagues today, and 
you have been--there's been authorization, for instance, for 
$60 million for the ICACs, if I'm not mistaken, and that's been 
pretty consistent. The highest you guys have ever actually seen 
appropriated is $34 million, if I remember that right.
    How I was presented with some numbers which were different 
than your $500 million. I think the $500 million, it sounds 
like an ideal--
    Mr. Madsen. True.
    Mr. Biggs. --but what can we do more short-term to just put 
some pedal to the metal on this?
    Mr. Madsen. So, obviously, for me, having dealt with 
budgets year over year through the DOJ program with the ICAC, 
having sustainable funding is the gold standard. Certainly, 
there could be earmarked funding to support one or more task 
forces briefly. For them to really be able to benefit from that 
over time, to train people--as Jim mentioned, training somebody 
to do enhanced victim identification, like the stuff that he's 
talking about at C3 or at Interpol, it takes time. Getting 
somebody out of the office for two weeks, that's very, very 
difficult generally.
    What we've asked for is numbers that are closer between the 
$120-$160 million mark, and certainly hoping that we can get to 
that in the short-term. As you mentioned, the ideal number is 
much higher, and we fully understand that's an unlikely thing 
to achieve today.
    Mr. Biggs. Thanks for that.
    So, I just want to summarize really quickly. I appreciate, 
again, all the witnesses for being here and the Members who 
were here to ask questions.
    I just want to--I'm looking here at my scrawled notes here 
on action items. I want to just go over those. If I miss any, 
please catch me afterwards and tell me what else that you feel 
that we need to do:
    (1) We're talking about making a potential markup of the 
REPORT Act, so that we can make it going forward, if possible. 
I would say we want to make sure it's as clean and as close to 
perfect as possible.
    (2) To authorize with the requisite appropriations 
resources necessary for the ID Victims Units--and, also, make 
sure we rescue and prosecute these perpetrators that, 
apparently, we also have some holes with the victims after 
they've been rescued. So, we want to see if we can find that 
out.
    (3) To continue to highlight CSAM awareness to 
policymakers, influencers, and to the public.
    Then my own is, I want to meet with Google to find out what 
in the heck they're doing that seems to be right and see how we 
can make that a little bigger.
    With that, I will just say that I have some documents to 
include.
    First, is Interpol's Crimes Against Children Unit. I'd like 
to submit that for the record. Second, a document called 
Childlight Global Child Safety Institute report on child sexual 
exploitation and abuse victim identification.
    So, without objection, those will be admitted into the 
record.
    With that, again, I thank everyone for being here today. 
with that, the Committee is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:41 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

    The record for this hearing by the Members of the 
Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance is 
available at: https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/
ByEvent.aspx?Event ID=116913.

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