WEBVTT

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[This talk contains mature content]

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Five years ago,

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I received a phone call
that would change my life.

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I remember so vividly that day.

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It was about this time of year,

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and I was sitting in my office.

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I remember the sun
streaming through the window.

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And my phone rang.

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And I picked it up,

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and it was two federal agents,
asking for my help

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in identifying a little girl

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featured in hundreds of child
sexual abuse images they had found online.

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They had just started working the case,

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but what they knew

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was that her abuse had been broadcast
to the world for years

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on dark web sites dedicated
to the sexual abuse of children.

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And her abuser was incredibly
technologically sophisticated:

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new images and new videos every few weeks,

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but very few clues as to who she was

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or where she was.

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And so they called us,

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because they had heard
we were a new nonprofit

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building technology
to fight child sexual abuse.

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But we were only two years old,

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and we had only worked
on child sex trafficking.

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And I had to tell them

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we had nothing.

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We had nothing that could
help them stop this abuse.

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It took those agents another year

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to ultimately find that child.

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And by the time she was rescued,

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hundreds of images and videos
documenting her rape had gone viral,

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from the dark web

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to peer-to-peer networks,
private chat rooms

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and to the websites you and I use

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every single day.

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And today, as she struggles to recover,

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she lives with the fact
that thousands around the world

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continue to watch her abuse.

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I have come to learn
in the last five years

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that this case is far from unique.

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How did we get here as a society?

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In the late 1980s, child pornography --

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or what it actually is,
child sexual abuse material --

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was nearly eliminated.

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New laws and increased prosecutions
made it simply too risky

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to trade it through the mail.

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And then came the internet,
and the market exploded.

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The amount of content in circulation today

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is massive and growing.

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This is a truly global problem,

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but if we just look at the US:

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in the US alone last year,

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more than 45 million images and videos
of child sexual abuse material

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were reported to the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children,

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and that is nearly double
the amount the year prior.

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And the details behind these numbers
are hard to contemplate,

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with more than 60 percent of the images
featuring children younger than 12,

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and most of them including
extreme acts of sexual violence.

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Abusers are cheered on in chat rooms
dedicated to the abuse of children,

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where they gain rank and notoriety

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with more abuse and more victims.

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In this market,

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the currency has become
the content itself.

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It's clear that abusers have been quick
to leverage new technologies,

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but our response as a society has not.

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These abusers don't read
user agreements of websites,

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and the content doesn't honor
geographic boundaries.

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And they win when we look
at one piece of the puzzle at a time,

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which is exactly how
our response today is designed.

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Law enforcement works in one jurisdiction.

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Companies look at just their platform.

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And whatever data they learn along the way

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is rarely shared.

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It is so clear that this
disconnected approach is not working.

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We have to redesign
our response to this epidemic

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for the digital age.

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And that's exactly
what we're doing at Thorn.

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We're building the technology
to connect these dots,

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to arm everyone on the front lines --

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law enforcement, NGOs and companies --

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with the tools they need
to ultimately eliminate

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child sexual abuse material
from the internet.

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Let's talk for a minute --

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Let's talk for a minute
about what those dots are.

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As you can imagine,
this content is horrific.

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If you don't have to look at it,
you don't want to look at it.

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And so, most companies
or law enforcement agencies

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that have this content

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can translate every file
into a unique string of numbers.

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This is called a "hash."

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It's essentially a fingerprint

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for each file or each video.

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And what this allows them to do
is use the information in investigations

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or for a company to remove
the content from their platform,

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without having to relook
at every image and every video each time.

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The problem today, though,

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is that there are hundreds
of millions of these hashes

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sitting in siloed databases
all around the world.

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In a silo,

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it might work for the one agency
that has control over it,

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but not connecting this data means
we don't know how many are unique.

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We don't know which ones represent
children who have already been rescued

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or need to be identified still.

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So our first, most basic premise
is that all of this data

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must be connected.

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There are two ways where this data,
combined with software on a global scale,

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can have transformative
impact in this space.

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The first is with law enforcement:

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helping them identify new victims faster,

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stopping abuse

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and stopping those producing this content.

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The second is with companies:

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using it as clues to identify
the hundreds of millions of files

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in circulation today,

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pulling it down

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and then stopping the upload
of new material before it ever goes viral.

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Four years ago,

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when that case ended,

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our team sat there,
and we just felt this, um ...

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... deep sense of failure,
is the way I can put it,

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because we watched that whole year

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while they looked for her.

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And we saw every place
in the investigation

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where, if the technology
would have existed,

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they would have found her faster.

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And so we walked away from that

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and we went and we did
the only thing we knew how to do:

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we began to build software.

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So we've started with law enforcement.

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Our dream was an alarm bell on the desks
of officers all around the world

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so that if anyone dare post
a new victim online,

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someone would start
looking for them immediately.

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I obviously can't talk about
the details of that software,

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but today it's at work in 38 countries,

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having reduced the time it takes
to get to a child

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by more than 65 percent.

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(Applause)

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And now we're embarking
on that second horizon:

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building the software to help companies
identify and remove this content.

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Let's talk for a minute
about these companies.

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So, I told you -- 45 million images
and videos in the US alone last year.

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Those come from just 12 companies.

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Twelve companies, 45 million files
of child sexual abuse material.

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These come from those companies
that have the money

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to build the infrastructure that it takes
to pull this content down.

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But there are hundreds of other companies,

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small- to medium-size companies
around the world,

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that need to do this work,

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but they either: 1) can't imagine that
their platform would be used for abuse,

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or 2) don't have the money to spend
on something that is not driving revenue.

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So we went ahead and built it for them,

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and this system now gets smarter
with the more companies that participate.

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Let me give you an example.

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Our first partner, Imgur --
if you haven't heard of this company,

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it's one of the most visited
websites in the US --

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millions of pieces of user-generated
content uploaded every single day,

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in a mission to make the internet
a more fun place.

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They partnered with us first.

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Within 20 minutes
of going live on our system,

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someone tried to upload
a known piece of abuse material.

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They were able to stop it,
they pull it down,

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they report it to the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.

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But they went a step further,

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and they went and inspected the account
of the person who had uploaded it.

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Hundreds more pieces
of child sexual abuse material

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that we had never seen.

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And this is where we start
to see exponential impact.

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We pull that material down,

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it gets reported to the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children

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and then those hashes
go back into the system

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and benefit every other company on it.

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And when the millions of hashes we have
lead to millions more and, in real time,

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companies around the world are identifying
and pulling this content down,

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we will have dramatically increased
the speed at which we are removing

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child sexual abuse material
from the internet around the world.

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(Applause)

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But this is why it can't just be
about software and data,

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it has to be about scale.

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We have to activate thousands of officers,

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hundreds of companies around the world

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if technology will allow us
to outrun the perpetrators

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and dismantle the communities
that are normalizing child sexual abuse

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around the world today.

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And the time to do this is now.

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We can no longer say we don't know
the impact this is having on our children.

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The first generation of children
whose abuse has gone viral

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are now young adults.

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The Canadian Centre for Child Protection

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just did a recent study
of these young adults

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to understand the unique trauma
they try to recover from,

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knowing that their abuse lives on.

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Eighty percent of these young adults
have thought about suicide.

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More than 60 percent
have attempted suicide.

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And most of them live
with the fear every single day

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that as they walk down the street
or they interview for a job

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or they go to school

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or they meet someone online,

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that that person has seen their abuse.

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And the reality came true
for more than 30 percent of them.

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They had been recognized
from their abuse material online.

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This is not going to be easy,

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but it is not impossible.

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Now it's going to take the will,

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the will of our society

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to look at something
that is really hard to look at,

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to take something out of the darkness

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so these kids have a voice;

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the will of companies to take action
and make sure that their platforms

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are not complicit in the abuse of a child;

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the will of governments to invest
with their law enforcement

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for the tools they need to investigate
a digital first crime,

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even when the victims
cannot speak for themselves.

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This audacious commitment
is part of that will.

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It's a declaration of war
against one of humanity's darkest evils.

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But what I hang on to

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is that it's actually
an investment in a future

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where every child can simply be a kid.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)