VANCOUVER — The mass shift online brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with a boom of so-called “sextortion scams,” new data from Statistics Canada suggests.
As authorities aim to educate youth and parents about online sex crimes, experts are calling for more regulation, education and law enforcement.
Sexual extortion, or sextortion, occurs when someone threatens to distribute private, often sexually explicit, material online if the victim doesn’t comply with their demands, usually for money.
The crime gained national attention almost a decade ago when 15-year-old Amanda Todd from Port Coquitlam, B.C., died by suicide after posting a video where she used flash cards to describe being tormented by an anonymous cyberbully. It has been watched more than 14 million times.
The trial of her alleged harasser, Dutch national Aydin Coban, began in the B.C. Supreme Court in June.
He pleaded not guilty to extortion, harassment, communication with a young person to commit a sexual offence and possession and distribution of child pornography. He was not charged in relation to Todd’s death.
Closing arguments in the case wrapped earlier this week and the jury is now deliberating.
Signy Arnason, associate executive director at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said the issue has grown exponentially since Todd took her life in October 2012.
“It’s out of control,” she said in an interview.
Police across the country have been issuing warnings to the public about sextortion scams targeting youth.
“Unfortunately, police around the world have tragically seen some of these incidents end in victims taking their own lives,” Nova Scotia RCMP Internet Child Exploitation Unit Cpl. Mark Sobieraj said in a news release last week. “We’re urging parents and guardians to talk with children about the potential dangers, emphasizing that they can come to you for help.”
Statistics Canada data released Tuesday shows police-reported extortion cases in Canada rose by nearly 300 per cent in the last decade, but the crime significantly rose during the pandemic.
Incidents of non-consensual distribution of intimate images involving adult or child victims increased by 194 cases in 2021, representing a nine per cent jump from the year before, and a 52 per cent increase compared with the previous five-year average.
“These concerning increases are being facilitated by social media platforms and other electronic services providers,” said the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s executive director, Lianna McDonald, in a news release. “It should be a wake-up call.”
Cybertip.ca, a national tip line for reporting online child sexual abuse, said it has received “an unprecedented volume of reports from youth and sometimes their concerned parents about falling prey to aggressive sextortion tactics,” amounting to about 300 online extortion cases a month.
Wayne MacKay, a professor emeritus of law at Dalhousie University, said the increase could be partly explained by awareness and better policing of cybercrime, but noted research also suggests that online child sexual abuse often goes unreported.
A review of the 322 sextortion cases Cybertip.ca received in July found that when gender was known, 92 per cent of them involved boys or young men.
“The review also showed an emerging tactic where the victim is sent nude images of children from the person behind the fake account. The offender will then threaten to report the victim to police, claiming they are in possession of child sexual abuse material. Demands for money immediately follow,” the child protection centre said in a news release this week.
David Fraser, an internet and privacy lawyer with the Canadian law firm McInnes Cooper in Halifax, said a main reason some youth may not come forward is they believe they could be charged with child pornography of their own image. He said this is a wide misconception, sometimes even among law enforcement.
“We need to be very careful about the messaging we send to young people, just to make sure that there are safe places that they can go to and get support before things escalate,” Fraser said.
He cited a 2001 Supreme Court of Canada decision that established a “personal use” exception to the child pornography provisions. It said young people have a right to create intimate images of themselves as long as they don’t depict illegal sexual activity, are held only for private use, and were created with the consent of the people in the image.
Fraser would like to see more police resources and education around the issue.
“I have generally seen across the board a lack of skill and competence on the part of police to take existing laws and translate them into the online context,” he said.
“Extortion is extortion whether you’re extorting somebody by threatening to disclose nude pictures that you have extorted them to provide, or whether you’re extorting somebody through other forms of more conventional blackmail.”
Molly Reynolds, a lawyer with Torys LLP in Toronto, said her civil caseload on sexual extortion has increased significantly.
“The demand is huge. It is at least a 10-year-old crisis, and we are just beginning to understand it more broadly across Canada,” she said. “There are still a lot of people who really don’t get police attention when they do report this criminal conduct.”
She said civil court tends to be a better option for adult victims who know their perpetrator.
“You’re more likely to see a law enforcement response if it can fall into the child pornography offences, and not just the non-consensual distribution offences or voyeurism ones,” she said.
“(Children) are, in some ways, better served through the criminal procedure, whereas adults, I think, are more often having to turn to the civil procedures.”
Darren Laur, chief training officer at White Hatter, an internet safety and digital literacy education company, said the law has not kept up with technological advancements.
He said so-called deep fakes, in which an existing image or video is used to create fake but believable video footage, will create new challenges because extortionists will no longer need to coerce a person to perform explicit acts.
“The reality is people are going to use the goodness of technology and sometimes weaponize it. That’s the problem with deep fakes. I perceive that deep fakes are going to be weaponized, especially when it comes to tech-facilitated sexual abuse,” said Laur, who is a retired Victoria police sergeant.
Reynolds agreed but said she doesn’t think the law will ever be able to “keep up with technology and the harms it can create.”
“There is a really big role, I think, for the courts to interpret what we already have, and allow it to evolve just as the technological risks evolve. We need to be able to make it easier for people to get these cases to court, whether criminal or civil, and to test the boundaries,” she said.
McDonald, with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, has begun calling for more regulation of social media companies, including Snapchat and Instagram, where the organization has found most of the harm to children occurs.
“This is an ongoing problem that is getting worse, and so it really does beg the question about what are these companies doing to keep children safe? It is incredulous that social media platforms allow total adult strangers to directly reach out and target our children without any consequence,” she said in a news release Thursday.
Laur said he has been calling for years for the creation of an online regulatory agency, like Australia’s eSafety Commissioner.
“They basically have the blueprint on how to do this,” he said. “We need something similar here in our country.”
The Department of Canadian Heritage said in a statement the federal government “is currently developing an approach to address harmful content online, which includes the potential creation of a regulatory body.”
As part of this process, it said Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez is “currently conducting roundtables across Canada to hear from victims of online harm, including children and youth.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 6, 2022.
Netflix on Thursday reported that its subscriber growth slowed dramatically during the summer, a sign the huge gains from the video-streaming service’s crackdown on freeloading viewers is tapering off.
The 5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same time last year. Even so, the company’s revenue and profit rose at a faster pace than analysts had projected, according to FactSet Research.
Netflix ended September with 282.7 million worldwide subscribers — far more than any other streaming service.
The Los Gatos, California, company earned $2.36 billion, or $5.40 per share, a 41% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 15% from a year ago to $9.82 billion. Netflix management predicted the company’s revenue will rise at the same 15% year-over-year pace during the October-December period, slightly than better than analysts have been expecting.
The strong financial performance in the past quarter coupled with the upbeat forecast eclipsed any worries about slowing subscriber growth. Netflix’s stock price surged nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out, building upon a more than 40% increase in the company’s shares so far this year.
The past quarter’s subscriber gains were the lowest posted in any three-month period since the beginning of last year. That drop-off indicates Netflix is shifting to a new phase after reaping the benefits from a ban on the once-rampant practice of sharing account passwords that enabled an estimated 100 million people watch its popular service without paying for it.
The crackdown, triggered by a rare loss of subscribers coming out of the pandemic in 2022, helped Netflix add 57 million subscribers from June 2022 through this June — an average of more than 7 million per quarter, while many of its industry rivals have been struggling as households curbed their discretionary spending.
Netflix’s gains also were propelled by a low-priced version of its service that included commercials for the first time in its history. The company still is only getting a small fraction of its revenue from the 2-year-old advertising push, but Netflix is intensifying its focus on that segment of its business to help boost its profits.
In a letter to shareholder, Netflix reiterated previous cautionary notes about its expansion into advertising, though the low-priced option including commercials has become its fastest growing segment.
“We have much more work to do improving our offering for advertisers, which will be a priority over the next few years,” Netflix management wrote in the letter.
As part of its evolution, Netflix has been increasingly supplementing its lineup of scripted TV series and movies with live programming, such as a Labor Day spectacle featuring renowned glutton Joey Chestnut setting a world record for gorging on hot dogs in a showdown with his longtime nemesis Takeru Kobayashi.
Netflix will be trying to attract more viewer during the current quarter with a Nov. 15 fight pitting former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson against Jake Paul, a YouTube sensation turned boxer, and two National Football League games on Christmas Day.
REGINA – Saskatchewan’s provincial election is on Oct. 28. Here’s a look at some of the campaign promises made by the two major parties:
Saskatchewan Party
— Continue withholding federal carbon levy payments to Ottawa on natural gas until the end of 2025.
— Reduce personal income tax rates over four years; a family of four would save $3,400.
— Double the Active Families Benefit to $300 per child per year and the benefit for children with disabilities to $400 a year.
— Direct all school divisions to ban “biological boys” from girls’ change rooms in schools.
— Increase the First-Time Homebuyers Tax Credit to $15,000 from $10,000.
— Reintroduce the Home Renovation Tax Credit, allowing homeowners to claim up to $4,000 in renovation costs on their income taxes; seniors could claim up to $5,000.
— Extend coverage for insulin pumps and diabetes supplies to seniors and young adults
— Provide a 50 per cent refundable tax credit — up to $10,000 — to help cover the cost of a first fertility treatment.
— Hire 100 new municipal officers and 70 more officers with the Saskatchewan Marshals Service.
— Amend legislation to provide police with more authority to address intoxication, vandalism and disturbances on public property.
— Platform cost of $1.2 billion, with deficits in the first three years and a small surplus in 2027.
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NDP
— Pause the 15-cent-a-litre gas tax for six months, saving an average family about $350.
— Remove the provincial sales tax from children’s clothes and ready-to-eat grocery items like rotisserie chickens and granola bars.
— Pass legislation to limit how often and how much landlords can raise rent.
— Repeal the law that requires parental consent when children under 16 want to change their names or pronouns at school.
— Launch a provincewide school nutrition program.
— Build more schools and reduce classroom sizes.
— Hire 800 front-line health-care workers in areas most in need.
— Launch an accountability commission to investigate cost overruns for government projects.
— Scrap the marshals service.
— Hire 100 Mounties and expand detox services.
— Platform cost of $3.5 billion, with small deficits in the first three years and a small surplus in the fourth year.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct .17, 2024.
VANCOUVER – More than a million British Columbians have already cast their provincial election ballots, smashing the advance voting record ahead of what weather forecasters say will be a rain-drenched election day in much of B.C., with snow also predicted for the north.
Elections BC said Thursday that 1,001,331 people had cast ballots in six days of advance voting, easily breaking a record set during the pandemic election four years ago.
More than 28 per cent of all registered electors have voted, potentially putting the province on track for a big final turnout on Saturday.
“It reflects what I believe, which is this election is critically important for the future of our province,” New Democrat Leader David Eby said Thursday at a news conference in Vancouver. “I understand why British Columbians are out in numbers. We haven’t seen questions like this on the ballot in a generation.”
He said voters are faced with the choice of supporting his party’s plans to improve affordability, public health care and education, while the B.C. Conservatives, led by John Rustad, are proposing to cut services and are fielding candidates who support conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and espouse racist views.
Rustad held no public availabilities on Thursday.
Elections BC said the record advance vote tally includes about 223,000 people who voted on the final day of advance voting Wednesday, the last day of advance polls, shattering the one-day record set on Tuesday by more than 40,000 votes.
The previous record for advance voting in a B.C. election was set in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when about 670,000 people voted early, representing about 19 per cent of registered voters.
Some ridings have now seen turnout of more than 35 per cent, including in NDP Leader David Eby’s Vancouver-Point Grey riding where 36.5 per cent of all electors have voted.
There has also been big turnout in some Vancouver Island ridings, including Oak Bay-Gordon Head, where 39 per cent of electors have voted, and Victoria-Beacon Hill, where Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau is running, with 37.2 per cent.
Advance voter turnout in Rustad’s riding of Nechako Lakes was 30.5 per cent.
Total turnout in 2020 was 54 per cent, down from about 61 per cent in 2017.
Stewart Prest, a political science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, said many factors are at play in the advance voter turnout.
“If you have an early option, if you have an option where there are fewer crowds, fewer lineups that you have to deal with, then that’s going to be a much more desirable option,” said Prest.
“So, having the possibility of voting across multiple advanced voting days is something that more people are looking to as a way to avoid last-minute lineups or heavy weather.”
Voters along the south coast of British Columbia who have not cast their ballots yet will have to contend with heavy rain and high winds from an incoming atmospheric river weather system on election day.
Environment Canada said the weather system will bring prolonged heavy rain to Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Whistler and Vancouver Island starting Friday.
Eby said the forecast of an atmospheric weather storm on election day will become a “ballot question” for some voters who are concerned about the approaches the parties have towards addressing climate change.
But he said he is confident people will not let the storm deter them from voting.
“I know British Columbians are tough and they’re not going to let even an atmospheric river stop them from voting,” said Eby.
In northern B.C., heavy snow is in the forecast starting Friday and through to Saturday for areas along the Yukon boundary.
Elections BC said it will focus on ensuring it is prepared for bad weather, said Andrew Watson, senior director of communications.
“We’ve also been working with BC Hydro to make sure that they’re aware of all of our voting place locations so that they can respond quickly if there are any power outages,” he said.
Elections BC also has paper backups for all of its systems in case there is a power outage, forcing them to go through manual procedures, Watson said.
Prest said the dramatic downfall of the Official Opposition BC United Party just before the start of the campaign and voter frustration could also be contributing to the record size of the advance vote.
It’s too early to say if the province is experiencing a “renewed enthusiasm for voting,” he said.
“As a political scientist, I think it would be a good thing to see, but I’m not ready to conclude that’s what we are seeing just yet,” he said, adding, “this is one of the storylines to watch come Saturday.”
Overall turnout in B.C. elections has generally been dwindling compared with the 71.5 per cent turnout for the 1996 vote.
Adam Olsen, Green Party campaign chair, said the advance voting turnout indicates people are much more engaged in the campaign than they were in the weeks leading up to the start of the campaign in September.
“All we know so far is that people are excited to go out and vote early,” he said. “The real question will be does that voter turnout stay up throughout election night?”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said more than 180,000 voters cast their votes on Wednesday.
