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Operation Find Them All: Cellebrite Unites Philanthropic Pioneers to Accelerate Investigations of Crimes Against Children

TYSONS CORNER, Va. and PETAH TIKVA, Israel, Jan. 12, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —  Cellebrite DI Ltd. (Nasdaq: CLBT), a global leader in premier Digital Investigative solutions for the public and private sectors, is honored to announce a powerful collaboration aimed at reducing crimes against children and online child exploitation.

This new campaign titled Operation Find Them All (OFTA) brings the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, The Exodus Road, Raven and Cellebrite together for the first time under a collective goal to accelerate investigations of online crimes against children and in doing so, help law enforcement find missing children, solve crimes involving exploited minors, remove harmful online images and bring perpetrators to justice.

In addition to a financial investment to all three organizations, Cellebrite is providing NCMEC and The Exodus Road with in–kind use of its preeminent technology—namely Pathfinder, an AI–based Investigative Analytics solution, and Smart Search, a cloud–based OSINT tool for investigators—to help these organizations in their efforts to dismantle child exploitation and child sex trafficking rings by accelerating the time it takes for law enforcement to investigate persons and organizations of interest, analyze evidence, gather insights, develop and advance leads and rescue innocent survivors.

“'Operation Find Them All' has the potential to aggressively accelerate the focus and efforts of all the 'good guys' in law enforcement working day and night to find missing children,” says NCMEC co–founder and longtime child advocate, John Walsh. “I'm deeply thankful Cellebrite is so committed and recognizes the pivotal role it plays in protecting children. Together, we can ensure that every child has a safe childhood, and that justice prevails.”

“The dangers of digital darkness demand our immediate attention and action,” said Yossi Carmil, Cellebrite’s CEO. “At Cellebrite, we are committed to working in unison with these heroic organizations and global law enforcement to help protect children around the world from online sexual exploitation. That’s why we’re dedicating Cellebrite’s resources and capabilities to finding these innocent children.”

Law enforcement at federal, state and local agencies are buried in a chilling amount of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) cases. In 2022 alone, the FBI reported 359,094 cases of missing children and NCMEC’s CyberTipline received over 32 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation. Today’s law enforcement professionals are under–resourced and overwhelmed due to the scale and complexity of these investigations. Cellebrite’s end–to–end portfolio will better equip law enforcement and these strategic partners with the most advanced digital investigative capabilities, innovative tools and comprehensive training to confront this crisis head–on.

“Since 2012, The Exodus Road has helped to free nearly 2,500 survivors, arrest more than 1,200 perpetrators and train over 25,000 law enforcement officers and civilians to respond to human trafficking crime. Cellebrite’s digital investigative technology and support are paramount in accelerating our work to liberate those being exploited around the world,” said Matt Parker, Chief Strategist and Co–Founder of Exodus Road.

“We must recognize that the advances in ICAC require not just technology and dedication but also a firm foundation of legislative change and heightened awareness,” said John Pizzurro, Raven CEO. “Only then can we ensure the structures and governance are in place to fully resource law enforcement and to protect our children from the relentless threats they face in the digital age. That’s why we stand in solidarity with Cellebrite and support the crucial goal of this operation to find them all.”

To learn more about Operation Find Them All, go to www.OFTA.Cellebrite.com.

About Cellebrite

Cellebrite’s (Nasdaq: CLBT) mission is to enable its customers to protect and save lives, accelerate justice and preserve privacy in communities around the world. We are a global leader in Digital Investigative solutions for the public and private sectors, empowering organizations in mastering the complexities of legally sanctioned digital investigations by streamlining intelligence processes. Trusted by thousands of leading agencies and companies worldwide, Cellebrite’s Digital Investigation platform and solutions transform how customers collect, review, analyze and manage data in legally sanctioned investigations. To learn more visit us at www.cellebrite.com, https://investors.cellebrite.com, or follow us on Twitter at @Cellebrite.

Media
Victor Cooper
Sr. Director of Corporate Communications + Content Operations
Victor.cooper@cellebrite.com
+1 404.804.5910

Investor Relations
Andrew Kramer
Vice President, Investor Relations
investors@cellebrite.com
+1 973.206.7760

About the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is a private, non–profit 501(c)(3) corporation whose mission is to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization. NCMEC works with families, victims, private industry, law enforcement, and the public to assist with preventing child abductions, recovering missing children, and providing services to deter and combat child sexual exploitation.

About The Exodus Road

The Exodus Road is a global nonprofit disrupting the darkness of modern–day slavery by partnering with law enforcement to fight human–trafficking crime, equipping communities to protect the vulnerable and empowering survivors as they walk into freedom. Working side–by–side with local staff, NGO partners and law enforcement around the world, The Exodus Road fights to liberate trafficked individuals, arrest traffickers, and provide restorative care for survivors. For additional information on what you can do to help stop trafficking, please visit The Exodus Road’s website at https://theexodusroad.com/, or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

About Raven

A 501(c)4 political lobby, Raven protects children from victimization by raising awareness of the threat of online child exploitation, increasing resources and funding to law enforcement, and lobbying for policy changes on the local and federal level.


GLOBENEWSWIRE (Distribution ID 9016600)

Bangladesh: Election with a Foregone Conclusion

Credit: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP via Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jan 12 2024 – Bangladesh just held an election. But it was far from an exercise in democracy.

Sheikh Hasina won her fourth consecutive term, and fifth overall, as prime minister in the general election held on 7 January. The result was never in doubt, with the main opposition party, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), boycotting the vote over the ruling Awami League’s refusal to let a caretaker government oversee the election. This practice, abolished by the Awami League government in 2011, was, the BNP asserted, the only way to ensure a free and fair vote.

The BNP’s boycott was far from the only issue. A blatant campaign of pre-election intimidation saw government critics, activists and protesters subjected to threats, violence and arrests.

At the government’s urging, court cases against opposition members were accelerated so they’d be locked away before the election, resulting in a reported 800-plus convictions between September and December 2023. It’s alleged that torture and ill-treatment were used against opposition activists to force confessions. There have been reports of deaths in police custody.

Police banned protests, and when a rare mass opposition protest went ahead on 28 October police used rubber bullets, teargas and stun grenades. Following the protest, thousands more opposition supporters were detained on fabricated charges. As well as violence from the notorious Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) – an elite unit notorious for excessive and lethal force – and other elements of the police force, opposition supporters faced attacks by Awami League supporters. Journalists have also been smeared, attacked and harassed, including when covering protests.

As a direct result of the ruling party’s pre-election crackdown, in December 2023 Bangladesh’s civic space rating was downgraded to closed by the CIVICUS Monitor, the collaborative research project that tracks the health of civic space in every country. This places Bangladesh among the world’s worst human rights offenders, including China, Iran and Russia.

Civil society’s concerns were echoed in November 2023 by UN human rights experts who expressed alarm at political violence, arrests, mass detention, judicial harassment, excessive force and internet restrictions.

All-out assault

Such is the severity of the closure of Bangladesh’s civic space that many of the strongest dissenting voices now come from those in exile. But even speaking out from outside Bangladesh doesn’t ensure safety. As a way of putting pressure on exiled activists, the authorities are harassing their families.

Activists aren’t safe even at the UN. A civil society discussion in the wings of the UN Human Rights Council in November was disrupted by government supporters, with Adilur Rahman Khan, a leader of the Bangladeshi human rights organisation Odhikar, subjected to verbal attacks.

Khan is currently on bail while appealing against a two-year jail sentence imposed on him and another Odhikar leader in retaliation for their work to document extrajudicial killings. Following the session in Geneva, Khan was further vilified in online news sites and accused of presenting false information.

Others are coming under attack. Hasina and her government have made much of their economic record, with Bangladesh now one of the world’s biggest garment producers. But that success is largely based on low wages. Like many countries, Bangladesh is currently experiencing high inflation, and garment workers’ recent efforts to improve their situation have been met with repression.

Workers protested in October and November 2023 after a government-appointed panel raised the minimum wage for garment sector workers to a far lower level than they’d demanded. Up to 25,000 people took part in protests, forcing at least 100 factories to close. They were met with police violence. At least two people were killed and many more were injured.

Seemingly no one is safe. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank that has enabled millions to access small loans, was recently convicted of labour law offences in a trial his supporters denounced as politically motivated. Yunus has long been a target for criticism and threats from the ruling party.

Democracy in name only

The quality of Bangladesh’s elections has dramatically declined since the Awami League returned to power in the last reasonably free and fair election in 2008. Each election since has been characterised by serious irregularities and pre-voting crackdowns as the incumbents have done everything they could to hold onto power.

But this time, while the Awami League victory was as huge as ever, turnout was down. It was almost half its 2018 level, at only 41.8 per cent, and even that figure may be inflated. The lack of participation reflected a widespread understanding that the Awami League’s victory was a foregone conclusion: many Awami League supporters didn’t feel they needed to vote, and many opposition backers had no one to vote for.

People knew that many supposedly independent candidates were in reality Awami League supporters running as a pseudo-opposition to offer some appearance of electoral competition. The party that came second is also allied with the ruling party. All electoral credibility and legitimacy are now strained past breaking point.

The government has faced predictably no pressure to abide by democratic rules from key allies such as China and India, although the once-supportive US government has shifted its position in recent years, imposing sanctions on some RAB leaders and threatening to withhold visas for Bangladeshis deemed to have undermined the electoral process.

If the economic situation deteriorates further, discontent is sure to grow, and with other spaces blocked, protests and their violent repression will surely follow. International partners must urge the Bangladeshi government to find a way to avoid this. More violence and intensifying authoritarianism can’t be the way forward. Instead Bangladesh should be urged to start the journey back towards democracy.

Andrew Firmin CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 


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