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The Instagram message popped up from a girl named Chelsea: “Howdy.”

David didn’t know anyone named Chelsea, but he clicked through her profile: She had brown hair and a nice smile; under her name was a quote from the Bible. He thought it was sort of weird that she was messaging him, a stranger, in the middle of a workday, but her pouty selfies made that easy to ignore.

He was hesitant when she asked him to chat, but soon her flirty messages escalated to a volley of explicit pictures, and David, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, got carried away. When she asked him for a nude, he hardly thought twice, he said. He slipped into the bathroom at the New Jersey hospital where he works, took a picture and hit send.

Within seconds, the threats began.

David’s phone lit up with messages: pictures he had sent with his genitals exposed alongside screenshots of his Instagram followers with whom he shares a last name — his family. “She said: I’m demanding $500, if not I’m going to send it to all of these people,” said David, who asked that only his middle name be used to protect his privacy. “Then she started a countdown.”

But there was no Chelsea. The real person behind the account, David said, was a man who, over the course of three fraught days, inadvertently revealed he was in Nigeria as he demanded hundreds of dollars to keep David’s pictures private. As he paid up, David joined the thousands of people cowed under a new scam that has exploded over the past three years to become the fastest-growing cybercrime, according to both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

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Join us. Learn more. Urge your representatives to sponsor here. 68 bipartisan co-sponsors and counting!

Kids Online Safety Act. 

Take action. Be part of the solution. If you know of or hear of anything, call 911 immediately and 1-800-THE-LOST.

“….. A child goes missing every 40 seconds in the U.S., over 2,300 per day.  In excess of 800,000 children are reported missing each year; another 500,000 go missing without ever being reported.” – Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).

A missing person is defined by the Department of Public Safety (DPS) as: A person, who has been reported missing, by a credible person, whose whereabouts are unknown.

What about all the children that are never reported? Where are they? It’s time we start asking.

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The New York Times has released a trove of raw government data on the unaccompanied alien children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. Among over 10,000 pages of information is data on the number of children who crossed the border into America without an adult and then were handed over to someone other than a family member.

From January 2015 through May 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released tens of thousands of minors who crossed the border illegally to sponsors who weren’t an immediate or distant relative, raising concerns about human trafficking and forced labor.

“More children are crossing the border on their own than ever before, and thousands are ending up doing dangerous, illegal jobs,” New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier wrote on X in a thread sharing the numbers with the public.

The Times sued the government to gain access to the records, which reveal more than 550,000 minors crossed the border illegally between 2015, halfway through Barack Obama’s second term as president, through May 2023, about two years and four months into Joe Biden’s presidency. From 2017 through 2020, Donald Trump was president.

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As technology has opened up opportunities to communicate, it has also created new avenues for bullying, allowing bullies to harm victims outside of school hours. Algorithms promote content that keeps young users coming back for more, even when platforms know they are exposing kids and teens to potentially fatal challenges. The relationship between social media’s design features and kids’ and teens’ access to narcotic drugs and other illegal substances has been well documented. Algorithms promote content that keeps young users coming back for more, even when platforms know that they are increasing anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

There is a complete lack of common sense safety features on most social media platforms that creates an unacceptable risk of sexual exploitation for minors.

Learn more. Take Action. Intervene. Educate. Protect. #communitycreateschange #BeAWarrior

FACT SHEETS

The Warriors applaud Sen. Ossoff’s bipartisan law with Sen. Marsha Blackburn that will toughen penalties on websites and social media companies that fail to report crimes against children

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff’s bipartisan bill to protect children from online sexual abuse and exploitation is now law.

President Biden signed into law Sens. Ossoff and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)’s bipartisan REPORT Act, which will — for the first time — require websites and social media platforms to report crimes involving Federal trafficking and enticement of children to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

Sen. Ossoff’s bipartisan law will increase fines for companies that knowingly and willfully fail to report child sex abuse material on their site and will also require evidence to be preserved for a longer period, giving law enforcement more time to investigate and prosecute crimes.

“My bipartisan law with Senator Blackburn will ensure tech companies are held accountable to report and remove child sex abuse material and to strengthen protection for kids online,” said Sen. Ossoff. “At a time of such division in Congress, we successfully brought Republicans and Democrats together to protect kids on the internet, and now our bill is law.”

“Children are increasingly looking at screens, and the reality is that this leaves more innocent kids at risk of online exploitation,” said Senator Blackburn. “Under this new law, Big Tech will now be required to report trafficking, grooming or enticement of children found on their sites to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline. I’m honored to champion this bipartisan solution alongside Senator Ossoff and Representative Laurel Lee to protect vulnerable children and hold perpetrators of these heinous crimes accountable. I also appreciate the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s unwavering partnership to get this across the finish line.”

Reps. Laurel Lee (R-FL-13), Susie Lee (D-NV-03), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA-01), and Madeleine Dean (D-PA-04) led introduction of the companion bipartisan bill in the U.S. House.

U.S. Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), James Lankford (R-OK), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) co-sponsored the REPORT Act in the Senate, and Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL-13), Barry Moore (R-AL-02), Bill Posey (R-FL-08), Russell Fry (R-SC-07), Carlos A. Gimenez (R-FL-28), Lucy McBath (R-GA-07), Glenn Ivey (D-MD-04), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX-18), and Henry C. “Hank” Johnson (D-GA-04) co-sponsored the REPORT Act in the House.

“The REPORT Act will help fight against the exploitation of children online by strengthening existing reporting procedures and requiring companies to disclose crimes involving child sexual abuse to NCMEC,” said Representative Laurel Lee. “I am glad to see this crucial piece of legislation make its way to the President’s desk and be signed into law.”

“Nevada has one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the nation, and a sickening number of those crimes involve children,” said Congresswoman Susie Lee. “Abuse of children online must be met with swift and complete justice. This includes implementing the most state-of-the-art reporting technology, requiring Big Tech to report all instances of child abuse, and increasing penalties for those who fail to report these crimes against children. I’m proud to work with Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate to lead this legislation to protect our children, crack down on human trafficking, and hold those accountable who turn a blind eye to these sickening crimes.”

The REPORT Act is endorsed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), International Justice Mission (IJM), ECPAT-USA, Fraternal Order of Police, ChildFund International, the End Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OSEAC) Coalition, Wired Human, Raven, and Internet Works.

“The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) applauds the enactment of the Revising Existing Procedures on Reporting via Technology (REPORT) Act today. We thank Senator Blackburn, Senator Ossoff, and Congresswoman Lee for their continued leadership on online child safety issues. The REPORT Act provides critical child safety improvements such as enabling the use of modern technology to store and electronically transfer child sexual abuse material (CSAM); empowering children and adult representatives acting on a child’s behalf to report CSAM in which the child is depicted to NCMEC; requiring online platforms to report child sex trafficking and online enticement to NCMEC; and supporting law enforcement investigations by extending retention time for information reported to the CyberTipline from 90 days to one year. We look forward to continuing our work with Congress to prioritize the safety of children online because every child deserves a safe childhood,” said Michelle DeLaune, President & CEO of NCMEC.

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CALLING ON 118th CONGRESS! It is time, we are overdue, to take action NOW.

Online Harms Factsheets: How KOSA will Protect Kids Online

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