A couple has sex and one of them records it. Later, he decides to share that video with other people without the other's permission. This is what happened to a minor from Gran Canaria with a player from the Real Madrid quarry, who along with three other colleagues, have been accused of an alleged crime of revealing secrets, for recording and disseminating a video of sexual content of the minor without her authorization. In the case of the 22 victims of Almendralejo, images of the minors with false nudes created with artificial intelligence were disseminated. One in three cybersecurity incidents in Spain are a leak of sensitive, protected or confidential data, stolen, according to the National Institute of Cybersecurity (INCIBE). In these cases, whether it is revenge or a deepfake, how can you report and prevent the dissemination of this content?
Record
The first step is to record the publication, according to Pablo Duchement, a computer judicial expert specializing in crimes in the networks perpetrated by and against minors. "We have to record the publication because if it is through the web, the content can disappear," he explains. To do this, he recommends requesting a digital certificate of the publication of the content, free of charge, through companies such as eGarante: "With the certificate nobody can doubt that the publication that was there, and where it was, and if it is deleted or modified, nothing happens because the certificate itself continues to work as evidence in a trial. "
Mónica Cuellas, professor of Technological Criminal Law at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) and criminal lawyer, agrees with Duchement that a digital certificate should be requested. Taking a screenshot of the post may not be enough in a trial. "A screenshot is easily contestable because it is easily manipulated," he explains. Make it clear that the most important thing is "not to erase the content of the device". That's what these online witnesses, as defined by INCIBE, are for.
In addition, in Spain INCIBE has a free telephone number, 017, active every day of the year (from 8 in the morning to 11 at night), to help solve cybersecurity problems, from the technical, psychosocial and legal point of view. They can also be contacted via WhatsApp (900116117), Telegram (@INCIBE017) and by email. Last year, the line received more than 67,000 inquiries.
Report content
The next step is to report the content to the authorities. Go to the State Security Forces or a guard court, says Cuellas. If the situation is suffered by a minor, it will have to be his family or a guardian who reports the content for him, explains Duchement. The prison sentences faced by the perpetrators are up to 1 year for disseminating sexual content of minors on the internet without consent, as a crime of revealing secrets, and up to 9 years for disseminating sexual images of minors under 16 years of age created with artificial intelligence, which could be considered a crime of child pornography, explains Cuellas. Compensation can also be claimed in civil proceedings.
More information
'Deepfakes': the threat with millions of views that targets women and challenges security and democracy
Request deletion
In parallel, the search engine should be asked to remove personal images, since explicit content continues to do harm as long as it remains on the network. If someone appears in Google images without clothes, in a sexual act or in an intimate situation, you can ask the search engine to remove them. INCIBE recommends contacting the platform or page where it detects the publication and requesting its removal. If necessary, the situation must be reported on the INCIBE Hotline, and reported on the priority channel of the Spanish Agency for Data Protection (AEPD). In the case of the victims of Almendralejo, the AEPD has opened an ex officio investigation.
Social networks also have their reporting channels. Meta, in addition to being able to report content from its platform, launched in February a new tool to combat sensitive material. It is called Take it Down and allows you to report the content and prevent the publication from being shared on other platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Onlyfans or Pornhub. Instagram also has a section to protect exposed private information. TikTok was fined €345 million by the European Union in September for putting minors' personal data at risk on its platform. Despite this, it has a complaint section available on its website.
Prevention
To avoid these situations in the network, certain measures can be taken. Informing close people about the dissemination so that the same thing does not happen to them, not trusting strangers when sending data, images or personal videos on the internet and never giving in to blackmail, are some of INCIBE's recommendations for these cases. Periodically checking the personal information of each one published on the internet, through search engines and social networks, is another good practice and is known as egosurfing.
In the case of the dissemination of fake images created with artificial intelligence on the internet, Duchement proposes that users do not publish their personal images. It also recommends that sexting, that is, the exchange of content of a sexual nature through devices, not be practiced. "It's safer to get naked in front of your partner than to send him a photo without clothes," he says.
You can follow EL PAÍS Tecnología on Facebook and Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
