Jeff Kosseff on the Fight Against Online Child Pornography

Private entities—in particular, technology giants like internet service providers, email services and social networks—play a vital role in helping law enforcement fight child pornography online. But the involvement of private entities does not eliminate the Fourth Amendment issues that come with electronic surveillance. In fact, the more the private entities cooperate with the government, the more likely it is that courts will consider them government agents, and the evidence they collect will be subject to the same Fourth Amendment restrictions as apply to law enforcement agencies. Jeff Kosseff is an assistant professor at the United States Naval Academy's Cyber Science Department. As part of Lawfare's ongoing Digital Social Contract research paper series, he published a paper entitled, "Online Service Providers and the Fight Against Child Exploitation: The Fourth Amendment Agency Dilemma." Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Jeff about how the government and internet companies can thread the needle on fighting digital child exploitation without running afoul of the Constitution.