Facing the Child

An in-depth exploration of the network of agencies involved in policing child pornography—and what the future of security and care looks like. Facing the Child investigates the technocratic expertise in the policing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Mitali Thakor argues that CSAM has come to be framed as primarily a digital problem, to be resolved digitally, thereby unleashing a new form of corporatized policing helmed by global technology companies. Ambitious in scope, this multi-sited global ethnography draws on four years of original fieldwork and interviews with technology companies in the US, the United Nations in Bangkok, Thai and Dutch NGOs, and law enforcement in the US and the Netherlands. The book argues that in the 2010s, a network of technology companies, NGOs, and law enforcement created the notion of a “virtual child” in need of techno-solutionist saving to justify a vast expansion of surveillance technologies. The book examines how pervasive myths of child abuse online were exploited to serve the aims of seemingly disparate groups, from Christian neo-abolitionists to NGOs conducting virtual sting operations. It is this complex relationship between the care and securitization needed to fix the child victim as an object of data, concern, and rescue that the book explores.