BBC FOI - deepfake porn
Request
1. For each of the months February, March, April, May, June, July and August 2024, how many reports did your police force receive alleging the offence of sharing explicit images or videos that have been digitally manipulated to look like someone else without their consent, commonly known as 'fake porn' or 'deepfake porn' (covered by the Online Safety Act 2023)?
2. Given there could be multiple reports about one individual, I am also asking the following question. For each of the months February, March, April, May, June, July and August 2024, how many individuals did your police force receive allegations about relating to the offence of sharing explicit images or videos that have been digitally manipulated to look like someone else without their consent, commonly known as 'fake porn' or 'deepfake porn' (covered by the Online Safety Act 2023).
3. For each of the months February, March, April, May, June, July and August 2024, how many people were charged under the Online Safety Act with the offence of sharing explicit images or videos that have been digitally manipulated to look like someone else without their consent, commonly known as 'fake porn' or 'deepfake porn'?
4. Given one individual could be charged with multiple offences, I am also asking the following question. For each of the months February, March, April, May, June, July and August 2024, how many charges were made by your police force under the Online Safety Act of the offence of sharing explicit images or videos that have been digitally manipulated to look like someone else without their consent, commonly known as 'fake porn' or 'deepfake porn'?
5. Among the reports of victims of 'deepfake porn' for each of the months February, March, April, May, June, July and August 2024, how many were under the age of 18?
6. Among the reports of victims of 'deepfake porn' for each of the months February, March, April, May, June, July and August 2024, how many were under the age of 10?
For clarity, for the questions above, I am asking for charges under the
following law, Section 66B, Sexual Offences Act:
(1) A person (A) commits an offence if –
a) A intentionally shares a photograph or film which shows, or appears to show, another person (B) in an intimate state,
b) B does not consent to the sharing of the photograph or film, and
c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents. Full legislation is here:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/66B
7. For each of the months August, September, October, November and December 2023 and January and February 2024, how many reports did your police force receive alleging the offence of deepfake sexual abuse under other legislation (before the Online Safety Act 2023 came into force) - e.g. communication offences or harassment legislation?
8. Given there could be multiple reports about one individual, I am also asking the following question. For each of the months August, September, October, November and December 2023 and January and February 2024, how many individuals did your police force receive allegations about relating to the offence of deepfake sexual abuse under other legislation (before the Online Safety Act 2023 came into force)?
9. For each of the months August, September, October, November and December 2023 and January and February 2024, how many people were charged with the offence of deepfake sexual abuse under other legislation (before the Online Safety Act 2023 came into force)?
10. Given one individual could be charged with multiple offences, I am also asking the following question. For each of the months August, September, October, November and December 2023 and January and February 2024, how many charges were made by your police force of the offence of deepfake sexual abuse under other legislation (before the Online Safety Act 2023 came into force)?
If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, please prioritise questions in number order. Questions 1-6 should be prioritised over questions 7-10.
Response
South Yorkshire Police holds the information you request. However, as this is already freely available, we will not be supplying the information to you now
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt), to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
a. states that fact,
b. specifies the exemption in question and
c. states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies)
The following exemption applies to the disclosure of the information:
Section 21 ‘Information which is reasonably accessible by other means’
The information held regarding closed stations is available on the South Yorkshire Police website using the following link:
The above information does not provide information regarding data held between July and August 2024. Please see below to ensure that all areas of your request are being answered.
Section 40 (2) – Personal Information
This is an absolute exemption and therefore a Public Interest Test is not relevant. However, for clarity, I will explain my rationale for engaging this exemption.
Section 40(2) provides that information is exempt if it is the personal data of someone other than the applicant and disclosure would breach any of the data protection principles. The term ‘personal data’ means data that relates to a living individual who can be identified. This may take an obvious form of ‘personal information’ such as a name but can also include information which, if aggregated, can pinpoint an individual. Due to the low numbers involved a full disclosure may potentially identify individuals involved and would breach data protection principles.
I am however, happy to supply you with some data to assist your research.
I approached our Performance Review Unit for assistance with your request. An analyst within this unit has conducted a search of our Crime Management System - Connect which records complaints or allegations of those matters, which the Home Office specify should be recorded as 'crimes'. All our systems are designed and used first and foremost for Policing Purposes and have limited search capability. They provided me with following information in response and the explanation regarding their search criteria:
We were provided the offences recorded under S66 B of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the Online Safety Act 2003. These were then manually reviewed to confirm whether they were in relation to ‘deep fakes’.
Criteria Used - Incident Created Date is between 01/02/2024 and 30/08/2024, SYP & crime only filter, ACT is equal to Sexual Offences Act 2003 Sec 66 B (1) (9), Online Safety Act 2023 Sec 179, Online Safety Act 2023 Sec 183(1), (2), (3), (8) and (10), Sexual Offences Act 2003 Sec 66A as amended by Online Safety Act 2023.
The above search returned 182 records, relating to the sharing of images.
I have reviewed the MO summary for each offence, and I believe I identified 1 that relates to images or videos that have been digitally manipulated to look like someone else.
1. 1.
2. Same as Q1.
3. 0 - 18 - Investigation Complete; No Suspect Identified. Crime Investigated As Far As Reasonably Possible-Case Closed Pending Further Investigative Opportunities Becoming Available.
4. Same as Q3.
5. Please see exemption.
6. Same as Q5.
For answers 7-10, please see previous response (FOI 24.011277) where the answer is 0 reports alleging the offence of deepfake sexual abuse.
Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.