How the Hotline Processes Your Report And The Information Provided Within It

The Hotline's operational process starts when a report is received from the public or from another international hotline. The submissions are generated through electronic forms that are available on the www.hotline.ie web site, reports can be submitted completely anonymously. When a report is received, the Hotline will send an acknowledgement where contact information has been given. The preference is to provide this reply by e-mail. The content of your report is then transferred to the Hotline operational Database, which is held in encrypted form for added security.

Under the legal system in this country, only a court of law can determine that a criminal offence has been committed and that material (i.e. child pornography) relating to that offence is actually illegal. Therefore, the Hotline can only determine that something is "probably illegal" with reference to the criteria given in the relevant Irish law. In the case of Child Pornography, for example, that is the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act (1998).

Once the report has been logged, one of our trained Hotline Analysts will try to find the material on the Internet. If the subject content to which the report refers is found, it will then be assessed as to whether it is probably illegal under Irish law. If it is not illegal, no further investigatory action is taken. If the content is considered to be probably illegal under the relevant Act, the next step is to determine the location of the material as accurately as possible. The Hotline staff use a suite of tools and their experience to attempt to trace and locate the source, be it a web host server, a peering node (P2P), an e-mail server or other Internet based service. If the reported material is traced to a server located in Ireland, or is found to have originated from an Internet user account provided by an Irish ISP, the ISP of that customer is identified. The Hotline then issues notification to An Garda Síochána and simultaneously a "take down" notice is issued to the ISP, where they are a member of the ISPAI. The ISP is responsible for the timely removal of the specified probably illegal content from their servers to ensure that other Internet users cannot access the material. The decision to initiate a criminal investigation is a matter for An Garda Síochána.

If the content source is traced to another country, there are two possible actions. If an INHOPE hotline exists in that country, then details based on the original report, including the Hotline's findings, are forwarded to the other hotline for processing. If the material is located in a country having no INHOPE presence, the Hotline will attempt to have action taken by providing details to An Garda Síochána for transmission to the source country through international law enforcement channels.

In all the above cases, even if the person reporting has provided contact details, these are not provided to other parties. Only the details of the suspected content and the technical findings of the Hotline are transmitted.

Once this notification procedure is completed, the Hotline records the action that was taken in the database and closes the report.