A Laval lawyer who had been accused of distributing child pornography following a simple tip from Facebook’s artificial intelligence has been completely cleared.
Jean Berthelot, a photography enthusiast who also practiced labor law for more than 30 years, was released on November 16 and 23 from the charges of distribution and possession of child pornography against him.
This decision puts an end to a saga which also raises questions about the work carried out by the Laval police and the Crown.
Presiding over the preliminary investigation, Judge Dominique Larochelle considered that there was not even enough evidence to hold a trial against the 61-year-old man whose life was turned upside down following his arrest in December 2020 .
“The police destroyed my life,” Berthelot says in an interview, his face marked by traces of eczema caused by the acute stress he has experienced for 3 years.
Photo Agence QMI, Mario Beauregard
Facebook alert
According to the court decision and police documents, the prosecution’s evidence of the distribution of child pornography relied solely on Facebook’s algorithms.
These systems would have detected a sexual image of a 6-year-old child that Berthelot allegedly transmitted to a woman with whom he was communicating.
The alert was forwarded to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), who relayed it to police.
Following a search of Berthelot’s home, however, sleuths did not find the photo in the 343,780 files analyzed in the lawyer’s cell phones and computer equipment.
“No evidence has been provided on how Facebook locates, identifies and transmits problematic files to NCMEC,” indicates Judge Larochelle.
Notably, no human at Facebook carries out a check to confirm that there was no error (see other text).
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Photos from Africa
Questioned by a major crimes investigator from the Laval police following his arrest, Berthelot swore he had never seen this image and expressed disgust when the investigator showed it to him.
“Zero attraction towards children”, we can read in the police interrogation notes.
The police still submitted a file to the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP), who then laid charges against Berthelot.
Among other things, she accused the lawyer of possessing some photos that she described as child pornography.
Two of them had been taken in Mali by one of Berthelot’s daughters during a humanitarian trip. They were part of a set of nearly 600 photos in the daily life of African families and had no sexual connotation.
One of 600 photos from a humanitarian trip to Africa that the police recovered from their computer equipment.
Courtesy photo
Judge Larochelle did not fail to ask the Crown questions about these photos: “Clearly, do you think that you will be able to provide proof that these photos are material pornographic? Is it yes or no!” she said, in a tone full of impatience.
The magistrate also excluded five photos which were in the “cache” directory of a device. This directory temporarily records data without the user of the device necessarily having knowledge of it, which the police took care to specify in one of their search reports.
“I am no longer convinced of a reasonable prospect of conviction,” Crown prosecutor Brenda Toucado wrote to the defense in the days that followed.
The Laval police did not want to comment on the file. As for the DPCP, it confirmed to us that the procedures had been completed, notably “in light of new elements brought to its attention”.
Excerpts from the judge’s decision
- “The evidence does not indicate who made the denunciation at Facebook.”
- “The police never requested the initial denunciation from Facebook […] to demonstrate the reliability of the information, which in this case is fatal.”
- “The evidence further shows that NCMEC does not verify what it receives before transmitting it to the police.”
- “No child pornography files were deleted before the search [par Berthelot].”
A three-year nightmare
- July 14, 2020: Facebook detects the sending of an image of child pornography associated with an account of Jean Berthelot.
- July 15, 2020: The social network relays the case to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).
- August 10, 2020: NCMEC transfers the case to the police.
- November 28, 2020: The Laval police (SPL) begin their investigation.
- December 15, 2020: The SPL arrests Jean Berthelot and searches his house. The same day, he was formally charged at the Laval courthouse.
- December 16, 2020: The next day, the law firm he works for removes his description sheet from its website.
- November 16, 2023: Jean Berthelot is freed from the charge of distribution of child pornography, at the preliminary investigation stage.
- November 23, 2023: He is also released from the charge of possession of child pornography.
Facebook does not verify
Facebook does not use any human being to verify cases of images that could qualify as child pornography that are relayed to the authorities.
“Everything is done by automated system without any human intervention and without any verification,” explains Carl Dubé, a former specialist in technological crimes with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
Since 2020, Facebook has made no fewer than 74.4 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation and abuse to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), according to figures from the Canadian Center for Child Protection.
Carl Dube
Photo taken from Linkedin
“It’s simply an algorithm that has been programmed to detect categories of images and certain offensive words,” explains the former RCMP specialist.
Facebook silence
When a case is detected, Facebook blocks the account of the user allegedly involved, and a digital fingerprint of the image or comments is recorded in a database.
The identity of the user of the account that has been blocked is then relayed to NCMEC, the American organization which receives complaints both from the public and via computerized detection systems.
NCMEC redirects everything to the police for an investigation based on the approximate location of the IP address associated with the user of the Facebook account.
After some discussions with the communications department of the social network, their spokesperson simply refused to respond from the moment we presented Berthelot’s specific case to him.
Last August, Facebook announced that it intended to deploy end-to-end encryption of communications on its platforms by the end of 2023. This should make it impossible to automatically detect potential cases of exploitation and abuse. sexual abuse of children.