Andy Briercliffe: Identifying Victims, Demanding Honesty

Today, we're bringing you Andy Briercliffe's story. Andy Briercliffe is a member of the Trilligent Advisory Board and a Global Online Harms Consultant with decades of expertise in CSEA and CSAM. He's worked for various UK Government Agencies fighting organised crime and child sexual crimes, spent three years at Twitter (now X), and most recently headed a dedicated Online Child Safety team focussed on threat intelligence concerning online CSEA activities. Although his main focus is online CSEA, Andrew has also been heavily involved in other online harms, online regulation, platform policy, legal topics, content moderation, and welfare and wellbeing. He pioneered technology that identifies child victims through school uniform recognition - a concept he developed over a decade ago that has since been formally adopted across the UK and other countries. He's also one of the most vocal advocates for honesty in an industry that, in his view, too often prefers polish over truth.

What's your journey into Trust and Safety?

I came into this area of work a little by accident. I was working for a UK Government law enforcement agency at the time and was asked if I would be interested in helping set up a new unit to deal with Online CSEA. Sounded intriguing and an area of work I'd never thought of or been involved in. Sounded challenging, but extremely worthwhile, so I agreed. What an eye opener from day one!

How has the field evolved?

T&S has evolved massively over the years - from new harms and risks, to how tech is used to communicate both good and bad, to how we deal with that. New laws and regulations, and of course the advancement of AI. I'd say overall tech is great - it's the society we live in that shapes how it's used. It's exciting and always good to see new trends or devices that bring benefit to society.

What's a project you're especially proud of?

Apart from losing count of how many victims I helped identify or how many offenders I assisted with being charged - I am proud of being one of the first people to identify how technology can be enhanced to help identify victims quicker and more efficiently.

Whilst working within law enforcement, I identified a potential ability to enhance the identification of young victims via images of school uniforms. Either full uniform, or part image, or even just a school badge or tie. Through liaison with other law enforcement colleagues, it became very apparent how useful such a resource would be. Although localised basic resources had been looked into, no national resource existed - and certainly not one that would be simple and effective.

The system I developed used certain identifiers to localise the relevant school uniform - colours, patterns, images - so once a school was confirmed, we could speed up the safeguarding of victims. Although at the time, due to various reasons, the system wasn't launched, a few years later the benefit was realised and it has been launched formally across the UK and in other countries.

Andy's original concept has since been adopted commercially, including by the Uniform Intelligence Hub and Semantics 21's School Badge Lookup.

How can the industry better standardise team names and structures?

One of the biggest issues we have is this exact problem. Many platforms are utilising different terminologies for the same type of role and/or topic. This causes all sorts of confusion, even during recruitment. I think it's "choice." As an industry, we could align a lot better on simple matters like this, but for some reason choose not to. We have T&S-related organisations which could help in this process and alignment, but it needs everyone to understand and want to do it.

What's your advice for someone starting out in T&S?

Take time to learn and understand the landscape. Get involved, ask questions, network and reach out. It's a very complex environment and no one is an "expert" - no matter what some say. It's an ongoing and ever changing landscape, but also fulfilling and highly motivating.

Anything you'd like to add?

T&S is much bigger than just social media, gaming, dating, etc. Any company that has an online presence needs in some way, T&S. We need to look beyond the obvious and all start coming together better. It's not all about the senior people making decisions and speaking - we need to listen to everyone involved, no matter what level, grade, location or organisation.

I'd also say - maybe it's time to be more honest. There appears to be a lot of confusion in the landscape. Platforms, organisations, governments - all saying how wonderful they are doing and what they are achieving, but at the same time, we also hear how everything is getting worse. If some of these just said, "OK, we know we haven't got it right, but we're working on it," or "we tried such and such and it didn't work," then users might have a bit more faith. We also hear similar stories about working life within platforms - all appears happy, but insiders say it's not as good as it appears. Maybe it's time to be honest and review the actual basics of what is going on. Surely listening and improving the basics is better than denying issues exist.

A big thank you to Andy for sharing his journey, insights, and advice with us! His path from law enforcement to global advisory work - and his pioneering vision for technology that identifies child victims through school uniform recognition - is a powerful reminder that innovation in Trust and Safety often starts with one person asking, 'What if we could do this better?' We also appreciate his willingness to speak honestly about where the industry falls short - because it's exactly that kind of candid critique that pushes the field forward.

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