Google tipped off authorities to illicit images in Canadi…

Internet giant Google tipped off authorities that an account in the name of Canadian public-health doctor David Poon had uploaded suspected child sexual abuse images, according to court documents, ultimately leading to 43 sex-crime charges against the outspok…

For the last few years, physician David Edward-Ooi Poon was providing psychotherapy in Ontario and public-health services in northern Saskatchewan, after rising to prominence in the media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then last summer, a tip from Google — one of millions sent every year to a U.S. child-protection organization — kicked off a chain of events that ultimately landed him in pre-trial jail on 43 sex-crime charges, according to allegations in a police court document.

In an unproven affidavit filed in court to obtain a search warrant, Toronto police say the U.S. tech giant flagged 11 images of suspected child sexual abuse material uploaded last August to a Google Drive account in Poon's name.  Most such tips, child-protection advocates say, draw little to no police action because they either turn out not to involve illicit content or because of limited investigative resources.

But this case appears to have triggered a robust response. As CBC News first reported last week, Poon was charged by Toronto police in November with two counts of accessing and possessing child sexual abuse and exploitation material. Detectives laid 41 more charges in December including making and possessing child pornography, sexual assault, voyeurism for a sexual purpose and drugging someone to facilitate sexual assault.

Toronto police say the investigation is ongoing. The criminal charges, like the allegations in the police search-warrant application, have not been proven in court. After the first two charges were filed, Poon's lawyers told the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario the accusations were unrelated to his medical practice and he intended to "vigorously oppose" them. Neither Poon nor his lawyers responded to multiple requests for comment from CBC News.

Poon is currently in a Toronto jail, with one of his lawyers telling a court hearing last week they are waiting for more evidence disclosure from the Crown before deciding about applying for bail. How he got there is laid out in allegations filed in court by a detective from the Toronto Police Service's internet child exploitation team. It says Google sent nine alerts last August and September to a U.S.-government funded non-profit organization called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The NCMEC serves as a clearinghouse for such reports and receives tens of millions of them every year, largely from tech platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. The alerts flagged 11 images suspected to be child sexual abuse material that Google reported as being uploaded last Aug. 4 and 5 to a Google Drive account registered with Poon's name, birthdate, phone number and email address, the ITO says.  The Toronto detective alleges that after the alerts were passed to the RCMP and then Toronto police, she looked at three of the images and found they depicted naked prepubescent girls.

The images included an explicit sex act and exposed genitals. The document indicates the detective requested cellphone records for the phone number and internet account information for the IP address allegedly used to upload the material in order to find out who was behind the Google account. The results of those inquiries led to an initial search warrant for Poon's downtown Toronto apartment on Nov.

4, where police say they seized electronics including an iPhone, four tablets, five laptops, two desktop computers and 16 storage drives before arresting him and charging with him possessing and accessing child sexual abuse and exploitation material. According to allegations in the ITO, initial analysis of the iPhone using forensics platform Cellebrite turned up 16,000-plus images that the software labelled as "nudity," including images of adult women.

"The first image in the 'Nudity' collection … depicted who I believe to be David Edward-Ooi Poon without a shirt, taking a selfie of himself while sticking out his tongue over an unconscious adult female," the search-warrant application states. The document goes on to describe the woman in the photo as naked below the waist and wearing a dark-coloured eye mask over her eyes.  The detective alleges that that photograph and others she examined appeared to be stored in a folder on the iPhone titled "Girls I Drugged And Raped." The images included adult females with breasts and genitals exposed "who appeared to be unconscious," the ITO says.

"The body positioning of the females appeared to be limp and did not significantly change throughout the images taken."  Police allege they found other files on the iPhone that appeared to be "upskirt" images or photographs focusing on the buttocks of females, in folders with names suggesting they were underage girls. The search warrant application requests court authorization to search Poon's apartment again for the dark-colour eye mask and for any bedding matching what's seen in some of the photos, and to search the other 30-odd electronic devices police previously seized.

Tips like the ones said to have come from Google that led to the investigation into Poon are shockingly common, said Monique St. Germain, general counsel at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a Winnipeg-based charity that provides resources to combat child exploitation and promote child safety.  Tech platforms such as Google, Facebook and Snapchat use automated software like Microsoft's PhotoDNA that generates a unique fingerprint, called a hash, for images.

The software then compares each hash to the ones of known illicit images and flags matches and strong similarities.  The U.S.-based NCMEC, the clearinghouse for alerts from American tech companies, says it received nearly 20 million reports from around the world of suspected child sexual abuse and exploitation material, or CSAM — the accepted term for what used to be called child pornography — in 2024, with 84 per cent of those resolving to countries outside the U.S.  "Police receive far more reports than they are able to action.

We have heard from various police forces in Canada that they are maybe able to get to at best 20 per cent of the reports that are coming into them, and that is a very generous estimate," St. Germain said.  Sean Sparling, chief executive of private investigation firm Investigative Solutions Network and a former deputy police chief in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., said detectives have to triage the reports that come in because the volume is so high.

But a case involving allegations against a doctor like Poon "would be an absolute priority" because that person acts in a position of authority with access to lots of people, Sparling said.  "You can tell that Toronto police took this very seriously," said Sparling, who also served on his force's computer forensics team during his policing career and helped set up police squads across Ontario to combat internet child exploitation.    In all but four of the charges against Poon, police have not identified the alleged victims.

They are listed only as "an unknown person" or "a person." Sparling said Toronto police would be working hard to try to identify those people, and the search could stretch around the world.  But when it comes to any eventual trial, if the visual and circumstantial evidence is strong enough, it's still possible to convict someone of sexual assault — or drugging for the purposes of sexual assault — without knowing the victim's identity, let alone having their testimony, said David Butt, a criminal defence lawyer and former prosecutor.  "The most important core of evidence that you look for in a case like that would be evidence of unconsciousness," Butt said.

"That is a strong indicator that there may be a sexual assault in play because the Supreme Court of Canada has been very clear that people who are unconscious or asleep cannot consent. So sexual activity with a sleeping or unconscious person is categorically sexual assault." Poon made international headlines during the COVID-19 pandemic with his campaign to get the Canadian government to ease entry restrictions so that loved ones separated by international borders, like him and his partner, could reunite.

He also campaigned at one point to end the requirements for people entering Canada to pay to quarantine in a hotel and to pay for COVID testing even if they were vaccinated. Following his second arrest and pending the outcome of his criminal case, Poon's licences to practise medicine in Ontario and Saskatchewan, where he was working for Northern Medical Services as a medical officer of health in northern Saskatchewan, have been suspended.

Both the University of Toronto and the University of Saskatchewan told CBC last month that Poon no longer holds any roles he used to have there. David Edward-Ooi Poon should not be be confused with his father, Edward Poon, who was convicted of two counts of sexual assault in Saskatchewan in 2010 and had his medical licence revoked. Zach Dubinsky is a CBC investigative journalist. His reporting on offshore tax havens (including the Paradise Papers and Panama Papers), political corruption and organized crime has won multiple national and international awards.

Phone: 416-205-7553. Twitter: @DubinskyZach. Email zach.dubinsky@cbc.ca

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