Twelve California school districts have quietly adopted software that scans school-issued devices and district networks for child sexual abuse material, and in just eight months of use, the tool has flagged about 35 computers with inappropriate content, leading to action against at least 10 school employees ranging from termination to criminal prosecution.
The software, called NetPropriate, was launched in late 2025 by Steve Hummel, a former private investigator who spent four decades working with California school districts, according to NBC Bay Area. During that career, Hummel was personally responsible for removing 28 predatory individuals from classrooms, a process he has said was almost always reactive, occurring only after harm had already occurred, according to NetPropriate. After retiring, Hummel hired software engineers to build NetPropriate's detection system and now owns the company.
How the Scanning Tool Works
NetPropriate compares file hashes, a 25-alphanumeric digital fingerprint unique to each file, against a proprietary master database, generating an alert whenever a match is found on a school device or network, the station's report explains. School districts then decide for themselves whether to act on those alerts. Hummel described one case to NBC Bay Area involving a teacher who was browsing hundreds of inappropriate sites before and after school hours, content he said could have been discovered before there was a victim.
Among the California school employees arrested on child sexual misconduct charges since the tool's rollout were a longtime elementary school teacher in San Mateo County and a principal in Costa Mesa, per the same account. NBC Bay Area withheld the identities of the specific school districts involved, citing privacy concerns, and school employees flagged by the system have often resigned rather than face further action.
A National Surge in Reported Cases
The scale of the underlying problem is enormous. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's CyberTipline handles reports of suspected child exploitation, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The child safety nonprofit Thorn has reported more than 55 million suspected child sexual abuse material files since 2025 and has declared CSAM a global crisis, per the NBC Bay Area report. Thorn CEO Julia Cordua said the material is widespread and that much of it remains undiscovered, adding that if each file were a sheet of paper, the total would cover an entire football field 620 times over.
NCMEC has also received reports involving AI-generated child sexual abuse material, according to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Separately, financially motivated sextortion targeting minors has generated more than 80,000 reports, averaging 137 per day, per the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Legal Duties Already on the Books
California school staff are already designated mandated reporters under Penal Code Section 11166, part of the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, facing misdemeanor charges, up to six months in jail, and a $1,000 fine for failing to report known or reasonably suspected child abuse or CSAM, according to FindLaw. Separately, under the federal Children's Internet Protection Act, public schools receiving E-Rate internet discounts must deploy technology that blocks obscene content and CSAM on school-owned devices, regardless of whether they are used on or off campus, per the Federal Communications Commission.
Hummel has acknowledged that NetPropriate cannot stop the overall problem, but he said he hopes the tool will help schools get ahead of at least some cases before a child is victimized. That framing echoes research from RAINN, which has reported that most perpetrators who sexually abuse children and create or distribute CSAM are adults known and trusted by the child, according to NBC Bay Area's reporting.
Similar Cases Elsewhere
Academic research published in the Stanford Law Review examines automated online student monitoring, though legal scholars and privacy advocates warn that continuous device scanning raises concerns about student privacy, data handling, and false-positive alerts. NetPropriate's rollout follows a string of recent cases in which digital tips led directly to arrests of school staff.
The report also describes an instructional assistant at McNary High School in Oregon who was arrested on multiple felony counts of encouraging child sexual abuse following a tip routed through an Internet Crimes Against Children task force data system.
Last November, a Scottsdale middle school language arts teacher who had passed all district background checks and held a valid fingerprint clearance card was arrested after an internet service provider tip to NCMEC exposed his online CSAM activity, illustrating why passive background checks alone often fail to catch digital exploitation among school staff. That pattern is precisely what Hummel says NetPropriate is designed to address by scanning proactively rather than waiting for an outside tip to arrive.
