300+ People Arrested Across 38 Countries - Dark Net Child Abuse

[sweep_shot]

More than 300 people have been arrested following the take-down of one of the world's "largest dark web child porn marketplaces", investigators said.

The site had more than 200,000 videos which had collectively been downloaded more than a million times.

It was shut down last year after a UK investigation into a child sex offender uncovered its existence.

But on Wednesday, officials revealed that 337 suspected users had been arrested across 38 countries.

US officials unsealed nine indictments against the site's owner Jong Woo Son, 23, from South Korea – where he is currently in prison.

The UK's National Crime Agency said arrests had been made in the UK, Ireland, America, South Korea, Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic and Canada - among others.

The site, named Welcome to Video, was run from South Korea and had nearly eight terabytes of content involving child abuse - enough to store hundreds or even thousands of hours of video footage.

Prosecutors said the site had offered videos of sex acts involving children, infants and toddlers – and specifically asked users not to upload videos featuring adults-only pornography.

The site was "one of the first to offer sickening videos for sale using the cryptocurrency bitcoin," the UK's National Crime Agency said.

It was taken down by an international task force that included agencies from the UK, the US, South Korea and Germany after operating for three years.

It was discovered during an investigation into paedophile Matthew Falder from England, who was jailed for 25 years for sharing abuse tips and images on the dark web.

In the UK, seven men have already been convicted in connection with the investigation, including Kyle Fox who was jailed for 22 years last March for the rape of a five-year-old boy and who appeared on the site sexually abusing a three-year-old girl.

Suspects were identified after crime agencies traced the site's cryptocurrency transactions back to them.

About 23 children have been rescued from active abuse situations, the joint task force said at a press conference about the operation.

They are continuing to trace other children seen in the videos.

"Dark web child sex offenders...cannot hide from law enforcement," the UK's National Crime Agency investigations lead, Nikki Holland, said.

"They're not as cloaked as they think they are, they're not as safe as they think they are."

Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-50073092.

 

[MenInG]

Dark web seems to exist and not much the authorities can do about it apart from some lucky breaks - but the use for such a crime is absolutely horrendous. Surely the world can take a combined action against the dark Web?

 

[sweep_shot]

Dark web seems to exist and not much the authorities can do about it apart from some lucky breaks - but the use for such a crime is absolutely horrendous. Surely the world can take a combined action against the dark Web?

Dark Web should be completely shut down. It is the lawless part of the internet. Pretty much anything goes there.

 

[sweep_shot]

Hundreds of people have been arrested in a worldwide operation over a South Korea-based dark web child sexual abuse site that sold videos for digital cash.

Officials from the United States, Britain and South Korea described the network as one of the largest operations they had encountered to date.

Called Welcome To Video, the website relied on the bitcoin cryptocurrency to sell access to 250,000 videos depicting child sexual abuse, authorities said, including footage of extreme abuse of young children. Its upload page specifically stated, “Do not upload adult porn”.

“Darknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behaviour,” US assistant attorney general, Brian Benczkowski, said.


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Officials have rescued at least 23 underage victims in the United States, Britain and Spain who were being actively abused by users of the site, the justice department said. Many children in the videos have not yet been identified.

The site’s vast library – nearly half of it consisting of images never seen before by law enforcement – is an illustration of what authorities say is an explosion of sexual abuse content online. In a statement, Britain’s National Crime Agency said officials were seeing “increases in severity, scale and complexity”.

Welcome To Video’s operator, a South Korean named Jong Woo Son, 23, and 337 users in 12 different countries, have been charged so far, authorities said.

Son, currently serving an 18-month sentence in South Korea, was also indicted on federal charges in Washington.

Several other people charged in the case have already been convicted and are serving prison sentences of up to 15 years, according to the justice department officials.

Welcome To Video is one of the first websites to monetise child sexual abuse using bitcoin, which allows users to hide their identities during financial transactions.

Users were able to redeem the digital currency in return for “points” that they could spend downloading videos or buying all-you-can watch “VIP” accounts. Points could also be earned by uploading child sexual abuse images.

“These are the bottom feeders of the criminal world,” said Don Fort, chief of criminal investigation at the US internal revenue service (IRS), which initiated the investigation.

The justice department said the site collected at least $370,000 worth of bitcoin before it was taken down in March 2018 and that the currency was laundered through three unnamed digital currency exchanges.

Fort said the investigation was triggered by a tip to the IRS from a confidential source. However, Britain’s National Crime Agency said it came across the site during an investigation into a British academic who in October 2017 pleaded guilty to blackmailing more than 50 people, including teenagers, into sending him images that he shared online.

In a statement, British authorities said the National Crime Agency’s cybercrime unit deployed “specialist capabilities” to identify the server’s location.

The justice department gave a different explanation, saying that Welcome To Video’s site was leaking its server’s South Korean internet protocol address to the open internet.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technol...over-international-child-sexual-abuse-website.

 

[KingKhanWC]

Dark web seems to exist and not much the authorities can do about it apart from some lucky breaks - but the use for such a crime is absolutely horrendous. Surely the world can take a combined action against the dark Web?

The UK have been spending millions to track such content on the dark web. Other nations also need to do more.

The other issue is peodophiles recieve very leniant sentences. You get more for getting into a fight.

 

[sweep_shot]

The UK have been spending millions to track such content on the dark web. Other nations also need to do more.

The other issue is peodophiles recieve very leniant sentences. You get more for getting into a fight.

There is a conspiracy theory that it gets all the way to the top. Many prominent politicians and celebrities are involved and there is a global ring.

Many politicians and celebrities got accused of child abuse. I see a pattern. Edward Heath is one example.

 

[Pakistanian]

Dark web seems to exist and not much the authorities can do about it apart from some lucky breaks - but the use for such a crime is absolutely horrendous. Surely the world can take a combined action against the dark Web?

The UK have been spending millions to track such content on the dark web. Other nations also need to do more.

The other issue is peodophiles recieve very leniant sentences. You get more for getting into a fight.

Most of these predators aren't even on the darkweb, there are plenty of grown men that prey on young girls on social media sites by DMing them. You'll always middle aged desi uncles commenting on pics on girls barely 18 on instagram and twitter.

 

[KingKhanWC]

There is a conspiracy theory that it gets all the way to the top. Many prominent politicians and celebrities are involved and there is a global ring.

Many politicians and celebrities got accused of child abuse. I see a pattern. Edward Heath is one example.

This is no conspiracy theory, many have been exposed. Jeffrey Epstein who has powerful friends inc Trump had a private island with a temple for peodophilia.

Most of these predators aren't even on the darkweb, there are plenty of grown men that prey on young girls on social media sites by DMing them. You'll always middle aged desi uncles commenting on pics on girls barely 18 on instagram and twitter.

Sure but these are very dangerous people because they view photos/videos of children who being shown abused. Stop this and you will save many many children. Those on social media are equallly disgusting but are more opportunitists.

 

[sweep_shot]

This is no conspiracy theory, many have been exposed. Jeffrey Epstein who has powerful friends inc Trump had a private island with a temple for peodophilia.



Sure but these are very dangerous people because they view photos/videos of children who being shown abused. Stop this and you will save many many children. Those on social media are equallly disgusting but are more opportunitists.

I don't consider it as a conspiracy theory but I added the word conspiracy just to not rile up the ones who deny it.

Epstein, Ted Heath, Jimmy Savile - just three of them.

There is a clear pattern. I can't call it a coincidence.

 

[sweep_shot]

Facebook has released the latest figures in its efforts to remove harmful content from its platforms.

They reveal 11.6 million pieces of content related to child nudity and child sexual exploitation were taken down between July and September 2019.

For the first time, Facebook is also releasing figures for Instagram and including numbers for posts related to suicide and self-harm.

This follows a public outcry over the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell.

The teenager killed herself in 2017 and her father then found large amounts of graphic material about self-harm and suicide on her Instagram account.

In a blog, Facebook vice-president Guy Rosen said: "We remove content that depicts or encourages suicide or self-injury, including certain graphic imagery and real-time depictions that experts tell us might lead others to engage in similar behaviour.

"We place a sensitivity screen over content that doesn't violate our policies but that may be upsetting to some, including things like healed cuts or other non-graphic self-injury imagery in a context of recovery."

The figures, in Facebook's fourth Community Standards Enforcement Report, reveal that between July and September 2019:

11.6 million pieces of content related to child nudity and child sexual exploitation were removed from Facebook - and 754,000 from Instagram
"over 99%" of these were "proactively detected", indicating the firm had still relied on third-party reports for about 100,000 examples
2.5 million pieces of content related to suicide and self-harm were removed from Facebook - and 845,000 from Instagram
4.4 million pieces of drug-sales content were removed from Facebook - and 1.5 million from Instagram
2.3 million pieces of firearm-sales content were removed from Facebook - and 58,600 from Instagram
133,300 pieces of terrorist-propaganda content were removed from Instagram
Facebook said it had removed more than 99% of the content associated with al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and their affiliates.

And for other terrorist organisations this proportion was 98.5% for Facebook and 92.2% for Instagram.

Overall, the figures suggest Facebook is removing ever larger quantities of harmful content.

From January to March 2019, for example, it took down 5.8 million pieces of content related to child nudity and sexual exploitation of children.

But future efforts to clamp down on harmful content could be hampered by the social network's self-styled "pivot to privacy", announced by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, in part in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The end-to-end encryption on Facebook-owned WhatsApp will be extended to Facebook Messenger and Instagram, with Mr Zuckerberg acknowledging there would be a "trade-off" that would benefit child sex abusers and other criminals.

Analysis
By Angus Crawford, BBC News correspondent
Facebook, it seems, is still playing catch-up in two very important areas.

Instagram, the junior partner, bought back in 2012 for $1bn (£0.8bn), now seems to be leading policy changes at Facebook around content about self-harm and suicide.

Molly Russell's father, Ian, led calls for Instagram to reform - and, to be fair, it has made a start, banning images, pictures and even cartoons, that encourage or promote self-injury, so no more razor blades, bottles of pills or nooses.

Already that kind of thing is harder to find on Instagram than it was a year ago.

So what do we now hear from Instagram's parent company, Facebook?

For the first time, it is revealing how much of that kind of depressing, graphic damaging material it has been taking down, on both platforms - a little late some might think.

The second area is around child abuse material. In the third quarter of 2018, Facebook removed 8.7 million pieces of content related to child nudity and child sexual exploitation.

In the same period this year, that figure had risen to 11.6 million.

Now, either Facebook is doing an even better job of detection than before - or it has lost control of the problem.

After all, it is not as though the company is new to this issue - it has been a member of the Internet Watch Foundation, which actively hunts for this kind of content, for more than a decade.

It has also been using sophisticated search-and-takedown software, such as Microsoft PhotoDNA, since 2011.

But still the images of child sexual abuse keep coming, in ever greater quantities.

And what is heading down the track? Mr Zuckerberg's plans to introduce encrypted messaging on the apps - which at a stroke throws an invisibility cloak over all communications.

Facebook may not be able to see what you've sent, but, possibly, nor will PhotoDNA or, crucially, the police.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50404812.