An operation consisting of law enforcement from the UK, US, Germany and South Korea resulted in the arrest of 338 people worldwide. Arrests took place in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech, Finland, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden and the UAE.
Source
Officials described the network as one of the largest child porn operations they've seen. The site was called "Welcome to Video", and is now shutdown. They sold 250,000 child sexual abuse and rape videos, mostly via bitcoin.
The site specifically said to not upload adult porn. It was completely geared towards pedophilia videos.
Some users of the site were direct abusers of children who sold their videos of abuse. The arrests led to 23 victims being rescued in the US, UK and Spain. many videos have yet to identify the victims.
Most of the content had images never seen by the authorities, which indicates the explosion of sexual abuse content online.
The owner of the site was a South Korean named Jong Woo Son, who is serving 18 months in jail, and is indicted on federal charges in the US. Other have already been convicted and are serving up to 15 years in prison.
Users thought they could hide their identities by using Bitcoin as the primary means of selling and buying. but these "bottom feeders of the criminal world" were mistaken.
When the site was taken down in March 2018, the Justice Department says it had already collected at least $370,000 in Bibtcoin. The investigation started when a tip was sent to the IRS, but other agencies have different narratives on how the investigation began and how it succeeded in tracking people down. The Justice Department says the site leaked it's IP, while the UK's National Crime Agency said a blackmailer who was caught in October 2017 was how they got onto the site.
Anonymity isn't secured by using Bitcoin while hiding personal transaction info that authorities normally trace. Despite not breaking the encryption in Bitcoin, the depraved scum were still caught.
It is an unpleasant and disturbing idea that the human species is the only one I know that can harm their own offspring in this way, I even remember anecdotes of people from the interior of the country who raise horses, that the stallions reject the mares that are their daughters and they have grown close to them.
On the other hand, I am still surprised that Dark Network users believe they have full anonymity with the use of Bitcoin as a means of payment.
A similar site was shut down in Canada not long ago that allegedly had 60,000 regular users globally. My understanding is that a large part of the spread of these crimes is due to various largescale programs within secret societies, cults and religions - intended to make people controllable and blackmailable - they then tend to abuse their own children and pass on the mental virus... :/
But that violates private property rights.
Huh?
I do not like it when the government invades my fourth amendment rights. So, when they take down websites, they might be invading privacy. Yes, we don't like criminals. Yes, we like to stop child porn. But at the same time, do we want 1984 tyranny government to keep us safe? The problem is that they can stop child porn websites today. But tomorrow, they could be stopping your website because they don't like your opinion about something. Well, in Europe, governments are putting people in jail for all sorts of things like that, already. For example, @tommyrobinson.
I appreciate the problem, yes. Governments are 'meant' to provide a formalisation to the process of the 'will of the people' being enacted and generally it falls far short of what is needed. We have no real way of knowing if the site in question even existed or whether those charged are really guilty.
This is part of why I put time into independent research to try to shine light on these areas and to motivate public engagement in them so that control of the situation might become more transparent.
Despite all of the problems with government, it is probably better that their (usually) corrupt agencies do 'something' to tackle the problem, than that there is no organised movement to deal with it.
I agree.
See ladyofliberty's post: https://steemit.com/news/@ladyofliberty/how-the-deep-state-recruits-people
Great to see some good news, but hope it's not going to be used as an excuse to try and ban crypto.
Only 18 months for the owner! That's a bit disappointing.
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I disagree with the violation of private property rights. I don't like crime. But this is 1984 tyranny in the name of keeping people safe from bad people. Yes, I agree child porn people are scum. I agree that we should go after them. The problem is that government grows. Government gets bigger. So, as government gains power, it does not stop here. Next, they will try to even shut down hate speech websites, assuming they have not already.
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