Here’s a reminder that you can submit photos of your hotel room to law enforcement, to assist in tracking down CSAM producers. The vast majority of sex trafficking media is produced in hotels. So being able to match furniture, bedspreads, carpet patterns, wallpaper, curtains, etc in the background to a specific hotel helps investigators narrow down when and where it was produced.
Wouldnt this be so much better if we got hoteliers on board instead of individuals
Thank you for posting this.
Does it feel odd to anyone else that a platform for something this universally condemned in any jurisdiction can operate for 4 years, with a catchy name clearly thought up by a marketing person, its own payment system and nearly six figure number of videos? I mean even if we assume that some of those 4 years were intentional to allow law enforcement to catch as many perpetrators as possible this feels too similar to fully legal operations in scope.
With the amount of sites that are easily accessed on the dark net though the hidden wiki and other sites. This might of been a honeypot from the start.
On the contrary, why would they announce that they seized the site? To cause more panic, and to exaggerate the actual situation?
In addition, that last point should be considered because even if they used these type of operations, honeypotting would still be considered illegal. So Ultimately what is stopping the supreme power to abuse that power on other people?
Illegal business can operate online for a long time if they have good OpSec. Anonymous payment systems are much easier these days because of cryptocurrencies.
Is that why Trump is so for them?
Yeah, more or less
It’s a side effect of privacy and security. The one side effect they’re trying to use to undermine all of the privacy and security.
This has nothing to do with privacy! Criminals have their techniques and methods to protect themselves and their “businesses” from discovery, both in the real world and in the online world. Even in a complete absence of privacy they would find a way to hide their stuff from the police - at least for a while.
In the real world, criminals (e.g. drug dealers) also use cars, so you could argue, that druck trafficking is a side effect of people having cars…
Well, it does have to do with privacy and security, it just doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not for them. These people (in the US) always make a point that criminals will buy guns whether it’s legal or not, but then they’ll argue they need to destroy privacy because criminals are using it. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t need to because honesty or consistency aren’t important.
This platform used Tor. And because we want to protect privacy, they can make use of it.
This particular platform used tor. It doesn’t mean all platforms are using privacy centric anonymous networks. There are incidents with people using kik, Snapchat, Facebook and other clear net services to perform criminal actions such as drugs or cp.
with a catchy name clearly thought up by a marketing person
A marketing person? They took “Netflix” and changed the first three letters lol
So you are saying it is too creative for the average person in marketing?
It would feel odd, but you have to remember we live in a world where Epstein was allowed to get away with what he did until the little people found out.
It definitely seems weird how easy it is to stumble upon CP online, and how open people are about sharing it, with no effort made, in many instances, to hide what they’re doing. I’ve often wondered how much of the stuff is spread by pedo rings and how much is shared by cops trying to see how many people they can catch with it.
If you have stumbled on CP online in the last 10 years, you’re either really unlucky or trawling some dark waters. This ain’t 2006. The internet has largely been cleaned up.
I don’t know about that.
I spot most of it while looking for out-of-print books about growing orchids on the typical file-sharing networks. The term “blue orchid” seems to be frequently used in file names of things that are in no way related to gardening. The eMule network is especially bad.
When I was looking into messaging clients a couple years ago, to figure out what I wanted to use, I checked out a public user directory for the Tox messaging network and it was maybe 90% people openly trying to find, or offering, custom made CP. On the open internet, not an onion page or anything.
Then maybe last year, I joined openSUSE’s official Matrix channels, and some random person (who, to be clear, did not seem connected to the distro) invited me to join a room called openSUSE Child Porn, with a room logo that appeared to be an actual photo of a small girl being violated by a grown man.
I hope to god these are all cops, because I have no idea how there can be so many pedos just openly doing their thing without being caught.
not stumbled upon it but I’ve met a couple people offering it on mostly normal discord servers
universally condemned
There are a few countries that would disagree
Which countries do you have in mind where videos of sexual child abuse are legal?
Context is important I guess. So two things.
Is something illegal if it’s not prosecuted?
Is it CSA if the kid is 9 but that’s marrying age in that country?
If you answer yes, then no, then we’ll not agree on this topic.
I am not talking about CSA, I am talking about video material of CSA. Most countries with marriage ages that low have much more wide-spread bans on videos including sex of any kind.
As for prosecution, yes, it is still illegal if it is not prosecuted. There are many reasons not to prosecute something ranging all the way from resource and other means related concerns to intentionally turning a blind eye and only a small minority of them would lead that country to actively sabotage a major international investigation, especially after the trade-offs are considered (such as loss of international reputation by refusing to cooperate).
Fuck man. I used to use a program called “Kidpix” when I was a kid. It was like ms paint but with fun effects and sounds.
Holy. Shit. This is somehow glorious on an oled iPad screen. The late 1900s never looked so good.
Thank you for given me a nostalgia jolt that I didn’t know I wanted, but am fully enjoying right now
When I read the very first bit I was like “oh is that a new kids tv streaming platform from the same creators as kidpix?” Then I was immediately hit with the reality of the grim world we live in
I used to love the dynamite tool!
I loved the explosion sound, and the “oh no” when you click the undo button. I have the Windows versions of KidPix on CD somewhere.
Same here! We had it on a Macintosh LC 575. I will never forget those sound effects haha.
Haha yep, kidpix deluxe 3 I remember fondly
Omg I remember Kidpix! It was great!
This… not so much.
Oh no!
On average, around 3.5 new videos were uploaded to the platform every hour, many of which were previously unknown to law enforcement.
Absolutely sick and vile. I hope they honey potted the site and that the arrests keep coming.
I just got ill
1.8m users, how the hell did they ran that website for 3 years?
That’s unfortunately (not really sure) probably the fault of Germanys approach to that. It is usually not taking these websites down but try to find the guys behind it and seize them. The argument is: they will just use a backup and start a “KidFlix 2” or sth like that. Some investigations show, that this is not the case and deleting is very effective. Also the German approach completely ignores the victim side. They have to deal with old men masturbating to them getting raped online. Very disturbing…
I think you are mixing here two different aspects of this and of similar past cases. I the past there was often a problem with takedowns of such sites, because german prosecutors did not regard themselves as being in charge of takedowns, if the servers were somewhere overseas. Their main focus was to get the admins and users of those sites and to get them into jail.
In this specific case they were observing this platform (together with prosecutors from other countries in an orchestrated operation) to gather as much data as possible about the structure, the payment flows, the admins and the users of this before moving into action and getting them arrested. The site was taken down meanwhile.
If you blow up and delete)such a darknet service immediately upon discovery, you may get rid of it (temporarily) but you might not catch many of the people behind it.
This feels like one of those things where couch critics aren’t qualified. There’s a pretty strong history of three letter agencies using this strategy successfully in other organized crime industries.
Honestly, if the existing victims have to deal with a few more people masturbating to the existing video material and in exchange it leads to fewer future victims it might be worth the trade-off but it is certainly not an easy choice to make.
It doesn’t though.
The most effective way to shut these forums down is to register bot accounts scraping links to the clearnet direct-download sites hosting the material and then reporting every single one.
If everything posted to these forums is deleted within a couple of days, their popularity would falter. And victims much prefer having their footage deleted than letting it stay up for years to catch a handful of site admins.
Frankly, I couldn’t care less about punishing the people hosting these sites. It’s an endless game of cat and mouse and will never be fast enough to meaningfully slow down the spread of CSAM.
Also, these sites don’t produce CSAM themselves. They just spread it - most of the CSAM exists already and isn’t made specifically for distribution.
Who said anything about punishing the people hosting the sites. I was talking about punishing the people uploading and producing the content. The ones doing the part that is orders of magnitude worse than anything else about this.
I’d be surprised if many “producers” are caught. From what I have heard, most uploads on those sites are reuploads because it’s magnitudes easier.
Of the 1400 people caught, I’d say maybe 10 were site administors and the rest passive “consumers” who didn’t use Tor. I wouldn’t put my hopes up too much that anyone who was caught ever committed child abuse themselves.
I mean, 1400 identified out of 1.8 million really isn’t a whole lot to begin with.
I used to work in netsec and unfortunately government still sucks at hiring security experts everywhere.
That being said hiring here is extremely hard - you need to find someone with below market salary expectation working on such ugly subject. Very few people can do that. I do believe money fixes this though. Just pay people more and I’m sure every European citizen wouldn’t mind 0.1% tax increase for a more effective investigation force.
And yet there are cases like Kim Dotcom, Snowden, Manning, Assange…
it says “this hidden site”, meaning it was a site on the dark web. It probably took them awhile to figure out were the site was located so they could shut it down.
Wow, with such a daring name as well. Fucking disgusting.
I once saw a list of defederated lemmy instances. In most cases, and I mean like 95% of them, the reason of thedefederation was pretty much in the instance name. CP everywhere. Humanity is a freaking mistake.
Isnit not encouraging that it is ostracised and removed from normal people. There are horrible parts of everything in nature, life is good despite those people and because of the rest combatting their shittiness
You’re just seeing “survivor’s bias” (as nasty as that sounds in this case) not a general representation.
No, there really are a lot of pedophiles on Lemmy
I regularly see people on Lemmy advocating for pedophilia, at LEAST every 3 months as a popular, upvoted stance. I argue with them in my history
With everything going on right now, the fact that I still feel physically sick reading things like this tells me I haven’t gone completely numb yet. Just absolutely repulsive.
I know I’m not heartless yet because I am still traumatized by the brick in the window video…
I’ll probably regret asking, but I’m out of the loop and insatiably curious.
Brick in the window video?
If it’s what I’m thinking of, camera footage of a vehicle interior.
Driving down the highway, going under an overpass when a brick gets tossed by some kids and goes through the window.
Passenger hit, husband is driving and screams.
You know that scream they mention in The Princess Bride? That “only someone experiencing ultimate suffering” can make?
If you know, you know.
It’s not an overpass. A loose brick falls off a truck going in the opposite direction, bounces off the pavement once, then goes through the windshield.
Edit: oh hurray, there’s two different brick videos.
Well, I know what other video I’m never watching.
And people wonder why I don’t like being around any vehicle that carries things…
I’ve never seen that video but I can hear that scream from the husband. That’s some fucked up shit.
Oh no. I remember that video now. I didn’t need to remember that video. Why did I have to ask?!
Fuck. Don’t make me think about that video. Fuck. Shit.
Gonna ruin me, but seconding. Brick in the window video?
To sanitize the traumatic video as much as possible: A man is driving under an overpass and a brick is dropped through the passenger side window instantly killing his wife. He reacts in horror.
Link to the brick video please?
If you really want to see this type of content you can easily find it with the tiniest amount of motivation.
With my luck I would try to find the video, end up getting my PC or phone infected with spyware or ransomware, and have a bad time. Yeah I rely on other humans to vet things.
Maybe the ransomware would be better than seeing the video
Not just horror… the torment in that voice… fucking hell. Feel so bad for them both.
They’re probably referencing the video where a woman was killed after a brick flew through the windshield. I haven’t watched it, but it is on YouTube and I’ve heard that the husband’s cries are not so nice.
I don’t remember if it was kids throwing bricks off of a bridge or if it was something else.
They also seized 72,000 illegal videos from the site and personal information of its users, resulting in arrests of 1,400 suspects around the world.
Wow
Imagine if humans evolved enough to self-solve the problem of liking this shit.
1,393 suspects identified 79 suspects arrested Over 3,000 electronic devices seized 39 children protected
1.8 million users and they only caught 1000?
I imagine it’s easier to catch uploaders than viewers.
It’s also probably more impactful to go for the big “power producers” simultaneously and quickly before word gets out and people start locking things down.
79
Massive congratulations to Europol and its partners in taking this shit down and putting these perverts away. However, they shouldn’t rest on their laurels. The objective now is to ensure that the distribution of this disgusting material is stopped outright and that no further children are harmed.
The objective now is to ensure that the distribution of this disgusting material is stopped outright and that no further children are harmed.
Sure, it’ll only cost you every bit of your privacy as governments make illegal and eliminate any means for people to communicate without the eye of Big Brother watching.
Every anti-privacy measure that governments put forward is always like "We need to be able to track your location in real time, read all of your text messages and see every picture that your phone ever takes so that we can catch the .001% of people who are child predators. Look at how scary they are!
Why are you arguing against these anti-pedophile laws?! You don’t support child sex predators do you?!"
Then end up USA
And it didn’t even require sacrificing encryption huh!
“See we caught these guys without doing it, thank of how many more we can catch if we do! Like all the terrorists America has caught with violating their privacy. …Maybe some day they will.”
If that’s the actual splash screen that pops up when you try to access it (no, I’m not going to go to it and check, I don’t want to be on a new and exciting list) then kudos to the person who put that together. Shit goes hard. So do all the agency logos.
Every now and again I am reminded of my sentiment that the introduction of “media” onto the Internet is a net harm. Maybe 256 dithered color photos like you’d see in Encarta 95 and that’s the maximum extent of what should be allowed. There’s just so much abuse from this kind of shit… despicable.
Raping kids has unfortunately been a thing since long before the internet. You could legally bang a 13 year old right up to the 1800s and in some places you still can.
As recently as the 1980s people would openly advocate for it to be legal, and remove the age of consent altogether. They’d get it in magazines from countries where it was still legal.
I suspect it’s far less prevalent now than it’s ever been. It’s now pretty much universally seen as unacceptable, which is a good start.
The youngest Playboy model, Eva Ionesco, was only 12 years old at the time of the photo shoot, and that was back in the late 1970’s… It ended up being used as evidence against the Eva’s mother (who was also the photographer), and she ended up losing custody of Eva as a result. The mother had started taking erotic photos (ugh) of Eva when she was only like 5 or 6 years old, under the guise of “art”. It wasn’t until the Playboy shoot that authorities started digging into the mother’s portfolio.
But also worth noting that the mother still holds copyright over the photos, and has refused to remove/redact/recall photos at Eva’s request. The police have confiscated hundreds of photos for being blatant CSAM, but the mother has been uncooperative in a full recall. Eva has sued the mother numerous times to try and get the copyright turned over, which would allow her to initiate the recall instead.
Let’s get rid of the printing press because it can be used for smut. /s
great pointless strawman. nice contribution.
It’s satire of your suggestion that we hold back progress but I guess it went over your head.
It’s not a strawman if they repeat your own logic back at you. You just had a shit take.
It is easy to very feel disillusioned with the world, but it is important to remember that there are still good people all around willing to fight the good fight. And it is also important to remember that technology is not inherently bad, it is a neutral object, but people could use it for either good or bad purposes.
I think it just shows all the hideousness of humanity and all it’s glory in a way that we have never confronted before. It’s shatters the illusion the humanity has grown from its barbaric ways.
With that logic, I might as well throw away my computer and phone and go full Uncle Ted.
