When given a chance to speak, McIntosh asked the judge for hope — if not for physical freedom, he said, then for mental freedom from the “invasive, pervasive thoughts always in my mind.” In December 2015, Thailand introduced stricter penalties for anyone caught possessing or sharing child pornography involving individuals under 18. The Criminal Code was updated to impose harsher consequences for possession, distribution, or gaining profit from such materials.
A list of the indicted Americans includes both those who have plead guilty and those who are still facing trial. Sentences range from one to 15 years with charges including money laundering and crimes related to child pornography. A spokeswoman for the center said it was common to expect corporations to provide financial assistance to charities. But the practice, others working in the area of child protection say, could elevate the interests of the tech companies above the children’s. The Justice Department’s coordinator for child exploitation prevention, Ms. Harris, said she could not explain the poor record. A spokeswoman for the department, citing limited resources, said the reports would now be written every four years beginning in 2020.
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Some of the strongest provisions of the law were not fulfilled, and many problems went unfixed, according to interviews and government documents. Some of his victims attended the court proceedings and submitted statements about their continuing struggles with the abuse. The highly skilled perpetrators often taunt the authorities with their technical skills, acting boldly because they feel protected by the cover of darkness. One showed a woman orally forcing herself on a girl who was then held upside down by the ankles in a bathroom while “another child urinates” on her face, according to court documents. The federal government has also not lived up to the law’s funding goals, severely crippling efforts to stamp out the activity.
- The UK aims to be the first country in the world to create new offences related to AI-generated sexual abuse.
- Of the 2,401 ‘self-generated’ images and videos of 3–6-year-olds that we hashed this year, 91% were of girls and most (62%) were assessed as Category C by our analysts.
- The IWF is warning that almost all the content was not hidden on the dark web but found on publicly available areas of the internet.
- But its reign has now come to an end, as German investigators, in coordination with pan-European police agency Europol, led a major operation to dismantle the streaming service.
- It’s something built into the password management services offered by Apple and Google as well, so you don’t need to trawl through data leaks manually yourself.
- Some of the strongest provisions of the law were not fulfilled, and many problems went unfixed, according to interviews and government documents.
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A fourth suspect, a 64-year-old man from Hamburg, is accused of being one of the most active users of the platform having allegedly uploaded more than 3,500 posts. They also searched seven buildings in connection with the porn ring in mid-April in Germany. We encourage you to share our campaign using #ThinkBeforeYouShare and by following, liking and sharing the campaign on our social channels. Though Schiller suggested that McIntosh’s history of abuse made him the worst of the site’s four leaders, Serafini disagreed. Her decision followed an hour-long discussion over the website’s contents, and whether McIntosh’s role warranted a longer or shorter sentence than that of his codefendants, three other men identified as the site’s leaders. The investigation spearheaded by German authorities and joined by forces of 36 countries led to the dismantling of Kidflix.
The federal complaint says undercover agents traced payments of bitcoin to the darknet site. South Korean authorities arrested Son and seized his server in 2018, shutting down an operation active since at least June 2015. A nine-count indictment says 337 people in 24 U.S. states and 11 countries, including eight individuals in the Washington, D.C., area, were arrested and charged with operating or using the site.
AI-Driven Child Abuse Images: Dark Web Threat Grows
A new investigation by The New York Times found that the internet’s largest tech platforms are failing to effectively shut down the giant portions of online child sexual abuse material found in search engines, social networks, and cloud storage. And when tech companies cooperate fully, encryption and anonymization can create digital hiding places for perpetrators. Facebook announced in March plans to encrypt Messenger, which last year was responsible for nearly 12 million of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of child sexual abuse material, according to people familiar with the reports. Reports to the authorities typically contain more than one image, and last year encompassed the record 45 million photos and videos, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Viewing, producing and/or distributing photographs and videos of sexual content including children is a type of child sexual abuse. This material is called child sexual abuse material (CSAM), once referred to as child pornography.
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Some of these sites can be found through regular web browsers, but you’ll then need to switch over to Tor once you’ve got the onion links you want to follow. Cybersecurity has to also cover everything physically on your computer too—which law enforcement or government authorities might have the right to seize if they come calling. If you want to be untraceable and undetectable, connecting to the dark web via the Tor browser is a major step towards that, but not the only step you’ll need. Below is a chart showing the breakdown of the sexual activity seen in this 3–6-year-old ‘self-generated’ material.
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The shutdown operation, called Operation Pacifier, involved the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) hijacking the site and continuing to serve content for two weeks (from February 19, 2015 until March 4, 2015). During this time, the FBI used a malware-based “Network Investigative Technique” (NIT) to hack into the web browsers of users accessing the site in what is known as a watering hole attack, thereby revealing their identities. 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 Justice Department is touting the shutdown of those sites as a victory to help deter future abuse or production of unlawful images. Most of the images and videos showed children in a home setting and most often in a child’s bedroom.
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The law Congress passed in 2008 foresaw many of today’s problems, but The Times found that the federal government had not fulfilled major aspects of the legislation. Three were held in Germany and another 14 were detained in Austria, according to local reports. The secret Elysium website had 87,000 members and was launched on the internet in December, prosecutors say. More than half of the AI-generated content found by the IWF in the last six months was hosted on servers in Russia and the US, with a significant amount also found in Japan and the Netherlands. “‘Whereas before we would be able to definitely tell what is an AI image, we’re reaching the point now where even a trained analyst … would struggle to see whether it was real or not,” Jeff told Sky News.
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Mr. Shehan, the vice president, said such disclosures might discourage tech companies from cooperating with the center. A Microsoft spokesman said that the company had only limited information about offenders using the search engine, and that it was cooperating as best as it could. Congress has regularly allocated about half of the $60 million in yearly funding for state and local law enforcement efforts.
Our analysis showed that members of these forums are using non-AI-generated images and videos already at their disposal to facilitate their learning and train the software they use to create the images. Many expressed their hopes and expectations that the technology would evolve, making it even easier for them to create this material. In one joint raid by German and Dutch authorities, they seized a hard drive containing a staggering 72,000 videos of child sexual abuse. He also called for greater online child safety, stressing how online behaviour could have long-term consequences.
Louis Donald Mendonsa, 62, of Sacramento, pleaded guilty in April to seven counts of distribution of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography, according to the U.S. However, there was also a higher percentage of Category B images that had more than one child. Category B images include those where a child is rubbing genitals (categorised as masturbation) or where there is non-penetrative sexual activity which is where the children are interacting, perhaps touching each other in a sexual manner. Most of the time these children are initially clothed and much of what we see is a quick display of genitals. It could also be that most 3–6-year-olds are not left alone long enough for the discussion and the coercion to get further along, towards full nudity and more severe sexual activity.
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2,562 images were assessed as criminal pseudo-photographs, and 416 assessed as criminal prohibited images. In another case, investigators tracked down a “serial abuser” operating from the US. In March, the police conducted coordinated raids across 31 nations in what Europol’s Guido Limmer described as the “largest operation ever” of its kind. Before authorities took it down on March 11, 2025, Kidflix was expanding at an alarming rate, with 3.5 new videos being uploaded every hour.
- In March, the police conducted coordinated raids across 31 nations in what Europol’s Guido Limmer described as the “largest operation ever” of its kind.
- This new July 2024 updated report evaluates what has changed since October 2023 with AI child sexual abuse imagery and the technology being abused to create it.
- In it’s investigation, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) compared official numbers published by Apple to numbers gathered through freedom of information requests.
- The Internet Watch Foundation’s powerful new tool for small businesses and startups.
- South Korean authorities arrested Son and seized his server in 2018, shutting down an operation active since at least June 2015.
Even the most recent of the two reports that were published, in 2010 and 2016, did not include data about some of the most pressing concerns, such as the trade in illicit imagery. Multiple police investigations over the past few years have broken up enormous dark web forums, including one known as Child’s Play that was reported to have had over a million user accounts. Increasingly, criminals are using advanced technologies like encryption to stay ahead of the police.
