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.
Thank you for posting this.
1.8 million users and they only caught 1000?
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 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.
Wow, with such a daring name as well. Fucking disgusting.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Oh no!
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.
Omg I remember Kidpix! It was great!
This… not so much.
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
Haha yep, kidpix deluxe 3 I remember fondly
Same here! We had it on a Macintosh LC 575. I will never forget those sound effects haha.
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?
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.
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.
Not just horror… the torment in that voice… fucking hell. Feel so bad for them both.
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
