Instead, he apologized to Cannon, to the children he’d victimized, and to his family, none of whom attended the hearing. The prosecutor declined to repeat McIntosh’s username Thursday but said it referred to “a scary vehicle parents feared their children being abducted by.” According to Schiller, McIntosh told the rooms’ occupants that he preferred fantasies involving girls ages 10 to 13. Under the right circumstances, he added, he would entertain those that feature children as young as 7. “It isn’t pretty, it isn’t fun, and it isn’t right,” he said, but it doesn’t require the abuse of actual children. Serafini called the site “horrific” and blamed McIntosh’s involvement on a lifelong sexual addiction.
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‘Protected by Mediocean’, a leading solution for holistic ad verification has joined the Internet Watch Foundation to strengthen safeguards in the digital media supply chain and help protect children online. McIntosh, shackled in orange prison garb, scanned the empty seats reserved for his family as deputies led him from the courtroom. His hearing came one day before the man who killed Abby and Libby was sentenced to prison, too. At its conclusion, Cannon called McIntosh’s propensity to abuse children the most severe she had ever seen. The attorney stressed that McIntosh’s managerial role on the website was different from that of his codefendants.
Language Sites
Viewers could use a search engine to pick videos by age, including “preteen hardcore” and “pedophile.” Some adults form ‘friendships’ with minors online with the intention of eventually meeting to sexually abuse them. A young person may be asked to send photos or videos of themselves to a ‘friend’ that they might have met online.
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This technology is creating a new world of opportunity for offenders to create and share the most depraved forms of child abuse content. Researchers analysed chats that took place in dark web forums over the previous 12 months. We found evidence of growing interest in this technology, and of online offenders’ desire for others to learn more and create abuse images.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) And The Production Of Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
These considerations are also part of ongoing discussions about deepfake pornography, the creation of which the government also plans to criminalise. Europol has shut down one of the largest dark web pedophile networks in the world, prompting dozens of arrests worldwide and threatening that more are to follow. Man faces child porn charges for having nude pics of lover who is of consenting age. “While many people believe they can hide in these corners of the dark web, the online world is not anonymous,” said Det. Erik Bjarnason of the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team’s Internet Child Exploitation unit, speaking to Global News.
Justice Dept Shuts Down Dark Web Child Abuse Sites That Had 120,000 Members And Millions Of Files
- “We are overwhelmed, we are underfunded and we are drowning in the tidal wave of tragedy,” he said.
- The dark web, which is what I’m discussing here, is a small subset of the deep web, and refers to websites that are specifically trying to stay out of sight.
- Raid comes months after Jared Foundation’s director was arrested on child porn charges.
- In interviews, executives with some companies pointed to the voluntary monitoring and the spike in reports as indications of their commitment to addressing the problem.
- The Justice Department is touting the shutdown of those sites as a victory to help deter future abuse or production of unlawful images.
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. The punishment is more severe for those who distribute, possess, or import such material with the intent of making money. They may face three to ten years in prison and fines ranging from 60,000 to 200,000 baht.
He told investigators he didn’t think exchanging the images was harmful “because the harmful acts have already taken place.” Websites like theirs, he said, were “essential for people to express themselves.” These incredibly realistic deepfake, or partially synthetic, videos of child rape and torture are made by offenders using AI tools that add the face or likeness of a real person or victim. Europol said the operation had been the largest ever handled by its experts in fighting child sexual exploitation and one of the biggest cases the agency had supported in recent years. Steffen faces several charges, including possession of child pornography for exploitation, distributing it for commercial purposes, and involvement in importing, exporting, or producing such material. He admitted to the charges and revealed that he moved to Thailand after retiring from programming in Germany. 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).
Severity: Multiple Children, ‘Self-generated’ And 3-6-years-old
- They should also be informed about the risks of sexting so that they have the language to make safe decisions and navigate this in their own peer group.
- Among those was Kyle Fox, 26, of the United Kingdom, who was sentenced to 22 years for raping a 5-year-old boy and appearing on Welcome To Video sexually abusing a 3-year-old girl.
- The Internet Watch Foundation has documented concerning statistics about the rapid increase in the number of AI-generated images they encounter as part of their work.
- A sentencing memo submitted to the court said it was “no wonder” that he had tried to resist the FBI, rather than surrendering.
Prosecutors say they conducted 92 searches of homes and businesses tied to U.S. suspects, with 53 arrests so far. Prosecutors also said the investigation revealed “more than one million bitcoin addresses, signifying that the website had capacity for at least one million users. The indictment of Son in Washington is dated last year but only unsealed this morning, along with a parallel civil forfeiture action.
Federal Agencies
The technology it uses for receiving and reviewing reports of the material was created in 1998, nearly a decade before the first iPhone was released. To perform key upgrades and help modernize the system, the group has relied on donations from tech companies like Palantir and Google. Hany Farid, who worked with Microsoft to develop technology in 2009 for detecting child sexual abuse material, said tech companies had been reluctant for years to dig too deeply. The reporting included conversations with an admitted pedophile who concealed his identity using encryption software and who runs a site that has hosted as many as 17,000 such images.
A search of Mendonsa’s electronic devices revealed thousands of illicit images of children, “approximately 6,500 of which depicted identified victims of his conduct,” the statement said. 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.
Mendonsa committed his crimes from a local coffee shop, where he would connect to the internet, prosecutors said. With all of that in mind, you need to tread carefully when browsing, in terms of the sites you visit and the other users you interact with. Bear in mind too that laws about freedom of speech and censorship vary from country to country, which is part of the reason the dark web exists in the first place. That’s not to say you should assume any transactions you make on the dark web won’t ever be linked back to you—law enforcement has gotten pretty good at tracking down people who think they’ve been acting in the shadows. Even if you’re using a private, anonymized crypto wallet, there are other ways your identity can be revealed—even if it’s something as simple as letting a personal detail slip in an instant message. Other dark web search engines worth investigating are Ahmia, Torch, NotEvil, and the Onion URL Directory—just type out some keywords for what you’re looking for.
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. The law enforcement officials also pointed to problems with Microsoft’s Bing search engine, and Snap, the parent company of the social network Snapchat.
