Treating paedophiles

Gardaí are seizing increasing amounts of virtual or simulated child pornography, in the form of cartoons, text and computer graphic images.

The material, which does not feature real child victims, is frequently seized alongside child abuse material by gardaí under the Operation Ketch initiative, an intelligence-led operation aimed at proactively targeting those who download and disseminate such material, according to Garda and legal sources.

Investigators have also started to uncover images of minors created using sophisticated computer graphics programmes as well as standard adult pornography which has been “aged down”, meaning it has been altered to make the participants appear to be underage.

The US Justice Department has announced the seizure of one of the world's largest child pornography websites.

The site, which was called 'Welcome to Video', was hosted on the so-called "darknet" and funded by Bitcoin.

A 23-year-old South Korean man has been indicted for operating the website and 337 site users have been arrested and charged in countries around the world, including in Ireland.

Authorities described the website as the largest child sexual exploitation market by volume of content.

Eight terabytes of child sexual exploitation videos have been recovered, one of the largest seizures of its kind.

The images contained more than 250,000 unique videos.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/ul-researchers-use-maths-in-fight-against-online-child-abuse-1.4176555

Irish mathematicians have devised a method for effectively dismantling online child abuse networks imagery with limited police resources.

The academics from University of Limerick (UL) teamed up with the Brazilian Federal Police to examine the most efficient way of causing “maximum damage” to online forums sharing child abuse material through the arrest of key members.

The approach involves using the science of network analysis to determine the most active members – or “nodes”– of the group and focusing investigative resources on them. Because so much of the group activity flows through these members, their targeted removal could bring the whole group down.
Online child abuse investigations are notoriously resource intensive, especially when the material is shared on the so-called “dark web” which affords users a large degree of anonymity.

In Ireland, there is a backlog of up to 2½ years in examining devices suspected to contain abuse imagery. It takes an average of nearly five years for a case to progress from arrest to sentencing.