US authorities have dismantled an international child pornography network on the Internet with 27,000 subscribers from around the world, announced Jeh Johnson, US Secretary of Homeland Security.
According to him, 14 people were arrested on charges of exploiting minors in connection with a website that operated on the so-called "hidden Internet" (also known as deepnet or darknet or Deep Web or Hidden Web), the content of which is not so easily accessible, consists only of websites that do not exist and are not discovered by search engines, and only a few people have access to it.
To access the Darknet, TOR is used, a program that facilitates maintaining the anonymity of its users and "reads" links that do not follow the HTTP protocol.
The administrator of the child pornography network and its leader appears to be a 27-year-old man, Jonathan Johnson, who was arrested in June in the state of Louisiana and faces a 20-year prison sentence.
The network operated from approximately June 2012 until June 2013, when Johnson was arrested
As authorities announced, the website had files with more than 2,000 videos and many more photos of about 250 children–mostly boys–from the US.
Their ages ranged from three to 17 years old–according to authorities–and they came from 39 American states.
About 150 arrest warrants were issued against suspects in the US and another 150 in other countries.
According to the BBC, victims were tricked – often by men posing as women – through social media and invited to “upload” pornographic material.
American authorities announced that this is one of the largest such networks being dismantled.
Source: newsit.gr
