What police call one of the largest international child porn rings – involving a reported 26,500 Internet users in 166 countries – has been cracked, German authorities announced September 26, and it all may have been triggered by a U.S. Postal Inspection Service discovery five years ago.
Suspects were found by way of computer files taken from a Magdeburg man last year, which included a huge e-mail distribution list used to swap child porn images of children as young as four months old, according to Reuters.
The suspects included people in the United States, Australia, and Switzerland, among other countries, but Reuters said authorities gave no further details, though 530 people in Germany were identified as suspects and being investigated for possession or distribution of child porn.
Those individuals, Reuters said, may include police officials, a border guard, teachers, and other educators, according to state attorney general Juergen Konrad.
In 1999, the Postal Inspection service discovered a list containing 389,000 people who had bought access to a child porn Website. That ultimately led to the current action, part of a sweep called Operation Marcy, involving about 1,500 police officers conducting hundreds of raids and seizing about 745 computers, at least 35,500 CDs, 8,300 floppy disks, and 5,800 videos, Reuters continued, including at least one photograph seized in North Rhine-Westphalia of a four month old baby being abused.
Authorities said network members got to the material by a password system where a designated manager verified members were contributing as well as viewing the material in question.
"This demonstrates that it’s not that easy to shut down or apprehend these criminals," said Adult Sites Against Child Pornography executive director Joan Irvine. "It took time and an international effort, including thousands of police officers, an American ISP, Intropol, billing and credit cards companies and probably various INHOPE member hotlines."
Irvine referred to the Internet Hotline Providers of Europe, the Internet safety and security group at whose Luxembourg conference she spoke on the child porn fight earlier this month. Among other results of that conference, ASACP will send validated child porn reports directly to hotlines in Spain, England, Germany, and other countries in the future, Irvine said, as well as to the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
"Those who are the worst are the people who are making money from this," she said. "They abuse both innocent children and take advantage of the illness of pedophilia."
