Watching the watchers: Taskforce Argos and the evidentiary issues involved with infiltrating Dark Web child exploitation networks

Bleakley, Paul

doi:10.1177/0032258x18801409

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This enabled Taskforce Argos to undertake operations against CEM networks by joining and engaging with the criminal conspiracies engaged in the production and distribution of CEM. Argos was able to use a uniquely powerful investigative strategy not available in other jurisdictions (Bleakley, 2018;Høydal, Stangvik & Hansen 2017).…”

Section: Sweetiementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A common investigative method was to impersonate persons less than 18 years on online chat sites that allow users to 'randomly' chat or socialize with strangers without the need to register such as Omegle or Chatroulette. If their conversational partner attempted to groom or coerce the investigators' child persona and arranged to meet with the Argos agents' child persona, the agents contacted the local authorities and the predator was apprehended by police assigned to observe the meeting (Bleakley, 2018). However, Argos also employed a more controversial investigative techniques such as the brief but potent covert takeover of a CEM website.…”

Section: Sweetiementioning

confidence: 99%

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Child sex abuse images and exploitation materials

Broadhurst¹

2019

The Human Factor of Cybercrime

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Online markets for child exploitation materials (CEM) or child sex abuse images have developed in tandem with the rapid expansion of the Internet. CEM images of sexual abuse of children, often photographs and videos, include live transmission of sexual assault as well as simulated experiences using virtual reality technology or robotics. User-generated images, sexting and 'revenge porn' are new sources of image-based abuse often involving older children. The content of CEM constitutes a crime scene that can help trace offenders and identify victims, but poses challenges for digital forensics. This chapter describes the prevalence and nature of CEM, profiles of offenders and victims, and law enforcement responses. Discussed are definitions of CEM; the relationship between online and offline or contact offending; emerging developments in CEM; the role of transnational policing; and international collaborative and regulatory approaches to suppress CEM.

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Section: Sweetiementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sweetiementioning

confidence: 99%

Child sex abuse images and exploitation materials

Broadhurst¹

2019

The Human Factor of Cybercrime

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Proactive investigations are considered a creative and successful response to CSAM (Mitchell et al, 2005) that has become increasingly necessary, particularly with establishment of the dark web (Bleakley, 2019).…”

Section: Proactive Investigationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The theory and evidence behind law enforcement strategies that combat child sexual abuse material

Christensen

Rayment-McHugh

Prenzler

et al. 2021

International Journal of Police Science & Management

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This article presents a synthesis of current and innovative law enforcement strategies to combat child sexual abuse material. Six law enforcement strategies were identified through an international literature search and verified by experts via roundtable discussion. Six strategies were identified: public intelligence gathering, polygraph, proactive investigations, risk assessment prioritization, resourced taskforces and collaborative partnerships. Strategies are reported via an adapted version of the ‘EMMIE’ framework: effects, mechanisms, moderators, and implementation considerations. Through applying the adapted framework, this article explains how and why each law enforcement strategy may work, and identifies the factors that may impact each strategy’s success. As a result, this article offers a valuable resource for practice professionals across the globe. The synthesis does not include an assessment of whether prior evidence supports the strategies discussed.

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“…In addition to drug markets, dark web sites also host other illegal activities, including child exploitation material. With untraceable shared files and encrypted user identifications, law enforcement agencies struggle to shut down child abuse imagery sites and identify the hosts, contributing to a growing base of such sites on the dark web (Bleakley 2018). The content of these sites is quite disturbing and includes violent, taboo, and illegal images and videos (Moore and Rid 2016).…”

Section: The Dark Webmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tor and the City: MSA-Level Correlates of Interest in Anonymous Web Browsing

Lindner

Pryciak

Elsner

2020

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In the twenty-first century, Americans have put more of their lives online while the US government has expanded its mass surveillance apparatus. Interest in anonymity-granting technologies like The Onion Router (Tor) has grown substantially as citizens seek to protect their privacy. However, this same technology can be used to engage in illegal activity on the dark web. This study examines how interest in the dark web, public attention to the 2013 Snowden revelations, and metro-area political ideology are associated with public interest in Tor. We link data from multiple sources including Google Trends, the American Community Survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study for the forty-nine largest US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) from 2006–2015 (n=490). Broadly, we find that metro areas with liberal citizen ideology and greater interest in the dark web were more likely to search for Tor. When controlling for the level of interest in the dark web, the Snowden revelations of 2013 had no significant impact on interest in Tor. These findings suggest that the lure of the dark web and left-leaning ideological contexts offer stronger explanations for interest in anonymity-granting technology than the public attention brought to mass surveillance by the Snowden revelations.

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Watching the watchers: Taskforce Argos and the evidentiary issues involved with infiltrating Dark Web child exploitation networks

Cited by 17 publications

References 8 publications

Child sex abuse images and exploitation materials

Child sex abuse images and exploitation materials

The theory and evidence behind law enforcement strategies that combat child sexual abuse material

Tor and the City: MSA-Level Correlates of Interest in Anonymous Web Browsing

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