On average, around 3.5 new videos were uploaded to the platform every hour, many of which were previously unknown to law enforcement.
Absolutely sick and vile. I hope they honey potted the site and that the arrests keep coming.
European police say KidFlix, "one of the largest pedophile platforms in the world," busted in joint operation.
Submitted 6 days ago by Tea@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
blazeknave@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I just got ill
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Fuck man. I used to use a program called “Kidpix” when I was a kid. It was like ms paint but with fun effects and sounds.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
El_Azulito@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Holy. Shit. This is somehow glorious on an oled iPad screen. The late 1900s never looked so good.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Thank you for given me a nostalgia jolt that I didn’t know I wanted, but am fully enjoying right now
candyman337@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
When I read the very first bit I was like “oh is that a new kids tv streaming platform from the same creators as kidpix?” Then I was immediately hit with the reality of the grim world we live in
Deceptichum@quokk.au 6 days ago
dan@upvote.au 6 days ago
I loved the explosion sound, and the “oh no” when you click the undo button. I have the Windows versions of KidPix on CD somewhere.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Haha yep, kidpix deluxe 4 I remember fondly
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Same here! We had it on a Macintosh LC 575. I will never forget those sound effects haha.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Omg I remember Kidpix! It was great!
This… not so much.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Oh no!
j0ester@lemmy.world 5 days ago
They also seized 72,000 illegal videos from the site and personal information of its users, resulting in arrests of 1,400 suspects around the world.
Wow
Maeve@midwest.social 5 days ago
1,393 suspects identified 79 suspects arrested Over 3,000 electronic devices seized 39 children protected
RedPostItNote@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Imagine if humans evolved enough to self-solve the problem of liking this shit.
Lightsong@lemmy.world 6 days ago
1.8m users, how the hell did they ran that website for 3 years?
danny161@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
That’s unfortunately (not really sure) probably the fault of Germanys approach to that. It is usually not taking these websites down but try to find the guys behind it and seize them. The argument is: they will just use a backup and start a “KidFlix 2” or sth like that. Some investigations show, that this is not the case and deleting is very effective. Also the German approach completely ignores the victim side. They have to deal with old men masturbating to them getting raped online. Very disturbing…
TheProtagonist@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I think you are mixing here two different aspects of this and of similar past cases. I the past there was often a problem with takedowns of such sites, because german prosecutors did not regard themselves as being in charge of takedowns, if the servers were somewhere overseas. Their main focus was to get the admins and users of those sites and to get them into jail.
In this specific case they were observing this platform (together with prosecutors from other countries in an orchestrated operation) to gather as much data as possible about the structure, the payment flows, the admins and the users of this before moving into action and getting them arrested. The site was taken down meanwhile.
If you blow up and delete)such a darknet service immediately immediately upon discovery, you may get rid of it (temporarily) but you might not catch many of the people behind it.
recall519@lemm.ee 6 days ago
This feels like one of those things where couch critics aren’t qualified. There’s a pretty strong history of three letter agencies using this strategy successfully in other organized crime industries.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Honestly, if the existing victims have to deal with a few more people masturbating to the existing video material and in exchange it leads to fewer future victims it might be worth the trade-off but it is certainly not an easy choice to make.
drmoose@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I used to work in netsec and unfortunately government still sucks at hiring security experts everywhere.
That being said hiring here is extremely hard - you need to find someone with below market salary expectation working on such ugly subject. Very few people can do that. I do believe money fixes this though. Just pay people more and I’m sure every European citizen wouldn’t mind 0.1% tax increase for a more effective investigation force.
Maeve@midwest.social 5 days ago
And yet there are cases like Kim Dotcom, Snowden, Manning, Assange…
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 5 days ago
They have to deal with old men masturbating to them getting raped online.
The moment it was posted to wherever they were going to have to deal with that forever. It’s not like they can ever know for certain that every copy of it ever made has been deleted.
_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
it says “this hidden site”, meaning it was a site on the dark web. It probably took them awhile to figure out were the site was located so they could shut it down.
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 5 days ago
it says “this hidden site”, meaning it was a site on the dark web.
Not just on the dark web (which technically is anything not indexed by search engines) but hidden sites are specifically a TOR thing (though Freenet/Hyphanet has something similar but it’s called something else). Usually a TOR hidden site has a URL that ends in .onion and the TOR protocol has a structure for routing .onion addresses.
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Bribes, most likely. Until the wrong people (the Right People) became aware of it.
muhyb@programming.dev 6 days ago
Wow, with such a daring name as well. Fucking disgusting.
Siegfried@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I once saw a list of defederated lemmy instances. In most cases, and I mean like 95% of them, the reason of thedefederation was pretty much in the instance name. CP everywhere. Humanity is a freaking mistake.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I regularly see people on Lemmy advocating for pedophilia, at LEAST every 3 months as a popular, upvoted stance. I argue with them in my history
Squizzy@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Isnit not encouraging that it is ostracised and removed from normal people. There are horrible parts of everything in nature, life is good despite those people and because of the rest combatting their shittiness
drmoose@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You’re just seeing “survivor’s bias” (as nasty as that sounds in this case) not a general representation.
drmoose@lemmy.world 5 days ago
And it didn’t even require sacrificing encryption huh!
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
“See we caught these guys without doing it, thank of how many more we can catch if we do! Like all the terrorists America has caught with violating their privacy. …Maybe some day they will.”
Ronno@feddit.nl 5 days ago
Basically the only reason I read the article is to know if they needed a “backdoor” in encryption, guess the don’t need it, like everyone with a little bit of IT knowledge always told them.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
Here’s a reminder that you can submit photos of your hotel room to law enforcement, to assist in tracking down CSAM producers. The vast majority of CSAM is produced in hotels. So being able to match furniture, bedspreads, carpet patterns, wallpaper, curtains, etc in the background to a specific hotel helps investigators narrow down when and where it was produced.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Wouldnt this be so much better if we got hoteliers on board instead of individuals
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 5 days ago
They’re only concerned with the room fees.
Don’t see, don’t tell.
Sadly.
thickertoofan@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Nice to know. Thanks.
faberyayo@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Thank you for posting this.
clearedtoland@lemmy.world 6 days ago
With everything going on right now, the fact that I still feel physically sick reading things like this tells me I haven’t gone completely numb yet. Just absolutely repulsive.
unphazed@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I know I’m not heartless yet because I am still traumatized by the brick in the window video…
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 6 days ago
Gonna ruin me, but seconding. Brick in the window video?
BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
I’ll probably regret asking, but I’m out of the loop and insatiably curious.
Brick in the window video?
Scrollone@feddit.it 6 days ago
Fuck. Don’t make me think about that video. Fuck. Shit.
thecomeback@programming.dev 5 days ago
During the investigation, Europol’s analysts from the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) provided intensive operational support to national authorities by analysing thousands of videos.
I don’t know how you can do this job and not get sick because looking away is not an option
T156@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You do get sick, and I would be most surprised if they didnt allow people to look away and take breaks/get support as needed.
ziggurat@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yes, my wife used to work in the ER, she still tells the same stories over and over again 15 years later, because the memories of the horrible shit she saw doesn’t go away
Rythm@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
Indeed, but in my country the psychological support is even mandatory. Furthermore, I know there have been pilots with using ML to go through the videos. When the system detects explicit material, an officer has to confirm it. But it prevents them going through it all day every day for each video. I think Microsoft has also been working on a database with hashes that LEO provides to automatically detect materials that have already been identified. All in all, a gruesome job, but fortunately technique is alleviating the harshest activities bit by bit.
the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 5 days ago
This kind of shit is why i noped out of the digital forensics field. I would have killed myself if I had to see that shit everyday.
sfu@lemm.ee 5 days ago
I’m sure many of them numb themselves to it, and pretend it isn’t real in order to do the job. Then unfortunately, I’m sure some of them get addicted themselves.
Similar to undercover cops who do drugs while undercover, then get addicted to the drugs.
SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
Massive congratulations to Europol and its partners in taking this shit down and putting these perverts away. However, they shouldn’t rest on their laurels. The objective now is to ensure that the distribution of this disgusting material is stopped outright and that no further children are harmed.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 5 days ago
The objective now is to ensure that the distribution of this disgusting material is stopped outright and that no further children are harmed.
Sure, it’ll only cost you every bit of your privacy as governments make illegal and eliminate any means for people to communicate without the eye of Big Brother watching.
Every anti-privacy measure that governments put forward is always like “We need to be able to track your location in real time, read all of your text messages and see every picture that your phone ever takes so that we can catch the .001% of people who are child predators. Look at how scary they are!
Why are you arguing against these anti-pedophile laws?! You don’t support child sex predators do you?!”
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 days ago
This also helps child predators and other traffickers.
Having backdoors and means to create stalkerware and spy after people in various ways benefits those who have energy to use them and some safety. Lack of truly private communications also benefits them. The victims generally have very little means to ask for help without the criminals knowing that.
Human trafficking, sexual exploitation, drugs, all these things are high-value crime. They benefit law enforcement getting part of the pie, which means that law enforcement having better ability to surveil communications will not help against them, - the criminals will generally know what is safe and what is not for them, and they will get assistance in such services.
Surveillance helps against non-violent crime - theft, smuggling, fraud, and usually only low-value operations.
Surveillance doesn’t help against high-value crime with enough incentive to make connections in law enforcement, and money finds a way, so those connections are made and operations continue.
Giving more power to law enforcement means law enforcement trading it in relationship with organized crime. To function better, it needs more transparent, clean and accountable organization, not more power.
But all this is not important, when someone is guilt-shaming you into giving up your full right, you should just tell them to fuck off. This concerns privacy.
This also concerns guns. The reason it’s hard to find arguments in favor of gun (I mean combat arms, not handguns or hunting rifles) ownership is because successful cases for it are rare (by nature, that’s normal, you don’t need a combat rifle in your life generally, your country also doesn’t need a nuke generally, but it has one and many more), and unsuccessful (bad outcome, but proving the need for gun ownership) are more common, but hard to notice, - it’s every time you obey when you shouldn’t (by that I mean that you harm others by obeying).
Point being - no person telling you that dignity should be traded for better life has any idea. You are not a criminal for desiring and achieving privacy, you are also not a criminal for doing the same with means to defend yourself, you are also not a criminal for saying all politicians and bureaucrats of your country are shit-swimming jerks and should be fired, and even demanding it. And if someone makes a law telling you differently, that’s not a law, just someone forgot they are not holding Zeus by the beard.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Kidflix sounds like a feature on Nickelodeon. The world is disgusting.
Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Goddam what an obvious fucking name. If you wrote a procedural cop show where the child traffickers ran a site called KidFlix, you’d be laughed out of the building for being so on-the-nose.
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
1.8 million users and they only caught 1000?
The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 5 days ago
The name of it sounds like a streaming service for children’s movies and TV shows. Like, Netflix for kids. In the past 5 years I have seen at least 3 deepweb social communities that started out normally, with a lot of people talking shit and enjoying anonymous free speech. Then I log in a couple weeks or months later to find CP being posted and no mods doing anything to stop it. In all those cases, I reported the site to the FBI anonymously and erased my login from my password manager.
GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Every now and again I am reminded of my sentiment that the introduction of “media” onto the Internet is a net harm. Maybe 256 dithered color photos like you’d see in Encarta 95 and that’s the maximum extent of what should be allowed. There’s just so much abuse from this kind of shit… despicable.
Corno@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Geez, two million? Good riddance. Great job everyone!
TJC@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Maybe Jeff Bezos will write an article about him and editorialize about “personal liberty”. I have to keep posting this because every day another MAGA/lover - religious bigot or otherwise pretend upstanding community member is indicted or arrested for heinous acts against women and children.
Kobo@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Good fucking riddance
Gaxsun@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
If that’s the actual splash screen that pops up when you try to access it (no, I’m not going to go to it and check, I don’t want to be on a new and exciting list) then kudos to the person who put that together. Shit goes hard. So do all the agency logos.
futatorius@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Leak the subscribers’ details.
quack@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Excellent work. That’s an unimaginable amount of abuse material.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Does it feel odd to anyone else that a platform for something this universally condemned in any jurisdiction can operate for 4 years, with a catchy name clearly thought up by a marketing person, its own payment system and nearly six figure number of videos? I mean even if we assume that some of those 4 years were intentional to allow law enforcement to catch as many perpetrators as possible this feels too similar to fully legal operations in scope.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
Illegal business can operate online for a long time if they have good OpSec. Anonymous payment systems are much easier these days because of cryptocurrencies.
BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 6 days ago
Is that why Trump is so for them?
x00z@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It’s a side effect of privacy and security. The one side effect they’re trying to use to undermine all of the privacy and security.
TheProtagonist@lemmy.world 6 days ago
This has nothing to do with privacy! Criminals have their techniques and methods to protect themselves and their “businesses” from discovery, both in the real world and in the online world. Even in a complete absence of privacy they would find a way to hide their stuff from the police - at least for a while.
In the real world, criminals (e.g. drug dealers) also use cars, so you could argue, that druck trafficking is a side effect of people having cars…
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
A marketing person? They took “Netflix” and changed the first three letters lol
taladar@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
So you are saying it is too creative for the average person in marketing?
imetators@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Exactly! There are plethora of *flix sites out there including adult ones. It does not take much of marketing skill to name site like this.
lumony@lemmings.world 5 days ago
It would feel odd, but you have to remember we live in a world where Epstein was allowed to get away with what he did until the little people found out.
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Epstein was very smart, and figured out early on there were many, many rich pedophiles.
So, he got buddy buddy with them, supplied young girls to them.
BUT, he filmed the encounters in secret, and blackmailed the shit out of these people.
He was smart enough to become obscenely rich on Wall Street legitimately, but he liked to bang little girls, found other who did, and then extorted them.
There’s an anecdote about how when Epsteing was holding court with other Aristos, they would bring up any random subject, to get his opinion.
What would he say? “What does that have to do with pussy?”
Many, many people have verified that. But because we was filthy rich, everyone just laughed, and blew it off.
Epstein was murdered. I’m not a conspiracy nut. It’s just blatantly obvious. The 2 guards on duty admitted to fucking off (bribed,) and were aquitted.
nbcnews.com/…/case-dropped-jail-guards-duty-night…
sleen@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
With the amount of sites that are easily accessed on the dark net though the hidden wiki and other sites. This might as well be a honeypot from the start. And it’s doesn’t only apply to cp but to drugs, fake ids and other shit.
quack@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
No judge would authorise a honeypot that runs for multiple years, hosting original child abuse material meaning that children are actively being abused to produce content for it. That would be an unspeakable atrocity. A few years ago the Australian police seized a similar website and ran it for a matter of weeks to gather intelligence and even that was considered too far for many.
swelter_spark@reddthat.com 5 days ago
It definitely seems weird how easy it is to stumble upon CP online, and how open people are about sharing it, with no effort made, in many instances, to hide what they’re doing. I’ve often wondered how much of the stuff is spread by pedo rings and how much is shared by cops trying to see how many people they can catch with it.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 5 days ago
If you have stumbled on CP online in the last 10 years, you’re either really unlucky or trawling some dark waters. This ain’t 2006. The internet has largely been cleaned up.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 5 days ago
it can hide in plain sight, and then when you dig into someones profile, it can lead to someone or a group discussing CSAM and beastility, not just CP. like a site similar to r/pics, or porn site.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 6 days ago
There are a few countries that would disagree
taladar@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Which countries do you have in mind where videos of sexual child abuse are legal?