{"id":15706,"date":"2024-10-08T08:16:06","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T15:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=15706"},"modified":"2024-10-12T08:26:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T15:26:56","slug":"german-police-smash-child-sexual-abuse-site-deutsche-welle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=15706","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;German police smash child sexual abuse site&#8221;, Deutsche Welle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>October 8, 2024, Bonn<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>German police say they have shut down a &#8220;dizzyingly large&#8221; child sexual abuse image website with hundreds of thousands of users. Six people with links to the network were arrested.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/darknet\/t-19184846\">darknet<\/a>&nbsp;child abuse image platform with hundreds of thousands of users has been taken offline, the German state of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/north-rhine-westphalia\/t-18943637\">North Rhine-Westphalia<\/a>&#8216;s Interior Minister Herbert Reul said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reul told a press conference it was not yet possible to estimate how much material there was but that the scope of the investigation was &#8220;dizzyingly large and extensive.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What know about the investigation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Investigators said six men, aged 43 to 69 and suspected of being &#8220;leading figures behind the darkweb platform,&#8221; had been arrested and taken into custody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chief investigator Kai-Arne Gailer told journalists&nbsp;the operation had been a &#8220;massive blow&#8221; against&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/germany-strikes-against-child-sex-abuse-darknet-forums\/a-64129140\">distributors of the material<\/a>&nbsp;that would have a &#8220;lasting effect on the scene.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gailer said the website was used &#8220;solely&#8221; to share abuse images of children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Officials gave no estimate for the number of victims affected but said the abusive material shared on the site exclusively depicted girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Police arrested the men in nationwide raids at the end of September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Officers confiscated more than 1,500 items of evidence, including laptops, computers and cell phones. In addition, there were video cassettes and DVDs, totaling 94 moving boxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More questions to be asked<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For one accused alone, 13.5 terabytes of data had to be evaluated. With an average file size of four megabytes, this corresponds to around 3.4 million photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.dw.com\/image\/70437153_900.jpg\" alt=\"Press conference of the Cybercrime NRW contact point\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Police arrested the men in nationwide raids carried out at the end of September, the press conference heard<small>Image: Oliver Berg\/dpa\/picture alliance<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We are still in the middle of the investigation,&#8221; Gailer said, adding that police would now have to comb through the evidence collected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some 200 forces were deployed in the raid&nbsp;on the abuse platform. According to investigators last week, special units and forces such as evidence securing and arrest units, IT experts and data storage detection dogs were also involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Police were still investigating and would now have to comb through the evidence collected, Gailer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>International law enforcement authorities would also conduct further&nbsp;investigations into suspects, he said. &#8220;There is no continent that is not affected.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>rc\/wmr (AFP, dpa)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>October 8, 2024, Bonn German police say they have shut down a &#8220;dizzyingly large&#8221; child sexual abuse image website with hundreds of thousands of users. Six people with links to the network were arrested.\u00a0 A&nbsp;darknet&nbsp;child abuse image platform with hundreds of thousands of users has been taken offline, the German state of&nbsp;North Rhine-Westphalia&#8216;s Interior Minister [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15707,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15706\/revisions\/15707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}