{"id":8862,"date":"2019-12-26T23:38:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-27T07:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=8862"},"modified":"2019-12-27T15:54:56","modified_gmt":"2019-12-27T23:54:56","slug":"post1-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=8862","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Fighting the Good Fight Against Online Child Sexual Abuse&#8221;, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rad-summary\">By Gabriel J. X. Dance, Dec. 23, 2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"rad-summary\"><em>Several websites popular with sexual predators were thwarted last month after a determined campaign by groups dedicated to eliminating the content. It was a rare victory in an unending war.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"rad-summary\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/12\/22\/us\/child-sex-abuse-websites-shut-down.html\">The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"rad-summary\">[Text below accompanied by images]<\/p>\n<p class=\"rad-summary\"><em>Across the internet, sexual predators flock to websites where they share images of child sexual abuse.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"rad-summary\"><em>Seven years ago, three such sites went online. Groups dedicated to protecting children quickly started sending email notices to remove the illegal imagery.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"rad-summary\"><em>As the imagery grew more extreme, the sites drew hundreds of thousands of visitors and found ways to hide behind tech companies.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"rad-summary\"><em>Finally, one group in Canada overwhelmed the sites, forcing the images offline with a computer program that sent more than a million of the notices.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"rad-summary\"><em>It was an epic battle, but can it be repeated?<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">In late November, the moderator of three highly trafficked websites posted a message titled \u201cR.I.P.\u201d It offered a convoluted explanation for why they were left with no choice but to close.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The unnamed moderator thanked over 100,000 \u201cbrothers\u201d who had visited and contributed to the sites before their demise, blaming an \u201cincreasingly intolerant world\u201d that did not allow children to \u201cfully express themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">In fact, forums on the sites had been bastions of illegal content almost since their inception in 2012, containing child sexual abuse photos and videos, including violent and explicit imagery of infants and toddlers.<\/p>\n<div id=\"interactive-29child-series-breakout\" class=\"rad-interactive full_bleed\" data-id=\"100000006741683\" data-slug=\"29child-series-breakout\">\n<div class=\"rad-interactive-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"nytg-embed\" data-slug=\"series-breakout\">\n<div class=\"breakout desktop svelte-a4oy4e\">\n<h3 class=\"svelte-a4oy4e\"><em>Exploited<\/em><\/h3>\n<p><em>Articles in this series examine the explosion in online photos and videos of children being sexually abused. They include graphic descriptions of some instances of the abuse.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul class=\"svelte-a4oy4e\">\n<li class=\"svelte-a4oy4e\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/09\/28\/us\/child-sex-abuse.html\"><strong class=\"svelte-a4oy4e\">Part 1:<\/strong> The Web&#8217;s Darkest Corners<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<li class=\"svelte-a4oy4e\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/11\/09\/us\/internet-child-sex-abuse.html\"><strong class=\"svelte-a4oy4e\">Part 2:<\/strong> Pictures Are Forever<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<li class=\"svelte-a4oy4e\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/12\/07\/us\/video-games-child-sex-abuse.html\"><strong class=\"svelte-a4oy4e\">Part 3:<\/strong>Predators in Your Home<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The sites managed to survive so long because the internet provides enormous cover for sexual predators. Apps, social media platforms and video games are also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/11\/09\/us\/internet-child-sex-abuse.html\">riddled with <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/11\/09\/us\/internet-child-sex-abuse.html\">illicit material<\/a>, but they have corporate owners \u2014 like Facebook and Microsoft \u2014 that can monitor and remove it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">In a world exploding with the imagery \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/09\/28\/us\/child-sex-abuse.html\">45 million photos and videos of child sexual abuse were reported<\/a> last year alone \u2014 the open web is a freewheeling expanse where the underdog task of confronting the predators falls mainly to a few dozen nonprofits with small budgets and outsize determination.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Several of those groups, including a child exploitation hotline in Canada, hunted the three sites across the internet for years but could never quite defeat them. The websites, records show, were led by an experienced computer programmer who was adept at staying one step ahead of his pursuers \u2014 in particular, through the services of American and other tech companies with policies that can be used to shield criminal behavior.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">But the Canadian hotline developed a tech weapon of its own, a sophisticated tool to find and report illegal imagery on the web. When the sites found the tool directed at them, they fought back with a smear campaign, sending emails to the Canadian government and others with unfounded claims of \u201cgrave operational and financial corruption\u201d against the nonprofit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">It wasn\u2019t enough. The three sites were overwhelmed by the Canadian tool, which had sent more than 1 million notices of illegal content to the companies keeping them online. And last month, they were compelled to surrender.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s been a wonderful 7 years and we would\u2019ve loved to go for another 7,\u201d the sites\u2019 moderator wrote in his final post, saying they had closed because \u201cantis,\u201d short for \u201canti-pedophiles,\u201d were \u201chunting us to death with unprecedented zeal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The victory was cheered by groups fighting online child sexual abuse, but there were no illusions about the enormous undertaking that remained. Thousands of other sites offer anybody with a web browser access to illegal and depraved imagery of children, and unlike with apps, no special software or downloads are required.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The three shuttered sites had hidden their tracks for years using the services of Cloudflare, an American firm that provides companies with cyberprotections. They also found a hosting company, Novogara, that gave them safe harbor in the Netherlands \u2014 a small country with a robust web business and laws that are routinely exploited by bad actors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Cloudflare\u2019s general counsel said the company had cooperated with the nonprofits and law enforcement and cut ties with the sites seven times in all, as they slightly altered their web addresses to evade targeting. A spokesman for Novogara said the company had complied with Dutch law.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Last year, Europe eclipsed the United States as the top hosting location for child abuse material on the open web, according to a report by Inhope, a group that coordinates child abuse hotlines around the world. Within Europe, the Netherlands led the list.<\/p>\n<div id=\"interactive-29child-ncmec-breakout\" class=\"rad-interactive full_bleed\" data-id=\"100000006741625\" data-slug=\"29child-ncmec-breakout\">\n<div class=\"rad-interactive-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"nytg-embed\" data-slug=\"ncmec-breakout\">\n<div class=\"breakout svelte-1vb69wr\">In an interview in The Hague, the Dutch minister of justice, Ferdinand Grapperhaus, said he was embarrassed by the role Dutch companies played. \u201cI had not realized the extent of cruelty, and how far it goes,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">When hotlines like the one in Canada learn about illegal imagery, they issue a takedown notice to the owner of the website and its hosting company. In most cases, the content is removed within hours or days from law-abiding sites. But because the notices are not legally binding, some owners and web hosts ignore or delay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Several Dutch hosting companies will not voluntarily remove such content, insisting that a judge decide whether it meets the legal definition of so-called child pornography. Even when they agree, abuse imagery reappears almost at once, setting the cycle back in motion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The Dutch police say they do not have the resources to play what is essentially an endless game of Whac-a-Mole with these companies, according to Arda Gerkens, a Dutch senator who leads Meldpunt Kinderporno, the Dutch child abuse hotline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cIt takes a lot of time,\u201d Ms. Gerkens said, \u201cand basically, they are swamped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">That means results like last month\u2019s, while relished by hotlines around the world, are likely to remain rare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><strong>\u2018Our Little Community\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The trio of shuttered websites first emerged in early 2012, according to domain records and transcripts of online chats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Their professed goal was to offer an easily accessible digital space for pedophiles and sexual predators to indulge their twisted obsessions, which had often been shunned even on notorious websites like 4chan and 8chan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">At least initially, the sites steered clear of imagery that was obviously illegal, the records show, focusing instead on photos and videos of young children posing in revealing clothing. Even so, the founder of the sites identified in the transcripts expressed surprise in 2014 that they had \u201clasted so long.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">But the Canadians were already on to them. By then, the small hotline had been alerted to dozens of illegal images on the websites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">As the sites gained in popularity, child sexual abuse content became more and more common. The transcripts, which include over 10,000 time-stamped messages on a chat app, show how the founder, a man identifying himself as Avery Chicoine, reveled in the opportunity to interact with others who shared his interests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cWhat we got here,\u201d he wrote in 2015, \u201cis our little community.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">By 2017, the sites\u2019 home pages featured images of young girls that did not legally qualify as child pornography in most countries but signaled that there was plenty available a click away. One of the girls, no older than 7, lay on her back in sparse clothing with her legs spread; she had been a victim of sexual abuse, according to the Canadians, and was easily recognizable to predators through widely circulated imagery of the crimes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">As illegal material flooded the sites, so did visitors. SimilarWeb, which measures internet traffic, estimated that the most popular of the sites received millions of visits a month earlier this year from an average of more than 500,000 unique visitors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The moderator of the sites in recent months boasted about the traffic in a series of emails and encrypted messages to The New York Times, attributing the popularity to the extreme content.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The sites\u2019 many visitors were perhaps \u201cthe most hated people on earth,\u201d he said, describing them as belonging to an \u201coppressed sexual minority.\u201d He showed no remorse for their behavior, even casting the community of predators as visionaries whose crimes should be made legal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">He did not identify himself and would not say if he was Mr. Chicoine \u2014 the sites\u2019 founder, according to the chat transcripts \u2014 or if he knew him. Last year, a Canadian by the name of Avery Chicoine with a lengthy criminal record was arrested in British Columbia and charged with possessing and distributing child pornography. The Canadian authorities would not say whether the charges related to the websites. According to court documents, he pleaded not guilty, and a trial is set for next month. He and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The moderator would not address another pressing question: How had the sites managed to stay ahead of its pursuers so long?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">He said he did not want to hand a blueprint to his enemies, writing: \u201c99% of attempts to bring us down fail. So I want the antis to keep wasting 99% of their time, instead of figuring out what works.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">In the chat transcripts, however, there were clues about the sites\u2019 evasion tactics. They pointed to a major cybersecurity firm, Cloudflare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><strong>A High-Tech Hideaway<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Based in San Francisco, Cloudflare built a billion-dollar business shielding websites from cyberattacks. One of its most popular services \u2014 used by 10 percent of the world\u2019s top sites, according to the company \u2014 can hide clients\u2019 internet addresses, making it difficult to identify the companies hosting them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The protections are valuable to many legitimate companies but can also be a boon to bad actors, though Cloudflare says it is not responsible for the content on its clients\u2019 sites. The man accused of a mass shooting at a Walmart in Texas had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/08\/04\/technology\/8chan-shooting-manifesto.html\">posted his manifesto on 8chan<\/a>, an online message board that had been using Cloudflare\u2019s services and was well known for hosting hateful content. Cloudflare also came under criticism for <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.cloudflare.com\/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer\/\">providing services<\/a> to the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer. (The company has since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/08\/05\/technology\/8chan-cloudflare-el-paso.html\">ended its relationship<\/a> with both websites.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">In the chat transcripts, the man identifying as Mr. Chicoine showed he was fully aware of the company\u2019s advantages when he signed on. \u201cWhat cloudflare does is it masks and replaces your IP with one of theirs,\u201d he wrote in 2015, using the abbreviation for internet address.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">That year, he appeared to panic when a child abuse hotline identified one of his sites, telling a fellow moderator their operation was \u201cfinished.\u201d But when he later realized the hotline had sent the report to Cloudflare \u2014 and apparently not to the company that hosted the content \u2014 he seemed relieved. \u201cWait,\u201d he wrote, \u201cmay be ok.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">He was right.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">One month later, he expressed exasperation that a hotline had fired off another notice, this time to Cloudflare as well as the hosting company. The hotline confirmed the report with The Times. Still, the sites remained online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Interviews and records show that Cloudflare\u2019s services helped hold off the day of reckoning for Mr. Chicoine\u2019s sites by providing protections that forced hotlines to go to the company first.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the clearinghouse for abuse imagery in the United States, had sent Cloudflare notices about the sites starting in 2014, said John Shehan, a vice president at the center. Last year, it sent thousands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Even apart from the three sites, Mr. Shehan said, Cloudflare was well known to be used by those who post such content. So far this year, he said, the company had been named in 10 percent of reports about hosted child sexual abuse material. The center is in touch with Cloudflare \u201cevery day,\u201d Mr. Shehan said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Separately, records kept by the Canadian hotline, known as the Canadian Center for Child Protection, showed that since February 2017 there had been over 130,000 reports about 1,800 sites protected by Cloudflare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">In December, the company was offering its services to 450 reported sites, according to records reviewed by The Times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Through its general counsel, Doug Kramer, Cloudflare said it worked closely with hotlines and law enforcement officials and responded promptly to their requests. It denied being responsible for the images, saying customer data was stored on its servers only briefly. Efforts to eliminate the content, the company said, should instead focus on the web-hosting companies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Records from the Canadian hotline revealed several cases in which abuse material stayed on Cloudflare\u2019s servers even after the host company removed it. In one instance, the imagery remained on Cloudflare for over a week afterward, allowing predators to continue viewing it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cThe reality is that it is totally within Cloudflare\u2019s power to remove child sexual abuse material that they have on their servers,\u201d said Lloyd Richardson, the technology director at the Canadian hotline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">[Text below accompanied by images]<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>Records show that for several years, the sites were clients of Cloudflare, a U.S. tech company with servers in almost 200 cities in over 90 countries around the world that can be used to ward off cyberattacks.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>Cloudflare\u2019s protective services obscure a website\u2019s internet address. When you visit a protected site, you are actually communicating with a Cloudflare server located somewhere near you.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>Somebody visiting a protected site from Oklahoma, for example, may be directed to a Cloudflare server in Kansas City.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>That server will communicate with the website\u2019s server in turn, but only if it needs new information.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>Often, Cloudflare will already have the information requested in its systems.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>This means that images of abuse can remain on Cloudflare, even if they have been removed from the original host, according to records provided by a hotline in Canada.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">When asked why it did not cut ties with a number of companies known to host child sexual abuse imagery, Mr. Kramer said Cloudflare was not in the business of vetting customers\u2019 content. Doing so, he said, would have \u201ca lot of implications\u201d and is \u201csomething that we really have not entertained.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Still, he said, the company had stopped providing services over the past eight years to more than 5,000 clients that had shared abuse material. And on Wednesday, the company <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.cloudflare.com\/the-csam-scanning-tool\/\">announced<\/a> a new product \u2014 currently in development \u2014 that would allow clients to scan their own sites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The tension over Cloudflare\u2019s protections reflects a larger debate about the balance between privacy on the internet and the need of law enforcement to protect exploited children. For example, Facebook\u2019s recent decision to encrypt its Messenger app, the largest source of reports last year about abuse imagery, was hailed by privacy advocates but would make it much more difficult for the authorities to catch sexual predators.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Addressing that broad tension, Matt Wright, a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security, said law enforcement and the tech industry needed to find \u201ca mutual balance\u201d \u2014 \u201cone where companies intended to secure data, and protect privacy, don\u2019t get in the way of our need to have access to critical information intended to safeguard the public, investigate crimes and prevent future criminal activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><strong>Going Rogue in the Netherlands<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">There were other clues about the sites\u2019 ability to stay online, in a trail of activity across the web that led to the Netherlands. Internet criminals come from far and wide to leverage Dutch technology, some of the best in the world, for the purposes of spam, malware and viruses. They do this by using rogue hosting companies, which are infamously uncooperative except in response to legal requests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cI realize that because we have such excellent internet logistics, we now have it on our plate,\u201d said Mr. Grapperhaus, the country\u2019s minister of justice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">For child abuse sites like the ones identified as Mr. Chicoine\u2019s, a top draw has been the company Novogara, formerly known as Ecatel, one of the country\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/umbrella.cisco.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/20\/bitcoin-wallet-phishes-reveal-rogue-hosts\/\">most criticized hosting<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/umbrella.cisco.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/20\/bitcoin-wallet-phishes-reveal-rogue-hosts\/\">businesses<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The Chicoine sites were hosted on Novogara\u2019s servers for all of 2018 and through the early part of this year, records show. While working with the company, and without Cloudflare\u2019s protections at the time, the sites came under increasing pressure from the Canadians. Their hotline, along with at least four others around the world, stepped up their offensive, issuing hundreds of thousands of more reports about abuse imagery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The number was so great, according to the Dutch and Canadian hotlines, that Novogara blocked the groups\u2019 email addresses to avoid receiving additional notices. Ultimately, though, the targeting was effective: Novogara pulled the plug on the sites in May.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>[Read more about the hotlines\u2019 role in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/12\/22\/us\/hotlines-child-sexual-abuse.html\">global fight against abuse<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Aside from sites like Mr. Chicoine\u2019s, the Dutch have an even larger problem with sexual predators taking advantage of platforms used to upload and share images. Since June, a company that hosts those platforms, NFOrce, has appeared in more than half of reports the Dutch hotline has received about illegal imagery. Over the past three years, sites using NFOrce servers have received more than 100,000 notices of illegal content, records show, but the company has not removed the material, according to Ms. Gerkens, who leads the hotline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">NFOrce\u2019s sales operations manager, Dave Bakvis, said the company\u2019s hands were tied by Dutch laws, which prevent it from monitoring customer servers without a court order. He said NFOrce acted immediately when it received requests from the authorities. Separately, the websites themselves can and do remove the content.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cI hate child pornography,\u201d Mr. Bakvis said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The Dutch national prosecutor for cybercrimes, Martijn Egberts, said in an email that issues involving \u201csovereignty\u201d and \u201cjurisdiction\u201d complicated the removal of illegal material \u2014 leading the authorities to cooperate \u201cas much as possible\u201d with web hosts to get results.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Legislation is now being drafted that would require Dutch web hosts to keep the material out of their systems, essentially forcing to them to scan for it. If a company falls short, it could face ever-increasing fines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Ben van Mierlo, the national police coordinator for online child sexual exploitation, said in an email that companies like Novogara \u201csee themselves as a provider of a service.\u201d The challenge for the Dutch authorities and lawmakers, he said, was to convert them into partners in preventing the spread of illegal imagery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cThere is no space in the Netherlands for those individuals or companies that threaten these basic rights for children,\u201d Mr. van Mierlo said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><strong>The Final Assault<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">By May of this year, the moderator of the three sites was apoplectic, complaining in an email to The Times that \u201ctolerance\u201d for his views was coming to a halt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Over the next several months, the sites hopscotched around the world, finding more than a half-dozen new hosts \u2014 to pick up where Novogara left off \u2014 in Denmark, Russia, the Seychelles and elsewhere. For years, they had deployed a similar tactic of changing the last part of their web address \u2014 moving from .com to .org, for example \u2014 to avoid being targeted and blocked. Companies and governments that provide these domains often <a href=\"https:\/\/johncarr.blog\/2018\/05\/14\/cherie-blair-speaks-out\/\">do not coordinate<\/a> with one another, allowing offenders to move around the globe while largely preserving their site\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">But there was no hiding this time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">[Text below accompanied by images]<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>Records reviewed by The Times show that over seven years, the websites were directed to servers in over 20 countries, many of which are shown here.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>A borderless internet means bad actors can move their sites between countries, and even continents, in seconds.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>This complicates the work of child abuse hotlines and law enforcement agencies trying to eradicate images of child sexual abuse.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The Canadian hotline, working from offices in Winnipeg, Manitoba, were using a computer program named Arachnid to crawl the internet in search of Mr. Chicoine\u2019s sites, and to send takedown notices whenever it identified illegal material.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">And as soon as the three sites reappeared somewhere, the Canadians reached out to the new hosts. In all, they found more than 18,000 confirmed images of abuse on the pages, reporting most of them hundreds of times each. It is also possible that law enforcement officials and other groups directed their firepower at the sites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Signy Arnason, the associate executive director of the Canadian center, described Arachnid as a \u201csurvivor-centric\u201d endeavor, inspired by a survey that found victims of child sexual abuse feared being recognized in person by those who had viewed their abuse online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Since its launch two years ago, Arachnid has found more than 1.6 million confirmed images of child sexual abuse, and has sent more than 4.8 million takedown notices to websites and hosting providers. The British child sexual abuse hotline, the Internet Watch Foundation, has also developed a \u201cspider\u201d to crawl the internet.<\/p>\n<div class=\"rad-article\" data-slug=\"100000006871917\">\n<div class=\"rad-story-body\">\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cArachnid is one oar \u2014 a big oar \u2014 in a ship of many oars rowing against this issue,\u201d said Denton Howard, executive director of Inhope, the organization supporting child abuse hotlines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Throughout the battle, the moderator of the sites would email the Canadians, accusing them of corruption and filling their inboxes with spam. He also contacted Canadian government agencies with false claims about the center, and even built software that altered the child sexual abuse imagery, hoping to trick Arachnid into skipping it over.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">It was not enough. All imagery of abuse has been removed from the sites, and the forums for the predators are closed, at least while their opponents have the upper hand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">But as a parting shot, the home pages were filled with links to other sites that offered similar content, giving criminals a road map to continue their pursuits \u2014 and the groups dedicated to stopping them a list of new targets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>Michael H. Keller contributed reporting from New York.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><em>Produced by Rich Harris, Virginia Lozano and Rumsey Taylor.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">To report online child sexual abuse or find resources for those in need of help, contact the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.missingkids.org\/gethelpnow\" target=\"_blank\">National Center for Missing and Exploited Children<\/a>at 1-800-843-5678.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rad-article-credits\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Gabriel J. X. Dance, Dec. 23, 2019 Several websites popular with sexual predators were thwarted last month after a determined campaign by groups dedicated to eliminating the content. It was a rare victory in an unending war. The New York Times [Text below accompanied by images] Across the internet, sexual predators flock to websites [&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\/8862"}],"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=8862"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8876,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8862\/revisions\/8876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}