112 held in European pedophilia investigation

An investigation into an online pedophile ring spanning 22 countries has resulted in 112 arrests and the identification
of 269 suspects, following an international investigation. Countless
unidentified children are the victims, according to European police
services.

The material confiscated in Europol's Operation Icarus is disturbing
and, for many, simply horrifying: images and video showing the sexual
abuse of babies and toddlers, uploaded onto the Internet and passed
around.

Europol Director Rob Wainwright explained: "It's the first time that
we have tackled a particular phenomenon on the Internet. File-sharing
networks and peer-to-peer services make it much easier for child sex
abuse suspects to exchange large quantities of material on the
Internet."

Peer-to-peer networks allow users to equally distribute file-sharing
capabilities, so that there is no central hub of data, making the
sharing of illegal images extremely difficult to trace. Additional
encryption software allows users to hide their identities and share
files anonymously.

The National High-Tech Crime Unit of the Danish Police spearheaded
the operation at the beginning of the year, using its expertise to
infiltrate and expose file-sharing networks that were swapping images of
child abuse.

The sheer amount of material they collected online was staggering,
said Jens Henrik Hoejbjerg, Danish national commissioner of police.

"The complexity is huge and challenging -- for example, one of the
Danish suspects had 29 terabytes of data that we confiscated. This is an
incredible amount of data for our investigators to handle. To put it
into perspective, that could hold about 9,000 hours of high-quality
video," Hoeibjerg said.

Europol showed Danish police video of scores of computers and hard
drives found in the investigation. The evidence collected by Danish
police was then passed on to 26 national police forces across Europe to
make arrests.

In many cases, the suspects already had been identified as possible
pedophiles. One suspect was believed to have been grooming a 12-year-old
child for sexual purposes, but police allegedly swooped in to make the
arrest before a meeting could be arranged.

Europol said it was working to identify and safeguard the victims,
attempting to trace them from the hours of confiscated footage.

"These children are victims of multiple crimes. First, when the
actual abuse takes place. Then, when it is filmed. And, thereafter,
every time the images are posted, circulated or viewed," Cecilia
Malmstrom, EU commissioner for home affairs, said in a statement
released by Europol.

The countries involved are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the
Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland,
Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain,
Sweden, Croatia, Norway and Switzerland. Operation Icarus is ongoing,
and more arrests are expected.


Source

well i bet Chokey is part of that fucked up group.

when i read the title i thought they were talking about the group "112"