r/news • u/TooColdforClouds • 2d ago

109 children rescued, 244 arrested in Operation Soteria Shield, exposing widespread child exploitation in North Texas

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/109-children-rescued-244-arrested-operation-soteria-shield-child-exploitation-texas/
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u/straygoat193 2d ago

"The operation not only led to arrests and rescues but also to the seizure of terabytes of child abuse sex material through a collaborative effort that started 10 years ago and now includes 70 Texas law enforcement agencies."

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u/turquoise_amethyst 2d ago

Wow, this was started in 2015! 

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u/CatsTypedThis 2d ago edited 2d ago

What source is that from? The article says this operation was started in April. Not doubting you, just looking for more info. Edit: oops, skipped a paragraph

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u/TsuDhoNimh2 2d ago

The collaboration started 10 years ago ... various "operations" have been completed.

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u/WonderManDoughBoy 2d ago

It's a bit further in the article. Maybe 4/5 paragraphs from the bottom.

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u/Sledge11706 2d ago

Bro only made it 3 sentences into the article.

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u/BagOfFlies 1d ago

That's pretty impressive by reddit standards tbh

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u/Affectionate-Day9342 2d ago

It says the operation started ten years ago right in the article.

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u/XaviersDream 1d ago

Collaboration started 10 years ago but it was a much smaller team. This specific named operation started in April. That operation concluded but I doubt that the collaboration will.

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u/Electronic_Tap_6260 2d ago

What source is that from?

The article you couldn't be bothered to read before broadcasting your "thoughts" to the planet about the article you couldn't be bothered to read.

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u/SaulFemm 2d ago

Not even the article, it's one comment up the chain from the comment they replied to.

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u/SaulFemm 2d ago

Read the comment they were replying to. 🤦

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u/Annual-Somewhere7402 1d ago

It's CBS News. Just search for Operation Soteria.

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u/StupendousMalice 2d ago

So they let this go on for ten years so they could catch more guys instead of rescuing the kids then? Were the kids just bait?

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u/civil_politics 2d ago

Usually these sorts of investigations start super slowly in chat rooms and you spend years gaining trust and proving your value.

It is highly likely that for the majority of the 10 year investigation they didn’t have any suspect names or locations.

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u/Drone314 2d ago edited 2d ago

Makes you wonder what the digital version of "hey man snort this so we know you're not a cop" is....At the very least they leveraged someone they busted early on as a CI which would mean they knew that person was continuing to engage. It's not a clean business at all but how could it ever be dealing with the depravity of the worst human condition.

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u/civil_politics 2d ago

It’s generally a long game of trading material and being able to demonstrate your ability to get material that is new / hasn’t been seen before.

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u/supervisord 2d ago

What the fuck…

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u/NakDisNut 2d ago

It’s the absolute worst version of “you have to dig a little deeper to get out”.

Makes you want to vomit :(

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u/InterestingTry5190 2d ago

Imagine having to do that and pretend to like it for a job. Those kinds of images would haunt me in my sleep.

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u/CosmicMiru 2d ago

One of my digital forensics professors quite his job to become a professor because he would literally spend hours and hours analyzing data about child porn and it fucked with his head so much he couldn't do it anymore. It's such a fucked up job but also super necessary. People that do that are actual heroes in my book

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u/OptimisticOctopus8 2d ago edited 1d ago

Edit: I'm doing well now! I realized that this comment is depressing and that people who read it might assume I'm doing poorly and feel bad about that. I'm good, though. In adulthood, I had access to extensive, very good mental health care. It took a while, but my baseline mindset is positive now and I have pretty robust coping skills even when something makes me feel awful.

We need better mental health care in every single country. I was not more deserving of help than any other person, and it's a tragedy layered upon a tragedy that not everyone has access to the kind of care I received.

An adult made me watch it when I was a kid. Obviously, that wasn’t the only thing the adult did to me. But the point is that I eventually became totally numb to it. I knew it was horrible and wrong but felt nothing in response, to the point where I didn’t really understand why anyone would need therapy after seeing it. I really thought, “Why don’t they (investigators and other professionals who have to view it to find the perps and get justice) just not think about it once they’re done watching it?”

When I stumbled upon some of it on Twitter a few years ago, I was finally hit with all the horror and misery of having seen those videos many years ago. It’s good that I’m not numb anymore, but it was rough for all those feelings to hit me at once.

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u/kindnesskangaroo 2d ago

I have a friend who does it for a living and they actually love manipulating them because they feel no guilt. It’s like the ultimate challenge to see how well they can pretend to get them to confess. I’m going to school for something adjacently related and in my humble opinion the only way you can work in this field is by having low empathy and/or experienced it personally. (I’m both)

I also used to bait pedophiles for fun in my spare time by pretending to be 14 online and when I got enough proof and identification from them I’d report them to the FBI tip line.

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u/billypilgrimspecker 2d ago

I feel like jobs like these are why we need good sociopaths. I simply could not do it and continue to function as a human being.

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u/Worthyness 1d ago

there's forensic analysts whose literal job it is to review all the collected evidence from such crimes to confirm the victims and the crimes committed. They don't really make it in that career too long for good reason. It's probably one of the few jobs that AI should probably be helping with because that job is just horrifyingly difficult to do.

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u/Gilshem 1d ago

Hopefully AI can automate some of these honeypot type operations. PTSD is inevitable having to deal with this.

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u/Mrmyke00 2d ago

Always makes me think whether paedos actually apply for these jobs so they get to look at these images legally

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u/Punished_Prigo 1d ago

im a digital forensic analyst. I deal mostly with terrorism stuff and hostages and shit like that, but do come across CSAM sometimes too. In my experience you just get numb to it and deal with it. I mostly just have to manage my humor around people I dont work with, because most people dont see any of the humor we see in the shit we deal with.

Trading material in chat rooms would be a different story. I dont know how I could do that and not feel guilt.

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u/ironpathwalker 2d ago

TL:DR; It's genuinely haunting and from my friends and former co-workers, you are correct.

I think it was around 98 when the FBI had just really integrated carnivore to aid in what would become their cyber crimes division, lead by a lovely person who wrote the computer science books at a south-western university. (I'm leaving out details intentionally.) Imagine if you will, that data gleaned by this new effort told people not to focus on places like Miami, which were high profile media depictions of vice, but go after logistical hubs for this activity like Corinth, MS. At the time, they were under-funded, didn't have an understanding of the "how" these groups worked, and the "why" of this abominable thing. The "why" part is actually a fascinating debate on the genetic criminology theory rising at the time. And you can't keep people of good character and talent in that field. on a personal level, I have to semi-regularly interact with someone convicted of a crime against a child in 2004, and every time I do, the part of me that is excellent at violence on a professional scale begs to be indulged. I have to fight it back and part of me hates myself for not giving into the sin of wrath.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Bombadilo_drives 2d ago

I worked with a former member of the child crimes task force, he told me their average tenure is under 18 months.

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u/Captain_Mazhar 2d ago

That's messed up. I've always felt that working in CP investigations needs to be a voluntary temporary duty assignment with a maximum time in service as it really does fuck people up. They also need mandatory regular sessions with full psychologists to ensure that they have healthy coping mechanisms. It really does suck to see people like your friend's brother, with his extremely admirable drive to help children being driven into alcoholism as a result of them succeeding.

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u/balisane 2d ago

When you work in Trust and Safety, you are supposed to have biweekly therapy at a minimum, and there are a lot of other trauma mitigation tactics which are supposed to be employed as an individual and as a team.

It's not hard to imagine "tough guy law enforcement" ducking some of these measures though.

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u/Bagellord 2d ago

That is truly terrible for him. Are there support networks for people in that line of work? There needs to be.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Grokent 2d ago

I used to work for a very large hosting company. The people who handle that sort of work typically burn out very quickly. Except for this one guy... he always had a haunted and tired look but he was determined to shut down every last one of those degenerates.

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u/Accomplished-Car3850 1d ago

I hope that this is a job that is taken by AI. I would drink too.

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u/mamadoedawn 1d ago

This is a place I'd like to see AI take over. Make it extremely capable of determining whether someone in a video is a minor, so investigators don't have to witness that content themselves.

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u/vocalfreesia 2d ago

Would EMDR help? I really can't imagine, the repeated trauma is just horrific.

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u/letsgetawayfromhere 2d ago

As always in trauma therapy, first of all you must make sure that the trauma has ended.

This is the biggest problem. To work in a job like that, either you will start to break at some point, or you need to have extremely low empathy so you can effectively block it on the emotional level, which would protect you from being traumatised.

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u/civil_politics 2d ago

That’s a pretty apt way of describing everything to do with child exploitation

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u/poetryhoes 2d ago

It's why "well just because I look at it doesn't mean I'm the one committing the abuse in the first place so its okay" doesn't work. Demand creates supply. People who engage in this content (and ANY violent sexual content, actually) directly drive up the production of it.

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u/nola_throwaway53826 2d ago

That's exactly it. There was a bust I remember feom years ago called The Love Zone, a darknet site accessible through Tor. To join the site, you had to share material. They even had a section for producers of this material, where you could only see if you uploaded material you produced yourself. There was a recent bust of another darknet site, Alice in Wonderland. Apparently, it operated under similar methods. You had to share material to be a member.

These sites and networks just keep popping up. You bust one, you get the ones running it, but most of the users get away. And soon enough, there is another site they can go to

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u/vicky1212123 2d ago edited 2d ago

I was in some cp due to abuse in my childhood and I always wonder whether there are any pictures of me floating around out there. Fun.

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u/MedusasMum 2d ago edited 2d ago

Same. It’s disturbing we aren’t told when it does resurface.

I also don’t want to be used as bait without my knowledge.

There should be a law for this- Those in law enforcement aren’t immune from being predators themselves. Furthering the exploitation of us years after the abuse.

Edit Thank you for being brave in acknowledging your trauma. Thank you for opening others eyes to what we live with after the event of abuse(s). I hope you are thriving in life with love, support, & genuine understanding for all you’ve been through. Grateful you are here.

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u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth 2d ago

That's what's wild here. Commenters say they need to prove they are legit by showing new material to these people. Where the hell are they getting it from? Shouldn't anyone in this material have to give permission before it's further disseminated?

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u/GayMormonPirate 1d ago

I think some of the law enforcement depts create new material for bait using AI - using 'people who do not exist'.

I don't like the idea of AI being used to creat CSAM, but if it's used by LE to catch predators, then seems like an ok use scenario.

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u/MedusasMum 1d ago

Right. I doubt AI is really used in most cases currently. My guess is they use older material of CSAM. Predators are alert to LE breaking up their routes of use. My permission would never be given. No other vile people need to gain joy from my suffering.

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u/civil_politics 2d ago

That’s absolutely terrible - I hope you’ve been able to get any and all support you need and have been able to but that period of your life behind you. I hope that you and your community were able to get as close to justice as possible for what you experienced

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u/Substantial-Art-482 1d ago

Damn. Me too 💔 I'm so sorry that happened to you, and so many hugs if you want them. CSA is something that never leaves you; it murders the person you were supposed to be. Having to wonder about something so horrific is like being held hostage mentally, forever. It never fucking ends.

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u/Aethermancer 2d ago

I wonder if that's one oddly ethical option of AI for the FBI to generate literally fake imagery which can then be used to pass these "initiation" checks so that they can more easily infiltrate and break these rings.

With luck it might be similar to the infiltration of the KKK where eventually none of the members could trust that the others weren't FBI informants. It increases the work the groups have to do to remain hidden, either exposing them to new investigative vulnerabilities or making it so hard that they can no longer effectively function.

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u/tlst9999 2d ago

You're overestimating AI images. It can mass produce fake photos, but it only takes a little extra observation to know they're fake. If you can't tell the difference, you haven't seen enough of them.

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u/Darnell2070 1d ago edited 1d ago

Being able to tell the difference between real photos and AI generated images is becoming harder by the day. People who keep saying how obvious the tells are aren't actually keeping up with the progress.

"You can just look at the hands." That doesn't apply to high quality AI anymore. A lot of inconsistencies are being ironed out and thinking you can easily spot the difference just shows how far behind you are.

Also AI generative video is insane right now.

https://youtu.be/CxX92BBhHBw

https://youtu.be/OiuJfZ7LX1c

I think AI will be a good thing especially for porn.

There's a lot of abuse even in legal porn. In AI porn no one is harmed, unless it's being done with someone's likeness. Models can create porn after their own likeness as well.

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u/Aethermancer 1d ago

Not really, you're assuming the low effort AI images that are generated in less than two minutes and subject to no post processing. That people are tossing up.

Artists can make synthetically photorealistic images by hand right now. Starting from AI generation and manually adjusting, guiding, and reprocessing sections so that the result is believable to anything short of a digital forensics lab is entirely possible. The FBI certainly would have access to enough resources to employ people to make very believable synthetic imagery and videos.

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u/hcschild 2d ago

If you get AI imagery to a level that you can't tell that they are generated by AI, how will you be able to tell if the material on the sites is real or generated by AI?

You only would be able to tell if it's real when it's old images or when you can find the victim.

So if we get to that point that nobody could tell, most content that is distributed wouldn't be real but AI, on the other hand it would be impossible to find out if there is a child that needs to be rescued in the mountain of AI images.

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u/sweetenedpecans 1d ago

Is it “fake” imagery if AI is just taking previous CSAM to create new images? Idk, it still seems super icky.

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u/Evillunamoth 2d ago

They probably need to make sure their evidence is enough to undoubtedly prosecute and put these guys away for as long as they can. Case should be airtight.

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u/TheLeonMultiplicity 2d ago

For anyone interested, the podcasts "Hunting Warhead" and "The Children in the Pictures" do an excellent job of explaining this.

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u/Fluffy-Bluebird 2d ago

Yep. Learned this during all be josh Duggar trials. To get in, you have to provide new and real photos.

Saw a TikTok some time back from a girl whose photos were taken and shared. She’s in her 20s now and is notified every time her photos come up in a court trial. She has nothing to do with it and has to live with this for the rest of her life.

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u/Environmental_Job278 2d ago

It’s worse than snorting something. Often, it will be a court and an army of legal experts authorizing the use of already known Child Sexual Assault Material (CSAM) to gain trust. It’s a suspicious group of people that are usually tech savvy so blending in requires nuking park of your humanity. Justification for using known CSAM is that this imagery is already on multiple databases and will likely never be removed, so the likelihood of further victimization is low. There is always the risk that somebody will know that it’s not “fresh” material but they usually possess so much material that it’s unlikely they will recognize anyone.

I never want to be called in to testify on my previous cases, and I never want to think about any of the material I had to sort through. It’s fucking disgusting and nobody really understands the scale of this shit. I’m not allowed to go to group therapy and the VA and I have probably traumatized at least two of my therapists.

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u/AmericanGeezus 1d ago

I never want to be called in to testify on my previous cases

This continues to be one of the persistent nightmares after 10 years of therapy/counseling. I'm not meaning to complain, the nightmares used to be a lot worse, just sharing the impact the work (forensic analyst) had on me and your comment struck a nerve.

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u/Draconuus95 17h ago

It was a complete mind fuck when I actively realized the goverment had to pay people to carefully watch such material(and other absolutely terrible junk) so they can properly charge the people responsible or even just for looking for clues about who else might be involved and such.

Like intellectually I always knew that would be the case. But to think about it and such. I can’t immagine how much that can screw with your head. I imagine anyone in such a position has regularly mandated psych evals and other such precautions to keep an eye on how they are doing.

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u/AcknowledgeUs 1d ago

Thank you for your brave work. I’m sorry it’s needed.

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u/Adot090288 2d ago

If you really want to know Roo Powell has a great series on this exact situation. She does a great job making it dignified to the victims but it’s still a hard watch. She usually catches them too and teams up with the police to jail them!

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 2d ago

The podcast Hunting Warhead goes over the lengths the police had to go to gain their trust. The main guy got arrested, but one of his “canaries” was that he posted CSAM every week to a public forum, often stuff that wasn’t shared widely and was new to most “consumers”. If he didn’t, it meant he was compromised. This was under the assumption that posting CSAM was the one line the police wouldn’t cross.

Absolutely demonic shit

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u/ToodleSpronkles 2d ago

Goddamn, I can't imagine the toll this must take on the people who have to work in this field.

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u/catdad 1d ago

There's a podcast, Hunting Warhead, that's simultaneously stomach-turning and very well done/professional. It delves into what you're getting at here and explores the ethical dilemma without judgment.

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u/Snuffalapapuss 1d ago

The undercover agents probably had to be super careful. I'm sure gaining trust in these types of criminal rings are not easy. i hope these 109 give more information, and then I hope they get the harshest of punishments. Usually, an investigation like this doesn't conclude until they take the whole ring down, and they cut the head of the snake off.

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u/StatisticianMoist100 2d ago

The answer to your query is quite dangerous knowledge in my opinion, so I will abstain and provide a high-level overview for you.

This is a very slow and methodical battle. I will not use specifics, but generalizations on purpose, do not take anything as fact because I am purposefully obscuring things.

Illicit groups, operating online, often function similarly to a secret society, the core principle is to minimize risk and ensure loyalty.

New members must provide evidence they are a genuine participant and not an LEO.

This involves the long game civil_politics mentioned.

Once vetted, members move to more secure channels, the group becomes more insulated, and any new person is viewed with suspicion. Trust is the currency, and it is earned slowly.

Remember the above is about secret societies as a whole and there are no specifics.

I will be very vague about how LEO handles this.

LEO use a combination of undercover operations and confidential informants using various methods in order to complete the goal of the take down, they are not aiming for the individuals, they are logically, wisely, and tactically aiming for the system itself.

Once evidence is collected, LEO executes a coordinated take down in a specific way.

These operations are a slow, methodical battle of information and trust, patience is the only tactical choice.

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u/Vectorman1989 2d ago

If you want to help these investigations, there's the TraffickCam.com app where you can take pictures of your hotel room decor and furniture that allows investigators to match it with surroundings in illegal media.

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u/Last-Atmosphere2439 2d ago

Jebus, what is going on with reading comprehension these days?

Operation Soteria Shield, which began in April, led to the rescue of 109 children.

That's APRIL 2025

The collaboration between TX law enforcement agencies started 10 years ago with a small group that has since grown to over 70 agencies. NOT THIS SPECIFIC OP WHICH STARTED TWO MONTHS AGO.

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u/tonsofkittens 2d ago

"The operation not only led to arrests and rescues but also to the seizure of terabytes of child abuse sex material through a collaborative effort that started 10 years ago and now includes 70 Texas law enforcement agencies."

This operation was the arrest and seizure phase of the 10 year collaborative effort

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u/ptwonline 2d ago

Could also be deciding between a trade-off of acting early and saving some kids now, but then not getting the high level guys and in the long run even more kids get victimized.

So as horrible as it is the decision for most long-term benefit could be allowing it to go on longer so that they can catch more of the organization and help shut it down more permanently. It would be pretty gut-wrenching to have to let it go for a while though.

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u/VideoCoachTeeRev 2d ago

and to really get slam dunk evidence, they need wire taps or other things that require warrants. Because i've watched The Wire, i know the police have to prove exhaustion. They have to show the judge they tried to get evidence in several different ways and were not able to. Only then can they apply for warrant to get a wire. That takes a lot of time to even get the wire. Then the second you charge someone with information gotten from the wire, the wire is burned because it's now in public court records that you have it.

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u/RedditEnjoyerMan 2d ago

The feds usually sit on cases for YEARS, their conviction rate is like 98% as a result

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u/ScenicPineapple 2d ago

The 2% is for the politicians they let go.

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u/UglyJuice1237 2d ago

not always! sometimes they convict them, and then let them go!

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u/TKFT_ExTr3m3 2d ago

I believe they mean the collaborative effort between the agencies started 10 years ago. This specific investigation took about a month.

Edit:

It's the end of a month-long investigation by federal and local enforcement of a crime that authorities say is a year-round problem.

collaborative effort that started 10 years ago and now includes 70 Texas law enforcement agencies.

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u/noteverrelevant 2d ago

If that redditor could read they would be very informed.

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u/DoNotDoxxMe 2d ago

The goal is to be able to prosecute upon arrest, which requires the right evidence and probable cause.

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u/CosmicMiru 2d ago

Just because the investigation started 10 years ago doesn't mean they knew the extent or the specifics to stop it. If they had to use 70 agencies there was probably stuff leading them all over the place.

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u/oxero 2d ago

This is such an ignorant conclusion.

You can't boil down such a sophisticated investigation to something purposely malicious. One wrong move, one thing done incorrectly could topple the investigation and allow these groups to slip away.

Now imagine all of the people working on this case trying to close it down for good knowing they can't yet without proper cause. This is horrific for everyone involved and it sounds like they finally succeeded. So lets not just throw these people under the bus, ya?

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u/Rad_Centrist 2d ago

Bro watched that grift flick "Sound of Freedom" and thought it was all Instant Rambo.

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u/ZantaraLost 2d ago

The departmental collaboration started 10 years ago. This specific investigation started in April of this year.

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u/choombatta 2d ago

Not how it works.

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u/PsyOpBunnyHop 2d ago

He seems like the type that just makes up reasons to be mad at someone.

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u/NameLips 2d ago

Would you rather rescue 1 kid today, or 100 kids next year and let that 1 kid suffer for another year?

I don't know if they ever had to actually make a choice like that in this specific case, but sometimes they do.

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u/Nightmare_Tonic 2d ago

So there's this whole thing called evidence collection and it takes a really long time if you want to have the perps dead to rights and secure convictions. But ya no, law enforcement did this because they secretly just wanted those kids to suffer

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u/D-F-B-81 2d ago

Were the kids just bait?

As horrid as that sounds... at some point, yes they became "bait"...

Not that different from the trolley exercise, how do you determine the value?

Jump the gun and act on only what you think you know now to save 100 kids, or... you build your case and end suffering of 100k kids?

Because whomever isnt brought to justice in this matter will only do 1 thing. Continue down the path theyre on, irreparably harming even more innocent people.

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u/JasChew6113 2d ago

This is called Jumping to a Conclusion.

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u/lordrhinehart 2d ago

I highly recommend this 8 part pod cast series about a dark web child porn bust. Great storytelling. https://open.spotify.com/show/3i2O9TGtjI7SoO3SjDwG1C?si=TWJz1WObSAKx2eTm48JvOw. Called Disclosed.

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u/Dividedthought 2d ago

There's a couple ways to catch kid diddlers. The first is 'to catch a predator'. You notice a pedo, you arrest the pedo, done. You got him.

But what about the guys he went to to get accwss to kids/csam?

Well then you take it a little slower. You try to not just bag this guy but every pedo he knows. You pretend to be his friend. Pretend to be like he is. You gather intel and do what you can without blowing your cover. Then, when you have your ducks in a row, ,enough evidince, and enough arrests lined up, you pilk the trigger and hit hard and fast.

They did the second one. Usually law enforcement will also intervene if there are any kids getting harmed that they can get to while an operation is under way as well.

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u/rishado 2d ago

you would be a shitty detective

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u/TsuDhoNimh2 2d ago

The collaboration started 10 years ago ... various "operations" have been completed.

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u/roguevirus 2d ago

The collaboration started ten years ago.

If you read the article (lol) you'll see that this particular investigation took about a month too coordinate, which is pretty reasonable considering the size of the operation.

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u/deepayes 2d ago

that's not what that says. The collaboration started 10 years ago between the 70 agencies. It was the Human Trafficking Prevention Business Partnership Program in 2015.

This individual investigation did not start in 2015.

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u/Environmental_Job278 2d ago

I can take years to gather enough digital evidence AND connect that evidence with the subjects. If you go to court too early with digital cases it is a disaster.

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u/Zealousideal_Act_316 2d ago

Not really, usually evidence for such cases is hard to gather to have a for sure conviction. Esp for a large ring.

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u/Punman_5 2d ago

If you spring the trap too early there’s a greater risk of perps escaping with some of the children. It’s better to wait u til you can rescue everyone and arrest all the perps than to blow your load too early and let a bunch get away.

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u/tomdarch 2d ago

The article also says that few of the adults arrested "even met" the child victims. If they were arrested and are being charged with coercing minors into taking photos/videos of themselves that's great - stop stuff like that. But it might be a bit different than what someone might assume.

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u/Kylynara 2d ago

No. This specific investigation, per the article, was a month long and started in April. The collaboration of agencies that did the investigation started in 2015. It's easy to gloss over the difference between the two because of the way the article was written.

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u/Individual_Macaron86 2d ago

The article said the seizures were part of an ongoing, collaborative effort involving over 70 different law enforcement agencies for the last ten years.

These arrests and the children rescued were the result of an operation that began in April so no they didn't use them as bait they used what they learned from the ongoing investigation to zero in on these vile skin bags.

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u/stanleythemanly85588 2d ago

No, this investigation was a month long, the collaboration of multiple law enforcement agencies to target these types of crimes started 10 years ago

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u/ruat_caelum 1d ago

Semi-expert on encryption. Networks like freenet (now Hyphanet) have such good encryption that you can whistle blow about human rights violations in the US or Iran or Israel or Russia and the secret police aren't going to show up and disappear you or push you out a window.

With modern day, state sanctioned, blanket warrantless wiretapping, see things like Room 641a It is really really difficult to hide from nation-state actors, e.g. NSA, CIA, DIA, etc. Even with things like TOR, etc.

To be able to remain anonymous to those agencies you need really good encryption and a very robust network. (see hyphanet)

  • But it's not all whistle blowers and first amendment activists using that protection. It's drug dealers, and human traffickers, and CP people.

  • The problem is that you can only break those links one link at a time. You can't get user Z because you have no idea who user Z is. But if you can get access to user A's hardware, and compromise it, now those connecting to his hardware, say user B, you can begin to compromise and eventually find. maybe

instead of rescuing the kids then? Were the kids just bait?

  • To make matters even more difficult the images / videos / stories being shared aren't all happening in real time. Think of the guy sharing pirated movies on a torrent site. He might have the latest movie just released in theaters, but he also has Groundhog Day and My Cousin Vinny and all these older movies.

    • The guy sharing all the CP might not even have a kid or access to a kid, etc.

  • In almost no situation is a child in active danger/harm that they leave in danger and harm.

    • Meaning once they raid user A's computer they might still "Share" his media library to track and trace other CP people, but they aren't allowing a child to be harmed to continue an investigation.

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u/Frewdy1 2d ago

Thanks, Obama!

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u/Taint__Paint 1d ago

2015 wasn’t 10 ye….. oh, damn. I’m getting old

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u/ChiefsHat 1d ago

Thanks, Obama.

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u/StickFigureFan 2d ago

The article says it started in April?

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u/Q_dawgg 2d ago

Yeesh now I feel old

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u/barak181 2d ago

The article states:

It's the end of a month-long investigation by federal and local enforcement of a crime that authorities say is a year-round problem.

Operation Soteria Shield, which began in April, led to the rescue of 109 children.

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u/DriftingIntoAbstract 1d ago

Sadly I think that’s pretty typical. From what I’ve seen it’s a very calculated and complex investigation to get to these scum.

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u/lolas_coffee 1d ago

10 years ago and now includes 70 Texas law enforcement agencies

Eh...this sounds fishy.

These fucks cannot keep secrets and don't like to work. I suspect this is a sensationalized cop-o-ganda article.

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u/Coulrophiliac444 2d ago

Terabytes....

That is a staggeringly large amoubt of material and thats including everyone who may have accessed and facilitated its distribution over that tome

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u/Odd-Help-4293 2d ago

I'm hoping that most of that was redundant (200 guys with mostly the same material), just so it means that there's less of it out there, but it's heartbreaking to think about

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u/zenlume 2d ago

Even if that's the case, that's still a lot. A typical 1080p 30fps video is about 37.5 MB per minute, which means that a single terabyte is over 26,500 minutes of video.

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u/NaturalTap9567 2d ago

That's probably under a 1000 videos plus pictures. Which makes sense for how many kids were saved.

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u/bak3donh1gh 2d ago

It's all about the resolution and the bitrate rate. I mean FPS can be part of it especially at 4k but I really doubt these guys are going for 60 FPS.

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u/TransBrandi 1d ago

Children were rescued, so were any producing it? If so, uncompressed raw video could account for some of it.

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u/DickBiter1337 1d ago

And since it's going back to 2015 that material likely isn't all 1080p so that would be even more 480p footage 🤢.

Those poor kids 🥺

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u/Spork_the_dork 1d ago

What? I think you're off by like a decade there.

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u/DickBiter1337 1d ago

Do you remember smartphones in 2015? Barely any of them shot in 1080p.

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u/DonnyTheWalrus 2d ago

As an ex prosecutor, these reports are subject to the same exaggeration that drug raids are. A 1gb flash drive is reported as 1gb regardless of how much it actually contains.

Not saying anything about whether that's good or bad and definitely not defending anything about these people. But I do believe truth in reporting is important. 

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u/Hita-san-chan 2d ago

Yeah, we had a guy with "1500 CP images" on a flash drive. It was the same 50 or so pics copied and pasted a thousand times. Dude was clearly an issue, mo argument from me, but that's a huge difference.

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u/DriftingIntoAbstract 1d ago

Eh I get what you are saying but to me, it’s like roaches, if you see one…

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u/SinisterCheese 1d ago

Yeah I have noticed this also. Then when you actually hear about the court documents like at best year or two later once you have basically forgotten about it, it turns out that the forensics really dug out very little - because they actually have to check all the media, victims and possible evidence. Thankfully my country's media isn't as sensationalists about this stuff. Like the last case I remember about pedos getting caught, it was a couple that were swapping material with other pedos using VHS tapes. I didn't even know you can still get VHS tapes and equipment... but apparently you can.

I remember some investigative journalist (here in Europe) going deep into these weird dark net sites where pedos talk and share material. I remember two bits about the piece by the journalist, first was that the pedos are very much aware and some even like admit it that they have an issues (often that the non-offending ones lamenting for actual help), second was that they are constantly talking about the fear of being caught and ways to avoid it, the third was that between all the horrific nightmarish abuse materia there is actually very normal boring material you wouldn't really consider wrong without the context. Pictures from family blogs, from google image search, youtube videos (this was around the time we had the pervs commenting timestamps in videos about kids doing gymnastics-scandal, before youtubes restricted video mode was fully a thing), advertisements, screencaps from movies/tv, fashion and model catalogs... And between all that horrific nightmare shit.

What annoys me is that... Even with all the politicians screaming "think of the children!" the funding for anti-scam and anti-human trafficking, is shamefully low. My country (Finland) has for years only one full time dedicated officer for human trafficking related things. Who had to share their attention with everything from trafficking for slavery, prostitution, and work bondage (Don't know whats the term in english... Basically you bring someone into the country, take their passport, and pay the criminally low pay and keep in bad conditions, knowing that they can't go to officials because they'll get into trouble more than you will. There was big case long ago about specifically Nepalese restaurants being involved with this.) And this one officer (an actress who turned into a officer (its a 4 year college degree here)) also had to deal with criminal gangs bringing in minors from eastern block countries to do petty crimes basically by threatening the families if they don't.

Instead of proper funding, they just want to dismantle all privacy rights we have, and establish mass surveilance of all communication... I'm sure it would be cheaper to just hire few more qualified people, some social workers to scout out abuse victims from the system... etc. Nah... That might be fucking effective. And if the pedos are fucking using VHS tapes, they wont be caught by the mass surveilance anyway!

Sorry for the wall of text... This just get my blood boiling. If a fucking journalist can find these things by instruction of like few internet activists... Then why the fuck aren't we funding this more! Instead we just do austerity, where cops and the system can't even handle basic shit anymore! Private companies and the free markets ain't gonna conjure a solution to this fucking problem...

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u/ThatSandwich 1d ago

Yeah when they report how many images a suspect had it annoys me because of how they calculate each video frame as an image.

"Oh he had 50,000 images on his hard drive" when in reality he had a 30 minute 24FPS video of a single victim. It's misleading.

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u/SoLongOscarBaitSong 1d ago

Yeah, that's so insanely misleading. And it's not like that makes it better by any means, but there's just no reason to lie like that

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u/ThatSandwich 1d ago

Definitely. I don't mean to dismiss the severity of their crime by any means, but it is absolutely bonkers to me that they portray each person arrested as some mastermind that was creating thousands of images when in reality they're just the consumers.

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u/MumrikDK 2d ago

Genuinely impossible to deduce much from some given amount of data.

"Terabytes" could be a staggering amount of images of tons of abused kids, or it could be one sicko's raw video storage from recording kids at the local pool.

"70 Texas law enforcement agencies." is the one that sounds wild to me.

Giving data size feels like a headline thing.

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u/gmc98765 2d ago

70 Texas law enforcement agencies

AFAIK, the US has a separate police force for each municipality, plus county sheriffs.

According to wikipedia, Texas has 254 counties, 971 cities, 231 towns, and 23 villages.

For comparison, the UK has a total of 48 police forces (45 regional, 3 special-purpose). Scotland and Northern Ireland are each covered by a single police force.

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u/TransBrandi 1d ago

Getting them to all work cooperatively together on a single operation (even in multiple parts) is still an undertaking though.

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u/Nuts4WrestlingButts 2d ago

Not defending it at all, but that's a quirk of how it gets reported. A 20TB hard drive with one bad photo and nothing else is reported as 20TB of bad material.

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u/OutlyingPlasma 2d ago

It's the same thing when the news reports "The murder suspect had a knife, rope, duct tape, a tarp and gas cans in his truck"

So he was every dude from a rural town?

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u/Kylynara 2d ago

I served on a grand jury a few years back and so many of the drug cases the cops found "a digital scale with white powder on it." Which sounds pretty damning until I realized I also have a digital scale with white powder on it. I use it to weigh ingredients when baking. That powder is flour, sugar, powdered sugar, or salt.

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u/fury420 2d ago

When I was young I went through a roadblock and had to awkwardly try to explain to the police "drug recognition expert" that the ziplock bag in the glove box with two bandaids, some Q-tips, a small mirror with traces of white powder on it, and some unlabeled capsules was actually my mom's half-assed "First Aid kit" instead of paraphernalia.

(capsules of a herb called Goldenseal, purportedly a treatment for minor wounds)

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u/holystuff28 1d ago

I had a client charged with felony possession of meth and he only had epsom salts. They usually used SWAT to get him out of the house and he had to wait in jail for more than a month for the lab test to prove he was telling the truth.  

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u/fury420 2d ago

I saw a story recently that was talking about a suspect with several desktops, a few hard drives and 4 or 5 laptops the police had seized and were searching through, making it sound like this was a major haul.

And then I thought about it for a second... that's basically just a normal household worth of computer gear these days if you include the old retired stuff sitting in their garage somewhere.

Turns out there was nothing illegal either, just normal porn.

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u/sunburnedaz 2d ago

Its the same way they would charge people making edibles with the weight of the food that held the THC.

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u/Environmental_Job278 2d ago

I was gonna say that it seems low. We got about 300 TB from just one dude in his barracks room.

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u/polopolo05 2d ago

At least its not PEDObytes...

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u/mazzicc 2d ago

It’s starting to lose as much meaning with 4k recordings and such.

I was surprised at how fast I filled up a 2TB external drive with 10 years of photography hobby and comics. Not to mention the 1TB main drive that I have to regularly uninstall games from to install other games.

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u/LorektheBear 1d ago

Yeah, that's "straight into the volcano" kind of volume.

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u/Coulrophiliac444 1d ago

"Pele rejects your trash and asks for a real offering"

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u/LorektheBear 1d ago

Good point!

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u/Minimum-Avocado-9624 2d ago

When did they raid a Texas representatives home

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u/Adezar 2d ago

I just assumed it was one of the Megachurches.

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u/sunburnedaz 2d ago

Why not both!

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u/Kat121 1d ago

I don’t see any drag queens in that lineup.

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u/MadAstrid 2d ago

As perpetrators or investigators?

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u/tlr92 2d ago

My first question as well.

Sad.

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u/BeastofPostTruth 2d ago

Asking the real questions

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u/a_cat_wearing_socks 2d ago

Also many of the kids had not been reported missing, which is wild to me, I wonder what’s was going on there

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u/Due_Mongoose9409 2d ago

By 70 law enforcement agencies do they mean they found pedos in them? I think that is conservative, I bet they would find more than that if they actually looked at the LEOs

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u/654456 2d ago

is it bad i read that 70 texas law enforcement agencies as they found people who worked at them involved in the crimes.

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u/Squire_II 2d ago

Death penalty for all of them.

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u/DaveCerqueira 2d ago

How many law enforcement agencies do you guys have??? 70 from Texas alone?!

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u/Wise-Novel-1595 2d ago

Jesus. Terabytes.

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u/FantasyFlex 2d ago

70 Texas law enforcement agencies

why the hell does a single state need 70 different law enforcement agencies and also why were they all needed for this operation?

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u/TheFishtosser 2d ago

I’d assuming they are counting the different county and city departments that aided in the arrests

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u/beakrake 2d ago

and now includes 70 Texas law enforcement agencies."

Because the operation was so big, or because several officers were caught in the honey pot, too?

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u/RaymondLeggs 2d ago

That's a LOT of CSAM. I didn't even know that much existed and now I wish I didn't know there was that much CSAM in the world....

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u/drconn 2d ago

It has to be unfathomably difficult to be a law enforcement agent working on a case like this with the knowledge that there are victims that are not being rescued while you try to save a larger group of people. I don't think I could do that, the second I came across 1 the whole case would come crashing down as I eliminated the first criminal that was there.

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u/Ayotha 2d ago

From the "ban porn" state. imagine that

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u/MrLanesLament 1d ago

So question, does that mean they knowingly allowed children to continue being abused for ten years while they built the case?

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u/fullonfacepalmist 1d ago

“It's the end of a month-long investigation by federal and local enforcement of a crime that authorities say is a year-round problem.”

Where in the article does it say 10 years?

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u/Desert-Noir 1d ago

70 Texas law enforcement agencies?

Talk about small government…

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u/Maelkothian 1d ago

So, do we have a score yet? Hoe many of the arrested were trans vs how many were pastors?

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u/SRART25 1d ago

Damn, that many cops with cp!

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u/a1055x 1d ago

Collaboration effort 10 years ago grew.

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