Anonymous goes after paedophiles

The hacking group Anonymous, fresh from its campaign against jihadist websites, has taken on a second target.

It has announced that it will expose international paedophile networks and has called for a global effort on social media to build up a grassroots database of paedophile cases.

It says it wants to shine light into the so-called dark web. Its “Operation Death Eaters” was named after the evil followers of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter books.

Experts warn that there could be tens of millions of images of child abuse online, many so deeply distressing that the media tread lightly when reporting cases.

One US missing persons centre has identified almost 8,000 child victims since 2002 as well as some 3.2m child pornography images, with approximately 40,000 new images being added every week.

David Cameron last year launched the “We Protect” initiative which includes new offences for soliciting pictures from children and a new unit at GCHQ to police the encrypted file-sharing networks abusers use to swap videos and pictures of child abuse.

Anonymous now want to expose what it calls a conspiracy of silence among politicians, police and the media which downplays the extent of the problem.

The group says it wants to shut down the child-sex industry by “dismantling the power structure which held it there” and by “educating to create a cultural change”.

The rise of the smartphone, the ubiquity of ‘regular’ pornography and the ability of the internet to network child-abusers together into self-supporting groups has massively accelerated the child porn problem in recent years, according to experts.

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