French authorities have arrested nearly a hundred people in connection to an immense international child pornography ring following an investigation launched last year by the National Gendarmerie.
Gendarmes, the police force responsible for fighting cyber crimes in France, revealed Thursday that they have seized some 122 computers, 152 smartphones, and 330 other digital media devices containing 375,000 photos and 156,000 videos totaling 217 terabytes of data as it dismantled a large-scale international child pornography operation.
So far, 95 people have been arrested in France in connection to the case, notably including the director of a youth organisation, a sports instructor, and even a deputy mayor, Le Figaro reports. According to the paper, the majority of suspects have already admitted to their guilt in the case.
Of those arrested, 36 were already known to police for having previously committed sexual offences against children or having visited websites featuring child pornography. All of the suspects were men between the ages of 18 and 74, except for one 16-year-old minor.
The investigation, launched in December of last year, was prompted after a search of an individual’s phone revealed several discussion groups on child pornography on the encrypted messaging application Signal.
Colonel Hervé Petry of the National Cyber Unit (UNC) said: “What is hidden behind these forums is this whole galaxy of child criminals who potentially can be extremely dangerous because they can also be predatory.”
“The fight against child crime is an area in which the gendarmerie, for decades, has been very invested, very committed. Thanks to the rise of social networks, this has taken on a truly extremely worrying dimension since it has exploded: before social networks, it took several years for these people to be able to access this type of images. And even more so when approaching children,” he explained.
Petry continued: “Today, with social networks, there is an ‘increase in supply’ since images and videos can be exchanged extremely easily.”
