Authorities all over the world continue to battle criminals that run illegal child abuse websites on the Dark Web. Throughout those efforts, countless amounts of criminals have been arrested and brought to justice for their despicable crimes as well as a vast amount of websites have been shut down.
What happens when law enforcement takes it a step to far? Australian Task Force Argos did just that, or at least that is the opinion from the public. Nearly a year ago, in October 2016, Task Force Argos took over a Dark Web child abuse website called Child’s Play.
The task force had successfully identified and arrested the site’s owner, Benjamin Faulkner. They then proceeded to study everything from his posting style to his general personality as site admin, WarHead. Three months after the initial arrest of Faulkner, Task Force Argos, began a secret operation they called Operation Artemis.
Operation Artemis’ goal was to slip in undetected by forum users and continue to run the Child’s Play website. Individuals within the task force made regular posts including sharing countless images of unspeakable child abuse, which is where the public says they crossed the line.
For about 11 months, the task force ran the website, all the while collecting information and evidence against the site’s users. Many arrests came from Operation Artemis and due to word getting around in the pedophile communities, the website was seeing less and less traffic.
This, in turn, caused Task Force Argos to decide it was time to end the operation and shut down the website for good. Overall, the posting of explicit child abuse material doesn’t seem entirely necessary, it apparently had to be done but at least a good amount of pedophiles were caught and put behind bars in the process.