Why did Biden - the Sniffer-in-Chief - leave these websites up?
Justice Dept. shuts down dark web child abuse sites that had 120,000 members and millions of files
Arrest the members and prosecute them. Post the names of the members so that patriotic pro-child activists can have a word with these members out in the woods in the dark and silent.
When FBI agents arrived outside William Spearman's home in the quiet suburb of Madison, Alabama, in November 2022, they were prepared for danger.Their search warrant was so important to the bureau that it was approved by the FBI director himself. When the agents breached Spearman's door with tactical explosives, Spearman fought back, tussling with the agents as three of his handguns remained barely out of reach. The FBI managed to handcuff and arrest Spearman, a high-value arrest, in what a top Justice Department official called "one of the most successful" prosecutions of its kind.
Spearman went by the nickname "Boss" and was labeled by the Justice Department as "one of the most significant" purveyors of child sex abuse material in the world. His arrest in 2022, his guilty plea a year later and his eventual life sentence were part of an unprecedented takedown of a prodigious child abuse network.
Spearman is one of at least 18 people convicted so far of leading and utilizing the dark web to share hundreds of thousands of unlawful sexually exploitative images of children. The Justice Department calls the investigation and prosecutions Operation Grayskull; it helped secure those arrests and shutter four heavily trafficked dark web sites where violent and horrific images of child sexual abuse were traded and housed.
The Operation Grayskull investigation launched in 2020, when law enforcement agents noticed a spike in traffic to a dark web site suspected of hosting child abuse material. The dark web child abuse sites eventually attracted more than 120,000 members, millions of files and at least 100,000 visits in a single day, according to an FBI official who spoke with CBS News.
"Even for prosecutors, it is difficult to understand how pervasive this is," said Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department Criminal Division.
"Because it happens on the dark web, people aren't aware of it. It's extremely troubling," he told CBS News.
...
Selwyn Rosenstein was sentenced to 28 years in prison in 2022, for operating a dark website for unlawful exploitative images. Prosecutors said the platform "was not simply a website; it was a large, active community of pedophiles and (abuse material) enthusiasts. And it existed in part because of the Defendant's criminal acts."
Rosenstein possessed such a large quantity of abusive images, he needed to store some on a server he used to run his business, according to the Justice Department.
Speaking from a second floor conference room at Justice Department headquarters in Washington last week, Galeotti told CBS News the members of these dark web child abuse sites often "earn" membership by paying a fee, "helping moderate the site" or contributing child abuse images or material.
GO READ THE WHOLE THING.
