413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

programmers. Over a quarter of offenders (n = 6, 29 percent), however, had little experience with
computers, describing themselves as “point and click” or “rookie” users.
Wolak, Finkelhor, and Mitchell (2005) found in a sample of 429 offenders, law enforcement investigators
described 10 percent of arrestees as extremely knowledgeable about the Internet, 4 percent very
knowledgeable, 40 percent somewhat knowledgeable, and 3 percent not at all knowledgeable.
Steps to Avoid Law Enforcement
There was a large degree of variation in how actively offenders used technology to evade law enforcement
detection. For some, security was an important factor in determining what method to use to download
child pornography. Many offenders recognized the risk involved in peer-to-peer networking. One offender
commented that “serious users” would not use GigaTribe, a P2P network, because they would have to
trust a third party network:
People involved in the trading community are very cautious of this sort of thing. No
matter how good the product looked or the company said, they wouldn’t trust them. (E9)
Another offender believed that trading through IRC was less common, therefore he was less likely to be
caught:
I was always a little bit nervous about it. It wasn’t so much that I thought these places
could be patrolled and others couldn’t. It was the low hanging fruit, so if anyone wants to
get involved in this, it’s the first thing they’ll see and there are so many people there. IRC
was fringe. (E9)
Some offenders felt that uploading images was the most dangerous, since it could attract attention and
enable detection by law enforcement:
I didn’t upload my own images because I was too afraid of law enforcement. I thought
uploading was asking to be arrested—inviting attention to myself and inviting other men
to engage me. (B2)
There is always a risk of law enforcement … If [you are] not posting images, [there is] less
risk than [for] people downloading. When [you] post images, all your IPs go along with
the post. I never posted. (D1)
One offender assumed that downloading large batch files of legal material would mask child pornography,
though he later recognized this large amount of downloading may have actually attracted law
enforcement’s attention:
Respondent: So at the time I would follow that and download a batch, in bulk, and then
in more mainstream [files], there would be illegal things buried within it.
Interviewer: So there were certain ways to get to what was buried
Respondent: Think of a bag of groceries. You have Oreo cookies around the good,
healthy stuff, and then that’s how you’d hide it. You snuck it in there.
Interviewer: So that’s how you would share
Respondent: Yeah, well, that’s how I would download. And so I would hide that in
there, and try to download all those packages to keep it in the background and part of the
low noise. I thought downloading those packages was keeping me safe. But that actually
ended up being more of a red flag to the police. (A6)
Serious traders, those who had developed an extensive collection and close networks, had more advanced
strategies for evading law enforcement. These methods, such as using the Tor network, often required
more technological expertise. One offender, who made money compiling child pornography for
customers, was aware of online law enforcement efforts to stop child pornography and used an
anonymizer service to cover his tracks. He shared, "If you don’t know how to get out there anonymously,
ICAC [Internet Crimes Against Children] is serious” (C6).
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