In a normal working day, US criminal investigator Flint Waters will surf the Internet, chat online with someone whose acquaintance he made a few weeks earlier, and exchange photos and videos.
And every so often, Waters goes for stress counseling to try to get some of the images he's seen in a day's work out of his head, because the reality of his line of work is in sharp contrast to the attractive job description.
Waters is an undercover agent who uses investigate online sex crimes against children.
"It's difficult to deal with. We have post-traumatic stress arrangements with an expert to help us to deal with the material we come across," the father of four from Wyoming said.
At a US congressional hearing in Washington earlier this month, Waters described in graphic detail the horrors he has seen as he tracks what officials believe are millions of child sex offenders around the world who thrive in the anonymity of the Internet.
He spoke of a video of a toddler on a changing table who is penetrated by an unknown adult male, of pictures of "a young girl, about six or seven, nude and tied to a chair, who is being sexually assaulted by a dog."
"I've posed as a mother with two-year-olds and had offenders show up to have sex with the two-year-olds," Waters said.
The Internet has made it easier for law enforcement officials to track and arrest would-be child predators, but a lack of manpower means that only two percent of known offenders are investigated and brought to justice.
"We have licensed 800 investigators around the world who work the system," Waters said.
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida has co-sponsored a law which would ensure that each US state has a cyber unit dedicated to combatting Internet crimes against children.
"This legislation would train federal, state and local police forces to lift the digital fingerprints left by child sex predators so they can be put behind bars," she said.
Waters hailed the Internet for giving law enforcement agents "a chance to catch child molesters without them realizing we can see what they're doing."
But he also said the Internet has made it easier for predators to find their victims and to learn "how to do their crimes better and be harder to catch."
"We have seen our [Internet child sex crimes] caseload in Connecticut double or triple. And we are using undercovers with much greater frequency ... the more lines you throw in the water the more fish you catch," he said.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
RSS