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.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
RSS