0:00

I'm speaking to you at a moment of grave

0:03

crisis. I'm

0:05

Jeff Turner and this is Recall. It's

0:08

a series about history, not

0:10

the ancient past, but history that's still

0:12

hot to the touch. In

0:15

this first season, I explore a revolutionary

0:17

political movement that brought a modern democracy

0:19

to the brink. You

0:21

can find Recall, how to start a

0:23

revolution on the CBC Listen app, or

0:26

wherever you get your podcasts. This

0:32

is a CBC Podcast. The

0:34

following episode contains difficult subject

0:36

matter. Listener discretion is

0:39

advised. When

0:41

they were arrested, Paul Gryffokner, where

0:44

were you all? Were you and the team inside

0:46

the room listening to the arrest? I mean, how

0:48

did it work? No, I mean, there

0:50

was no remote monitoring or anything

0:52

like that. That's Paul

0:54

Griffiths, one of the investigators

0:56

with Task Force Argos. We

0:59

were kept in fairly constant

1:01

touch over the course of the whole weekend.

1:04

Griffiths is based in Brisbane, Australia. He

1:07

works for the Queensland Police Service. Time

1:11

zones obviously present something

1:13

of a challenge. He

1:16

and the rest of Task Force Argos were

1:18

waiting for the news of Warhead's arrest. We

1:21

knew that they were at the address in

1:24

the US, then it was getting into the

1:26

evening here. Waiting for information

1:29

that might help launch the next phase of

1:31

the operation. Yeah, I

1:34

would say it was within the first hour after

1:36

the arrest that we had at least

1:38

one password that allowed us to get into the site.

1:42

Warhead, the Canadian Benjamin Faulkner, soon

1:44

gave up all the passwords necessary

1:46

to access his abuse site, Child's

1:48

Play. But access

1:50

alone wasn't enough. They

1:53

had security measures in

1:55

place that would, they thought, prevent

1:57

law enforcement taking over their accounts.

2:01

It was one thing to have an account

2:03

password and have access to the site, but

2:05

to get yourself into a position where you

2:07

could securely post

2:09

as them was a

2:12

bigger challenge that almost undid

2:14

us. It almost undid you? Yeah, we

2:16

almost didn't get ourselves into a situation

2:18

where we could do that. Overcoming

2:23

the hidden security measures took time, which

2:26

was an issue because Warhead had often posted

2:29

on Child's Place several times a day. So

2:32

if the form didn't hear from him soon,

2:34

its million-plus members would figure out that something

2:36

was off. They might delete their accounts and

2:38

disappear, only to surface later

2:41

as another anonymous user on

2:43

another encrypted site. Griffiths

2:46

wanted to keep them on the site and

2:48

in his crosshairs. The

2:50

operation depended on it. This

2:52

operation, does it have some kind of name? It's

2:55

got various names, to be honest, depending on which

2:57

country you're in. So what do you call it? Here

3:01

in Queensland, it's Artemis. Artemis?

3:03

Yeah. Do you like that? We

3:06

don't have reasons for operation names here,

3:08

they're just a generic name that's given.

3:10

I think it's something from Greek mythology,

3:12

actually. In

3:16

Greek mythology, Artemis was a goddess.

3:19

She was associated with the

3:21

moon, with chastity, childbirth, nature.

3:25

But Artemis, Artemis

3:27

was also the goddess of the

3:29

hunt. So

3:33

random or not, it's fitting. Because

3:35

even though Ben Faulkner and Patrick Faulty

3:38

had been arrested, the real hunt had

3:41

only just begun. I'm

3:45

Damon Fairless, and this

3:48

is Hunting Warhead. When

4:06

people think of the word child pornography, they

4:08

might think of a 13-year-old teenager in

4:12

a skimpy bathing suit who could almost pass

4:14

for 16 or 18 or 20. That's

4:18

not what this is. That's

4:21

investigative journalist Julian Cher. We're

4:23

talking about infants. We're talking

4:25

about school children being forced

4:27

to endure some of

4:29

the worst forms of systematic

4:32

sexual abuse. Julian

4:36

literally wrote the book on the rise of Internet

4:38

child abuse, as well as the type of police

4:40

work Paul Griffiths and his colleagues around the world

4:43

do every day. His book is

4:45

called One Child at a Time. Child

4:48

pornography is just the wrong term.

4:51

This is child abuse.

4:54

These are crime scene photos.

5:00

What people don't realize is how

5:02

different this is from every other

5:04

crime. In almost

5:06

every case, they know where the crime took

5:08

place. They almost

5:10

always know who the victim is,

5:12

and often the bad guy leaves

5:15

obvious evidence. When it

5:17

comes to child abuse online, police

5:19

have a much harder job. They

5:24

have a photo, a little four-year-old

5:27

sitting naked on a bed.

5:31

They don't know who she is. They

5:33

don't know where she is, and they

5:35

certainly don't know who's doing the abuse.

5:39

And they have this mad race around

5:41

the world to try to find her.

5:47

It's like investigating a missing person's case

5:50

without really knowing who's missing. So

5:54

the priority for police is not

5:56

catching the offenders, it's rescuing

5:59

the children. because there is a life

6:01

at stake. So

6:07

do we have any measures of how prevalent child

6:09

pornography is? The largest center

6:11

in the world that monitors this

6:13

is in Washington, D.C. It's

6:15

the National Center for

6:18

Exploited and Missing Children,

6:20

NICMC. In

6:22

1998, the center started at Cyber Tip Line,

6:25

a way of gathering together all reported cases

6:27

of online child abuse and passing

6:30

them on to the appropriate law enforcement

6:32

agencies. In its first few years,

6:34

the tip line got about 10,000 reports a year. But

6:37

that's been growing exponentially. In

6:40

2017 alone, it received 9.6 million reports. In

6:45

2018, the total number of cases was

6:47

about 43 million. And

6:50

by all accounts, that's just the tip of

6:52

the iceberg. All

6:55

we know is that it's growing, it's exploding,

6:58

and it's a volcano of abuse

7:00

that's out there. About

7:08

half of child abuse imagery depicts

7:10

kids under the age of 10.

7:14

And nearly a third of it involves

7:16

rape and torture. When

7:21

police first began trying to rescue these children, they

7:24

had a lot of catching up to do. The

7:54

latest encryption software and

7:56

the latest camera equipment and

7:59

other stuff. Well, the police would do

8:01

the same thing. And so

8:03

one of the things that I find really

8:05

intriguing is that they've got this real world

8:07

network, the set of relationships

8:09

between these different agencies in Europe, here

8:11

in North America and Australia. Can

8:14

you tell me about the nature of that relationship

8:16

between the different agencies? Yeah,

8:18

it's really something that's very special.

8:21

Because if you think about it,

8:23

by definition, police are territorial,

8:26

right? Their mandate is

8:28

to protect and serve the people of the

8:30

city who pay their taxes and hire

8:32

them and run them. The

8:35

problem is online child abuse, by

8:37

definition, is borderless. So the police

8:40

had to come up with ways

8:42

where they could fight a borderless

8:44

crime by breaking down the very

8:46

borders that are built into the

8:48

police mandate and to the police

8:51

budget. So one

8:53

of the things that meant is they had

8:55

to go to their bosses and say, we

8:58

need more money because we're going to rescue children

9:00

around the world. And that commitment had to be

9:02

made. Second, they had to

9:05

set up some formal structure. They

9:07

had to find quick ways of being

9:09

able to share images. So when a

9:11

picture of a little girl is found

9:14

by the Toronto police, they could immediately

9:16

figure out ways to work with the

9:18

FBI and the UK police and eventually

9:21

locate her in North Carolina. Interpol

9:24

set up coordinating bodies. There

9:26

were international databases so that

9:28

pictures found in Canada, in

9:30

the US and Australia could

9:32

be shared, matched, correlated.

9:35

And then finally, and in many

9:38

ways most importantly, were the personal

9:40

relationships that developed. So Paul

9:42

Griffiths used to be in the

9:44

UK and had a huge reputation

9:46

as one of the best hunters

9:48

of clues in the photographs.

9:51

He would work closely with the

9:53

Canadians. When he moved down to

9:55

Australia, he stayed in touch with

9:57

the Canadians and the French and

9:59

the Germans. So you have this important

10:02

network built on trust

10:04

and sharing and competence.

10:07

And so just like the online

10:10

pedophile community had its

10:12

hidden network of, you know, secret

10:14

handshakes and codes, so did the

10:16

police. And it has just grown

10:18

stronger and stronger over the years. How

10:22

did you get involved in the Internet? I

10:28

first met Paul Griffiths when he was

10:31

working in the UK. He

10:33

had been an officer in Manchester,

10:35

England, tackling sex crimes. And

10:38

he began to realize how the Internet

10:40

had radically changed things. I think it

10:42

was back in 1990, about 84% of

10:45

his UNIT cases were with adult

10:47

obscenity, and only about 3% dealt

10:50

with child abuse. By 2000, it

10:52

had been completely reversed. 87%

10:56

of their cases involved children. So

10:58

Griffiths decided to devote his

11:00

career and really his life to this.

11:02

So he begins to work with online

11:05

child images. And he told me a

11:07

story of one incident that really changed

11:10

things. There

11:13

was a complaint in Manchester, England, against a

11:15

man, and they made the arrest. And they

11:17

found that the man had abused a girl

11:19

who was about eight or nine years old.

11:23

When they made the arrest, Griffiths and

11:26

his colleagues realized that they had seen

11:28

her photos in collections on the web.

11:30

They just had never connected her with

11:33

abuse that was really going on almost

11:35

around the corner from the police station.

11:38

So it was a kind of epiphany

11:40

for Griffiths because he said, well, wait

11:43

a minute. Instead of waiting to arrest

11:45

some sexual offender and then hoping that

11:47

will lead to the rescue of children,

11:50

what if we look at these pictures

11:52

as potential clues to try to

11:54

find out who the offenders are and

11:56

rescue the kids proactively? So,

12:02

he had to set out to

12:05

figure out ways to hunt for

12:07

these clues. I remember talking with

12:09

him, he would explain how, for

12:11

example, in one picture, he would

12:13

see some computer boxes on

12:15

some gray steel shelves in the background,

12:17

and he would zoom in and read

12:19

the barcode, and then contact the company

12:21

to figure out where the shipment had

12:23

been sent. In another photo,

12:25

there was a TV commercial in the

12:27

background for a chocolate bar,

12:29

and he was able to figure out where

12:32

and when that ad, that specific

12:34

ad, had read. I've

12:40

seen him put together

12:42

a photo of a

12:44

suspected offender from a

12:47

glimmer of an eye here, a reflection

12:49

in a mirror there. It's

12:51

the passion of somebody putting together a

12:54

jigsaw puzzle, but knowing that if he

12:56

can put the pieces together, there might

12:58

be a little child somewhere that he

13:01

could rescue. In

13:05

2009, Griffiths moved from the UK to Australia

13:08

to join Task Force Argos. There

13:10

are several agencies around the

13:12

world that are entirely devoted

13:14

to the rescuing of children,

13:16

and specifically children who are

13:19

victims of online child abuse.

13:21

Toronto has an internationally

13:24

famous squad. The RCMP

13:26

has some units. The FBI has

13:29

a dedicated unit. Interpol

13:31

has an international

13:33

cooperating body. Task

13:36

Force Argos has earned

13:38

quite deservedly a reputation

13:41

for being one of the best,

13:43

for being leaders, for being bold

13:45

and innovative and even aggressive. And

13:50

now, thanks to Homeland Security's work

13:52

in Virginia, Argos was close to gaining

13:55

access to the largest child abuse

13:57

site on the dark web. The

14:03

first two hours after these guys were taken,

14:06

they were quite intense. Do you

14:08

feel that that's? Yes, so

14:11

we knew that the operation

14:13

was happening. Inspector Paul Griffiths. We

14:15

knew that the arrest was imminent

14:17

and of course we were on

14:19

standby waiting for any information that

14:21

would come out of that. I

14:23

don't think we were entirely surprised

14:25

when it sounded as if

14:27

there was some amount of cooperation force

14:29

coming from, I think, Fort Neffers in

14:32

terms of access to accounts and access to

14:34

passwords and things like that. It's

14:38

very rare that anything like this was run 100% smoothly. Just

14:43

because Task Force Argos had all of

14:45

Warhead's passwords, it didn't mean that

14:48

they had full control of child's play and

14:50

they needed full control for what they planned next.

14:53

First, they'd have to secure the

14:56

server that hosted the site, which meant

14:58

moving it to Australia. We

15:00

would normally choose to move the server because we'd want

15:02

it in a situation where we had full control over

15:04

it and we'd also want it within our jurisdiction if

15:06

we were going to operate it. The

15:10

original child's play server was somewhere in Europe.

15:13

Hulken and Einer are pretty sure it was in

15:15

Germany. Argos isn't willing to say

15:17

one way or another. What we

15:20

do know is that Argos had the support

15:22

of their European colleagues, which would

15:24

allow them to take over the site and transfer

15:26

it to an Australian server. But

15:30

there was another problem. So

15:33

there was a third admin, so there was another guy

15:35

who we knew that had the same amount of access

15:37

to the servers and the sites. Warhead

15:45

and Crazy Monk, Faulkner and Faulty,

15:47

were child's plays and main administrators.

15:50

But there were others, including a user

15:52

named Deadpool, who had the same kind

15:54

of high-level access to the site. At

15:58

this point, the police didn't yet know who Deadpool was. was

16:00

and so they couldn't arrest them meaning

16:03

they had to tread carefully. So

16:09

you can't just close the site

16:11

down you can't just pick it up and move it

16:13

you can't do any of those things without alerting this

16:16

other guy and potentially other people as well

16:19

so what you don't have is full control

16:21

so you need some amount of social engineering

16:23

there to explain why you're going to move

16:25

the server and what you're going to do

16:27

exactly when you move it and

16:29

if you're not careful just as easily

16:31

as you could kick them out they

16:33

could kick you out as well. As

16:40

if this wasn't tricky enough there was one

16:42

final challenge. Benjamin

16:44

Faulkner had developed a protocol for precisely

16:47

this kind of situation to ensure the

16:49

site couldn't be taken over by an

16:51

undercover unit something

16:53

he called a canary. How

16:56

can explains? He told the

16:58

community the rest of the users on Childplay that every

17:01

month at the beginning of every month Warhead

17:04

the administrator would post a

17:07

message where he would share

17:09

some information about the status of this

17:11

forum and if he didn't if

17:14

this message wasn't posted the community

17:16

was to assume that Childplay

17:18

was being compromised or being taken over by

17:21

the police or someone else. The

17:25

challenge for Aragos was that Homeland

17:27

Security had arrested Faulkner on Monday,

17:29

October 3rd and Warhead was

17:31

expected to post a canary the next

17:33

day which put Task

17:35

Force Aragos under even more

17:37

pressure. And we

17:39

also knew that other people would expect us to

17:42

post something in that secure manner that we weren't

17:44

yet in a position to do. So

17:48

Paul Griffiths worked around the clock

17:51

poring over Warhead's posts studying his

17:53

spelling errors, his punctuation, mastering his

17:55

style, his linguistic quirks, even

17:57

a sense of humor. Four

18:01

days after Faulkner's arrest, Griffith

18:03

brings Warhead back online. He

18:07

posts the canary. It

18:09

reads, Phew, what a month

18:11

that was. A month of my life that I

18:13

won't get back. Although technically most of

18:16

the really screwed up shit happened in

18:18

October, not September, hence my

18:20

late foray into this month. Sorry

18:22

again about the late arrival, but I did ask

18:25

the staff team to step in and cover for

18:27

me in my enforced absences. I'm

18:34

not sure that any of the other users

18:36

knew categorically what had

18:38

happened. I think one or two

18:40

had very strong suspicions

18:44

and they, some

18:46

of them chose at least to raise

18:48

their suspicions and of course that then makes

18:50

other members of the community a little bit

18:52

jittery. So

18:54

Paul Griffiths hands over the reins of

18:56

the undercover operation to his colleagues. One

18:59

of the big jobs then for the

19:01

undercover guys is to quieten

19:04

those rumours down and so you know, as if

19:06

you've not got a hard enough job, A,

19:09

running the site, B, conversing

19:11

with all the people you've got to

19:13

converse with and being that guy online,

19:16

you've then also got to sweep up

19:19

after yourself and make sure that the

19:21

damage is limited as much as possible.

19:26

By the end of October, Child's Play

19:28

had been successfully transferred to a server

19:30

in Australia. There were

19:32

some suspicions initially, but

19:34

now the majority of the site's users

19:36

believe Child's Play is safe and secure.

19:40

And so Task Force Argos is

19:42

right where it wants to be. On

19:44

the hunt. A

19:50

web of manipulation and terrifying abuse.

19:53

If you'd have said to do anything, I would

19:55

have done it. With a powerful religious figure at

19:57

its centre. There was no safe place. don't

20:00

say no to him. World of

20:02

Secrets from the BBC World Service

20:04

is back to the brand new

20:07

season, investigating allegations surrounding the preacher,

20:09

T.V Joshua. Sequelger or secrecy need

20:11

to be broken. Search for World

20:13

of Secrets wherever you get your

20:16

BBC podcast. What

20:21

have you been doing on the site

20:24

these months in regards to Trustlay? Just

20:26

monitoring the activities on the site, trying

20:28

to identify new material and trying to

20:30

identify people who are either producers or

20:33

are close to the production of the

20:35

material, and then trying to do

20:37

what we can to identify who they are or

20:39

who the children in the images are basically. After

20:42

months of watching from the sidelines, Hauk-Gun and

20:44

his colleagues are finally granted a second interview

20:46

with Task Force Argos in August of 2017.

20:50

At this point, Paul Griffiths and the rest

20:52

of the unit have been running Child's Play

20:54

undercover for 10 months. My

20:57

area of expertise, if you like, is

20:59

the analysis of the images and investigating

21:02

the producers of those images and identifying

21:04

the victims. It

21:07

goes without saying that this involves looking

21:09

at a lot of pictures of children

21:11

being abused. I've

21:13

been working in this area for 22 years now.

21:17

I usually say if one human being has done

21:19

it to another human being, then I've seen a

21:21

photograph or a video of it happening. Have

21:24

you ever cried? No.

21:28

Close. But no. When

21:30

was that? A long time ago. Long

21:33

time ago. I

21:44

kind of get a little bit desensitized to it,

21:46

I suppose, but I think the main motivator for

21:50

the staff who are working victim identification is that they know

21:52

that they can do some good, basically.

21:55

They can achieve a result by examining

21:57

that image, examining that video. looking

22:00

at the associated information about it and

22:02

actually finding the child and removing them

22:04

from a harmful situation. As

22:08

we heard earlier, Griffith is a pioneer in the field

22:10

of victim ID and he's still one

22:12

of the world's best. It's

22:15

just that I remember things as photographs.

22:18

So when I think about an event

22:21

or when I think about something that I did,

22:23

I can see that in

22:25

my mind. And

22:27

I found fairly early on when

22:29

I was doing this work that I could store

22:32

that image as an image and

22:34

I could remember that I'd seen it previously. So

22:37

even now where we're talking, you know,

22:39

millions of images in circulation, I

22:41

can very often just look at an image and

22:43

tell you, you know, yes, but I've

22:46

seen it before. I could probably tell

22:48

you when I first saw it. I can probably tell

22:50

you where it was seized from. And yeah,

22:53

we have great databases that allow us to find

22:55

these things. But occasionally I find that I'm quicker

22:58

than the database and I can actually find

23:00

where it is before the database finds it.

23:03

This is something that's helped him with past cases.

23:06

We were dealing with an investigation where

23:08

we'd been looking for this guy for a while.

23:10

He was running a darknet site and we knew

23:13

he was an abuser. He

23:15

was one of the higher end in

23:17

terms of the level of

23:19

abuse in his images that was bondage and

23:21

there was torture in the images. And

23:25

when you look at the images and

23:27

you analyze them for all sorts of

23:29

clues, looking for information that might help,

23:31

I noticed this guy had a particular

23:34

mark on his body that was faint,

23:37

but identifiable. And

23:39

I would say a week, two, three,

23:41

four weeks later, I was looking at a video

23:44

and it was a video I'd seen 100 more

23:47

times previously. I thought,

23:50

wait a minute, this guy looks like he's

23:52

got the same kind of mark. That

23:54

mark was on the guy's penis. And

23:57

when I look closely at it, I realize. It

24:00

was clearly the same mark in the

24:02

same location and it

24:05

was the same guy. Griffiths

24:09

cross-referenced the two sets of images

24:11

which eventually led to... Identifying

24:16

and rescuing kids is Task Force

24:18

Argo's primary objective and

24:21

running child's play as an undercover operation as

24:23

Warhead was a means to that end. It's

24:27

not something I feel particularly comfortable with

24:29

actually. Putting yourself in the shoes of

24:31

those people especially when you know the

24:33

mindset that they have and the sexual

24:36

attraction to children that they have. It's

24:38

a testing piece of work. It's not

24:41

something everyone can do and it's quite

24:43

challenging. You've also got to get yourself

24:45

into their mind a little bit and you've got to

24:47

think the way that they think and it's a fairly

24:49

uncomfortable way to think to be honest. But

24:53

it is vital to what Argos does. So

24:56

along with specialists and victim ID, guys like

24:58

Griffiths, Argos has several experienced undercover investigators. It's

25:05

an awful lot of effort, an awful lot of work. To become somebody online is

25:07

not just a case of becoming

25:10

them on the site but you've also got to

25:12

be aware of how they interact off the site

25:14

with other members of the site maybe or with

25:16

other people that they know in the community. So

25:18

for instance when you're

25:20

talking about an individual who you

25:22

know has written a security and

25:24

anti-forensics guide then you know that

25:26

people are going to come to

25:28

him for advice on computer security

25:30

and anti-forensics. And of course that's

25:32

a difficult balance there because you

25:35

need to kind of put yourself across as

25:37

knowing as much as he knows but then

25:39

you don't want to give people information that

25:42

are then going to make them harder to

25:44

catch, harder to find, harder to prosecute at

25:46

the end of the day. So you know

25:48

it sounds almost trivial but you've got to

25:50

understand the mindset of the person that you're

25:53

being. But

25:58

this raises a big question. one

26:00

that's relevant to all undercover operations.

26:04

What ethical boundaries might you cross? If

26:07

you're a police officer pretending to be

26:09

an online child abuser, how

26:12

far should you go? And

26:14

how do you know when you've gone too

26:16

far? How

26:26

can an INR had been monitoring activity on

26:28

child's play since Argos had taken it over?

26:31

Warhead was no longer as present on the site,

26:34

but his Canary messages were still

26:36

being posted like clockwork. Health

26:39

Force Argos, they were the

26:42

ones who had to post these Canary

26:44

messages every month. And

26:46

we were obviously interested and curious to see

26:48

what they posted. And we find it interesting

26:50

that the police actually are posting child abuse

26:52

images. I mean,

26:55

they are spreading something that they are trying

26:58

to combat. As

27:03

Warhead, Ben Faulkner had designed his Canary in

27:05

a way he thought was failsafe. A

27:08

way that would prove to other users that he was

27:10

still in control of child's play. They

27:13

had to have two images of child abuse attached

27:15

to this message, because they thought that

27:18

this is something the police can't do. Faulkner

27:20

was right. Sort of. In

27:23

many jurisdictions, police don't have the authority

27:25

to post child abuse images, at least

27:28

not that easily. But Argos

27:30

is an exception. I

27:33

think collectively within this unit, we've

27:35

been working for so long that

27:37

we've identified the fact that legislation

27:39

needs to keep up with the

27:41

way that offenders are using technology.

27:45

That's John Rouse, the other guy Halkin met at

27:47

the Burger Bar in his first trip to Brisbane.

27:49

He's the officer in charge of Task Force

27:52

Argos, as well as the unit's founder. So

27:55

we've been very much on the

27:57

front foot in talking to, possibly, the

28:01

Attorney General's office and the government,

28:03

about the challenges that we're facing

28:06

to successfully prosecute these people. And

28:08

we've been fortunate that, not just from within our

28:10

organisation in the Queensland Police Service, but

28:12

across government, there's been support and an ear

28:15

to help us do our job. I've

28:20

been in the unit now for 17 years. Some

28:22

of the other guys have been here for the same amount of

28:24

time. So we've seen the internet evolve

28:26

into what it is today, from fax

28:29

modems and bulletin boards back

28:31

in the 90s. And we recognised that we

28:33

were deficient in legislation in the early 2000s.

28:36

And in fact, we didn't have

28:38

legislation that really clearly criminalised

28:41

the images of children being sexually abused. Progressively

28:47

over the years, we've consistently

28:49

sought new laws to help.

28:53

So for example, when you're dealing with a network

28:55

of offenders like we are in this board, we

28:57

now have a legislative provision that criminalises

29:00

the fact that they network. It

29:02

criminalises the fact that they're using Tor to

29:05

hide their IP addresses. It

29:08

criminalises if they share information about how to defeat

29:10

law enforcement. All of those things are criminal offences

29:12

here in Queensland. And that's way ahead of any

29:14

country that I've heard of. We

29:17

have the power to demand their

29:19

passwords, or they commit a criminal offence. And

29:22

that's the kind of tools you need to be able to do your job. And

29:26

that job sometimes entails breaking the law in

29:28

order to enforce it. We

29:32

have a management board with a judge

29:34

sitting on it. And

29:37

that judge gives us authority to commit

29:39

certain ranges of criminal activity. So

29:44

our legislation allows us to assume the identities of both

29:46

children and offenders. It

29:48

allows us to infiltrate and take over networks like this.

29:52

It allows us to, in instances

29:54

where it's required, to share child exploitation

29:56

material to keep your membership. If

29:59

you don't do it... Well, immediately

30:01

you're detected as a police officer.

30:07

It's similar to how undercover officers can sell

30:09

or buy drugs when they're going after a

30:11

drug cartel. You're doing

30:13

the same thing that criminals do to

30:16

achieve the objective of dismantling and destroying

30:18

a criminal network. We're not

30:20

producing child exploitation material. They're

30:22

the ones that are producing it. They're the ones that are

30:24

circulating it around the world. They're

30:27

taking it and under certain rules we

30:29

are using it, if

30:32

it can possibly, it's the only way I can

30:34

put it, for good. I

30:36

can't fix what happened to the child in that picture,

30:39

but I can use the fact that that picture's been

30:41

circulating in the globe for the last 10, 15, 20

30:43

years for some good to

30:46

stop the further abuse of a child. Using

30:54

child abuse images as an undercover

30:56

cop was considered unorthodox. Even

30:59

Paul Griffiths was unsure about it at

31:01

first. When

31:04

I came to Australia, it was something

31:06

that I wasn't entirely sure about, but

31:08

it becomes obvious when you start

31:11

to work in the area and you start to

31:13

look at that as a tactic. It

31:15

becomes obvious how it should be used and why

31:17

it should be used, basically. I hope

31:19

that any child who'd been

31:22

abused would understand that law enforcement

31:24

are trying to catch as many of those abuses as

31:26

they can and identify as many

31:28

of the victims as possible. And I hope

31:30

that they would support us in our attempts

31:32

to do that. The

31:35

simple fact is that if we close the site

31:37

down, it would reappear within days

31:40

in another guise and

31:42

someone else would be running the site.

31:44

That's unfortunately what happened. It's

31:47

a compelling argument. But Hulken,

31:49

watching from afar, had some reservations.

31:52

And he wasn't the only one. So

31:55

this is where it gets hard, right? Because

31:57

law enforcement may tell themselves a story that...

32:00

will be able to free a child

32:03

if we either commit these

32:05

crimes or allow other people to commit these

32:07

other crimes. This is Carissa Hessek.

32:10

She's a law professor at the University

32:12

of North Carolina and an expert in

32:14

child pornography law. They don't

32:16

know that they'll actually be able to free a child, right?

32:18

So what they should probably be weighing in that balance is,

32:21

you know, the probability that they'll free

32:23

a child with the certainty of what they're

32:25

doing now. Another problem

32:27

though is when

32:29

should these undercover

32:32

investigations end? So,

32:35

you know, back when we

32:37

had undercover agents who had infiltrated the

32:39

Italian mafia, they had these

32:41

sort of unspoken rules, right? They'd never let a

32:43

murder go ahead. They'd sort

32:45

of set limits for when they

32:47

had to wrap up the investigation

32:50

because they couldn't let that particular

32:52

crime go forward. Because

32:55

if the site is being used

32:57

to facilitate the actual abuse of

33:00

children and law enforcement is continuing

33:02

to run it, then I have

33:04

real questions about their ability to

33:07

strike this balance and

33:09

it suggests to me that maybe

33:11

some independent oversight is needed.

33:16

It wasn't the first time Argos had run this

33:19

kind of operation. In 2014, the unit had taken

33:21

over another dark website, a forum called The

33:23

Love Zone. They

33:37

identified a high-level administrator, a 32-year-old

33:39

Australian youth worker who was later

33:41

charged with abusing at least seven

33:43

kids in his care. He

33:46

was arrested and Argos took over

33:48

his account and eventually the site's server. They

33:51

ran The Love Zone for six months,

33:53

identifying hundreds of members around the world

33:55

before shutting the site down. reasons

34:00

for why the police should run this undercover

34:03

operation. I see that. And

34:06

I understand that. What

34:08

concerned Huycken was that it wasn't clear, at

34:10

least it wasn't then, just how

34:12

many kids these kinds of operations

34:15

rescued. He worried that

34:17

maybe the ends didn't entirely justify the

34:19

means. For instance, I mean, one

34:21

thing is that the police were sharing

34:24

images in this Canary message. They

34:27

were also writing things in

34:30

these messages that I find rather

34:32

disturbing. For instance,

34:34

there's this Canary message from

34:37

the beginning of January 2017, where

34:43

the police officer acting as Warhead, he

34:45

writes, I hope that some of you were able

34:47

to give a special present to

34:49

the little ones in your lives and spend

34:52

some time with them. It's

34:54

a great time of year to snuggle up near

34:56

a fire and make some memories. For

35:04

me, this sentence, it's a great time of

35:06

year to snuggle up near a fire and

35:08

make some memories? What the hell? It's almost

35:11

like you're encouraging the users to abuse children.

35:18

Here's my question back to you. Did we create the

35:20

board? Did we create the environment that they're using? No,

35:23

we didn't. We didn't make it. They made

35:26

it. So what we've done is we've infiltrated

35:28

it, we've taken it over,

35:30

and we're now going to destroy it. But

35:33

during that period, we're going to identify as many

35:35

children and as many of those people that built

35:37

that temple that they worship at, we're going to

35:40

take them down. What

35:47

I find interesting is they're sort

35:49

of this explorers.

36:00

or cartographers into this unknown

36:02

territory, which is this online

36:05

community. They want to know

36:07

as much about these communities as possible, so that

36:09

no one else will be able to know

36:11

anything about these communities. Because their goal is

36:14

to burn the community down. So

36:16

it's like, if no one ever

36:18

knows what Paul is talking about when

36:20

he's describing his work, he

36:23

has succeeded. It's interesting to hear

36:25

you describe him as an explorer or cartographer,

36:27

because really that's what you and particularly Einar

36:29

were doing on your own, right?

36:31

Your own expedition into this

36:33

dark territory. Did

36:36

you feel a kind

36:38

of professional kinship in

36:41

a way with the police? Because you guys were both

36:43

kind of exploring the

36:45

same territory. Did you feel a sense of

36:47

commonality with what they were doing? Yeah,

36:50

I did so. So

36:58

I guess I'm not clear on what point did you know they

37:01

were going to shut down the website and

37:04

finish their operation. Were they in contact with you? No,

37:06

we didn't know. They had told us,

37:08

you know, we'll let you know in a couple

37:10

of weeks beforehand when we're going to shut down

37:12

Chosley, so that we would be able

37:14

to prepare our publication of the story. But

37:19

I think it was in the middle

37:21

of September. I now came

37:23

to me and said they shut down the

37:25

site two days ago. This

37:31

was September 2017, almost

37:33

a year after Benjamin Faulkner and Patrick

37:35

Fulte had been arrested. Hargos

37:39

had been running Child's Play for 11

37:41

months. So

37:45

after they had shut down the website without

37:48

telling us, we started preparing the article. But

37:51

Hulken wasn't able to get all the information

37:53

he felt was important to the story. I

37:56

was surprised because we asked John and

37:58

Paul and Toss-Cors-Argos Many times

38:00

can you give us any numbers? Know

38:02

how many children do you think it'll

38:05

be possible to save in this operation?

38:07

How many producers or of users as

38:09

as we would call them to think

38:11

it's possible to to arrest and they

38:14

refused to give us any number. Because

38:16

I said we feared that numbers will

38:18

be used as a weapon or the

38:21

media and you could interpret it that

38:23

they thought if we give this slow

38:25

number if we allow this long number

38:27

to be published and and be peace

38:29

agreement for is it really worth reading

38:31

it with. So it's to the be

38:33

Some ups and Eleven have to save

38:36

these cute kids. It's

38:40

possible to save one one child by running

38:43

i target of his website for eleven months.

38:46

Isn't worth it? Is.

38:54

Hop can also points out that another

38:56

reason Argos may have been reluctant is

38:58

that pinning down these numbers is actually

39:00

quite complicated. The

39:05

users, producers, and victims are all scattered

39:07

across the world. Operation

39:11

Hard must involve police forces from

39:13

about a dozen countries. Once argus

39:15

past evidence on to their international

39:17

colleagues, it wasn't easy to keep

39:19

track of the results. One.

39:21

Arrests beast more evidence which leads

39:23

to more arrests and so it's

39:25

a never ending scene of investigations.

39:27

Not to mention the fact that

39:29

these investigations to just take a

39:32

long time. So

39:39

how can draft the story he writes

39:42

about? I are finding the sites Ip

39:44

address, stumbling on operation Hard to miss

39:46

discovering that Warhead was Benjamin Soccer. And

39:50

you voices his concerns about Argos running the

39:52

site for as long as they did, as

39:54

well as his concerns about them posting child

39:56

abuse material. I

40:01

contacted John in Poland said you know these are

40:03

the quotes that I want to use. Because we

40:05

had been working so close with them, I let

40:07

them see the article. I don't always do that,

40:09

but I'm because we'd been very close for almost

40:11

a year or thought that would be. The.

40:14

Right thing to do. And

40:17

they were surprised. Are

40:20

you really going to publish the article

40:22

now? They. Told. Me

40:24

at that time that they had thought that

40:26

we would wait at we would delay are

40:28

polluting until the fault and Faulkner were sentenced.

40:34

John and said we want you to wait. And

40:37

they also reacted quite negatively to the

40:39

article the they thought we were being

40:42

too critical towards but they had done

40:44

so. They didn't like that and don't

40:46

Told me that if you are going

40:49

forward to polish this week I'll stop

40:51

you better than they will be. No

40:53

more contact. Vg

40:57

published a story in October two thousand

41:00

and Seventeen. I haven't

41:02

heard from him since. August.

41:12

Ten months later, in August, two

41:14

thousand eighteen, how can heard from

41:16

Task Force Argos? In a roundabout

41:19

sort away for a press release

41:21

he reads: In the

41:23

last year or detectives have contributed

41:25

to the removal of eighty three

41:27

children from sexual harm nationally and

41:29

internationally, and arrested two hundred child

41:31

sex offenders on one thousand, two

41:34

hundred and fifty four criminal charges.

41:37

The press release also pointed out that

41:39

the evidence Argos gathered lead to over

41:41

three hundred new please cases around the

41:43

world. so

41:48

after this is published you continue to

41:51

work on the stuff and if you

41:53

continue to do research on this story

41:55

i guess most importantly been in touch

41:58

with and faulkner Yeah,

42:00

that was one thing I felt lacking in

42:03

our reporting, because we mostly

42:05

wrote about the police and the police

42:07

operation and the criticism towards the methods

42:09

that the police were using. But

42:14

I think it's important to try

42:16

to understand

42:22

it in the right word. I mean, it's not like

42:24

you want to understand why Foltian Faulkner did what they

42:26

did, but you have to... Analyse maybe?

42:29

You have to analyze why they did it. So

42:35

that's why I contacted Foltian Faulkner, because

42:38

by being able to understand how they become what they

42:40

are, we can help others. How

42:50

does someone like Benjamin Faulkner

42:52

transform himself into something

42:54

like Warhead? That's

42:58

a crucial question to ask, because no

43:01

matter how many sites the police can infiltrate

43:03

and shut down, no matter

43:05

how many kids they save and abusers they arrest,

43:08

the harm's already been done. To

43:11

prevent that harm from ever happening, you

43:14

have to understand its inception. And

43:17

so, like Hawken, I've written to

43:19

Benjamin Faulkner, asking if he'd be willing to

43:22

talk. I've also

43:24

made calls to the people who

43:26

know him best. His

43:28

closest friends and

43:30

his family. You

43:34

think, you know, you see all this stuff

43:36

on TV and you watch true crime like,

43:39

nobody's gonna grow me. I'll

43:43

never be groomed. I

43:45

mean, nobody's safe. Nobody's

43:49

truly safe. The

44:19

Hunting Warhead is written and produced by

44:21

Chris Oak and me, Damon Fairless. The

44:24

series is co-produced by Halkin Heudl and

44:26

associate producer, Michal Arana. And

44:29

our executive producer, Zaref

44:31

Narani. Hunting

44:36

Warhead is a co-production

44:38

of CBC podcasts and the Norwegian

44:40

newspaper, Fiji. Coming

44:54

up on Hunting Warhead. It's

44:57

kind of out of the blue. He says, hey,

44:59

what's up? I want to come down and see you and

45:01

the kiddos. Is

45:03

that your little one? That's my oldest and there

45:05

he is crouching behind her. So

45:09

you're at home, you're here. Typical

45:11

day. And

45:14

my phone rings. And this

45:16

gentleman says, I'm with

45:19

Homeland Security and I'm headed to your house

45:21

right now. For

45:29

more CBC podcasts, go

45:31

to cbc.ca/ podcasts.