A report by Europol's European Cybercrime Centre makes the claim that, despite much of the evidence being anecdotal¹, Bitcoin is increasingly being used to pay for the live streaming of kiddy porn². The report was produced with the supposed intention of assisting law enforcement and the private sector to reduce and prevent such crimes from occurring, but it reads as nothing more than an attack on Bitcoin itself.

The report's attempt to intertwine Bitcoin with kiddy porn is not unexpected when one looks at the members who make up the EFC.³ Such members include:

• Visa Europe
• MasterCard
• PayPal
• Microsoft
• Google

None of the products produced by the above companies are specifically mentioned in the report but instead are vaguely referred to as credit cards, payment gateways, mobile phones and social networks.

For example:

• There is a clear shift from traditional credit card payments to the ones providing the most anonymity, namely alternative payment options, including virtual currency. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) analyses point to money transfers and Bitcoin as the most recommended payment methods offered by new brands identified within the Website Brand Project. This indicates that there is a need in this market for functioning and reliable payment systems.

• In a recent investigation a suspect that was arrested in January 2014 used more than 80 social networking profiles, email addresses and video chat accounts to sexually abuse children via web cams. Once victims had sent him the indecent image or video of themselves, he started threatening them and involving them in far more serious abuse. The youngest child was an 8-year-old girl, who was forced to involve other children in the abuse. The same suspect, who pretended to be a 13-year-old boy, also coerced adult men into performing a sexual act via web cam which was recorded and used against them unless they paid certain amounts of money. Unfortunately, it is not known at the time of writing if indecent materials provided by the children were commercially distributed online, but bearing in mind the profile of the suspect this possibility should not be excluded.

• According to information provided by INHOPE, the following payment methods appeared in 5236 URLs suspected of the commercial distribution of CAM (registered in 2013):

1. Money transfer services – 266
2. Credit card payments – 135
3. Digital wallet operators – 102

The report even goes so far as to suggest a link between the Silk Road and kiddy porn despite no mention of any type of pornography in the indictment against Ross Ulbricht. The report reads:

"In autumn 2013, Silk Road, the infamous marketplace for illicit goods which had alleged web links to CAM concealed in the block chain of Bitcoin transactions, was taken down. This gap has been filled very fast, and according to open sources, Agora became the leader in the Darknet anonymous market activity, and bigger than the Silk Road ever was. The Silk Road 2.0, Evolution, Hydra and Middle Earth were also described as thriving until some of them were taken down as a result of joint LE operations."

Fortunately, the hard hitting journalism published by The Daily Mail makes it clear that it is in fact companies such as Microsoft who are facilitating the live streaming of kiddy porn by providing paedophiles the means to stream their content via the Microsoft owned Skype and that traditionally, it has been companies such as Visa and MasterCard who have assisted the paedophiles who watch kiddy porn and the criminals who produce it to transact so that the industry can continue to flourish.

Let us not forget that Google assists paedophiles by way of its popular social media site Google+ combined with numerous Android devices that feature social media apps so that new talent is always within reach of the purveyors and consumers of kiddy porn.

1. "Although much of the evidence is still anecdotal, concerns have been expressed by LE and financial experts in the wider international environment that commercial CSE online, among other criminal activities, is moving to a new unregulated, unbanked digital economy. Payment mechanisms providing a certain degree of anonymity are always open to abuse by those with criminal intentions, as developments in the use of Bitcoin show." ↩

2. It is recommended by organisations such as Europol that the term Child Abuse Material or CAM is better suited to describe such material as the word pornography implies that the children were willing participants and paid, but if Europol cannot be reasonable and differentiate between a paedophile and the use of Bitcoin, I cannot be expected to know the difference between the words kiddy porn and CAM. ↩

3. European Financial Coalition against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Online. ↩