Intelligence experts and organised crime specialists will
join forces to scrub away child abuse images spreading on the “dark net”.
According to British Prime Minister David Cameron, a joint
GCHQ and National Crime Agency unit will hunt online paedophiles with the same
effort they use to track down potential national terrorists.
He said online child exploitation existed on an “almost
industrial scale” worldwide.
A new law which would stop adults from sending children “sexual”
messages was also unveiled during his talk at a London summit.
The term “dark net” refers to the hidden parts of the
internet that could only be accessed with special software. The GCHQ-NCA joint
operations are capable of analysing huge volumes of images.
Cameron said that "The dark net is the next side of the
problem, where paedophiles and perverts are sharing images, not using the
normal parts of the internet that we all use.
"What we are doing there is setting GCHQ, our world
class intelligence agency, together with the National Crime Agency and we are
going to go after these people with every bit of effort that we go after
terrorists and other international criminals."
"One gang in the Philippines was arranging the sexual
abuse of children, filming it and then live streaming it to paying customers
across the world," he said.
