The news is grim from Senegal, where authorities have announced the cracking of an alleged paedophile gang, and the arrests of fourteen people.
The men accused of being members of the gang were charged with “organised paedophilia, pimping, rape of minors under 15, sodomy, and intentional transmission of HIV/Aids.” This meant, according to the police, that gang members were accused of knowingly forcing children to have sex with men with HIV and filming it to sell the results.
This was all for profit, and involved people in multiple countries. The direct commission of these criminal acts, the Senegalese authorities claim, was allegedly done by a man in France who was arrested last year.
What his own intentions were, so far, has not been stated. While it’s possible that someone in that position commissioned these crimes for private gratification, it’s unlikely. A wider network almost certainly exists — with more nodes possibly so far undiscovered in Senegal, and other connections in France and around the world. The illegal pornography that is produced in these circumstances can be traded like any illicit commodity. It could be sold on like a shipment of drugs or an illegal gun, intended for use anywhere on the planet.
Senegalese police say that Senegal and France cooperated closely on this case. It’s possible, but not inevitable, that other police forces worldwide will be drawn into any subsequent investigations. Previous attacks on organised criminal networks, for instance those related to drugs and hacking, have involved many police forces. Senegal’s authorities claim that the ring has been smashed and wound up, but that may not be the end of it. The content produced by these criminals will have been sold to someone. Chasing down the buyers, pursuing the ghastly material that was made, might prove more difficult and more expansive than catching the initial perpetrators of these crimes against children.
Crimes like this are horrible in themselves. But what makes them worse, perhaps, is the diffuseness of the perpetrators and their financial backers. Yes, in this case, it appears as though a criminal cell has been broken up, its alleged members arrested alongside the claimed commissioner of these awful, life-altering crimes. But just as the international cocaine trade is not stopped nor significantly altered even by the biggest, flashiest busts and the most remarkable intercepting of shipments, it seems very probable that the real undercurrent of violence and depravity continues unabated.
Most developed countries talk about crime as a series of local or domestic events. Is the murder rate up or down? Is more money lost to fraud each year? These indices are important — yet, sometimes, these figures can lead us to lose the wood for the trees. A great deal of crime around the world is not local or national but international. Transnational criminal operations supply the guns and drugs in every country through vast global networks. Much fraud and hacking is perpetrated by people in different countries than their targets. Trafficking of all kinds — in people as well as weapons and narcotics and other illegal goods — is fed and fuelled by sophisticated global organisations.
The internationalisation of crimes like this is the future. It is unstoppable.
Crime has always been international, but police forces around the world now face new tools and circumstances. Digital technology provides new avenues for criminals, new markets for them to access and address.
A world increasingly easy to travel, combined with mass migration, means that people-trafficking is less easy to spot. People move around the world without many barriers. Criminals are able to use the greasy wheels of international travel to escape criminal charges. Migrant communities across the world send money and people back between their diaspora homes and the motherland. If children seem to be travelling a good deal between continents, innocent movements might conceal trafficking or modern slavery. If foreigners without much money travel to Britain to stay with a fellow countrywoman, are they her friends from back home or are they her slaves?
Children around the world now face new threats, which could come from anywhere on the planet
Cryptocurrency, too, has made many other transnational crimes — like human trafficking or exploitation of children either in person or online — easier and easier. Not necessarily because crypto is anonymous — most blockchains are transparent enough when examined closely, and earlier attempts to muddle crypto transfers using so-called “mixers” have largely been defeated. But crypto is a complex world, and it is rarely worth a police force’s time to keep too close an eye on what is happening with unofficial assets. Something big would have to happen to justify more effort being made.
Children around the world now face new threats, which could come from anywhere on the planet. Where once paedophiles were a risk mainly to children around them, now they can use their money and purchasing power advantages as levers. They can employ people in poorer countries, conscripting many who would likely not have done this earlier into crime. This is a deeply sick logic of increased global integration: rich paedophiles in other places paying poorer people to victimise local children, and selling what results for a profit.
Every so often, there is a mass arrest like this. Often paedophile rings are broken up in Europe and America, but increasingly their effects are felt all over Africa.
The press and the politicians of many developed countries have made use of the changing landscape of paedophilia to justify censoring the internet. Only if the state can take screenshots of your devices every moment you are using them, they claim, can the police catch the paedophiles. Only if your VPN is banned can we get the monsters. Only if your every communication is unencrypted and accessible by the state (and by anyone else, from any foreign state or criminal attacker, caring to look) can these people be found and tried.
What matters is money and time and effort
This is bankrupt thinking and betrays a revealed preference. Western governments have wanted to censor the world wide web since it was created. They want total control over what the population does and sees online. Paedophilia is a very small part of the reason why.
As these raids have shown, the key determiner in these crimes is not the failure of already-immense state surveillance. What matters is money and time and effort. The paedophiles have money and they put in time and thought to commit their crimes. Somehow, the police have to be capable of more.
