Innocent children around the globe fall victim to predators when they are featured in pornography.  Some are forced into it, some are unaware, and some are victims of their own parents who want to make some money by brandishing them on the web to be feasted on by strangers from all parts of the world.

The concept of right and wrong comes from our parents, but if our parents are the ones telling us that wrong is right, the morals of a child become disturbingly compromised.  It infuriates me that these adults can prey on little children.  I look at my little nieces and nephews and think, “If anyone does harm to any of them, I would make them pay.”  I’m an aunt, not a parent, but I imagine that parents of these little children would literally move mountains if harm falls upon their little angels.These predators have become the latest target for Anonymous.

Over the past few months, Anonymous, the hacktivist collective, has been causing chaos on the web, exposing security flaw after security flaw, exposing information of innocent civilians or those from law enforcement.  They’ve exposed corruption in the government, their actions met by some applause, but mostly criticism.  Anonymous does not approve of violence brought to protesters involved in Occupy Wall Street, and threatened to do harm if violence against these protesters wasn’t stopped.  Mostly, Anonymous’ feats had been ignored, but their latest endeavor could be their best effort yet.

Last week, Anonymous targeted a darknet site, Hidden Wiki that allows concealed access to child pornography sites.  Hidden Wiki contain hundreds of hidden websites that cannot be found when doing a normal online search.  The sites found here are mostly illegal, like porn sites making money off child exploitation.  Tor network enables illegal websites to operate, as it keeps these sites under the radar.  Those with Tor accounts are the only ones who can access these hidden sites.  Tor network is perfect for those who are hiding something grave, as it fosters anonymity of a different sort.

On a statement in Pastebin, Anonymous named a section dedicated to child pornography, Hard Candy.  When they learned the content of the section, Anonymous deleted the links to the porn sites but Hidden Wiki’s admin was quick to restore all sites, and this led to Anonymous’ vow to continue making Hidden Wiki unavailable.

They soon noticed that “95% of child porn sites listed on Hidden Wiki shared a digital fingerprint with the shared hosting server at Freedom Hosting.”  They have identified that Freedom Hosting hosts the largest collection of child pornography on the internet.  Anonymous asked Freedom Hosting to remove all illegal content from their servers, but they refused to do so. Anonymous then brought down their servers, but there were brought back up again, flush with new security features.  Anonymous was still able to bring down their server, and will continue doing so until child pornography is obliterated.

Anonymous’ Official Statement

The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape, and death.

For this, Freedom Hosting has been declared #OpDarknet Enemy Number One.

By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites, among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date containing more than 100GB of child pornography.

We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting’s server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography.

Anonymous’ Demands

Our demands are simple. Remove all child pornography content from your servers. Refuse to provide hosting services to any website dealing with child pornography. This statement is not just aimed at Freedom Hosting, but everyone on the internet. It does not matter who you are, if we find you to be hosting, promoting, or supporting child pornography, you will become a target.

If Anonymous’ efforts were brushed off before, this one may gain some public support.  This action is to protect children.  It’s a cause we don’t often hear about, unless you’re a regular SVU viewer.  As Anonymous continues to find new causes to take up, the public is made more aware of the dealings of the web, at the very least validating the awareness certain hactivist actions have raised.