The head of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) child protection unit has vowed to bring to justice those involved in child pornography following the arrest of 16 men who downloaded a movie showing the rape of an eight-year-old girl.
The AFP announced on Monday it had arrested 16 Australian members of a global child porn network, including eight in Queensland, three in South Australia, two each in Western Australia and Victoria and one is NSW.
The men, who ranged in age from 21 to 49, had all downloaded the same graphic 18-minute video showing the rape of an unidentified eight-year-old Russian girl.
Police in 92 countries are investigating as many as 9,000 people believed to have downloaded the movie.
The AFP said the video contained some of the most serious images of sexual abuse.
A total of 44 charges relating to the distribution and possession of child abuse images had been laid against Australians as a result of Operation Furious.
The AFP's head of high-tech crimes and child protection operations, Neil Gaughan, said more search warrants would be executed in the coming weeks with many more arrests expected.
Despite the success of Operation Furious and others like it - which have led to the arrest of 160 people in Australia and more than 245 charges being laid - Mr Gaughan said the prevalence of child pornography was not decreasing.
"The fact that our law enforcement colleagues throughout Australia and in fact throughout the world are continuing to arrest people that are involved in this type of vile crime, but people still commit that particular offence, (shows) it's clear that the message isn't getting out there," he told reporters.
"The message clearly is if people continue to be involved in this type of activity the AFP, with our state and territory colleagues, will bring people to justice."
Mr Gaughan said Operation Furious, which began after the AFP received information from German police in December last year, had led to the seizure of about 10 terabytes of data locally and another 20 terabytes of child pornography material was expected to be recovered.
He said the Australian men did not appear to know each other and included IT, printing, insurance and retail professionals.
While none had direct contact with children through their jobs, Mr Gaughan said state and territory police and local child protection authorities would investigate whether they had contact with other at-risk young people.
Mr Gaughan said easy access to advanced computer encryption technology meant people involved in child pornography were able to conceal their crimes better.
In one Queensland raid it took police six hours to break into the offender's computer, he said.
But police were stepping up their efforts in response, including infiltrating online networks by posing as offenders themselves, Mr Gaughan said.
"That's the other message for people involved in the proliferation and the movement of this particular type of filth," he said.
"You don't know who you're actually chatting to when you're in these type of networks. You could actually be talking to an undercover police officer."
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