Authorities in the Philippines have warned the sexual exploitation of children online is a "growing trend", despite ramped-up global efforts to rescue minors from abuse.

recent operations have indicated the involvement of families and neighbours in the abuse is occurring in more places than previously thought, and that thousands of children are still being exploited.

"Since these children are groomed as young as one-year-old, they think what they are doing is just normal, so they are able to act as if it is right," said Attorney Morecho-Fransciso.

While the problem of child online exploitation in the Philippines has been making headlines for years, there is mounting evidence the issue is getting worse.

https://news.sky.com/story/parents-in-philippines-taking-money-from-western-paedophiles-for-webcam-abuse-10807436

How child sexual abuse became a family business in the Philippines

Tens of thousands of children believed to be victims of live-streaming abuse, some of it being carried out by their own parents

the United Nations says, there are tens of thousands of children believed to be involved in a rapidly expanding local child abuse industry already worth US$1bn.

In some areas, entire communities live off the business, abetted by increasing internet speeds, advancing cameraphone technology, and growing ease of money transfers across borders.

Children are made to perform around the clock, with morning live-streams catering to Europeans and Americans, and later in the day, an Australian-based clientele.

The number of ongoing live-streaming criminal cases in the Philippines is rising, from 57 in 2013, growing to 89 in 2014, and up to 167 in 2015.

And while children have historically testified against sex traffickers in court, they have proved unwilling to incriminate their parents.

The day they arrived, the children played on the swings. Unlike others at the shelter, they showed no overt signs of abuse, their social worker explained. The staff, who had never dealt with a case like this before, wondered if they should be kept in the same shelter as other children who had been physically abused by paedophiles.

The children appeared oblivious to the fact that they had been exploited and it could affect them badly to realise they were abused like others around them.

The three-year-old continued to do “sexualised dancing” in front of other children, who complained to the staff.

“It was a struggle for the children to try to understand what their parents did,”

The two younger daughters had no idea that the abuse was anything but normal. “They said it was a business in the neighbourhood. It seemed natural to be involved in this as the other children were doing it,” she said. Police found that it was the children who first heard about live-streaming as a money maker when playing with their friends.

Live-streaming has turned policing on its head. Interpol currently has an eight-step process to identify victims of child abuse, with step two being that the crime is documented by the abuser with photos and videos. Such documentation does not exist with live-streaming.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/31/live-streaming-child-sex-abuse-family-business-philippines

Inside suspected pedophile’s lair, a glimpse at a global child rape epidemic

Deakin’s arrest on April 20 reveals one of the darkest corners of the internet, where pedophiles in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia pay facilitators on the other side of the world to sexually abuse children, even babies, directing their moves through online livestreaming services.

The relatively new crime of webcam sex tourism is spreading rapidly, with new digital technologies sparking what the United Nations calls an “alarming growth of new forms of child sexual exploitation online.” The FBI says it’s epidemic, and that at any given moment, 750,000 child predators are online.

Almost every case stems from the Philippines, where good English speakers, increased internet connections and widespread international cash transfer systems combine with widespread poverty and easy access to vulnerable kids. There have been as many as three busts a week there this spring. The youngest victim ever, rescued a few weeks ago, was an infant, 2 months old. Most are under 12.

“It’s not just a virtual crime. It is an actual crime,” said human rights attorney Sam Inocencio, who heads International Justice Mission’s Philippines office, which supports local law enforcement with investigators and attorneys. “Online sexual exploitation is possibly the most evil thing that I’ve seen.”

Perpetrators now use bitcoin or untraceable credit cards. By livestreaming, they bypass digital markers that law enforcement embeds in illegal content to catch people downloading, sharing or saving child pornography on computers or in the cloud. Once isolated, pedophiles now operate with virtual anonymity, sharing images and children, say experts.

NSFW

https://nypost.com/2017/05/09/suspected-pedophile-busted-in-sickening-philippines-sex-den/

Makes me wonder about Jared Leto

A New Webcasting Experience: Jared Leto Launches Live Streaming Service

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5641-jared-leto-vyrt.html

or how about Brock Pierce

Making a Crypto Utopia in Puerto Rico

Brock Pierce inside the former Children’s Museum in Old San Juan, P.R., which he and his colleagues hope to make part of a crypto utopia where the money is virtual and the contracts are all public.

They call what they are building Puertopia. But then someone told them, apparently in all seriousness, that it translates to “eternal boy playground” in Latin. So they are changing the name: They will call it Sol.

Dozens of entrepreneurs, made newly wealthy by blockchain and cryptocurrencies, are heading en masse to Puerto Rico this winter. They are selling their homes and cars in California and establishing residency on the Caribbean island in hopes of avoiding what they see as onerous state and federal taxes on their growing fortunes, some of which now reach into the billions of dollars.

And these men — because they are almost exclusively men — have a plan for what to do with the wealth: They want to build a crypto utopia, a new city where the money is virtual and the contracts are all public, to show the rest of the world what a crypto future could look like. Blockchain, a digital ledger that forms the basis of virtual currencies, has the potential to reinvent society — and the Puertopians want to prove it.

https://madamcrypto.wordpress.com/2018/02/04/making-a-crypto-utopia-in-puerto-rico/