A Benton County Arkansas Cyber crimes police unit said they intend to catch child pornographers and sex criminals by mining bitcoin. The county’s sheriff, Shawn Holloway, said that technology is evolving rapidly. In this sense, law enforcers must remain a step ahead to keep up with nascent trends in criminality. This is especially true when it comes to “cyber crime” and dark web activity.
A local news article said, “Today the sheriff announced that members of their cyber crimes unit will now be “mining” bitcoins as a way to catch sexual predators and other criminals who are using the secret web browsers.”
This method will likewise help educate police personnel on cryptocurrency technologies.
Law Enforcement to Buy Child Pornography with Bitcoin to Catch Offenders
The law enforcement unit plans to mine bitcoin and use it to buy child pornography. Then they will travel to arrest the offending suspect. A Detective for the department, David Undiano, clarified:
" People are selling child pornography on the dark web and on the internet. They are accepting bitcoins, not payments. We can’t use the sheriff’s office credit card, and we cant exchange child pornography. We need some type currency to get this and then identify who we are getting it from. That way, we can go arrest that person."
https://news.bitcoin.com/cyber-crimes-unit-to-criminals-by-mining-bitcoin
I did not understand this police strategy, if bitcoin is anonymous how they will find the pedophiles using bitcoin?
"The department is conducting this educational meeting, because the FBI recently said there has been a rise in the number of people trading in pornography, buying drugs, and engaging in human trafficking"
another thing I do not understand, if FBI already has many bitcoins that confiscated from many thieves, why not use these bitcoins to catch such pedophiles instead of the police mining?