Task Force Argos
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Task Force Argos is a branch of the
Queensland Police Service The Queensland Police Service (QPS) is the principal law enforcement agency responsible for policing the Australian state of Queensland. In 1990, the Queensland Police Force was officially renamed the Queensland Police Service and the old motto ...
, responsible for the investigation of online child exploitation and abuse. Founded in 1997, the unit's original charter was to investigate institutional child abuse allegations arising from the
Forde Inquiry The Forde Inquiry (1998–1999), or formally the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions, was a special inquiry into child abuse in the state of Queensland, Australia, presided over by Leneen Forde AC, a former ...
. The unit's name was derived from Greek mythology, in which Argus Panoptes, or Argos, was a primordial "all seeing" giant with multiple eyes, guardian of the goddess Io. As protector of the goddess, Argos was great and strong: sleep never fell upon his eyes, and he kept sure watch always. Technological advances and wider access to the Internet led the unit in 2002 to explore avenues to address growing community concern over the proliferation of child exploitation across the internet. Task Force Argos identified potential threats to children in online chat rooms, where sexual predators were grooming children and recruiting them to engage in sexual activity.


Notable cases

In March 2002, Argos began an undercover operation against a person whom they had discovered in a chat room seeking underage girls for sex. An Argos operative, posing as a 14-year-old girl, was asked to meet the offender in Brisbane so he could photograph her nude and have sex with her. During the online conversations the offender claimed to have some 66,000 images of child exploitation. Argos identified the offender, and a search of his computer identified contact offences involving multiple children. One child was 12 years of age at the time, and had been befriended by the offender on the internet. The other child was aged five, and was made available to the offender by her father whom the offender had met in an internet chat room. In 2004, a child pornography website, located in Belarus, was taken down by an international task force, involving the
Australian Federal Police The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is the national and principal federal law enforcement agency of the Australian Government with the unique role of investigating crime and protecting the national security of the Commonwealth of Australia. Th ...
and the
Australian High Tech Crime Centre The Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC) are hosted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at their headquarters in Canberra. Under the auspices of the AFP, the AHTCC is party to the formal Joint Operating Arrangement established between th ...
under the codename
Operation Auxin Operation Auxin was an Australian police operation in September 2004, leading to the arrest of almost 200 people on charges of child pornography. These people were all accused of purchasing child pornography over the Internet, using their credi ...
. The operation saw the arrest of 154 Australians, including 57 in Queensland. Officers of Task Force Argos identified seven children located in Brisbane from the child exploitation material and rescued them from further harm. In 2006, a similar international operation was undertaken, codenamed Achilles. Task Force Argos formed an alliance with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
in a lengthy covert operation that smashed a sophisticated international network of online offenders responsible for distributing and creating on-demand graphic, child exploitation material. Operation Achilles began in January 2006 and closed in February 2008, with the execution of warrants and arrest of offenders in Australia, the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. Task Force Argos officers infiltrated the international child sex offender network who were trading images and videos depicting the violent sexual abuse of children. The completion of Operation Achilles and its associated sub-operations around the world resulted in the removal of more than 60 children from sexually abusive situations, the arrest of 22 network members globally and the closure of four commercial child exploitation websites. The work of Task Force Argos in raising community awareness to the dangers of online predatory behaviour has been recognised globally. The team was awarded the International Law Enforcement Cybercrime Award 2011 (Gold award) by The Society for the Policing of Cyberspace (POLCYB), a Canadian-based organisation committed to enhancing partnerships in order to prevent and combat crimes in cyberspace. Task Force Argos has also been responsible for partnering with software powerhouse Microsoft to develop the Australian National Victim Image Library aimed at reducing investigator exposure to child exploitation material and improve opportunity to identify children at risk. Microsoft donated its technical development expertise to build this capability and the identification database is currently in national deployment. Task Force Argos works closely with international counterparts to deliver positive outcomes for child victims, irrespective of where those children might be geographically located. The unit relies on victim identification expertise and their specialist is also the chair of the Interpol Specialist Group on Crimes Against Children. By employing robust victim identification strategies that effectively identify and locate child victims then their offenders can be found and prosecuted. One such operation involved the police taking over and running a
dark web The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on ''darknets'': overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communi ...
network for several months, resulting in the rescuing of 85 children and hundreds of arrests, including notorious British paedophile
Richard Huckle Richard William Huckle (14 May 1986 – 13 October 2019) was an English serial child sex offender. He was arrested by Britain's National Crime Agency in 2014 after a tip-off from the Australian Federal Police and convicted in 2016 of 71 charge ...
and the site's operator Shannon McCoole. Task Force Argos expends considerable effort to protect children on-line by researching contemporary technology to effectively target on-line predators. Adopting the mantra to 'Leave No Stone Unturned' and the insignia of the scorpion (the natural predator of the 'rock spider') their focus is squarely on child protection to ensure exhaustive inquiries are conducted so that no child victim of sexual exploitation is ever overlooked. During 2016-2017, Argos operated the
darknet A dark net or darknet is an overlay network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, and often uses a unique customized communication protocol. Two typical darknet types are social ne ...
child pornography site Childs Play for eleven months.


Notable Abandoned Prosecutions

In December 2008, task force members arrested and charged a
Maroochydore Maroochydore ( ) is a coastal town in the Sunshine Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. The town was subdivided from the Cotton Tree reserve by Surveyor Thomas O'Connor in 1903. The land was acquired from William Pettigrew who had a timber de ...
man with 'using the internet to access and publish child-abuse material' after he allegedly reposted on Liveleak a
viral video A viral video is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email.Lu Jiang, Yajie Miao, Yi Yang, ZhenZhong Lan, Alexander Haupt ...
of another man swinging a baby by its arms. Although the offender was successfully committed to the District Court for trial, on 9 September 2009 it was announced that the charges had been dropped by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions after reviewing the case. The poster has called for an inquiry into how he came to be charged in the first place.


References

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External links


Interview with Task Force Argos squad member

Queensland Police service
Task forces Law enforcement agencies of Queensland Child abuse-related organizations Child abuse in Queensland Online child abuse Organizations established in 1864