Mr. Alfin, 36, was a father of one from New York and had been a special agent since 2009. He was assigned to the Miami Child Exploitation task force. He discussed his role in an
online F.B.I. article about the
2015 arrest of a Naples, Fla., man who ran what the bureau described as the world’s largest child
website. The site, called Playpen, had more than 150,000 users around the world.
“They put their lives on the line and that’s a hell of a price to pay,” President Biden said of the agents in remarks from the Oval Office. “My heart aches for the families.”
The F.B.I. squads that investigate crimes against children are considered some of the most difficult assignments because of the disturbing and graphic nature of the cases they handle. Agents typically review horrendous depictions of children being sexually exploited, images that are then shared with others online.
Investigations into child sexual abuse often start with a tip from online social media companies like Facebook, which reported finding nearly
60 million images and videos in 2019 alone. About half of the content was not necessarily illegal, according to the company, and was reported to help law enforcement with investigations.
Yet companies can usually only detect a small percentage of what is distributed, since they rely on automated systems that can only flag material that has been previously flagged by users. From a tip of just one or two images or videos, investigators frequently find troves of thousands, or more, on a suspect’s hard drive.
The sharing of this imagery can also point to real-world abuse. It is not uncommon to find offenders who share child sexual abuse imagery who have also abused children in real life.
Mr. Alfin was involved in an investigation into a dark web forum beginning in 2014 where members would upload and trade graphic images of child sexual abuse. The investigation resulted in the arrest of at least 350 people in the United States and hundreds more around the world. It is credited with rescuing over 300 children, according to a news release from the F.B.I.
For the past decade, criminals have increasingly been using advanced technologies like the dark web — where users’ internet protocol addresses are obscured — to stay ahead of the police. In one case, an Ohio man helped run a dark website with nearly 30,000 members from 2012 to 2014. The site, now shuttered, required users to share images of abuse to maintain good standing, according to court documents.
The online forum had a private section that was only available to members who shared imagery of children they had abused themselves.
Several police investigations in recent years have broken up other enormous dark web forums, including one known as Child’s Play that was reported to have had over a million user accounts.
2 F.B.I. Agents Killed in Shooting in Florida
