U.S. Customs Service Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced arrests of an international child pornography ring from Washington. (AFP)

By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 3, 1998; Page A12

Law enforcement agents in the United States and 13 other countries yesterday raided nearly 200 suspected members of an Internet child pornography ring, a secretive network described by authorities as the largest and most prolific ever uncovered.

The U.S. Customs Service, which seized computers from 32 American suspects yesterday in 22 states, said the on-line "Wonderland Club" required all members to possess thousands of sexually explicit images of children, some of them as young as 18 months. Club members then used secret passwords to meet in private Internet hideaways, where they traded the images "like baseball cards," officials said. The ring was targeted for possessing and distributing child pornography but in some cases, the images pictured club members molesting their own relatives, the officials said.

Officials around the world described the Wonderland raids as the most extensive child porn sting in history and as a troubling glimpse of the future of law enforcement. The digital age, they said, has made it much easier to commit crimes like child pornography, money-laundering and intellectual property theft, while erasing traditional borders between nations. Yesterday's sweep included targets in the United States, Australia and 12 European countries; investigators said they are aware of additional Wonderland members in 33 other countries, from Japan to Israel to Brazil.

Porn Raids The U.S. Customs Service issued search-and-seizure warrants in 22 states as part of a global raid on a child pornography trading ring involving suspects in 14 countries. Locations of U.S. raids 1. Grand Haven, Mich. 2. Conroe, Tex. 3. Broken Arrow, Okla. 4. Jacksonville, Fla. 5. Halifax, Pa. 6. National City, Calif. 7. St. Charles, Mo. 8. Lawrence, Kan. 9. Greenville, N.C. 10. Salt Lake City 11. Brooklyn, N.Y. 12. Chapel Hill, N.C. 13. Miami 14. St. Paul, Minn. 15. Kennebunk, Maine 16. Salem, Mass. 17. Fort Collins, Colo. 18. Chesapeake, Va. 19. Braintree, Mass. 20. West Orange, N.J. 21. Skowhegan, Maine 22. Alpharetta, Ga. 23. Glen Carbon, Ill. 24. Augusta, Ga. 25. Dallas 26. Allen, Tex. 27. Blacksburg, Va. 28. New Britain, Conn. 29. Santa Ana, Calif. 30. Knightstown, Ind. 31. Columbus, Miss. 32. Norcross, Ga. Other countries making raids Australia Austria Belgium Finland France Germany Italy Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom SOURCE: U.S. Customs Service

The Wonderland investigation also illustrated the wide reach of cyberporn throughout this country, in tiny towns and big cities, among the lowly and the elite. Search warrants were executed in communities from Brooklyn to Conroe, Tex., and the American suspects included a scientist, a law student, a medical student and a schoolteacher.

Four suspects in the United States and at least 40 suspects abroad were arrested yesterday on child pornography charges. Most of the other suspects are expected to face charges soon. Officials provided sketchy details yesterday, but one man has already admitted storing 70,000 images on his hard drive, and another allegedly kept pictures of himself raping his young niece. Agents believe that some members sent live video feeds of child molestation across the network, but they will not know for sure until they examine the suspects' computer files.

Investigators hope the files will also hold clues to who the children are and how they ended up in the images. "The people who exploit children in this way think they can hide in cyberspace," said Customs Service Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. "They are wrong. We will find them and bring them to justice."

American officials said the probe had its origins in a high-profile 1996 case involving a California-based child porn ring known as the Orchid Club. One of the defendants in that case implicated a British club member, and authorities in the United Kingdom soon linked him to the larger and more sophisticated Wonderland ring. In May, British investigators contacted the Customs Service, and an international task force quickly began preparing for yesterday's crackdown.

Under federal law, it is illegal to possess, transmit or distribute explicit images of child pornography, so the Wonderland members operated in the shadows of the Internet.

They created a private chatroom accessible only to members, who were only given its password after receiving an introduction from another member and demonstrating their access to pornographic material. They then arranged meetings through their own private servers, known as F-serves or FTPs, in which they could tap into each other's computers and download material. On three occasions when club members were arrested, they moved their entire operation to new computer servers.

The officials decided that they had to act now to prevent more children from being abused, so they never did manage to fully infiltrate the club. But they were able to trace its membership through wiretaps, records of on-line transmissions, and undercover participation in more public child-sex chatrooms. And they were able to organize simultaneous raids at locations all over the world, to prevent club members from warning each other to destroy their files.

The Internet is now the primary vehicle for smuggling pornography into the United States, and the Customs Service is now the top federal agency in terms of child porn arrests, with 189 already this year.

Yesterday, Customs officials provided a demonstration of a handful of the hundreds of legal Internet discussion groups devoted to pedophilia themes. Customs agent Glenn Nick said pedophiles often discuss exchanges of graphic material in these public rooms, then conduct the exchanges in private.

"They're allowed to talk about whatever they want -- that's the First Amendment," Nick said. "But we can use this to get to the pictures of the kids -- that's a crime."

Customs officials warned that the Wonderland case shows how the Internet has facilitated crime since their first computer porn investigation in 1989, but civil libertarians argue that the raids show how the Internet has facilitated law enforcement. They noted that while the anonymity of the Internet has helped pedophiles lurk undetected in children's chatrooms, it has also helped undercover officers draw them out.

And while federal law enforcement officials have called for legislation giving them "keys" to all private encryption programs, the investigation succeeded even though some of the suspects had encrypted their files.

"This shows that law enforcement already has plenty of power," said James X. Dempsey, an attorney for the Center for Democracy and Technology.

"The Internet only facilitates crime the way the automobile facilitates crime. Like any tool, it has its pluses and minuses."