Thread by @WIRED

On the web, 36-year old David Wilson pretended to be a 13-year old girl. Using Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram accounts, Wilson used stolen images of young girls to befriend other children online. And once he did, the abuse would begin.
wired.trib.al/ZvYuGqT Via @WiredUK 1/

Wilson would send sexual images of young women and demand his victims, all of them younger than 15 years of age, send him photos and videos of themselves in return. 2/

Soon, Wilson turned to blackmail–forcing the children to performing more extreme sexual acts. In some cases, he forced his victims to abuse their younger brothers and sisters, some of whom were as young as four years old. 3/

Police say some of Wilson’s victims wanted to end their lives.

But, with each victim, Wilson left a trail of digital clues. In early 2017 Facebook discovered 20 accounts, all belonging to teenage boys. 4/

The boys had been sending indecent images of themselves to an account that appeared to belong to a 13-year-old girl. 5/

The National Crime Agency arrested Wilson after linking IP address data provided by Facebook to an address in the UK, where he lived with his mother. Police say the information from Facebook was absolutely crucial to this case. 6/

But the system that allowed Facebook to spot Wilson’s illicit activities, and helped police build the case against him, is about to be torn down. End-to-end encryption is coming to Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. 7/

The move, which is likely to happen in 2022, has reignited the debate around how to balance the importance of individual privacy with protecting children from the worst kind of abuse. 8/ wired.trib.al/ZvYuGqT Via @WiredUK

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