In a recent article, I delved into the history of Operation Optic Nerve. This was an early 2000s MI5 and CIA domestic spying operation, which saw the UK and U.S. governments record thousands of hours of footage and still images of members of the public masturbating over webcams connected through Yahoo’s then-popular messaging service, Yahoo Messenger.
The intelligence agencies gathering this data then went one step further by using early facial recognition technology to link images of everyday Brits spanking the monkey to the real-world identities of people in passport and driver’s license databases.
I know this all sounds far too ridiculous to be true. That’s why GCHQ and their U.S. partners were left more than a little red-faced when The Guardian broke the story of Optic Nerve in 2014. However, as it turns out, this is far from the lowest level of degeneracy that Western intelligence agencies are willing to stoop to.
Operation Pacifier – The Time the FBI Became a Child Porn Kingpin
In early 2015, as verified by The Seattle Times, the FBI successfully arrested a notorious online pervert responsible for acting as administrator of The PlayPen, a Dark Web porn site disseminating pornographic videos of minors, attracting approximately 11,000 visitors each week. What the FBI did next, though, is more than a little bewildering.
Rather than taking The PlayPen down, the FBI began hosting The PlayPen, as well as 23 other high-traffic Dark Web child porn sites, on its very own servers. This saw traffic to The PlayPen almost quadruple to 50,000 visitors per week.
Put simply, for at least two weeks in 2015, the FBI was itself responsible for hosting half of all the sickest child porn on the Dark Web. Moreover, this isn’t conjecture. This is fact.
So How Many Pedophiles Did the FBI Catch?
Winding down after just two weeks, Operation Pacifier saw the FBI prosecute at least 200 Americans while simultaneously handing details of almost 400 more PlayPen site users/visitors to authorities in Europe. However, some of the people the FBI alleges are pedophiles have successfully fought to overturn prosecutions. This is due to the FBI not being willing to say how it was able to formally identify people accessing the abuse sites it was hosting.
Since 2002, it has also been law in the U.S. for child abuse victims to be able to sue the FBI if the agency uses images or videos featuring their abuse to honeytrap people it suspects are pedophiles.
This basic legal precedent from 2002 makes everything the FBI did in 2015 absolutely illegal. Let’s also consider the benefit-to-risk ratio here.
As I just made clear, traffic to just one illicit site the FBI was hosting in 2015 went from 11,000 visitors per week to 50,000. However, after two weeks of attempting to snare visitors, the FBI was only able to attempt to prosecute fewer than 1,000 people in total. This means 900,000 potential pedophiles got away scot-free, and likely after making copies of much of the illicit material made available to them. Great job, FBI!
Now the FBI and Most World Governments Want Direct Access to Your Data
For a moment, let’s put aside the fact that the world’s foremost intelligence agencies have gone to great lengths in the recent past to spy on you masturbating before later hosting half of all child porn on the Dark Web.
As we do this, let’s fast-forward to the present, where most governments in Europe and the U.S. are attempting to end something known as end-to-end encryption.
This is the encryption messaging services like WhatsApp, Apple Messenger, and Telegram use to ensure that only you and the people you are messaging can see the contents of whatever messages or media you are sharing. However, encryption like this is problematic for our friendly government and intelligence agency overlords, as when people share information this way, governments can’t see what people are talking about.
Of course, governments don’t want to be nosy. They just want to keep everyone safe by ensuring people aren’t sharing things like revenge porn or illicit pictures of minors, like they do.
The War on Your Digital Privacy Is Real, and It’s Happening Right Now
In the case of the UK, an Act of Parliament called the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 already gives UK authorities the right to demand that backdoors be built into encrypted apps like WhatsApp. This way, the UK government can keep better tabs on things like terrorism. However, to date, this Act has only been used against Apple.
In early 2025, the UK government requested that Apple create a backdoor into their iCloud Advanced Data Protection encryption. Apple declined to do so. However, it later removed all encryption from several iCloud services in the UK so as not to risk breaking UK law.
Right now, if you are an Apple user in the UK, your iCloud Backups, iCloud Drive Data, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Safari Bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Wallet Passes, and Freeform data are all easily and immediately accessible to the UK security services. Sadly, all the same data is now also more easily available to potential hackers and identity thieves than ever before also.
Of course, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear… right?
Everyone Has Something to Hide From an Incompetent Government
I’m going to talk more about the war on encryption in later posts. Until I do, consider this:
In 2022, the UK government spent a whopping £534,000 on its then end-to-end encryption demonizing “No Place to Hide” campaign. Noplacetohide.org.uk also still exists. However, as reported by The Register, the site has been hacked on at least two occasions to date by rogue agents attempting to lure site visitors to sign up for fraudulent payday loan schemes.
Yes, that’s right. The same UK government that can spend half a million on a website telling you to ditch encryption can’t even maintain the security of said website. Now, do you still want to put all your most sensitve data in their hands?