Inside the hunt: Undercover investigation with Idaho’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit

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IDAHO FALLS — It’s 6:30 in the morning and a group of police officers is about to knock on a door in Bonneville County to talk with a guy about some really disturbing stuff.

Moments later, he’s walked out in handcuffs.

A few days later, a similar scene plays out in Pocatello.

Then in Idaho Falls, Rexburg, Jefferson County, and many other counties and cities across the state.

The men and women in uniform are part of the Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children, or ICAC, Unit.

For the past four months, EastIdahoNews.com has gone undercover with the team as they work to get those involved in the disgusting behavior off the streets. The state attorney general has let our cameras inside ICAC headquarters and given EastIdahoNews.com an exclusive look at how the unit operates.

The ICAC Unit

There are 61 ICAC units across the country. They get thousands of tips every day about people viewing, sharing or producing CSAM – child sex abuse material, which is commonly called child pornography.

“Our job is to locate those that might be disseminating, uploading and downloading child pornography or enticing children,” says Nick Edwards, the chief investigator for the attorney general and the ICAC unit commander. “I get this question a lot: ‘Are people watching what I’m doing online?’ Absolutely. The internet provider that you’re using is absolutely watching what you’re doing.”

Federal law requires electronic service providers to report when users download, upload or distribute CSAM. Those reports go to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where they’re reviewed and then passed on to the states where investigators believe the perpetrators are.

In Idaho, those cybertips are forwarded to the Attorney General’s Office, where Lindsay Harris and Misty Hobbs review them.

“There’s chat, there’s video, there’s photo, sometimes there’s all in one,” says Harris.

Many of the tips involve teenagers sexting their friends. Others involve sextortion, and then there are videos and photos where it’s hard to tell if there’s a child involved.

“To determine if it has prosecutorial merit, we really have to look and see whether the average person would look at this child and know that’s a child,” says Hobbs.

Harris and Hobbs review nearly 100 cybertips every week, and the numbers aren’t slowing down.

Over the past five years, the number of incoming tips to ICAC has gone from around 1,500 in 2020 to over 4,100 expected this year, according to Edwards.

“We had a backlog of almost 2,000 cybertips at one point. Now when we get cybertips, we triage them in four hours on average,” says Edwards. “We get them from the National Center (of Missing and Exploited Children) and they’ve been looked at by someone on my team within four hours.”

To tackle the problem, Attorney General Raúl Labrador relies on an ICAC affiliate program. Eleven law enforcement agencies throughout the state, including the Idaho Falls Police Department, Pocatello Police Department and Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office, have officers and deputies working ICAC cases full-time. They’re paid by the attorney general, but work in police departments and sheriff’s offices where they live.

“Last year, we arrested more people and prosecuted more people than in the previous three years combined,” Labrador tells EastIdahoNews.com. “We hope it doesn’t keep going because that means we have more criminals and more children being harmed, but unfortunately, this is the kind of crime that continues to happen, and I think our team is well prepared to deal with those people harming children.”

Read the rest of the story here

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