European authorities announced Friday that 112 people across the european continent were arrested for downloading and sharing the "worst of the worst" online child sexual abuse images.
The investigation, called "operation icarus," started a year ago and includes national law enforcement agencies across most of europe.
Police moved in on previously unknown networks of child sex offenders who were sharing videos online.
Police targeted file sharing services online, and found the internet is helping offenders develop better techniques for sharing images on a global basis and for protecting their identity.
"The scale, I think, is also staggering," says Rob Wainwright, Europol Director, "with hundreds of thousands of hours of movie material that have been uncovered in this investigation."
