BEAVERTON, Ore. (KOIN) — The court documents obtained by KOIN 6 News into the arrest of a Vancouver middle school teacher on child pornography charges detailed how difficult it can be for authorities to track these crimes.
Jay Michaud is facing federal charges for possessing child pornography. Inside the court documents were details of how Michaud allegedly used dark websites — password protected sites accessible only through special software that masks IP tracking and user information.
Beaverton Detective Chad Opitz, who is also part of an FBI task force on sex trafficking, said his job was a lot easier when the Internet was just about desktop computers and IP addresses.
The advent of smart phones, iPads and software advancement make it very difficult to catch smart cyber criminals.
“The more technology evolves to make it easier for you and I to do our jobs, that is making it easier for these offenders to do what they want,” Opitz told KOIN 6 News.
He understands what it took for authorities to place Michaud under arrest. The teacher was allegedly on a hidden network designed for anonymous communication.
Sometimes the sites are located the browsers like TOR, which stands for The Onion Router.
In order to track users, detectives had to peel that onion. Sophisticated software makes it easy for offenders to stay ahead of the law by bouncing their communications around a network of relay computers run by volunteers across the globe.
“It’s all about being covert and being anonymous because you can pose who you want to be and age or a gender and disappear and come back the next day or even the next hour as somebody completely new,” Opitz said.
He added apps like Tinder and Whisper — sites with many teens — create opportunity previously unavailable to offenders. They never stay long, frequently change screen names and move from group-to-group, network-to-network as much as possible.
“The technology, the Internet, the programming, the social media has just made it a very convoluted, big mess we just know is going to get bigger, going to get more elaborate, more anonymous,” the detective said.