THEY COULDN’T PUT THEIR SKILLS TO BETTER USE. In War on Child Porn, US Turns Wounded Soldiers Into Hunters

It’s unpaid work that first year, working alongside agents to find suspects and build the cases, often looking at graphic, violent content for clues about the perpetrator, the victim, or even the location. But the program regularly leads to job offers from ICE, according to an agency spokesman.

The collaboration between ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations office, U.S. Special Operations Command, and the National Association to Protect Children builds the ranks of child sexual abuse investigators, as law enforcement across the United States scrambles to keep up with networks of elusive online suspects — the ones supplying the images and the ones demanding them.

Non-profit organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that also work on these cases report that the trade in child pornography images is growing “exponentially.” They report receiving thousands of requests from law enforcement agencies to analyze millions of images and videos in one year.