alt.hn

2/17/2026 at 1:01:00 AM

Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gn239exlo

by colinprince

2/17/2026 at 1:51:50 AM

Am I reading this correctly that the address where they found the child was where her mother’s boyfriend was living?

> "So we narrowed it down to [this] one address… and started the process of confirming who was living there through state records, driver's licence… information on schools," says Squire.

> The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother's boyfriend - a convicted sex offender.

There’s a lot of focus on Facebook in the comments here, but unless I’m missing something the strangest part about this story was that the child’s mother was dating a convicted sex offender and they had to go through all of this process to arrive at this? It’s impressive detective work with the brick expert identifying bricks and the sofa sellers gathering their customer list, but how did this connection not register earlier?

EDIT: As others have pointed out, the wording is confusing. They made these connections to the identity only after identifying the house

by Aurornis

2/17/2026 at 2:08:33 AM

Sex offender registries are just registries. They only work if someone decides to actually do a query. It might prevent them from getting a childcare job, but it doesn't really prevent them from accessing children at all.

The registers are also massively bloated, some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination.

The only sex offenders who actually get regular checks that might identify this type of thing, are those on parole, or similar court ordered programs.

by phire

2/17/2026 at 2:23:02 AM

How many of these sex offenders bought this couch and live close to this brick factory in homes built in that time period?

by jiqiren

2/17/2026 at 2:11:48 AM

The salient point was that the person was in a relationship to the child’s mother.

by Aurornis

2/17/2026 at 2:13:46 AM

They didn't know who the child was, yet alone the mother. All they had were photos of an unnamed girl being abused.

by phire

2/17/2026 at 2:35:50 AM

> the strangest part about this story was that the child’s mother was dating a convicted sex offender

70.6% of beaten children are beaten at the mother’s custody. Most often it turns out the choice of companion of the mother is inappropriate. While many see that as blaming the mother and it is a huge taboo in our society, it is such a huge humanitarian problem that it’s worth educating women better over that specific problem, and taking sanctions if necessary.

70.8% in the case of death. Source: CDC 2001-2006 if I remember. Incoming: Many ad-hominem about the source, it’s a problem that never gets addressed.

by eastbound

2/17/2026 at 1:54:57 AM

I think the order went finding the house first and only then were they able to identify the victim (and consequently the offender)

by Macha

2/17/2026 at 2:01:52 AM

That would make sense. Thank you.

by Aurornis

2/17/2026 at 2:01:42 AM

Exactly, it sounds like they didn't know who the girl was from photos alone; "Lucy" was just a name they gave the victim.

by Scipio_Afri

2/17/2026 at 2:06:14 AM

There's also a lot of "WHY AREN'T YOU FOCUSING ON THE MOTHER?" whataboutism in the comments, which I find appalling. The article was about something else, and who knows what her circumstances were.

by rectang

2/17/2026 at 2:11:13 AM

Most crimes like this are, sadly, committed by someone who has some connection to the family. It’s standard to investigate connections first. That’s not “appalling” to suggest, it’s just a sad reality of these crimes.

They should be focusing on everyone connected to the family if known. It would be negligent not to.

The confusion came from the way the article was written. They didn’t know the identity until afterward.

by Aurornis

2/17/2026 at 1:25:29 AM

> They contacted Facebook, which at the time dominated the social media landscape, asking for help scouring uploaded family photos - to see if Lucy was in any of them. But Facebook, despite having facial recognition technology, said it "did not have the tools" to help.

Willing to bet my life savings that they are able to do exactly this when the goal is to create shadow profiles or maximize some metric.

by puttycat

2/17/2026 at 2:16:09 AM

The fine article actually ends with this text:

  > The BBC asked Facebook why it couldn't use its facial recognition technology to assist the hunt for Lucy. It responded: "To protect user privacy, it's important that we follow the appropriate legal process, but we work to support law enforcement as much as we can."

by dotancohen

2/17/2026 at 1:44:20 AM

Facial recognition is very powerful these days. My friend took a photo of his kid at the top of Twin Peaks in SF, with the city in the background. Unfortunately, due to the angle, you could barely see the eyes and a portion of the nose of the kid. Android was still able to tag the kid.

I feel like Facebook really dropped the ball here. It is obvious that Squire and colleagues are working for the Law Enforcement. If FB was concerned about privacy, they could have asked them to get a judicial warrant to perform a broad search.

But they didn't. And Lucy continued to be abused for months after that.

I hope when Zuck is lying on his death bed, he gets to think about these choices that he has made.

by 1024core

2/17/2026 at 2:28:53 AM

Google photos has the advantage of a limited search space. Any photo you take is overwhelmingly likely to be one of the few faces already in the library. Not to say facebook couldn't solve the problem. But the ability of Google to do facial recognition with such poor inputs is that it's searching on 40~ faces rather than x billion faces.

by Gigachad

2/17/2026 at 2:34:18 AM

Can confirm, have seen Google photos misidentify strangers. I'm sure better technology exists, but Google's system has weaknesses.

by fwipsy

2/17/2026 at 2:15:54 AM

> I feel like Facebook really dropped the ball here

This story was from more than a decade ago.

Facebook had facial recognition after that, but they deleted it all in response to public outcry. It’s sad to see HN now getting angry at Facebook for not doing facial recognition.

> I hope when Zuck is lying on his death bed, he gets to think about these choices that he has made.

Are we supposed to be angry at Zuckerberg now for making the privacy conscious decision to drop facial recognition? Or is everyone just determined to be angry regardless of what they do?

by Aurornis

2/17/2026 at 1:51:55 AM

> I feel like Facebook really dropped the ball here

This case began being investigated on January 2014 [0], which means abuse began (shudder) in 2012-13 if not earlier.

Facebook/Meta only began rolling out DeepFace [1] in June 2015 [2]

Heck, VGG-Face wasn't released until 2015 [3] and Image-Based Crowd Counting only began becoming solvable in 2015-16.

> Facial recognition is very powerful these days.

Yes. But it is 2026, not 2014.

> I hope when Zuck is lying on his death bed, he gets to think about these choices that he has made

I'm sure there are plenty of amoral choices he can think about, but not solving facial detection until 2015 is probably not one of them.

---

While it feels like mass digital surveillance, social media, and mass penetration of smartphones has been around forever it only really began in earnest just 12 years ago. The past approximately 20 years (iPhone was first released on June 2007 and Facebook only took off in early 2009 after smartphones and mobile internet became normalized) have been one of the biggest leaps in technology in the past century. The only other comparable decades were probably 1917-1937 and 1945-1965.

---

[0] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/bbc-eye-documentary-t...

[1] - https://research.facebook.com/publications/deepface-closing-...

[2] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-can-recognize-you-just...

[3] - https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/data/vgg_face/

by alephnerd

2/17/2026 at 1:57:42 AM

Facebook rightly retired their facial recognition system in 2021 over concerns about user privacy. Facebook is a social media site, they are not the government or police.

by __loam

2/17/2026 at 1:49:39 AM

When people on hacker News talk about requiring cops to do traditional police work instead of doing wide ranging trawls using technology, this is exactly what they meant. I hope you don't complain when the future you want becomes reality and the three letter agencies come knocking down your door just because you happened to be in the same building as a crime in progress and the machine learning algorithms determined your location via cellular logs and labelled you as a criminal.

by Onavo

2/17/2026 at 2:13:47 AM

The grim meathook future of ubiquitous surveillance is coming regardless. At the very least we could get some proper crime solving out of it along the way.

by wat10000

2/17/2026 at 2:06:24 AM

There’s a pretty big difference between surveillance logging your every move your and scanning photos voluntarily uploaded to Facebook.

No, I don’t like Facebook using facial recognition technology, and no I don’t like that someone else can upload photos of me without my consent (which ironically could leverage facial recognition technology to blanket prevent), but these are other technical and social issues that are unrelated to the root issue. I also wish there were clear political and legal boundaries around surveillance usage for truly abhorrent behaviour versus your non-Caucasian neighbour maybe j -walking triggering a visit from ICE.

Yes, it’s an abuse of power for these organisations to collect data these ways, but I’m not against their use to prevent literal ongoing child abuse, it’s one of the least worst uses of it.

by hsbauauvhabzb

2/17/2026 at 2:13:41 AM

Facebook shut down their facial recognition program in 2021 and deleted the data in response to public frustrations.

It’s really sad now to see people getting angry at Facebook not having facial recognition technology.

by Aurornis

2/17/2026 at 1:36:45 AM

> From that list of 40 or 50 people, it was easy to find and trawl their social media. And that is when they found a photo of Lucy on Facebook with an adult who looked as though she was close to the girl - possibly a relative.

It sounds like Facebook was a huge boost to the investigation despite that.

by garbawarb

2/17/2026 at 1:47:24 AM

Facebook did nothing to assist in narrowing a search area.

What Facebook actually did was host images .. so that after the team narrowed a list down to under 100 people they could look through profiles by hand.

It may as well have been searching Flickr, Instagram, Etsy, etc. profiles by hand.

by defrost

2/17/2026 at 2:23:18 AM

Yes, and if Facebook didn't exist, presumably these images connecting the abuser to the victim wouldn't have been available anywhere for the investigators to find.

by garbawarb

2/17/2026 at 1:06:09 AM

You can do the same yourself here: https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse

by blahaj

2/17/2026 at 2:29:40 AM

There is only one location shown in the images, in the past there were several and much clearer, I cannot image how difficult it must be to find it if the europol cannot find it in 2026.

Old thread for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19469681

by GaggiX

2/17/2026 at 2:19:18 AM

I have reported the person currently holding the US Presidency.

by belter

2/17/2026 at 1:28:27 AM

This speaks volumes of the moral values of Facebook vs the brick industry.

by throwaway5465

2/17/2026 at 1:46:04 AM

I’ve spent just a teeny bit of time helping international ICE investigators (not that one; internet child exploitation) postpone PTSD with technology. It seems like after two years of their job, they’re going to have a mental break. So postponing is all you can really do.

It’s disheartening how underfunded these agencies are compared to, what feels like at least, the severity of the crimes they’re up against.

These folks are heroes. This is one place AI has a lot of potential (but very little commercial value).

by nebezb

2/17/2026 at 1:49:18 AM

Moderation feels like the one of the most ethical uses of AI. Being able to prevent a lot of the worst content from being posted and preventing people from being exposed to it.

by Gigachad

2/17/2026 at 1:50:16 AM

periodically the various forces tackling CSAM release images which are ENTIRELY SFW, and are purely of a jersey, a backpack, a location, a tea setting, and ask people to tell them things: Was this available in Belgium? Did you ever see this in a second hand shop? Do you recognise the logo on this bag?

Information inside images is useful for this kind of struggle to identify victims of crime.

by ggm

2/17/2026 at 2:21:28 AM

Sounds a bit more productive than Wordle. How can we get involved?

by normie3000

2/17/2026 at 2:06:05 AM

This is an old story about an old investigation. It is old news dredged up to try to win sympathy for DHS/ICE. It is propaganda resurrected to make DHS look useful.

They cherry-picked a story that they knew would win public sympathy since no one wants a child molester to run free. Lets show a time when an agent solved a case for an excellent outcome.

Pick a DHS/ICE story from this year and see what kind of dystopic shitshow you report on.

This is propaganda. Gullible people fall for this shit every day. Put some thought into the context before you swallow the turd.

by doodlebugging

2/17/2026 at 2:11:31 AM

Propaganda made by the BBC to make DHS look good? You are awfully cynical.

by rootusrootus

2/17/2026 at 2:27:33 AM

>You are awfully cynical.

A cynic is simply a realist who has seen too much shit. I am a firm realist. I see the world as it is and hope that others will come along to help make it better but I don't naively hold my breath.

DHS needs a win in the public's eyes. BBC has the air of a trusted platform. It is no big stretch to make the connection that dredging up an old story about tracking down and capturing a pedo using an elite DHS unit would be a useful tool to win back some public support. You notice that there are no dates given in the article so the reader has no way to know that this went down years ago. It looks new and fresh.

Propaganda. I don't have to be gullible so I choose not to be.

by doodlebugging

2/17/2026 at 2:33:17 AM

> the reader has no way to know that this went down years ago

Not so.

> Last summer Greg met Lucy, now in her 20s, for the first time. > Lucy (left), now an adult...

by theonething

2/17/2026 at 2:06:49 AM

Submitter is Canadian and re: America, posted "I read recently that Patrimonialism is a good way of describing the current regime" about 10 months ago.

Doesn't sound like paid DHS/ICE psyopper.

Any reason to think it is?

by refulgentis

2/17/2026 at 2:36:43 AM

Submitter's nationality has nothing to do with it nor does his post history. WTF

I suggest you read the article as it appears from your initial (pre-edit) reply that you didn't. Put this in context with contemporary events involving DHS/ICE and assimilate the knowledge that the story related happened more than 10 years ago. Then ask yourself, since this same story was already reported more than a decade ago, why do they need to dredge it up today?

Do some critical thinking so that you don't come across as a gullible shill.

by doodlebugging

2/17/2026 at 2:21:10 AM

From the fine article itself:

>Within hours, local Homeland Security agents had arrested the offender, who had been raping Lucy for six years.

by morkalork

2/17/2026 at 2:31:30 AM

Are you suggesting that the BBC, the world service arm of a British public broadcaster (that is editorially independent from the state and even the wider BBC), began spending five years filming a documentary across the US, Portugal, Brazil, and Russia, just so that they could secretly support a US government agency half a decade before it became embroiled in controversy?

by pgalvin

2/17/2026 at 2:24:32 AM

The claim is that an old article was submitted intentionally to manipulate public perception of DHS.

We can't relax the claim to "well, it says DHS found a pedo, so it's propaganda ipso facto, because DHS did something good": they specifically argue the submission was the propaganda, specifically because it'd be absurd to claim it was published as DHS propaganda. (it's an old article by the BBC)

by refulgentis

2/17/2026 at 1:50:23 AM

First of all, sorry to hear about the poor girl’s ordeal, and I’m glad she was rescued. But after reading about all that complicated digital sleuthing, it basically comes down to this:

"The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother’s boyfriend - a convicted sex offender."

I feel like the police should’ve started there: cross-referencing people in her close circle against a list of known sex offenders.

by vzaliva

2/17/2026 at 1:53:19 AM

It sounds like they had the abuse images but not her name or identity - hence asking Facebook to identify her via facial recognition search.

by Macha

2/17/2026 at 1:59:44 AM

I don't think they knew who Lucy was. Otherwise the search would have been much narrower and faster than 'everyone who bought this sofa'.

by mmooss

2/17/2026 at 2:00:45 AM

Not sure how we can help such heros !! These are the people that make the world a better place !!

by sciencesama

2/17/2026 at 1:43:42 AM

Strange to think that right now, the people doing that work are not getting paid for it.

by jeremyjh

2/17/2026 at 2:04:35 AM

DHS? There are a lot of different orgs doing this type of work, but I'm pretty sure (nearly?) all of them are getting paid to do it.

Horrific job though.

by estearum

2/17/2026 at 2:13:46 AM

Probably a reference to the shutdown.

by rootusrootus

2/17/2026 at 1:34:18 AM

Related: A researcher for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, warned executives at the tech giant that there may be upward of 500,000 cases of sexual exploitation of minors per day on the social media platforms.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/meta-researcher-warned...

Who needs the dark web when Meta exists and is protected by the US government?

Edit: downvotes? Lol

by xvxvx

2/17/2026 at 1:43:10 AM

I always need to contextualize these numbers:

- there are 2.4B under 18 globally

- which means 500k is 0.02% of all children

- or around 1 in 5000 children globally, per day

- if evenly distributed (which is unlikely), then roughly 7-8% of all kids would feature in Meta exploitation yearly

That suggests very high reoccurrence; but even reoccurrence suggests the total rate remains quite high. A reoccurrence rate of 100x would suggest that roughly 1 in 1000 kids is exploited on Meta, yearly.

Anyway, disturbing.

by zmgsabst

2/17/2026 at 1:38:43 AM

TBF these easily could be cases of Meta protecting the US government rather than vice versa.

by plagiarist

2/17/2026 at 2:14:59 AM

Hearing the sentence always pisses me off.

He should have been sentenced to six years of "let's see if we can push the limits of known horror" followed only then by a grizzly end, and share some sample images with his online sicko friends "this is what's coming from you".

by jalapenos

2/17/2026 at 1:35:31 AM

[flagged]

by anonym29

2/17/2026 at 1:38:18 AM

Have you ever dealt with a pedophile? I ask that incidentally, neutrally, in the sense of, have you ever dealt with a flat tire or mold in the attic.

by hyperhello

2/17/2026 at 1:39:55 AM

No, but note that my comment didn't mention pedophiles. Someone being a convicted sex offender should already be a big enough red flag that any parent with a working brain shouldn't ever let that person anywhere near their kids.

by anonym29

2/17/2026 at 1:44:38 AM

Then have you ever dealt with a convicted sex offender, same question.

by hyperhello

2/17/2026 at 1:47:07 AM

Yes. I immediately broke off all contact with them as soon as I learned about it.

by anonym29

2/17/2026 at 2:07:55 AM

How did you learn about it?

by c22

2/17/2026 at 2:25:45 AM

Web search for the person's name and city turning up mugshots and a criminal record that included SA, among other violent crimes, after getting a weird vibe / uncomfortable gut feeling from them at a social gathering with a mutual friend.

by anonym29

2/17/2026 at 1:59:41 AM

[flagged]

by poketdev

2/17/2026 at 1:43:07 AM

Was this guy law enforcement? How did he get the addresses of everyone who had bought that model of couch?

by changoplatanero

2/17/2026 at 1:45:29 AM

From the article: "Squire works for US Department of Homeland Security Investigations in an elite unit ..."

by tintor

2/17/2026 at 1:45:47 AM

FTA:

> Squire works for US Department of Homeland Security Investigations in an elite unit which attempts to identify children appearing in sexual abuse material.

by 1024core

2/17/2026 at 1:41:30 AM

Note: the "agent" the title refers to has nothing to do with an AI/LLM agent. Originally I thought this had something to do with an AI agent, as if someone put an AI agent in charge of identifying dark web pictures for clues. It's a good story nevertheless and I'm glad the victim was rescued, but nothing to do with AI/LLMs.

by Nextgrid

2/17/2026 at 2:10:15 AM

The term "agent" with regards to law enforcement substantially predates "agent" in the context of AI.

by dafelst

2/17/2026 at 1:48:11 AM

I'm wondering why they didn't cross reference the addresses they had from the furniture stores with those of registered sex offenders, as this abuser turned out to be? And further intersect that with "Flaming Alamo" brick houses??

by 1024core

2/17/2026 at 2:06:26 AM

From TFA: "Initially Squire was ecstatic, expecting they could access a digitised customer list. But Harp broke the news that the sales records were just a "pile of notes" that went back decades."

by alephnerd