The FBI ran nearly half of all known dark web child pornography sites

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(Image credit: Odd Andersen/Getty Images)

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal the FBI took over and operated 23 child pornography websites out of a government facility in an attempt to catch site users.

Though it was previously known the FBI operated one such site for 13 days before closing it down, using the website to install tracking malware on visitors' computers, the new documents show the scale of the project was much larger, comprising about half of all dark web child pornography sites.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.