Project Habitance

Project Habitance aka Operation Habitance was the United Kingdom's (UK) National Crime Agency's (NCA) project tackling child sexual exploitation offending on the dark web.

The NCA through its operation said in 2020 that it was monitoring some 70 dark web sites that were accessible, and by working with partners, the NCA had identified a significant number of unique global IP addresses visiting the dark web sites.

[1] In 2019 the NCA, working in partnership with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),[2][3] availed their resources via Operation Habitance to the Brazilian Federal Police as part of their Operation Lobos 1, and to the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) in a Tor deanonymization project as a dragnet of the administrators and users of the websites: Baby-Heart, Hurt-meh, Boyvids 4.0, Anjos Prohibidos (BR)/Forbidden-Angels, and Loli Lust,[4][5] Girland[6] and other websites.

During the time the Tor Onion services were active, starting in early March 2019, the NCA and their partners conducted traffic analysis under the Targeted Equipment Interference (TEI) warrants 91-TEI-0147-2019 and 91-TEI-0146-2019[7] The NCA says that through its programmes, it had been making on average 520 arrests each month as of 2020, and that it had "safeguarded" 700 children each month.

In 2020, the U.K. HMICFRS's confirmed the existence of Operation Habitance in a report, but the next year, a U.K FOIA commissioner in Wales affirmed the Gwent Police department's refusal under FOIA section 25(3) (see report) to even confirm the existence of the operation or their involvement.