KEY POINTS:
New Zealand is among dozens of countries caught up in a massive child pornography ring.
Hundreds of arrests have been made worldwide after Brazilian investigators identified about 250 suspects in 78 countries through eMule, Brazil's most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing program.
After discovering the network was being used to distribute child
pornography around the world, they developed their own software to
trace the offenders.
The results unleashed a worldwide investigation involving Interpol that
has led to the arrests of hundreds of alleged child pornographers in New
Zealand, Europe, the United States, Australia and Latin America.
The investigation focused on men sharing images over the internet
rather than downloading from an illicit website.
On Thursday, Australian detectives charged 22 men, including a policeman, a senior lawyer and a childcare worker, in connection with the pornography-sharing network.
Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Andrew Colvin called the images some of the worst his force had seen.
Possession of child pornography only became illegal in Brazil
last month.
