The Darkest Web: 4. Undercover

In case you're wondering why child abusers need to have the news covered, this is why.

If there was public news available worldwide about, say, an arrest, that person who ran that section on the site would pull the articles.

They would pull down conversations that occurred about it to pretty much inform the community, you know, what's happening today.

And the whole idea was safety of the community so that, you know, had someone been arrested and then all of a sudden their screen name comes back online, that's probably a police officer or there's something wrong with that or maybe their intent isn't good anymore.

So it's all about protection of the society and growth of the society.

But it isn't just the organization of this criminal community, the experts in tech, communications and news, which Greg and the team have to wrap their heads around.

It's the sheer amount of time these users spend online.

The almost constant stream of new images of children they're uploading.

This was life for them.

They were putting 40, 50, 60 hours a week into this community.

And for a lot of them, it seemed like this was their primary thing.

Like this was their escape.

You know, this is where they wanted to be.

You could see how much was happening.

So much that if Greg leaves the forums for even a few hours, he could miss potential clues.

Leads which could help shut down abusers.

Leads which he might never be able to access again.

You would go to sleep, you know, at 9 p.m. and in the neck by the next morning, there would be hundreds of new messages, new postings, new images of children.

It was kind of shocking that in the time that you're asleep, things can almost double.

Greg is trying to maintain a normal life, but it's becoming increasingly difficult.

That time frame, it was a majority of my identity.

And I think, you know, probably some error in that.

When I was home and with my kids, I tried to be a dad, you know, full time dad.

But that doesn't mean I wasn't thinking in the background or looking at my phone and trying to manage both worlds, essentially.

Inevitably, you find yourself looking at your own life and your own, your surroundings and wondering if there's something you can, you hadn't thought of yet at work.