Over 25 percent of the prosecutions stemmed from undercover operations conducted by law enforcement on Wickr and other tech platforms. Almost none of the criminal complaints reviewed note cooperation from Wickr itself at the time of filing, aside from limited instances where Wickr was legally compelled to provide information via a search warrant. Nearly every prosecution reviewed has resulted in a conviction aside from those still being adjudicated. NBC News reviewed court documents from 72 state and federal child sexual abuse or child pornography prosecutions where the defendant allegedly used Wickr (as it’s commonly known) from the last five years in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, using a combination of private and public legal and news databases and search engines. But Amazon is doing comparatively little to proactively address the problem, experts and law enforcement officials say, attracting people who want to trade such material because there is less risk of detection than in the brighter corners of the internet. It’s not the only tech platform that needs to crack down on such illegal content, according to data gathered by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, or NCMEC. Wickr’s, whose backers have included the CIA and controversial private security firm Blackwater, had also become a hub for drug dealers forced off the dark web by the closures of notorious illegal goods marketplaces such as Silk Road, according to reports.Wickr Me, an encrypted messaging app owned by Amazon Web Services, has become a go-to destination for people to exchange images of child sexual abuse, according to court documents, online communities, law enforcement and anti-exploitation activists. In June, NBC News, citing court documents, law enforcement and activists, said Amazon had done “little” to proactively address the problem. ![]() ![]() The shutdown announcement follows reports that the company’s free messaging app had allowed criminals to exchange images of child sexual abuse. “After careful consideration, we will be concentrating Wickr’s focus on securing our business and public sector customers’ data and communications with AWS Wickr and Wickr Enterprise, and have decided to discontinue our consumer product, Wickr Me,” Amazon said, adding that the company was working on allowing Wickr customers to securely communicate with individuals outside of their organization. Wickr’s other products, which are geared toward government agencies, military organizations and enterprises, won’t be impacted. ![]() The shutdown will only affect the consumer-facing version of Wickr, which has become popular among journalists and whistleblowers looking to send end-to-end encrypted and self-destructing messages. Amazon says the app will stop accepting new user registrations on Decembefore it’s discontinued completely the following year. In a post published Friday, Amazon said that Wickr Me will shut down for good on December 31, 2023. Wickr was founded in 2011 and became one of the first mainstream end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, until it was acquired by Amazon’s cloud services giant Amazon Web Services in 2021. Secure communications provider Wickr has announced that it will shutter its free encrypted messaging app, Wickr Me, next year.
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