Lady Gaga broke the record of a female artist's highest concert in history, among 15 suspects in several states in the country, seized electronic devices and arrested three people accused of participating in the conspiracy.
The highly secured concert was not reported, was injured, and details of the potential attack - police said they did not warn the public to avoid "panic" and false information - remained dim. Authorities say they arrested a man believed to be the leader of an extremist group in Rio Grande for possession of illegal weapons, while a teenager in Rio de Janeiro allegedly possessed child sexual abuse material (CSAM). A third person who allegedly murdered a "child or baby" in a "satanic ceremony" was arrested on terrorism charges. Although police mentioned plans to attack the Copacabana crowd with “simple explosives and Molotov cocktails” with inspiration from anti-LGBTQ hatred, they did not report any such explosives recovered in the raid.
It is unclear whether people swept in Dragnet with the means or ability of the kind of massacre that are allegedly envisioned. However, the extremist network described by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and Public Safety after the arrest has a great similarity with other digital organizations that have investigated in law enforcement across the world in recent months. The federal ministry said in a statement that this particular "crime" community operates on "digital platforms" and "promotes the radicalization of teenagers, hate crimes, self-harm and the spread of violent content." The civil police in Rio de Janeiro conducted an investigation with Brazil's cyber operations laboratory and a police department of children victims, claiming that individuals posing as Lady Gaga fans are recruiting youths for coordinated attacks, and that the program is "deemed a "collective challenge" with the aim of being famous on social media." (Because Gaga fans are affectionately called "little monsters", police called their investigation "fake monsters", suggesting false identities that suspects allegedly used to attract young people into possible horror plots.
Although none of these official statements named the group and individuals involved, the allegations amplify the disturbing trend of cybercrime, which authorities and experts say could lead to real-world violence and abuse. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, sociologist and founding director of the Extremist Research and Innovation Laboratory (Danger), introduced the dangers of such online communities to American University, what the FBI now calls the "non-profit violent extremism" network or NVE. She told Rolling stones Brazil-based cells follow “very similar strategies” to established NVE populations, including order commands from nine angles (O9a), CVLT and 764, with large entities constantly “changing and deforming”, germinating various factions and branches. The scope of the issue, she noted, is huge: The FBI has conducted more than 250 investigations into 764 connected activities, and all 55 of its on-site offices have handled at least one such case.
Related networks are difficult to enforce because they lack the hierarchy and ideological consistency that allows routing surveillance. "This is not a coherent extremist group structure with membership lists and priming rights or something," Miller-Idriss explained. "It is a group of people who are related to each other, and in some cases their strategies are exploited by the extremist groups of neo-Nazis, or have other goals, such as social morality and the collapse of social accelerators.
According to a report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a report by the Canadian National Police said these groups were able to bring teenagers to orbit by first building connections on public platforms. "These groups actually run in very accessible online spaces" including "platforms such as Discord, Telegram, Roblox, Minecraft, Twitch and Steam," the agency notes. They can communicate through encoded terms to control over more mainstream applications. Once in trouble, victims face increasing graphic, violence, hatred and taboo content. "Presisters affect children or youth in increasing shame, charges or acts of isolating them, leaving them vulnerable to further exploitation," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police warned.
"This is a generation we're just beginning to get into a growing fear of becoming more and more indifferent and unviolent terror with a generation," said Miller-Idriss, adding that the high school and college students she interviewed were "numb" to the graphic violence, sexuality, or otherwise shocking content that could appear in social feed, and this "extreme desensitization" made them accept this material as "a part of your online life." In turn, she believes this makes it easier for bad actors to exploit children. She observed that the gender element at work was also working, describing the boys’ subculture “sharing more mean content” as an avant-garde form of “general tricks” until they couldn’t see how deep they were in the terrible vortex. On the other hand, some bad actors prey on girls who post for disabled people in self-help forms or online communities: “They convinced these girls are boyfriends, they love them, they let them do that,” Miller-Idriss said. “It’s a lot of manipulation.”
The National Crime Agency released guidance for its own NVES (also known as "COM Networks") in a March report, also known as "COM Networks" (members of a specific group may be called "COM"). The NCA explained that the forums “see criminals collaborating or competing to cause harm in a wide range of criminal acts” and despite adult participants, “particular concern is that criminals are teenage boys, mainly teenage boys who often have sadistic and disgusting material and are considered targeting people of their age or younger.” NCA Director-General Graeme Biggar described the phenomenon as “violent online gangs who collaborate on mass engagement or incite others to cause serious harm.”
Law enforcement agencies also highlight the competitive and self-theological role of the forum. "As the victims provide photos and videos to the predators, they share them in the 'com' network, further humiliating the victims and creating content for the group," the RCMP said. "Most importantly, the predators do this to be infamous in the 'com' network, as these victims are seen as successful and 'fame statements of reputation.'"
Rolling stones The lawsuit against four men in January was previously reported, allegedly causing harm to more than a dozen minors through online grouping CVLT. Federal authorities in the United States called the network a "neo-Nazi child exploitation enterprise" that "modify and then force minors to produce images of child sexual abuse substances and self-harm", sometimes being the ultimate goal of persuading young people to commit suicide in their lives. The indictment alleges two unnamed minors were accomplices, including one who was also identified as victims. Just last week, the Justice Department announced that two leaders of the network's "764 Inferno" subgroup were accused of directing and spreading CSAM, and would face the highest penalty if convicted. Prosecutors said 764 collectives "nich violent extremists engaged in criminal acts in the United States and abroad, trying to destroy civilized societies by corruption and exploiting vulnerable populations, which often include minors."
In the March alert, the FBI provided a warning sign that young people may show when they are injured by NVE, including sudden withdrawals, injury to animals and idealized mass casualties. Miller-Idriss agrees that the “primary prevention method” is crucial to reducing harm. "Adults often don't know" this new threat emphasizes "media literacy and the need to warn children and adults about scam strategies." She noted that the FBI advised parents to “be careful if your child is wearing long sleeves and warm summers because there are a lot of camera cuts happening in these groups.”
Regarding activities related to 764, CVLT and similar gangs, the bureau said that some people were “motivated by the desire to cause fear and confusion through criminal acts”, but “motivation is highly personalized, and some threatening actors may simply make sex, social conditions or belong to other reasons rather than other reasons, or may not be suitable for other reasons, or may be other reasons. The term “attribution” appears several times in a statement from Brazilian law enforcement, which allegedly allegedly bombed the Lady Gaga concert in Rio de Janeiro. The county’s Justice Department addressed the danger of “the digital identity used to choose innocent and attribution, but running in closed networks with violent and self-destructive content. ”
Miller-Idriss said that despite all their anarchist activities, “the fact that seizing the group is indeed nihilism.” “The question is, what is nihilism used for?” she said, in some cases, the neo-Nazis are “using this nihilism to try to desensitize children and lower the levels of violence in a constant increase, but some of them are simply ways of pursuing violence in their own quantitative ways as a strategy to fold society or promote Nihilism itself.” Although this phenomenon is not a product of a strict partisan view, Miller-Idriss concluded: “It’s terrible effective.”
Perhaps it is also too early to illustrate the rise of this terrible online behavior that pervades but is widespread enough to present serious challenges to parents and police who want to protect children from such exploitation. Some might say that large-scale failure of moderation, toxic political climate and social isolation are all factors that arise. Whatever the root cause, it seems that the Internet continues to evolve and it rarely becomes safer.