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Anonymous Hackers Take Down Child Porn Websites
chrb writes "According to Security News Daily, Anonymous has taken down more than 40 darknet-based child porn websites over the last week. Details of some of the hacks have been released via pastebin #OpDarknet, including personal details of some users of a site named 'Lolita City,' and DDoS tools that target Hidden Wiki and Freedom Hosting — alleged to be two of the biggest darknet sites hosting child porn."
when the cops abuse their authority with impunity in front of everyone and there's no repercusions
when the rich and powerful get more rich and more powerful by trampling on others in complicity with self serving politicians
when the judges consider smoking pot and stealing food way worse than ruining the economy of a nation in the name of profits
yes, vigilance must come
Laws don't apply to the powerful, so why respect them at all?
Obey or disobey as expedient.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It's easier to think about them as an unguided mass that will attack targets at random. Sometimes the targets are assholes and people will cheer for them, but that doesn't make them freedom fighters. They reverted back to trolls some time ago.
How are we even going to know whether or not this is true? Nobody in their right mind would try to verify whether those sites were taken down or not, and even if they did, they sure wouldn't talk about it publicly, what with the risk of the cops showing up just for visiting those sites. Anonymous can pretty much say whatever they want about this with impunity.
Oh no. They hate the bastards. CP'ers DO use 4chan, but only to be met with a hailstorm of shit. They even got a guy a while ago, got his details and put the cops on his arse. So this I guess is a continuation on that theme of internet vigilante-ism. Hell, Pedo bear was created to MOCK CP'ers. 4chan and anon is responsible for a lot of things, good and bad, but CP is not one of them. I am not a channer by the way; I'm just sayin'.
I write professional videogame reviews! http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/
So they're tackling the only issue about which there is absolutely no debate, just like cable news anchors. Does Anonymous have a PR department now, improving their image?
Always someone has power over you. The thing to consider is this: Is the power good, or bad?
If they're targeting The Hidden Wiki, how is that "having a conscience"? The Hidden Wiki is not a porn site, it's a wiki site which has links to other hidden sites. It's like DDoSing Google because they are a "child porn website"...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Sigh. Quality of Slashdot readership is steadily going down.
These were TOR sites. That means that the hosting servers are near impossible to track because the TOR network is meant to allow for anonymous hosting.
Subsequently, unless you manage to globally packet-inspect the entire Internet (which is the very thing that the child-porn crusaders advocate, along with introducing a totalitarian global police state to "protect the children") or somehow crack in and identify the location of these servers from whatever data is within, you cannot even tell what country they are in.
Freedom Hosting is an extreme libertarian host service, with 0% censorship rules, which is meant to host sites of political dissidents and other web contents that is likely to get you killed by a mob of raving religious lunatics for breaking whatever taboo in whatever nut-infested country you happen to live.
So Anonymous cracked into some sites hosted on Freedom Hosting and defaced them, stole some meaningless login ids (like those of people logging in with the names of their least-liked politicians or neighbours) and did not even get the IP addresses of the servers or the users because on the TOR network they would be meaningless.
End result: upgraded and hardened CP sites on TOR.
This action defines the very concepts of "pointless", "futile" and "counterproductive". Which not very surprising since it is usually the fate of all vigilante witch-hunts in the long run ...
I believe the word you were trying to use was Vigilante.
Damn the AutoCorrect!
A good carpenter never blames his tools.
If his hammer breaks when trying to hammer in a normal nail, he most certainly will.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
A DDoS attack is also a cowards protest because it removes accountability. Whereas people partaking in a sit-in are accountable for their actions, they can't hide.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
It already happened. Remember all those people in the 80s and early 90s who were arrested because of fears that they were child molesters? Remember the satanic ritual abuse panic? People were being arrested on accusations of being witches and engaging in ritualistic abuse of children, and there was practically no evidence for any of it. We are seeing the tail end of that witch hunt with the modern fears of child pornography and pedophiles hiding around every corner.
Palm trees and 8
It's only ok to do that when it benefits lobbyists and their clients. Since there is little or no money in CP, da goobermint doesn't really give a shit.
For fucks sake.
Anon didn't just take down CP sites. They are attacking Freedom Hosting, which hosts many other sites, because they refuse to comply with Anon's orders.
And this is why vigilantism is dangerous - because it's riddled with collateral damage since the attackers answer to nobody.
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They don't go against child porn sites because they are illegal. They couldn't care less about that. They go against child porn sites because they are immoral (at least from the perspective of the vast majority).
The vast majority also acknowledges that sites like The Pirate Bay are illegal, but the morality of these sites and their users is rather neutral, if not positively.
I took down your mom's pants and what I saw was disgusting and wrong, so I quickly pulled them back up.
I don't think most people have an issue with taking down child porn sites. It's the way that the issue is pursued, or the definitions of child porn that tend to cross the lines of all rationality. Putting someone on a list meant to shame pedophiles because he urinated in public, or forwarded a picture of his 15 yo girlfriend when he himself was a teenager is not rational. It's just fucking stupid and people can't seem to understand this.
Protocols in general are content-agnostic. Unless you want to argue that sharing any kind of content (even by content producers/owners) is illegal, no protocol is inherently illegal.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for P2P protocols, the most widely-used probably being WoW's patch system.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Looking at some of the comments, it seems that a few people don't seem to get Anonymous. Anonymous isn't a group, really - they don't have a common agenda, they don't have common opinions or necessarily common skills. Rather, Anonymous is a label people have claimed and since it seems to be a similar type of person each time (e.g. from a certain part of the Internet, hacks sites or brings them down, may be vigilantes or may well be trolling), people still hold the misconception that they are somehow a unified group. They're not. Anonymous are anonymous. That's the point. There is no link between anything they do except people copycatting each other, and using the label. Thus Anonymous is not a group - I would say it is more of a phenomenon that has arisen, with the help of the Internet.
It remains virtually impossible for adult males to befriend children. (Friendships between adults and children used to be pretty common, even in the USA.)
As one example:
Neil Wilkes was a teacher in Manchester, England who had a close relationship with an eight year old girl he taught. He got on well with her and with her family.
But someone decided it was "inappropriate" for a man to befriend a girl, and launched a formal investigation into the relationship.
There was no evidence that Neil Wilkes had done anything wrong.
All the same, Neil lost his job and the girl's family was frightened into breaking off all contact.
On October 20th 2010, Neil Wilkes went to a quiet tourist spot, sent a text message to the girl telling her "I love you and I always will", doused himself with fuel, and set himself on fire.
http://www.thejournal.ie/teacher-sets-himself-alight-after-texting-i-love-you-to-girl-8-2011-03/
It is clear to me that the obsession with child pornography and child abuse is intended to break down the trust between generations, provide an excuse for controlling and monitoring all expression, and firmly cement the power of the ruling class. This panic also provides employment opportunities for a predatory class of therapists and an entire child abuse industry.
Thanks to the manipulation of the public consciousness and abusing the public's natural concern for the well-being of children, the prohibition of child pornography has provided a means for the ruling class to do whatever it wants. Want to eliminate a rival? Just claim they had child pornography on their computer. No one will investigate it, because investigating it would constitute a crime - so everyone must take their public servant overlords' word at face value - and the public accepts this without question.
We don't even have proof of what typical child pornography looks like. The claim is that it is all horrific images of rape and abuse, but ordinary citizens - even reporters - are not allowed to see for themselves. It seems more likely that it is mostly pictures of happy children wearing little or no clothing, because most guys don't get turned on by pictures of real abuse - but how could we find out? The public goes along with the farce, because they have been conditioned to hate pedophiles so much that they don't care whether their victims are even pedophiles, much less whether pedophiles or child pornographers are actually doing harm.
However, we do occasionally get a window into child pornography convictions. Here are a few young ladies speaking out against the conviction of the man who took their photographs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2xfzmcOPg0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ogJhlOw9U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqKEybfBPAs
This case is illustrative of two points: First, that many of the models do not feel harmed, and secondly that much "child pornography" consists of pictures of clothed children. It certainly gives the lie to the traditional narrative.