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FBI Hunt For Child Porn Thwarted By Tor
v3rgEz writes "Documents released by the FBI provide an unusual inside look at how the agency is struggling to penetrate 'darknet' Onion sites routed through Tor, the online privacy tool funded in part by government grants to help global activists. In this case, agents were unable to pursue specific leads about an easily available child pornography site, while files withheld indicate that the FBI has ongoing investigations tied to the Silk Road marketplace, a popular, anonymous Tor site for buying and selling drugs and other illegal materials."
Sounds similar to the problems that plagued freenet.
Freedom of speech, or government monitoring of all communications.
Decide which one you want and accept the consequences of your decision.
Isn't it kind of the POINT of a darknet that nobody can trace who's who? Sounds to me like the system is working as designed.
Yes, it will be used to break laws. But that's when you break out the actual investigative skills instead of relying on tech work and unrestricted wiretaps.
Nothing is important enough that it takes priority over liberty and freedom of speech. Nothing.
Nothing? Not shouting fire in a crowded theater? How about if someone rapes your daughter, films the act, and puts it on a billboard across the street from her school?
Freedom is important, but it is not an absolute.
Seed "dark sites" with child porn.
Then, stop it "for the children".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
FBI: "There are secret anonymous corners of the internet, where people are trading illegally downloaded movies!"
Public: "So what?"
FBI: "That isn't all. They're ALSO buying and selling.... MARIJUANA!"
Public: "We don't care."
FBI: ".....AND CHILD PORNOGRAPHY"
Public: "Nooooooooooooo! Here's $50 million in extra funding and new broad new powers for your agency."
FBI: "We promise only to use them for your own good."
Unfortunately technology is forcing us to decide -- a repressive police state that enforces your views of censorship, or a society that allows free speech. What little middle ground there ever was is rapidly vanishing.
Child porn, hate speech, etc are awful -- but we've seen what's first up against the wall when the censors get their way -- criticism of the law itself.
Both of these goals make it impossible for Tor as a system to prevent people from sharing child sex abuse images. Anything that could be done to prevent such sharing could just as easily be used by the Chinese to prevent dissidents from disseminating their information. Anything that could be done to track down people who share child sex abuse images could be used by China to track down dissidents and persecute them.
That is the trade-off: protecting free speech and dissidents who live under repressive governments necessarily thwarts the FBI's attempt to track down people who share child sex abuse imagery. This is a matter of priorities -- do we want to protect dissidents, or do we want to prevent child abuse images from being shared?
Palm trees and 8
I agree with OP. Assuming you didn't compensate the producer of the images, you in no way contributed to the market of child pornography. In saying this, I in no way condone the production of this material or in any way suggest that I like the stuff (I do not).
The problem I have is that mere possession of images should never be illegal in my opinion. The reason I say this is because it is extremely easy to accidentally download this material. I don't think people's lives should be ruined because they clicked on a bad link accidentally. The mere accusation can pretty much ruin your life, and there certainly have been cases where this has happened.
So the "problem" is actually a case of "working as designed".
Exactly. The "news" here is that the FBI can't penetrate an anonymous network.
Am I the only one that finds this reassuring?
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Whilst I am of course against child pornography, I get the feeling this isn't the real reason. Instead child-porn is now the catch-all excuse the FBI/NSA/CIA/whoever will use every time to try and legislate against any and all kinds of encryption, sharing or anonymising system that they can't get into.
No politician will stand up to defend our rights if it means they also risk being perceived as possibly defending child abuse.
I'm far more inclined to believe the real interest behind this is the RIAA/MPAA who want to make it impossible to anonymously share files at all and/or the gov itself who want to monitor every email, IM and keystroke we make online.
As horrible as child abuse is, it is utterly irrational grandstanding to say that child abuse is worse than murder. If I asked you if you would rather be raped or killed, do you really mean to tell me that you would answer "killed"? If not, then murder is worse than any form of abuse. The heinousness of a crime is directly proportional to its effect on the victim. There can be no crime more heinous, therefore, than any crime that deprives the victim of his or her existence unwillingly.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The only reason why this was released to the public, was to drum up support to make programs like TOR illegal in the US.
You have been warned. Once the government uses the "For the children" excuse... or "Child pornography" excuse... it should immediately make you take notice that the government is trying to outlaw something.
In this case, its dark nets, because as we all know that is where piracy is heading, and they want to stop it.
Are you really going to try to tell me that if nobody wanted to see CP, those that produce CP would stop making it?
CP is a behavioral issue. People would continue to make CP because _they_ enjoyed it, not because they thought someone else might enjoy it.
Anyone in the CP market to make a _profit_ would certainly suffer, but really I bet the number of CP producers turning a profit is quite small...
I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery. Eventually these pedo's will screw up and get caught. Time to go do some real police work.
Reading the comments on this thread, I'm realizing that likely within our lifetimes, we'll be having the same debate about strong cryptography that we're now having about guns, likely spurred on by stories like this about pedophiles, terrorists, "hackers" and all those other scary people on the internets.
Some of the same talking points are already in use ("We'll need them when the government comes for us", "Only criminals need them", "If they're banned, only criminals will have them and we'll be defenseless", etc), and strong cryptography, much like guns, are something that the governments and law enforcement fear as they can make it possible for people to break the law (just or otherwise) without the government being able to stop them.
I hope I'm wrong, and of course, you can't quite ban code so easily, but still, a scary future and an unpleasant debate may well be ahead.
Cartoon depictions of child sexual activity (commonly found in manga)
Bullshit. Your local Barnes & Noble is filled with manga volumes completely bereft of child porn.
It'd be just as (in)accurate to say, "Graphic depictions of sexual abuse (commonly found in Spanish literature)" or "Vivid roleplaying of homosexual violence (commonly found in sports)."
DATABASE WOW WOW
Assuming you didn't compensate the producer of the images, you in no way contributed to the market of child pornography.
I don't disagree with most of your points except your first. The fact others download and view the material provide validation and acceptance to the producers which probably is worth far more than money, and it also contributes to a sense of normalization of their behavior for all participants. Taking away money won't stop CP any more than taking away all CP will stop child sexual abuse but it does help discourage it.
Child porn is the reason I can't in good conscience run a telephone network.
Child porn is the reason I can't in good conscience run an ISP.
Child porn is the reason I can't in good conscience run a shipping company.
Child porn is the reason I can't in good conscience run a camera company.
Your conscience needs adjustment. Every sufficiently useful and/or popular tool will be used for crime at some point.
Of course, I was 28 at the time.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Vivid roleplaying of homosexual violence (commonly found in sports)."
Don't complain.
At least playing rugby keeps them off our streets and out of our zoos.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
So once a person rapes the child, there is no reason to even consider letting the child go. After all, the punishment for murder is the same, so why increase the risk of getting caught by letting the kid go?
Only low-budget movies, of course. If it comes from hollywood, it's exempt somehow. For example, Britain has a law against 'extreme pornography' which prohibits depictions of genital torture. Yet when genital torture was used to interrogate James Bond in Casino Royale, no police agency seemed particually concerned. I suspect that if exactly the same scene had been shot, word-for-word and action-for-action by a minimal-budget independant studio they'd have at least been forced to cut it to avoid a risk of prosecution.
A good friend of mine is serving 180 months for child pornography. Did he produce it? Sell it? Rape children? No. He ran an IRC fileserver and it was uploaded by a user. His upload directory was accessible, which is admittedly an idiotic thing to do. Some FBI agent across the country found it on his server and started the ball rolling. Eventually his house was stormed by agents and all computer equipment seized. He had deleted the files long before this point, but of course they were easily recovered.
He was charged with four (or five? Been a few years) offenses, all of which carried a sentencing recommendation of five years. All but one that is -- advertising. This charge was included as the behavior of an IRC file server (i.e. "Type !hotxxxpics to access my server") is considered by the law as advertising. The majority of the charges violate 18 USC 2252A which deals with possession. The advertisement charge violates 18 USC 2251 which deals mostly with creating and selling. Everything would've been covered with a five year sentence, but the advertisement pushed it to fifteen. The feds have been tossing this advertisement charge in wherever they can get away with it to raise the mandatory sentence. Google it. Or don't, as you'll likely be red flagged by some FBI drone.
All court proceedings occurred in the state where the FBI office is located despite the fact that there is a federal courthouse in a town less than an hour from here. A request for change of venue was denied. Your tax dollars paid to buy him bus tickets across the country, food and lodging while he was there, and bus tickets back. Upon the urging of his federal public defender, he eventually plead guilty. As noted by his PD, the 180 month sentence is higher than the sentence recommendation for voluntary manslaughter or conspiracy to commit murder.
This friend is a decent person, father of three, whose life has been functionally ruined. He left his children in elementary school, and will be released as they finish college. He did something ridiculously stupid and will pay for it for the rest of his life as he is subject to "lifetime supervised release." He's met murderers and rapists who are serving shorter sentences. My suggestion was to plead to possession, as, well, he was possessing it, but to fight this advertisement shit tooth and nail. His PD made it clear that he was absolutely not interested in doing so as it was not likely to work and he'd end up with a longer sentence than he would by pleading guilty to all of it. Your tax dollars will be paying for his incarceration for fifteen years because some jackass uploaded CP to his file server and some FBI agent noticed it. Apparently others have already tried (and failed) claiming an eighth amendment violation. This is widespread and completely out of control.
Veered somewhat off topic ... sorry ... someone mentions how CP is prosecuted and I get a little pissed. Thanks for letting me vent.
It's just pictures. Better the creeps inside jacking off than outside doing it personally. Isn't it time to get the government out of the bedroom?
If you've ever stumbled onto CP through any of the random image polling scripts from the image sites, what you see can be soul crushing. The looks on the children's faces are that of absolute depression and mental anguish. These children never had the option to say 'no' or reject what was happening to them... they were forced into their situation and what is happening to them will destroy their entire futures. They didn't start doing drugs and have to resort to porn to pay for their addictions, they were kidnapped and didn't know what was happening until their childhoods were irrevocably destroyed.
I support tracking down anyone who is sharing these images, since it leads to either one single person not sharing them with others, or (hopefully) maybe to the source. Yes, some people who are deprived of images will proceed to attempting abductions in real life; BUT these same people have a fairly high chance of doing the same thing with or without pictures. The larger idea of stopping these pictures from going out is to stop the BUSINESSES of child porn. There are people that kidnap and rape children just because they get paid for it. That is one of the things the government is trying to stop. Take away the subscribers and even if you can never find the source, at least the businesses stop getting paid and hopefully do less abuse to children.
TOR is awesome... it allows people in countries that are locked down to communicate freely and see beyond the propaganda that their governments are forcing on them; unfortunately though, in a system with absolute anonymity there will be those sick individuals that post and share images that society as a whole knows are horrible. Some of those will never be traceable, and that is sad but also the entire point of the TOR project. I would like to be able to trace them and shut them down, but that same ability would allow oppressive governments to shut down whatever they didn't like when they see dissenting opinions.
One other point: I have read the thread so far and it seems that a large portion of the people are complaining that Japanese hentai are what people get busted for. While that may be true in rare occurrences like someone sharing gigabytes of CP manga... I've worked with law enforcement on CP cases, and they really don't care that much about comics. Yes it's part of the law, but at least in the US, the FBI normally goes after the people with REAL CP and not cartoons. And even then, they go after the people with true collections and not 1-2 images in their cache that they stumbled into while searching random sites. Please link me to a news article that proves me wrong if people are getting busted for single images, since I am only an individual person and could have missed something. And before someone says "they don't report on small time CP busts," yes they do. Every time I've been involved with a CP case, the media is all over it as soon as they find out. They love to put the 'bad guy gets busted' stories in the news.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
What is this "letting the kid go" thing you are talking about? The vast majority of child abuse happens in the home, by the parents.. Kids getting abducted and raped is pretty much the exception as far as I know. People don't abuse kids because they want to hurt them, they do it because they [think they] love them.. and killing is rarely going to be a part of that
Not to mention, that letting the kid live has other advantages.. firstly, you told them not to tell and you might get away with it (vs a dead kid is pretty obvious) and secondly, you might get to do them again (you can do that with dead kids but not for long I guess).
Jeez, since when did NAMBLA have such a big following on slashdot?
I'm a big fan of Marlon Brando
I was sexually abused as a kid. It did fuck me up a bit, but not too badly, and I got over it. I'm now a relatively happy, well adjusted person - currently single, but have had numerous normal, healthy relationships.
If you're seriously suggesting that I'd be better off dead, you can go fuck yourself.