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FBI Has Tor Mail's Entire Email Database
An anonymous reader writes "Tor Mail was an anonymized email service run over Tor. It was operated by a company called Freedom Hosting, which was shut down by the FBI last August. The owner was arrested for 'enabling child porn,' and the Tor Mail servers suddenly began hosting FBI malware that attempted to de-anonymize users. Now, Wired reports on a new court filing which indicates that the FBI was also able to grab Tor Mail's entire email database. 'The filings show the FBI built its case in part by executing a search warrant on a Gmail account used by the counterfeiters, where they found that orders for forged cards were being sent to a TorMail e-mail account: "platplus@tormail.net." Acting on that lead in September, the FBI obtained a search warrant for the TorMail account, and then accessed it from the bureau's own copy of "data and information from the TorMail e-mail server, including the content of TorMail e-mail accounts," according to the complaint (PDF) sworn out by U.S. Postal Inspector Eric Malecki.'"
Anyone with an Internet connection is capable of 'enabling child porn'.
Fuck sakes - is CP now the backdoor to the whole US Constitution (not to mention the means by which anyone, anywhere, can be arrested for any reason?)
Someone needs to seriously put a curb on this.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
In those zombie movies, no matter how well the humans are barricaded in a place, eventually the slow-witted zombies will always break in. They have all the numbers and time required.
I don't know if it was designed for that purpose, but in practice Tor is a honeypot. Encryption too? (though not by design). Maybe it's time to consider steganography more, though it has its limits in terms of bandwidth, and if encryption isn't widely used, steganography certainly won't be.
i don't understand why people think that the FBI and NSA and CIA are just going to stand by and allow criminal activity when informants (no doubt where law enforcement gets 90% of its info) tell them how and where it's happening.
technology may slow them down a bit, but people are foolish if you think your VPN and Tor browser is going to protect you for long *if* a three-letter agency really decides to getya.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
When you trust a third party, with whom you have no actual connection, to keep your data private, you are pretty much asking to have it compromised. The best encryption and anonymity schemes in the world are useless in the face of a court order or questionable system administration. Did you really think some anonymous person was willing to go to jail for your privacy? You're both silly and naive if you think so.
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What kind of pron is it? A girl of 17 years, 364 days, looking "provocative"? I better check the pics on my computer. Somewhere I probably have one of my young daughter eating a pickle or something. Those perverts get off on anything. Does it matter if the pickle is half sour or full sour?
So, are the users of TorMail being presumed guilty because they dared to use a system that the NSA couldn't intercept?
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
If you care about your privacy or want that your data is still yours, don't host it there, even encryption can be surpassed if you can control the hardware that decrypts it. UK, Australia, Israel, and others allies in the intelligence operations should be avoided too. And is not just for privacy paranoids only, companies should be worried too, and is not limited to just IP, managing data that can get you sued if disclosed will make you liable.
Wonder what countries with strong citizens privacy laws will require to any company that want to work there.
please, STOP thinking about the children!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's like expecting your dog to ignore the roast you left on the counter while you went to work. Sure, it could happen, but there's no reason an intelligent person would expect it to happen.
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Phone lines, but only if you speak in Navajo.
What kind of pron is it? A girl of 17 years, 364 days, looking "provocative"?
No. Next question?
See, that's the thing. They weren't providing hosting services SPECIFICALLY to child pornographers. They were providing services to ANYONE. Anyone at all. No questions asked.
Some of those people happened to be child pornographers. The vast majority of them were not.
You're arguing it's reasonable to presume that any user of a service that is ALSO used by criminals should reasonably be treated as suspect? Oh, child. You don't think there's child pornographers on GMail? Using EC2? With Instagram accounts? What service that's open to all ISN'T "a crime ridden neighborhood" in your example?
Who would fight whom?
That's a serious question. What two (or more) large groups of Americans would organize themselves into armies of any respectable amount of strength?
Anyone trying to fight a loyal US military would get squashed faster than you can say "daisy cutter", I don't care how many M-16s and RPGs you have in your basement bunker. Maybe mutiny, turning the US Army into God's Army? Or how about Walmart and Monsanto *really* putting the competition out of business?
The states that keep threatening secession: Would we go to war to keep them, or just tell them not to let the door hit 'em where the Lord split 'em?
What's most likely is that the next civil war will be manufactured by the people selling arms to both sides.
I think you overestimate the US military's ability to turn out ruthless, cold blood killers (stow the cynicism here, there's obviously a few cases where a couple of bad actors have done terrible things, but that's not the norm.) I seriously, seriously doubt soldiers would follow orders that result in the slaughter (and it would be slaughter) of thousands of Americans.
Also, look how much trouble we had policing and 'holding' Iraq, a much smaller country (in terms of both population and geographical area.). Realistically the military would get spread too thin, supply lines would get cut, and yeah... done.
Good question. If only there was a modern day precedent for the US Military having a difficult time overcoming a vastly inferior enemy of insurgents.
This signature is false.
"I seriously, seriously doubt soldiers would follow orders that result in the slaughter (and it would be slaughter) of thousands of Americans. "
You mean like in the Civil War?
Considering that the official definition of "Child Porn" includes cartoons, and has been in the past used to arrest people for the possession of cartoons of "apparently underage" (don't remember the rest, sorry), I'm not willing to accept ANYTHING they say about the child porn problem.
Enforce the laws that already exist against violence and abuse. Do that and the entire problem goes away. (And if people want to see provocative cartoons, so what. It doesn't hurt anybody, and if you don't like it, just don't watch it.)
FWIW, given the prevalence of anime, I'd say that there's a huge market for cartoon child porn, given a strict enough definition of porn. And so what! It just doesn't matter. Enforce the laws against violence and abuse, and the problem goes away.
P.S.: Before this became an issue, it was, or appeared to be, much less of a problem. Most parents had explicit photographs of their children. And I just don't see that as a problem.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Think of something more like the Arab Spring vs the Civil War. Maybe i'm being optimistic, but I can't see the US army rolling tanks through the streets to quash widespread revolt. In the US. Killing US civilians.
In other words, fighting an opposing ARMY is probably quite a bit different than fighting CIVILIANS -- and only a sociopath would think it appropriate to use the same level of force in both situations. Doubly so against your own country.