Slashdot Mirror


Police Could Charge Data Center Operators In the Largest Child Porn Bust Ever

sarahnaomi sends this report from Motherboard: Canadian police say they've uncovered a massive online file sharing network for exploitative material that could involve up to 7,500 users in nearly 100 countries worldwide. But unlike past investigations into the distribution of child porn, which typically involve targeting suspects individually, police have instead seized over 1.2 petabytes of data ... from a data center responsible for storing the material, and may even attempt to lay criminal charges against its operators, too.

"What we are alleging is occurring is that there are individuals and organizations that are profiting from the storage and the exchange of child sexual exploitation material," Scott Tod, Deputy Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), told Motherboard at a conference late last month, after speaking to a crowd of defense specialists. "They store it and they provide a secure website that you can log into, much like people do with illegal online gaming sites."

6 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good question by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 1, Informative

    Because Republicans snuck a ban into a completely unrelated port security bill that they knew nobody could vote against right before an election.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006#Legislative_history

  2. So what, the DC are gonna be gatekeepers now ? by ScottJermaineGuyton · · Score: 3, Informative

    “There's no proactive obligation to investigate what happens on your service," said Tamir Israel, a staff lawyer at the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC). “If you do become aware that something is there, there's a reporting obligation. But usually data centers aren't actively looking through their stuff, so it's reasonable to say that they wouldn't have come across that." Nobody's got time for that!

  3. Not Dumb.... by GrumpySteen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not stupid. Just clickbait.

    If you actually read the article, it says "charges will likely hinge on the degree to which employees knew such activity was taking place." Nobody is going to get charged unless there's evidence that they knew they were hosting child porn and did nothing about it.

    1. Re:Not Dumb.... by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Informative

      really??? you mean that the CIO should be looking at encrypted data that he has no rights to???

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    2. Re:Not Dumb.... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 3, Informative

      Given storage work I've done, when you're hosting that much content and that much traffic, it's almost _always_ pornographic. I do hope that the Canadian courts can be sensible about what is specifically and knowingly hosted, and what is treated in a hands-off fashion like US "common carrier" standards require.

      I'll be even more fascinated to see if any intelligence agencies know about child porn and refused to reveal or prosecute its source, due to a desire to keep their monitoring secret. We've certainly seen that in the USA.

  4. SummaryBait by michaelmalak · · Score: 3, Informative

    charges will likely hinge on the degree to which employees knew such activity was taking place