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An FBI Hacking Campaign Targeted Over a Thousand Computers (vice.com)
derekmead writes: In order to fight what it has called one of the largest child pornography sites on the dark web, the FBI hacked over a thousand computers, according to court documents reviewed by Motherboard and interviews with legal parties involved.
Just a month after launch, a bulletin board called Playpen had nearly 60,000 member accounts. By the following year, this number had ballooned to almost 215,000, with over 117,000 total posts, and an average of 11,000 unique visitors each week. Many of those posts, according to FBI testimony, contained some of the most extreme child abuse imagery one could imagine, and others included advice on how sexual abusers could avoid detection online.
But after Playpen was seized, it wasn't immediately closed down, unlike previous dark web sites that have been shuttered by law enforcement. Instead, the FBI ran Playpen from its own servers in Newington, Virginia, from February 20 to March 4, reads a complaint filed against a defendant in Utah. During this time, the FBI deployed what is known as a network investigative technique (NIT), the agency's term for a hacking tool.
Just a month after launch, a bulletin board called Playpen had nearly 60,000 member accounts. By the following year, this number had ballooned to almost 215,000, with over 117,000 total posts, and an average of 11,000 unique visitors each week. Many of those posts, according to FBI testimony, contained some of the most extreme child abuse imagery one could imagine, and others included advice on how sexual abusers could avoid detection online.
But after Playpen was seized, it wasn't immediately closed down, unlike previous dark web sites that have been shuttered by law enforcement. Instead, the FBI ran Playpen from its own servers in Newington, Virginia, from February 20 to March 4, reads a complaint filed against a defendant in Utah. During this time, the FBI deployed what is known as a network investigative technique (NIT), the agency's term for a hacking tool.
They weren't hacking. They were obtaining the IP address of connected machines who were using Tor to access child porn sites. I just call that good investigation. Your IP address isn't private information, just like your postal address isn't.
Bit of a slippery slope when Law Enforcement is breaking laws to catch criminals. This is not good policing in my opinion. There should be no excuse for breaking the law, especially in an effort to enforce the law. Law enforcement should never be 'do as I say, not as I do.'
A simple test is.. if a citizen did this to another citizen, would that be against the law? Last I checked, hacking your neighbors computer and collecting information from it is definitely against the law. (Unless you're Microsoft and say you're going to do it in your EULA, bit that's a different can of worms.)
The issue was did this one warrant let the government hack into everyone who tried to use Tor to connect this hidden site. Tor prevented the FBI from determining their IP address without further attacks on individual computers. The other issue is if the Judge knew they were authorizing this many computers to possibly be hacked.
I believe they waited until the user tried to login, create an account, or something like that, so just accidentally browsing to the site shouldn't have triggered the attack.
From the facts I have from this article, I think the FBI did the right thing.
I don't get it, either, but again, if you're playing percentages, there's always someone... if it's not prepubescent kids, it's animals, or feet, or fat, or insert whatever. They say psychopaths make up 1% of the population... that's a LOT of psychopaths out there... people who not only don't care about hurting other people, but can get off on it.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I haven't seen it in the comments yet, but by seizing the site and NOT shutting it down, the government chose to run a child porn server. Does that not then put them under the same legal scrutiny as those they were investigating? Of course I did not read the article and may be missing a bunch of detail, but if the gov was actively serving child porn, then THAT is a crime in my eyes - regardless if it was a honeypot or not.
It is not so clear that this is "good". There is not much evidence for a causal link from porn to sexual crime. Most countries that have liberalized their pornography laws have experienced a decline in sexual violence toward women and children. Child porn is illegal even if is entirely animated, or made with adult actors portraying adolescents. That pushes the entire genre onto the dark web. If, instead, the law only banned the actual abuse of children, rather than thought crime, there could be a legal market that would drive out most of the material involving actual harm to children.
AFAIK, the FBI can't prosecute US citizens for thought crimes.
Then you are obliviously ignorant, and probably should spend a few minutes educating yourself about American child porn laws before you comment on them again.
prosecuted people for criminal behaviour, i.e. passing on the products of criminal acts (against children) ...
This NOT what they are doing. Child porn is illegal, even if it involves NO CHILDREN whatsoever. Many of the people being prosecuted were making or viewing animations or adult actors, not anything involving actual children.
I agree. While I abhor sexual abuse of children (required statement), it's an easy target of outrage but has far-reaching consequences to charge criminal offenses of people who view such things on the internet. It is a thought crime -- the abuse of the children is the people making the content -- and I think it should end there.
Free access to porn has shown a relative drop in rapes. Violence in games shows a huge drop in violence (relative to the same demographic without video games -- though not sure where they find those anymore).
I think the next battlefield will be on realistic sex robots. People will be morally outraged if they look this way or that. There's no abuse because it's a mechanism. If it stops rapists, sex addicts and molesters from doing damage to real people -- what is the harm?
I think too often we have morals based laws, that don't really meet the public interest of; "what does the most good for the most people?" Sure, we all might be creeped out by someone's preferences, but by not criminalizing the USE of materials, we can better get the CREATORS of harm. And in the future, STDs, Prostitution, and Sexual offenses may take a nose dive as Sexbots hit the scene.
It would be interesting to see the real stats on whether viewing makes someone more or less likely to abuse a kid. Perhaps there's a difference when there is a blog of people reinforcing how "OK" it is. The real question is; what path prevents child abuse?
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AFAIK, the FBI can't prosecute US citizens for thought crimes.
But how is a website or BBS showing material NOT a thought crime? You might say; the materials are prohibited. But we could outlaw bibles, and then everyone with a bible would be an outlaw. What ABOUT the bible is illegal? Reading the words, of course. They'll say it's possession, but really, it's in what you might learn, think and how it might change your behavior. No clear smoking gun on Pedophilia.
So this is a thought crime. They can see, view and hear but don't DO. Crime is an act that harms people. Until someone actually affects a person or property -- no crime. The only crime is based on prohibited material.
Is the crime in viewing an actual minor, or in viewing someone who LOOKS like a minor -- or a cartoon? What if I'm married to a 26 year old woman who 4 feet tall and looks really cute? Do I go to jail? Sure these people may clearly be looking for kids -- or maybe someone likes tiny women, but how do you define such a thing and does it really matter?
The user in this case is assuming there is privacy. They are viewing material to get stimulated. They didn't touch anyone.
I hate taking the side of Pedos -- but we don't even know if all these people are actual pedophiles. Some of them might just be into extremes and next week they'll be looking at chubby chicks. Some of them may have been abused in the past. If you criminalize this -- you don't have a situation where people can seek help. There are so many cases in our own history where stigmatizing causes MORE of the thing we are trying to reduce.
This is thought crime -- pure and simple. And if the rights of people who have done NO HARM are not considered, as reprehensible as they are, then the long arm of the law might do a reach-around into something else, like colluding with each other to change laws we think are wrong.
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