FBI Operated 23 Tor-Hidden Child Porn Sites, Deployed Malware From Them (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal investigators temporarily seized a Tor-hidden site known as Playpen in 2015 and operated it for 13 days before shutting it down. The agency then used a "network investigative technique" (NIT) as a way to ensnare site users. However, according to newly unsealed documents recently obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, the FBI not only temporarily took over one Tor-hidden child pornography website in order to investigate it, the organization was in fact authorized to run a total of 23 other such websites. According to an FBI affidavit among the unsealed documents: "In the normal course of the operation of a web site, a user sends "request data" to the web site in order to access that site. While Websites 1-23 operate at a government facility, such request data associated with a user's actions on Websites 1-23 will be collected. That data collection is not a function of the NIT. Such request data can be paired with data collected by the NIT, however, in order to attempt to identify a particular user and to determine that particular user's actions on Websites 1-23." Security researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis told Ars that "it's a pretty reasonable assumption" that at one point the FBI was running roughly half of the known child porn sites hosted on Tor-hidden servers. Lewis runs OnionScan, an ongoing bot-driven analysis of the Tor-hidden darknet. Her research began in April 2016, and it shows that as of August 2016, there were 29 unique child porn related sites on Tor-hidden servers. That NIT, which many security experts have dubbed as malware, used a Tor exploit of some kind to force the browser to return the user's actual IP address, operating system, MAC address, and other data. As part of the operation that took down Playpen, the FBI was then able to identify and arrest the nearly 200 child porn suspects. (However, nearly 1,000 IP addresses were revealed as a result of the NIT's deployment, which could suggest that even more charges may be filed.)

Comments

I'm afraid to click on any of this article's links

[JoeyRox]

For fear that I'll unwittingly be taken to a child porn site and then have my IP address logged for immediate arrest.

Is Tor still vulnerable?

[BitterOak]

That NIT, which many security experts have dubbed as malware, used a Tor exploit of some kind to force the browser to return the user's actual IP address,

Does anyone know if that exploit has been fixed or is it still unpatched? If the FBI can use this exploit to catch child pornographers then other, possibly malicious, people can use the same exploit.

Re:Is Tor still vulnerable?

[Anonymous Coward]

The EFF is trying to force the FBI to disclose the exploit they used. To date, the FBI has not publicly revealed it.

In addition to difficult questions concerning the Fourth Amendment, Rule 41, and the limits of government hacking, the Playpen cases raise an important question about the future of digital rights: whether, to what extent, and under what circumstances the government must disclose to criminal defendants how the government carried out its hacking.

In the Playpen cases, the government has provided some information to the accused about how the “network investigative technique,” or “NIT,” operated. But, critically, the government refuses to produce the exploit it used to allegedly take control of suspects' computers.

That refusal—in addition to all the other problems with the Playpen cases—violates the rights of the accused. And, as at least one court has correctly found, the refusal to disclose the exploit to the defense requires suppression of evidence obtained as a result.

At its core, the government's argument is: “You don’t need to know how we got into your computer (the exploit) because it does not change the information that we took from your computer (the private information copied and transmitted by the payload). Just trust us on this.”

Re: Is Tor still vulnerable?

[WarJolt]

Only a moron would actually turn on flash in a browser.

Re:Is Tor still vulnerable?

[AmiMoJo]

It's not a vulnerability in TOR, it's a vulnerability in the Firefox browser that shipped with the TOR Browser bundle. It's been patched.

Also, it looks like it only affected people with JavaScript enabled. Beware hidden sites that require JavaScript, they are almost certainly traps trying to unmask you.

entrapment

[lpq]

Why is this not entrapment?

If they offer 23 out of 29 sites, that would seem to be increasing enticement...

Re: entrapment

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they didn't make them do anything they wouldn't have otherwise done and they didn't force them to do it.

Re: entrapment

[Calydor]

Never an excuse for the seller?

Alrighty, let's haul the entire FBI department responsible for this off the federal prison for peddling child porn. Or are they just above the law because reasons?

Re:entrapment

[aaarrrgggh]

Because it was a limited time, and presumably they were not promoting the site, just getting residual traffic.

Re: entrapment

[lpq]

That's what I was thinking -- if the FBI was supplying a significant amount of porn sites compared to what is normally there, it is likely to have an effect.

Compare this to the argument that that intra-state sales of something affects inter-state pricing because intra-state sales affects availability. If the FBI is increasing availability, doesn't that mean it's lowering the difficulty in randomly coming across such a site and being tempted by it?

If the FBI increases supply by 383% (23 more sites compared to original 6), then it seems it would be considerably easier to find such a site by whatever method the news of such sites existing is spread. That HAS to bring in more people than the original 6 sites.

Note -- if the FBI offered only 1-2 sites added to original 6, the increased availability would be noticeable, but, *arguably* *necessary* to carry out the operation. But providing a 383% increase in the availability of such sites -- 80% of all such sites, they have to realize they are likely to advertise it to people who never would have known about such. The FBI is increasing the number of offenders by reaching a larger audience. That seems unethical, at least, and should, IMWO (in my worthless opinion, :-)), not be legal.

Re: entrapment

[penix1]

...properly authorized sting operations.

"properly authorized" still means they have to be clean themselves. For example, they can't have sex with you then arrest you for solicitations based on that sex. If the servers had child pron on them and the FBI was running them, then they broke the law themselves since simply possessing said porn is a crime. It surprises me that nobody brought up this little twist yet.

Re:entrapment

[dbIII]

Facts? Cases get thrown out due to obvious entrapment every now and again. It's not always like your cartoons.
It's off the top of my head so don't use the excuse that it is an old case, but one of the most utterly ridiculous ones was from the Clinton era that ended up being described in a book as "Saddams Nuclear Triggers". It took months for FBI agents to convince a British industrial parts supplier to buy an item from one FBI agent and sell the same thing to another and claim that the supplier was supporting a nuclear bomb program that didn't exist in Iraq. The amoral pricks who set it up just wanted a high profile case so they could get promoted so they manufactured a fake crime and spent about a year going shopping for a patsy to frame for it, then months "grooming" their patsy before he agreed. It took years but in the end all charges were thrown out. It is well established as a FACT that real entrapment, unlike your comic, was the situation there and that there would have been no crime or attempt at one without the involvement of the agents.
More recently a mentally ill person with no strong political or religious views was encouraged to get a bomb by FBI agents, once again with a very long "grooming" process, then provided with a bomb by FBI agents. That one is still going through the legal process so there may be more to it.
It does happen and merely manufactures convictions instead of stopping crime.

Re: entrapment

[Gavagai80]

The FBI did not increase supply at all. They simply delayed the decreasing of supply after seizing sites that already existed.

Re:entrapment

[Type44Q]

I'm just wondering if you have to fail a psych exam to be allowed to do this sort of work (kind of like you need to to serve on a sub)...

Re: entrapment

[lpq]

Article said they took down 1 but operated it for 13 days to entice more. Fine. But then it said they got permission to operate 23 such sites. To me that sounded like they used the 1 site and made 22 copies of it. There was nothing to indicate they got the 22 copies by busting 22 different servers -- at least not from what the article said.

Why would they need to get permission to operate 23 such sites when it sounds like they needed no permission at all to bust 1 site and operate it for 2 weeks after the bust. No -- they needed permission because they wanted to setup 22 more copies of the site. But taking down a site and not turning it off to uncover any related activity for 2 weeks is well within the scope of an investigation not needing pre-approval. The fact that they did need pre-approval indicated advance planning and wanting to setup 22 copies to go after unrelated traffic by setting out more sites to create a wider, more enticing net.

Doesn't sound ethical to me.

Re: entrapment

[oobayly]

My understanding of US law is that "putting a female police officer in a skirt and asking if you want a good time" *isn't* entrapment. The punter can simply say "no thanks" and walk on. It's entrapment if the punter is coerced into doing something illegal because you are given no choice but to break the law.

Re:entrapment

[thegarbz]

Cases get thrown out due to obvious entrapment every now and again

And a drug cultivator's case got thrown out a few weeks ago in Amsterdam too, that doesn't make it okay for everyone to grow drugs and that doesn't mean the technicality his got thrown out for suddenly applies to everyone.

Entrapment has a very clear legal definition. Come back when people directly prosecuted in this case have their cases thrown out due to "obvious" entrapment. After all it was a child porn site. Unless the FBI took out newspaper ads or started an advertising campaign all they did was catch existing people actively searching for illegal content and accessing it. That's not entrapment just because the guy on the other end is a cop.

Re: entrapment

[penix1]

But taking down a site and not turning it off to uncover any related activity for 2 weeks is well within the scope of an investigation not needing pre-approval.

Except we are talking about child pornography here which is illegal to possess even for the FBI.

Re: entrapment

[lpq]

Um, isn't that the norm? They are doing it for the children!

Re:entrapment

[Megol]

No that is _not_ how it works, unless FBI made people download child pornography that they wouldn't otherwise have downloaded then it isn't entrapment. Police dressing up as hookers isn't entrapment if they don't try to convince people to have sex with them for money. Police acting as drug dealers isn't entrapment unless they try to convince people to buy drugs from them.

Re: entrapment

[Altrag]

I would assume that they use a similar argument to what bittorrent sites use -- they host a service, but they don't explicitly provide the content. Though the FBI probably has less work to defend that argument since nobody's going to be too hard on them for trying to stop CP (unlike the *AAs trying to stop bittorrent sites.) Just hard enough to ensure they're following the rules and not risk having their eventual cases tossed on a technicality.

Of course at some point they're going to have to review more than logs to ensure that the content they're prosecuting someone for is actually CP otherwise the defendant could just claim they were only there for the articles or some such nonsense.

So yes at some level, they will have to have special license granted to do this since in general anything even vaguely related to CP is automatically at least suspect if not outright illegal. And seeing some of the suggested related stories on TFA's site, it sounds like the FBI is having a bit of a time defending their practices (though it seems more to do with the IP-collecting malware than the hosting itself.)

Re:entrapment

[Megol]

Here's a hint: police have more rights than ordinary people in order to enforce laws. While it is commonly avoided police have been distributing weapons and illegal drugs (with the receiver under careful watch) in order to catch criminals. Why is this different? The intent is to catch criminals, that is people that download and/or distribute child pornography, so they set up a way to identify the persons accessing the illegal goods and continue to make it available a while. Analogous operations have been done forever and is in no way entrapment.

Also how do you think anyone can be prosecuted if the police isn't allowed to handle the illegal goods?

Re: entrapment

[Altrag]

I'm reasonably sure that the officer can't specifically ask a potential john -- the john would have to ask them. Otherwise the john could claim that they wouldn't have considered the thought of the officer hadn't suggested it.

Not sure if that's technically entrapment or not (because only words were exchanged not money) but its still a pretty shaky case to bring in front of a judge whereas if the john made the approach, the case is fairly solid that he was specifically searching for a prostitute.

Re:entrapment

[Megol]

While generally a good comic for the topic I don't like the example of a protest march. It isn't illegal to walk, there isn't an indication that the people in the march had conspired to block anything etc. Unless doing something that is legal at the same time as others that do the same legal thing is illegal that makes no sense.

(I understand that the scenario was chosen to illustrate what isn't entrapment but it still pisses me off)

Re:entrapment

[lpq]

And that's why we have a court system. ;^)

@ http://legal-dictionary.thefre..., they say this (among many other things):

"The [entrapment] defense is not available if the officer merely created an opportunity for the commission of the crime by a person already planning or willing to commit it."

If someone has never seen a child porn site, but stumbles upon one, and is curious about why someone would find such things sexual, and stumbles upon such a site due to their being over 300% more sites (due to police running them), they might satisfy their curiosity, whereas if they had to search for such a site, they wouldn't have ever visited -- as that would be too much work.

It really depends on how such sites are found and how much a 300% increase in site availability would affect those who only have idle curiosity about such matters.

I can't help but think about how the feds, at one point, told the states that they couldn't allow legal, intrastate cannabis, as it would affect prices outside of the state and would thus be affecting interstate commerce. It was seen as a simple matter of supply & demand, with higher supply resulting in lower prices.

That was considered to be a "given". Here, if the cop-operated sites were a significant percentage of all such sites, I can't help but feel they would attract people that would otherwise have not been planning or willing to put in the work to find such a site and would have not, otherwise, visited such a site.

But I can see you firmly disagree and like I said -- that's why we have
judges (and juries).

Re:entrapment

[dbIII]

Entrapment has a very clear legal definition

Yes. I gave an example of something fitting that. So did the cartoon linked by the other guy above.
This time looks a lot like it at first glance and looks like lazy policing to hit performance targets instead of catching actual criminals but the details are what matters. If the suspected perpetrator gets onto the site without actively trying to find anything illegal then it is a fuckup and a waste of taxpayers money equivalent to planting drugs on people then arresting them. As an analogy, there's a big difference between posing as a drug dealer to catch potential buyers and planting drugs on people, just as there is a big difference between advertising porn in general and specifically directing people to child porn. How the "sting" is implemented will matter and since it's already lazy policing it just takes a bit more laziness to have a fucked up "sting" operations that is entrapment.

Question for the FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

When, may I ask, will the FBI go after the creators of child porn, and not just the consumers? The peopel who actually and directly abuse children for money? Or is it a lot simpler easier to entrap the customers, since you can wave the contraband in their faces? It's rather like penalizing people who drink poisoned water rather than finding the poisoners.

Re:Question for the FBI

[fustakrakich]

The creators are motivated by and profit from consumer demand

Re:Question for the FBI

[Boronx]

Fool! Don't question libertarian orthodoxy on Slashdot.

Re:Question for the FBI

[h33t l4x0r]

I imagine it's because they're outside the US while the consumers are within the US. FBI only operates within the US.

Re:Question for the FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

And there I thought America has learned it's lesson after decades of the "War on Drugs". Arresting junkies does not prevent drug crime. The demand is already there (people are predisposed to take drugs), outlawing people's urges does not magically make urges go away. I would argue that the relationship is inverse, it is child pornographers who prey on the weaknesses of people who have the natural inclination to desire such things.

But on a more pragmatic note, criminalizing possession has negative effects as well. It artificially restricts supply much like DRM and copyright law, thus inflating the value of the data and the profitability of the business model. Furthermore, it restricts the access to a harmless outlet, thus increasing sexual frustration and making those who have such urges more likely to seek out the real thing.

Now, I'm not sure whether criminalizing possession yields a net benefit, but I'm inclined to be skeptical, given the total absence of any evidence to support it's effectiveness.

Re:Question for the FBI

[LWATCDR]

1. They do.
2. Many of these sites are for sharing kiddie porn. You know like Reddit, YouTube, and Blogs are for sharing things. The consumers are often the creators.
3. " It's rather like penalizing people who drink poisoned water rather than finding the poisoners." Really? These people are going to a tor dark web site called the playpen and you are trying to paint them as victims? How about this instead, "it is like penalizing people that pay people to sexually abuse children for there entertainment".... Yea I got no problem with this.

reminiscent of the Reverse Sting drug deal

[rmdingler]

Akin to the drug deals that go down at an interstate truck stop when the _name your initials_ sells a kilo for under market value,

only to ensnare a rube who'd never be able to purchase at that level from legitimate drug dealers.

We can debate justifying the ethics of creating an environment that may have never existed for a drug arrest, but operating a pedobear porn site for a second crosses a line you cannot return from.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late, you came to this article. We have your IP and are coming to your home to arrest you.

Except

[s.petry]

1. They had 2 warrants and judges approve the tactic. If you want to complain about the judges that is fair game, but the FBI did follow the rules. 2. The FBI did not setup these sites, they seized them through legal process.

I am extremely pro US Constitution and don't see what they did as wrong. They followed the legal process as they should. What I wish we could see is how many arrests they made from the tactic.

Re:Except

[rmdingler]

Constitutional? yes

Legal? plausibly

Defensible behavior? No. "Honey, what did you do at work today?"

"Ran a kiddie porn site for the greater good!"

Re:Except

[MightyMartian]

It seems little different from any other kind of sting. Whether you have cops posing as drug dealers, prostitutes, or posing as public officials taking a bribe, so long as the perp is not enticed by the undercover officer or his associates into committing the crime, honey traps are permissible.

Re:Except

[MightyMartian]

I'm sure when the FBI is going after drug gangs and cartels, they will go a lot deeper than just busting the street dealer. And as others have pointed out, these are seized sites being used as honey pots.

I'm not clear why, providing it has been approved by a judge, anyone would have a problem with this. Undercover cops will embed themselves a helluva lot more than just keeping a server up and running and logging user details.

Re:Except

[ArtemaOne]

That's a lie. They ran them, and even made them faster so people could get more off them faster.

Re:Except

[Anonymous Coward]

And what makes the US exempt from other countries laws regarding distribution of child porn?

The FBI could easily be dragged into court in my country for what they did!

Re:Except

[thegarbz]

Defensible behavior? No. "Honey, what did you do at work today?"

"Ran a kiddie porn site for the greater good!"

Yes because catching sick fucks through legal means is not "defensible"

"Honey, what did you do at work today?"
"I just shutdown a website paedophiles were using. We could have used that website to catch many of them and place them all behind bars but we just decided to close it and let them all go instead."

Your resident pedo here

[Anonymous Coward]

The hosting site in question was known as "Freedom Hosting", it was the host of many sites including OPVA (main CP video site), Lolita City (main CP pic site), TorMail (used by everyone and their dog) and many others. The cops took over *all* of them when they took the host, what they're talking about here is the server request logs. The NIT was supposedly only deployed on CP sites, but that's a lie it was deployed on all sites hosted by FH. I'm not about to testify on that though.

The exploit was based on a Javascript exploit in Firefox, in the CP community it was well known that you should disable any form of scripting that TorBrowser insist on shipping enabled because otherwise it'd break too many regular sites. So in the end they caught a few nobodies that didn't follow best practices, shafted someone who only did the hosting and punch water knocking out the main sites. It's like bittorrent, we tend to crowd but the crowd could always meet somewhere else.

For what it's worth, they also took over TLZ (The Love Zone) and ran it for half a year. Playpen they took over and ran for two weeks. They catch the people who do stupid things like pay for hosting with non-anonymous methods, say compromising things in private messages and so on. They pick of the stupid, the smart stay on... 20+ years and counting, the cops are n00bs. They think the scene is TPB, it's just barely scratching the surface.

Re:Your resident pedo here

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk like you have some exciting insight to offer in a cat and mouse game, but in reality your a just a generic dirtbag lowlife that gets off jerking off to kids. This weekend i worked with some newer grad FBI agents and their capabilities are fucking amazing, they get it. Ive been doing UNIX and dev for 20+ years and was impressed. Make no mistake you are only free because of budgets and priorities (which change), not because they are "noobs". Your days are numbered.

You're only hearing the news from the Iraqi information minister on the crushing defeats and trembling of the enemy as they flee from the mighty police.

1. Society is getting hyper-sexual and it is less and less related to love and reproduction. People have sex because it feels good, younger and younger adolescents are picking up on that and experiment with their sexuality and have earlier and more advanced sex.
2. Camera phones and webcams means young ones record more, share more in constantly improving quality and flirting has become much more graphic than before, hence "sexting".
3. The attention frenzy of social media drives kids to seek attention and acting out online is one way of doing that, if you think it's all leaks from boyfriends I can tell you many are showing off for entire channels and they know it.

Those three alone pretty much overwhelm the system and you can't very well put these kids in jail and throw away the key. It's only the fringes that could be classified as CP but there's enough 10yos spreading and rubbing one out on cam that it's hard to keep up.

On top of that you have the enthusiastic amateurs, say what you will but the cops don't have any chance to stop anything spread to the general community it's many thousands of copies spreading like wildfire. Sometimes the supply is cut short, but you can't empty a dam where things flow in and nothing flows out.

Finally you have shady businesses most non-western places, SE Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, Russia, China and so on. They're few and the customers few, it's not the billion dollar industry people think but they're there if you got lots of money and want custom make-to-order material. Not saying I agree with it, but not going to pretend it's not there.

Taking down all that would be a bundle. Or you could try to attack the places we swap, but they tried with P2P which is like shooting fish in a barrel and they never managed to empty it as new fools joined. And there will still have to all the fun with jurisdictions and passing the case around.

The police are winning every battle, but still losing the war. In the 90s it was shitty scans of a polaroid or digitized 8mm from the 70s over crappy dial-up or the very few who could digitize a VHS tape. Today it's a lot easier, the quality and selection is much better, the tools are safer... the trend is in our favor, not theirs.

Re:Your resident pedo here

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi fellow AC, I'm your next door neighbor. As a pastime, I've put out a standing offer to everyone on our street to pay for photos and videos of them raping you. I'm sure you don't mind, because I'm not going to be harming you at all.

Re:Your resident pedo here

[Anonymous Coward]

To think that he's alone in being able to thwart NIT is naive. There are a lot of stupid people, but an NIT should be pretty simple to thwart amongst any Tor-using paedophile communities that exist. I know of dozens of methods other non-pedophile Tor users use to thwart these attacks.

Examples: Disabling javascript would have stopped this attack, click 'high security' option in the Tor Browser would have stopped the attack, running Tails would have stopped this attack. Running Tor Browser as a separate user without direct access to the internet and directing all traffic to 127.0.0.1 on a port that runs Tor as a separate user would have thwarted this attack (provided the user is behind a NAT). Running Tor Browser in a virtual machine where host-only networking is setup and only Tor running on the host machine has access to the internet would have thwarted this attack. Removing a wifi card and directing all traffic through a VPN router would have thwarted this attack.

Re:Your resident pedo here

[Draeven]

The irony here is, the resulting videos and photos would not be illegal, so long as that AC wasn't a minor.

Re:Your resident pedo here

[Anonymous Coward]

They disclosed the JS exploits from the first FH busts and Playpen was much later. Given how hard they've dug in their heels on this one (letting evidence be suppressed, guaranteeing the person walks free), it's entirely likely this isn't the basic JS exploit from back in the LC days. There's good reason to believe it's file-based (see, 7-zip and JPEG2000 code execution flaws, others that cause certain media players to contact a server when opened) or some more serious bug not involving allowing scripts or flash in some versions of Tor browser or against the Tor network.

And while local cops might for example think TBP is piracy, this is the FBI and international agencies-- the people that actually do know about the scene and arrest group leaders. They actually do have some seriously competent people.

Re:Your resident pedo here

[Megol]

No.

Re:eh

[The Rizz]

i think most can argue even in true free markets that who cares what happens to people that like that.

The question is whether that data collection was legal, and fell with a scope that didn't amount to a fishing expedition. There are two main reasons everyone should care about this:

1) If it's not legal, then it risks these suspects going free on a technicality.
2) If it's not legal, but people decide to just let it slip by because "those people are horrible", then it sets a precedent that said methods are OK, and it gets harder for it later to be declared illegal when the government starts using it for less clear-cut or outright nefarious purposes.

Re:eh

[Qzukk]

There's a third option:

3) It didn't happen, but people think the FBI can make it happen.

After rounding up these 1000 undesirables, next month word will get out that the FBI actually ran 300 child porn sites, and "I have here in my hand a list of two thousand and fifty commun... sorry, pedophiles."

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[ShanghaiBill]

Pedophiles fear many things. If they seek psychiatric help, the doctor is required to report them. So they stay untreated in the shadows. Other countries are more enlightened. In Japan, pedophiles can buy child-sized sex dolls. Although data is scarce, the dolls appear to provide a release for their predilection and reduce offenses against actual children. This is unlikely to happen in America, but soon we will have a sexual predator as our president, so maybe he will be more empathetic.

Re:Just sayin'

[MightyMartian]

The problem with your notion is that somewhere someone has to get people under the age of majority to take their clothes off. This means in most jurisdictions the photos themselves were produced unlawfully.

And, of course a great deal of child porn is far more than simply naked under age people posing.

So do you still think people should be able to look at pictures, even the most benign of which are in most, if not all cases, produced criminally involving at least one party who cannot lawfully grant consent?

I know those raided over this, info inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI needlessly raided, embarrassed, and stole a lot of property from people it disliked irregardless of the fact they didn't even know who they were targeting in most cases. The IP addresses don't equal persons or places to be searched despite what the courts have accepted. I know that because I can demonstrate it here with this very example. I do know that in this case the FBI did know who they were targeting because they were targeting an activist or two or group who stood up against the FBI for immoral and reprehensible behaviour (distributing child porn). Mark Edge and Ian Freeman stood up and called the FBI out just two weeks before they raided the studio of Free Talk Live and home of numerous liberty activists. The government has been targeting Ian Freeman's reputation for some time and slandering/libeling his name making claims he's a paedophile who advocates for the rape of children under six. Ian advocates against the use of violence including against children and doesn't think children under six should be having or are ready for sex.

Here is what I can tell you: The warrants didn't name a person, place, location, and specific things to be seized. In this case they've stolen a few dozen computers and devices from many innocent parties. The courts literally rubber stamp these types of warrants and higher courts have ensured this continues.

You can see exactly what happens in the videos below (thanks to other activists who recorded the raid). FTL is a libertarian talk show that has promoted the Free State Project which is a migration of liberty minded activists to New Hampshire for the purpose of pursuing liberty and freedom. Check out www.freekeene.com for Liberty news in New Hampshire. And don't worry- if you join us there are thousands of people here already. You won't be raided as long as you don't live near the home of the most active activists. They didn't succeed in undermining the movement (which actually consists of numerous groups throughout New Hampshire) and within a handful of hours they raised $5,000 and got Free Talk Live on air- before they even missed airing a single episode.

Check out:

http://www.copblock.org/156621/got-enemies-have-the-fbi/

Raid itself:

http://freekeene.com/2016/03/20/men-donning-badges-steal-property-from-free-talk-live-studios/

Re:I know those raided over this, info inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't understand. The scum bags who paint Ian as a paedophile twisted a story about him being molested at the age of six into a story about him advocating for sex with children at six or under. All he ever said was that he didn't feel it was a traumatic experience and that automatically making it out to be this terrible thing was nothing more than FUD by conservatives and religious nut jobs. Ian doesn't think the government should be involved in deciding what age is appropriate for 'children' to have sex, but recognizes that puberty is the point in which someone is going to seek it out. At no point did he say it would be appropriate for an adult to have sex with a child. Most of the problems that stem from age of consent are not related to adults having sex with kids, but 'kids' having sex with 'kids'. So a 12 year old having sex with a 10 year old. Or a 15 year old having sex with a 17 year old or an 17 year old having sex with an 18 year old. The government is literally ruining peoples lives and putting kids on sex offender lists for no good reason. It's simply nobody's business but that of the individual with whom and when sex is an appropriate thing to undertake. Rape is rape. If a 25 year old has sex with a 13 year old and the 13 year old didn't consent that is rape and that 25 year old should be charged. The same is true in reverse. The age shouldn't matter. Even a 4 year old can identify an act as something they don't like. Every parent knows what there kid likes and doesn't like. Even babies! There is no good logical reason to put an age on which a person can or can't decide for themselves whether to have sex. You can prove rape without such laws. Age of consent is only useful to persecute people where both parties actually consented and that almost always happens with people of similar ages.

Re: Just sayin'

[MightyMartian]

You've described the Libertarian alt-right future, where not only will you have the freedom to starve or die from treatable injuries and diseases, but where you'll have the added liberty of selling your children into sexual slavery.

Re: eh

[Qzukk]

You think being a Communist during the Red Scare is just like "having a difference of opinion on politics?"

The point was that someone who overstated his ability to gather information about evildoers apparently padded out his numbers a little bit with a few extra names here and there. Of course, nobody would question whether he ACTUALLY had 205 names of card-carrying Communists in his hand, they trusted him because they believed he had the ability to identify these Communists.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[tsotha]

...but soon we will have a sexual predator as our president...

Yeah, except... no. Those allegations fell apart the day after the election.

Besides, we had a sexual predator in the White house starting in 1992, and it didn't seem to matter much.

Rule 29 b.

[bmo]

Rule 29 is now amended thusly:

Rule 29 (a) In the Internet all the girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents.
        (b) All child porn servers are FBI servers

Which should have been obvious before this.

--
BMO

I don't feel too sorry for the chesters......

[BlytheBowman]

...i am happy they are going to be locked away and abused by the guards and hopefuly other inmates in PC

Disgusted but not surprised

[dbIII]

Disgusted but not surprised - how about they put in the hard work of solving crimes instead of the quick way to promotion of enabling crimes and catching the people they have tempted?
The primary target should be catching the people molesting the kids in the first place, but instead those get left alone as being too difficult.

Re:Disgusted but not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Disgusted but not surprised - how about they put in the hard work of solving crimes instead of the quick way to promotion of enabling crimes and catching the people they have tempted?
The primary target should be catching the people molesting the kids in the first place, but instead those get left alone as being too difficult.

Um. From what I read, to be a part of at least some of those sites you have to upload your own material, so probably a lot of the people who were signing up WERE actually doing some of the abuse.

Re: eh

[dbIII]

You think being a Communist during the Red Scare is just like "having a difference of opinion on politics?"

In those cases back then - yes - frequently that's all it was and today we'd even call some of those people libertarians and a wide range of other labels depending on who they were. Even the Hollywood millionaire Charlie Chaplin was called a communist while he and a pile of others called communists by McCarthy etc were nothing but anti-fascists. Where the scare fell apart was when General Marshall of the Marshall Plan (and a lot of other things) was called a communist.

whether he ACTUALLY had 205 names of card-carrying Communists in his hand

If he really did, considering he did not reveal them to the authorities what does it make him? That is of course a moot point since he was just a liar stirring up a fuss to have a chance at the Presidency in a field of war heroes and others that had done something of note with their lives.

Yes there were real communists out there in a pile of different factions, even some sad cases who were as deluded about Stalin as FDR was at Yalta (Good old Uncle Joe? WTF?), but why would a handful of them in 1950 be a threat when masses of them in 1930 were not? McCarthy despite all his fuss didn't even find one!

End of cartoon

[dbIII]

OK - so I didn't get to the end of the cartoon before replying and the two examples I gave fit the end of that.
My point is still that the very lazy policing of entrapment is still being practiced at times and that line between getting the attention of criminals and enticing people into performing criminal acts that they may not have otherwise done is crossed on occasion.
I'd prefer them to put some more effort into actually catching child rapists, which seems to be getting ignored to chase after those who look at porn instead.

Re:eh

[SuricouRaven]

I think 2) may be the intention.

Re:reminiscent of the Reverse Sting drug deal

[Sabriel]

What I'm wondering is how often such stings have ever collided. "You're-" "under-" arrest..." *stereo* "Wait, what?"

Re:Just sayin'

[SuricouRaven]

Don't be so sure about that: Many countries have laws that define child pornography to explicitly include artistic depictions or photoshopped fake images (known legally as 'pseudophotgraphs' in the UK).

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[Anonymous Coward]

When the police investigated and concluded that the fantasy hopes of anti-Trump children don't constitute a spontaneous materialization of crimes that never happened.

Re: eh

[Anonymous Coward]

Paedophiles are just like the rest of us. There isn't a risk of them molesting children any more than there is a risk of your heterosexual non-pedo neighbour raping your wife. They couldn't find enough child molesters so they fabricated it. The stories about cults of paedophiles were shown to be fabricated and false. They were created by terrible police tactics which got kids to say things that were false. What is a risk is reducing the supply of pornography of any type. The studies that have been done where pornography was legalized showed rapes fall and when outlawed again rapes go up. One study in one country where it was legalized, criminalized, and legalized against showed clear evidence of this. Some small percentage of paedophiles are going to rape children just like some small percentage of children population is going to go out and rape women/men.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[Serge_Tomiko]

You've got to understand. This is Slashdot. Most readers here can't get laid, or if they have, their partner count is low. They don't understand what it is like to follow the baseball metaphor for sex. If they have sex at all, it is because the woman finally settles for them and initiates everything (after fucking a lot of alpha guys less worthy than Trump).

So, "grab them by the pussy" means nothing to a man who only can have sex when a woman grabs him by the balls.

Anyone who is remotely attractive and talented knows how it works. First base, you kiss the girl, second base, you feel her up, third base, you grab her pussy, and if she is still into it, then you can push for a home run - getting her back to your place to fucking her.

If you are the kind of man women want, this is easy to do. There are at least 2 dozen girls I've done this with in less than 2 hours. A woman who doesn't resist you grabbing her pussy will fuck you, guaranteed. And women know this game. I've probably experienced 3 dozens times where I made out with a girl, quickly accelerated to second base, but when I went for her pussy, she brushed my and away, or in a few cases, pushed me away. Such is life. They didn't think anything of it, and in most cases they asked to go on a second date or even stated they wanted to take it slow.

And that's where a lot of this comes from. Trump did well for women, because women know how the game works. I mean seriously, Chaucer writes about grabbing a woman's pussy to see if she is ready and interested in sex. Men have been writing shit similar to the baseball metaphor for sex since writing was invented. In a more civilized age before testosterone levels plummeted, fathers would patiently explain to their sons the proper, respectable order of events.

For the nerd however, autism is his flaw. Poetry is a foreign language. Social cues with women are not understood. BUT, they do understand that alphas like Trump can fuck any woman they want, and deep down they know almost every woman wants to fuck him.

So they manufacture bullshit like this.

I am not a Trump supporter. I think he is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and I believe political correctness has been propagated to kill progressive economic policies and discredit the left. There are SO MANY REASONS to criticize Trump, but claiming he is a sexual predator? Bullshit. Total bullshit.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so painfully full of shit I don't know whether to laugh or cringe.

"There are at least 2 dozen girls I've done this with in less than 2 hours," really good sir? A tip of the fedora to you, that's an active fucking imagination you've got. A shame you can't tell the difference between what's real and what goes in in your cum-stained mind.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[AmiMoJo]

I browse with a VPN service all the time. I'm afraid to browse without it, for reasons like this.

Okay, maybe the VPN provider lied and does keep logs, but at least it's another layer of (likely international) process they need to through.

Good thing

[Cley Faye]

That's a good move. Instead of fighting windmills trying to shut down the network, use it. No idea how it will fare, but that's the way to go.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If they seek psychiatric help, the doctor is required to report them. So they stay untreated in the shadows.

This is a good point. They've made it dangerous for these people to seek treatment (not that many of them do, but still...).

In a way I almost feel sorry for them. We don't pick what we like or what we're attracted to, and it seems clear that most pedophiles are driven by urges far beyond conscious choice. (I mean, who would consciously choose to be attracted to children? No one, that's who.)

So obviously we can't let them do what they want to do (molest children), but at the same time we should recognize that they're not in control of what they want. That appears to be something that's baked into their personality from the start.

Just look at these guys on "To Catch A Predator"- many of them have seen the shows and are even worried that the "girl" they're going to meet is in fact a setup, and they still go. What does that tell you? It tells you that they'll ignore their own reasoning for a chance to fulfill their desires. That's an obvious sign of a mental disorder.

So you're right- pedophiles shouldn't be made to be afraid to seek treatment, or as you point out, they'll stay untreated in the shadows. And that benefits no one, especially the children they'll eventually victimize.

Good Grief!

[Torodung]

Oh my God. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. You are committing crimes in the course of your undercover investigation and abrogating 4th amendment rights.

No, "kiddie porn" and "think of the children" doesn't justify it. NOTHING does.

Signed,

A concerned citizen

Re:justice

[Megol]

That is not how the world works. No, they will not be sentenced as it isn't illegal for them _with_permission_ to serve goods that would be illegal otherwise, this in order to catch actual criminals. While most of the time police try to use dummy goods (fake drugs that appear genuine unless tested chemically, weapons that seem to work 100% but can't actually be fired etc.) sometimes that isn't possible - and this is the case here. This isn't something novel and it isn't something illegal for the police.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[war4peace]

There's been some sort of growth change as of late (I blame the hormones-infested meat the industry pushes into supermarkets). During the last two decades, I'll be darned if I can reliably tell whether that hot chick I see on the street is 24 or 14. Could be anything in between.
If you don't ask for an ID, you could spend long years in jail.

Back in 2002 I almost fell for it. Luckily I asked her which University she went to and she serenely said "I'm 8th grade". Mind you, that was in a bar.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I'll be darned if I can reliably tell whether that hot chick I see on the street is 24 or 14.

It's not just you. They sure don't look like they did when I was younger.

I see young women in stores and yeah, they could be 15 or they could be in their 20s. And they're a lot more curvy or buxom or whatever than I remember them being when I was in high school or junior high. Some scientific studies are claiming that the age of puberty is dropping, so maybe that's it.

https://www.theguardian.com/so...
http://sph.unc.edu/age-of-pube...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/0...

"At the turn of the 20th century, the average age for an American girl to get her period was 16 to 17. Today, that number has plummeted to less than 13, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey."

So yeah, there's something going on.

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[x_t0ken_407]

Why is this comment listed as "troll"?

Be definition, Former President and Governor Bill Clinton used his position of power to have sexual relations with two women which is what a sexual predator does. Yet we have little proof so far that President elect Donald Trump is a predator. And please don't claim the supposed the 13-year old girl rape case as proof because that case hasn't seen a court room. Nor is there proof to all the claims that suddenly appeared right before the election. None of those have seen a court room either just as with the some of encounters of Bill Clinton's. There is thing called innocent until proven guilty.

Ain't partisanship grand?

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[syntotic]

These people are doing several things WRONG. The case is real, kidnappers are not after the money but have much shadier agendas, so where do you think you have to go to see if you can find any clue as to what happened to missing people? All women have a responsibility to tell you if they got pregnant and they will always be in condition to reach you and make you pay for it, eh?

Re:I'm afraid to click on any of this article's li

[piojo]

There's been some sort of growth change as of late (I blame the hormones-infested meat the industry pushes into supermarkets). During the last two decades, I'll be darned if I can reliably tell whether that hot chick I see on the street is 24 or 14.

That's true, but it's not the same thing as pedophilia. Our society has the bad habit of treating someone exactly the same whether they sleep with a kid or a 17 year-old. Media is partly to blame, because "child" is a highly inflammatory term in the context of sexuality, so they overuse that term. The result now is that someone with a healthy brain who is attracted to young adults can end up being treated the same as someone with an abnormal brain (who is attracted to children). Our collective enjoyment of outrage is removing the nuance and shades of gray from life.