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Three Privacy Groups Challenge The FBI's Malware-Obtained Evidence (eff.org)
In 2015 the FBI took over a Tor-accessible child pornography site to infect its users with malware so they could be identified and prosecuted. But now one suspect is challenging that evidence in court, with three different privacy groups filing briefs in his support.
An anonymous reader writes.
One EFF attorney argues it's a classic case of an unreasonable search, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. "If the FBI tried to get a single warrant to search 8,000 houses, such a request would unquestionably be denied." But there's another problem, since the FBI infected users in 120 different countries. "According to Privacy International, the case also raises important questions: What if a foreign country had carried out a similar hacking operation that affected U.S. citizens?" writes Computerworld. "Would the U.S. welcome this...? The U.S. was overstepping its bounds by conducting an investigation outside its borders without the consent of affected countries, the group said."
The FBI's evidence is also being challenged by the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the EFF plans to file two more challenges in March, warning that otherwise "the precedent is likely to impact the digital privacy rights of all Internet users for years to come... Courts need to send a very clear message that vague search warrants that lack the required specifics about who and what is to be searched won't be upheld."
The FBI's evidence is also being challenged by the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the EFF plans to file two more challenges in March, warning that otherwise "the precedent is likely to impact the digital privacy rights of all Internet users for years to come... Courts need to send a very clear message that vague search warrants that lack the required specifics about who and what is to be searched won't be upheld."
People who look at CP deserve everything that comes to them. Including malware
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken
James Comey and friends spent 2 weeks as the biggest distributors of child porn on the planet, when they took over a child porn website, added server capacity, and kept it running. I get that we want to catch the bad guys, but the FBI is way overstepping its bounds lately. If you agree with the concept that distributing child porn harms the children over and over again, then the FBI itself is responsible for unimaginable amounts of harm to kids.
Foreign countries try to hack the computers of US citizens all the time.
The US Hacked Brazil (not only Petrobras, but also Brazillian Government websites) , as revealed by Snowden and by US Courts (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/exclusive-how-an-fbi-informant-helped-anonymous-hack-brazil) and nothing happened. It was the FBI, not even the CIA! ..And we are a friendly nation to the US.
I have a belly laugh every time I see americans complaining about Russia hacking your elections, EVEN if its true.
No. It was a French name and he was alive over a hundred years ago. These were glass plate photos. And by turn of the century I meant 1900.
I doubt very seriously that they advertised "kiddie porn here!", or worked to pump up their page rank on search engines. I'm reasonably sure that all of the visitors to their operational website were fully aware of exactly what they were doing, including the illegal nature of the material they were looking for. The website surreptitiously installed malware on their hosts, but this seems little different from police forces lying to suspects during interrogation or undercover operations in order to elicit useful information. Not so much like putting marked bills in a bundle (a technique described elsewhere) as adding a dye-pack designed to undetectably transfer an ultraviolet ink onto the hands of those who handle the ill-gotten money.
Now, whether they can prove exactly who used the specified hardware to view the illicit material - that's a different matter. My laptop (for example) is only used by me. Even my wife doesn't use my PC as she has her own system. I would guess that most of the suspects the FBI has identified are also sole users of the systems in question, but that will be a matter for the prosecution to prove in court. I would guess that some small percentage of the systems in question are not so single-user dedicated, so this may possibly be an issue to resolve.
Thin6s the 8ight
It's a sting/honeypot.
The FBI should have kept this site running, announced a blanket amnesty that anyone in possession of child porn with a hash matching any of the images would no longer be considered guilty of any offense, and allowed free access to the server to anyone who wanted. In return, anyone caught in possession of NEW images, would be sentenced more severely than at present.
Those pictures have already been taken, the children involved already harmed, and that can't be undone now. The focus should be on preventing future production of images, and avoiding harm to future children. You do that by offering people who get their kicks from these images free access to a stock of them on the understanding they don't go looking for, or aid the ecosystem for new ones. Offer an amnesty like that? I bet 99% of child porn consumers would likely take up the offer, leaving resources free to focus on the 1% of people who, for whatever reason, would prefer to remain underground.
Think about it. Government offers a massive stock of child porn images along with a guarantee not to be prosecuted as long as you stick to it? Where's the incentive to go producing new ones any more, or go looking for them? At a stroke, future harm will be prevented, children will be saved. Logically, it makes total sense.
Define child porn for us.
Fair enough.
Child pornography is a form of child sexual exploitation.
Federal law defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor (persons less than 18 years old). Images of child pornography are also referred to as child sexual abuse images.
It is important to distinguish child pornography from the more conventional understanding of the term pornography.
Child pornography is a form of child sexual exploitation, and each image graphically memorializes the sexual abuse of that child. Each child involved in the production of an image is a victim of sexual abuse.
While some child sexual abuse images depict children in great distress and the sexual abuse is self-evident, other images may depict children that appear complacent.
In most child pornography cases, the abuse is not a one-time event, but rather ongoing victimization that progresses over months or years. It is common for producers of child pornography to groom victims, or cultivate a relationship with a child and gradually sexualize the contact over time.
Furthermore, victims of child pornography suffer not just from the sexual abuse inflicted upon them to produce child pornography, but also from knowing that their images can be traded and viewed by others worldwide.
Once an image is on the Internet, it is irretrievable and can continue to circulate forever.
The permanent record of a childÂs sexual abuse can alter his or her live forever. Many victims of child pornography suffer from feelings of helplessness, fear, humiliation, and lack of control given that their images are available for others to view in perpetuity.
Unfortunately, emerging trends reveal an increase in the number of images depicting sadistic and violent child sexual abuse, and an increase in the number of images depicting very young children, including toddlers and infants.
Child Pornography
It can be a useful exercise for the geek to have a look at the registry of sex offenders for his state or county. No better way I think to dispel the fantasies he promotes about child pornography.
> Define "Child Porn" for us.
The kind of child rape and torture that's on that sort of site is so bad that the people who work on these cases develop PTSD. Yes iffy cases exist, but a dedicated CP site on Tor is not the kind of place that is dedicated to random innocent pictures.
This malware is the digital equivalent of a bait car. If they're actually innocent, they should be challenging how it was determined that they were using the computer. There's a safe harbor for people who stumble across CP accidentally, as well, but I'd guess that most of you haven't bothered to read that part of the US code, just to preempt the old Slashdot complaint that maybe they accidentally connected to Tor, hunted down a CP site, downloaded one picture and noped the hell out of there.
Spying on the population was a big driver behind the THIRD amendment:
While forcing the colonists to provide housing and upkeep for the soldiers sent to oppress them was an economic issue, there was more to it than that.
A soldier "quartered" in a colonist's house also served as a spy for the crown and its army. He eavesdropped on the conversations of the family and visiting friends. He had the opportunity to view their records when they weren't home (or even if they were). He reported anything suspicious to his unit. His presence inhibited getting together with others to hold private discussions, especially about opposing (by protest or otherwise) anything the government was doing. He was a continuous walking search, fed and housed by the people he was investigating.
It seems to me that law-enforcement and intelligence agency spyware, such as keyloggers and various data exfiltration tools, is EXACTLY the digital equivalent: It is a digital agent that "lives" in the home or office of the target. It consums the target's resources (disk space, CPU cycles network bandwidth) to support itself. It spies spying on the activities and "papers" of the target, reporting anything suspicious (or anything, actually) back to its commander, to be used as evidence and/or to trigger an arrest or other attack. It is ready, at a moment's notice, to forcefully interfere with, destroy, or corrupt the target's facilities or send forged messages from him.
Spyware is EXACTLY one of the most egregious acts (one of the "Intolerable Acts") that sparked the American Revolution. I'd love to see the Third brought back out of the doldrums and used against these "digital soldiers" the government is "quartering" inside our personal and private computing devices.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
First they came for pedophiles, then they came for me.
dammit, it wasn't meant to be a pun, it was meant to be an insightful commentary on how we can judge a society by how it treats the most despised and how they can use the same tools on the rest of us, dammit I did it again, I mean spy tools. Now because of you people and your twisted imaginations nothing can undo iterations of that pun from being in my head.
This is the problem with infringing anyones rights, it turns wisdom into a bad joke.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A conservative who has just been arrested...
Of course a conservative is a liberal who has just been mugged...
Given that they have demanded the extradition of British citizens who have spied on US government websites from their homes in the UK, logically the FBI can be charged with the same offence...
Time to start blocking the tor network by packet sniffing at the edges - problem solved. if people in the US can't get to the tor network, then no need to worry about searches.
And, the scumbags arrested and challenging all this - need all of their names, etc, to somehow leak. Then nature will take it's course. The scumbags will deserve everything they get
One such person
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/FBI-Special-ed-teacher-caught-with-infant-rape-6384373.php
Investigators searched Michaud’s home Friday, seizing electronics they claim contained images depicting child rape. According to charging papers, several images showed infants being raped.
The days when proper investigations were conducted are long gone.
With 'proper' needing to be interpreted very loosely anyway.
Nowadays the objective seems to be to 'gather any intel possible',
whether an investigation is actually going on or not. And by 'all means'
possible, even if that means lowering the practices of the agency to
the near-bottom-of-the-pit level of the entities it is supposed to engage.
Federal Bureau of Insinuation would be a more proper description...
Thanks for the cite. It's amazing how many people on Slashdot are suddenly eager to defend the rape of children...
Yeah, I'm real sure that they're going to a Tor hidden service to show off a few innocent baby pics or people that are 1 day less than 18. Makes perfect sense /s
https://www.engadget.com/2016/... Happy?