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FBI Dismisses Child Porn Case Rather Than Reveal Their Tor Browser Exploit (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Federal prosecutors just dropped charges against a child pornography suspect rather than reveal the source code for their Tor exploit. Of the 200 cases they're prosecuting nationwide, this is only the second one where the FBI has asked that the case be dismissed. "Disclosure is not currently an option," federal prosecutors wrote in a court ruling Friday. The Department of Justice is still prosecuting 135 different people believed to have accessed an illegal child pornography web site. Before shutting it down, the FBI seized the site and operated it themselves for 13 more days, which allowed them to deploy malware to expose the users' real IP addresses.
Secrecy or Child Pornography...
We report, you decide.
Sounds like there is a very simple formula for defense now and forever for any of their tor tapping. Smart, very smart.
You do know that javascript, java, and flash exploits are still a thing, right?
I would not be surprised if the FBI has learned of an exploit for one of these or in the Tor implementation itself, and has chosen to not disclose it because they can continue to use it for parallel-construction cases, or because their knowledge of it came from another agency that still wants to use it for international crimes.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Interesting, albeit disturbing, insight into the moral compass of the FBI. Secrecy trumps child pornography.
Adobe.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The question is if the FBI is actively seeking the child abusing producers of child pornography or if they are really only interested in catching the people who download it. It's all very distasteful but I'm more interested ending the abuse than throwing every twisted individual in jail for a period of time. I understand that it's a global problem which is why governments should work together to stop the madness.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
There's also a possibility that they haven't got anything as much to disclose as they'd like us to believe. Maybe some of the evidence supposedly gathered through the exploit, was instead obtained through another, possibly illegal, method or fabricated.
Tor disables javascript, java, and flash by default... so the exploit must have been in the mozilla firefox code base or the onion routing protocol -- unless they run and/or spy on all the Tor nodes to figure out where things are really being routed.
I've read stories where the feds attempted to shake down libraries to get them to close their Tor nodes, yet the feds run their own. If you control all the nodes, it's easy to figure out the real routing through the onion network.
Or letting one more child be raped and murder equals what the fuck exactly? Those child porn rings require content and every time a content producer is exposed, an arrest and rescue should immediately occur, 'IMMEDIATELY', fuck future prosecutions.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
First I heard it was a month.
But anyways, they got zero producers.
Distributed over a million images, which means they revictimized children over a million times. This is their own logic on sharing these images btw.
None of this is effective. None of this is okay. Get the producers FFS or keep the op going until you do.
This doesn't feel right at all.
Tor does NOT disable Javascript by default. It ought to, but it doesn't. The last official statement was they felt nobody would use Tor if it shipped with Javascript disabled, because so much of the web depends on it.
If you look at it rationally, you will see it's the best approach for getting the highest quantity of jailings versus the highest quality of cases. That seems like the most likely justification. This doesn't address whether they are doing more or less harm than good by withholding the information but I think their view should be obvious.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
> Tor disables javascript, by default...
It absolutely does not. It has noscript by default, but you have to make that change. With javascript disabled by default, many websites simply fail to function.
Tor project seems to assume that javascript is simply vulnerable permanently, which is generally what all sane computer users should assume at this point. Their solution seems to be to put some kinda sandbox around it, which should at least give them a bit of a race to run versus attackers.
Your other assumptions are totally reasonable however- run a bunch of nodes and you can break a lot of the assumptions about tor.
to get these cases dismissed now? I suppose there's lots of folks that can't afford the lawyer needed to file the motions to request the information correctly (two-tiered justice system for the win). But assuming you're not just bullied into a confession you'll be able to use this to get off scot-free...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Or letting one more child be raped and murder equals what the fuck exactly?
There are many myths about "snuff films" that record actual murders, but none have ever been verified. In the most famous case Ruggero Deodato was prosecuted for murder, but was acquitted when the actors and actresses that he had allegedly murdered showed up to testify in his defense. It is hard to imagine how some scenes in his films could have been made without killing someone, but they obviously were, since the people "killed" were still alive and healthy.
Simply dropping the charges is not enough. The only exception for not divulging method to the courts is National Security. The accused, even if charges dropped, should be able to pursue disclosure of methods. The government should not be able to pick and choose after filing charges unless a valid national security claim.
Or rather locking people up trumps protecting children. That is also why they kept running the site for 13 days. By the very definition of the DoJ, they committed child abuse for 13 days. Seems to me the FBI is part of the problem now.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There is actually some genuine "murder porn" out there: You get to see it on the news, perfectly legally. Think for example, the footage exposed by Manning. It even comes with mocking comments by the murderers while they kill innocent civilians.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Considering that the argument for why distributing and owning (as opposed to producing) child porn is that the images actively harm children, I do not think there is any way to justify the FBI's behavior. I think its been generally established that law enforcement cannot commit felonies in order to gather evidence. Otherwise we could have police informants carrying out gang hits in order to capture higher level crime bosses. This is not the start of a slippery slope, it is well down the slope.
They can't have it both ways. If the images don't do actual harm to children, the people who posses the images are only guilty of a minor crime. If the images do harm children, then the FBI should destroy them as soon as they are discovered to prevent continuing harm .
On the central topic there need to be clear rules about what capabilities we want law enforcement to have. It is probably technologically possible for law enforcement to scan all of the records of the great majority of citizens to look for criminal activity. Is that what we want?
Personally I would vote to reduce surveillance and accept a higher rate of criminal activity.
In the 30+ years that I've been using computers, I've had 4 viruses. Two of them came through Adobe exploits. (Both were served by web ads on mainstream sites, which downloaded and auto-opened PDF files which in turn deployed and opened executables.)
This guy was charged with accessing and possession, not creation. If he had been a content creator then prosecution would not have been stopped.
Lets put this a different way. Would you grant pardon to a person who viewed child porn if it meant you could catch someone who made it? It's the same as offering deals to a street drug dealer to catch their supplier.
Exactly. Freedom always includes the freedom to do wrong and a realistic chance to get away with it (depending on the magnitude of the crime). I believe freedom is of critical importance and the only purpose of law-enforcement is to keep crime at a level that society continues to function reasonably well. They are clearly not doing that, or the banksters would all be in prison now for a long, long time. Nobody on recent memory did this much damage to society and individuals.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Good catch! You're right. It instead has NoScript installed, but not even configured properly.
I'm frankly surprised anyone there would even argue to leave it on. Better to have a web site break than have a malicious site track you when the purpose of using it is to NOT be tracked.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/fbi-would-rather-prosecutors-drop-cases-than-disclose-stingray-details/ April 7, 2015
The FBI actually has a policy to drop cases instead of revealing their detection (spying) methods, to avoid public scrutiny of what they're doing.
The new document, which was released Tuesday by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) in response to its March 2015 victory in a lawsuit filed against the Erie County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) in Northwestern New York, includes this paragraph: "In order to ensure that such wireless collection equipment/technology continues to be available for use by the law enforcement community, the equipment/technology and any information related to its functions, operation and use shall be protected from potential compromise by precluding disclosure of this information to the public in any manner including but not limited to: press releases, in court documents, during judicial hearings, or during other public forums or proceedings."
That has to do with their 'Stingray' technology, but I'm sure it applies to any kind of digital surveillance.
Besides, if they didn't drop the case the court would have probably ruled against them, like what happened in a case that slashdot mentioned last year: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/07/13/0411255/us-judge-throws-out-cell-phone-stingray-evidence-for-the-first-time
Maybe, maybe not. Having charges dropped doesn't mean they can't file charges again later as long as it wasn't dismissed with prejudice.
I think either they are currently using this exploit for other active investigations or they used an illegal exploit and don't want to implicate themselves.
More likely they're still using the exploit and don't want to tip their hand. They could be monitoring another ring, terrorists, etc. If they give up the code, Tor would release a patch, and they'd be done. Stating that they can't offer up the code "at this time" is their key phrasing... as if there's something important riding on this code remaining a useful tool. Or, I could be wrong and they just want to keep using the tool when and where they can and manufacture alternate evidence to point the finger to the bad guys without disclosing the true source of intel.
Uhh there was one busted in Australia not too long ago who was raping, torturing, and murdering kids on a private darknet PPV. I can't remember the guy's name but they gave the "genre" a name..."hurtcore" because it was as much about causing pain and suffering as it was the rape. The article I read about the case said it was shit that made "A Serbian Film" look tame and it was all real.
I don't want to search too actively for the terms that would bring up the article for obvious reasons but I did find an article about their web admin being busted where they mention hurtcore.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Where is the point where the crime is so egregious that the FBI is willing to publish the exploit? I presume their keeping the exploit secret because once it's known, it will be fixed and they will no longer be able to monitor the "deep, dark, black, web"?
What if there was a terrorist attack and the FBI knew about it and sat on it because they thought the expected value of the property and lives lost was less than the value of the exploit and the intelligence received from it?
Would the FBI (and the US government) be liable for damages because they could have prevented the crime?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
It's funny how often child porn is used as a justification for more spying.
But when actually dealing with child porn goes against more spying, well, fuck children, literally.
Don't get your panties in a bunch. The point is not about blaming people, the point is that Tor is not more secure than a typical bank infrastructure.
lucm, indeed.
Uhh there was one busted in Australia not too long ago who was raping, torturing, and murdering kids on a private darknet PPV.
Peter Scully. He is accused of murdering one girl, but he didn't film it. The things he did film were horrific, but did not include any killings. So no "snuff film".
Should the FBI have the ability to not prosecute in a child porn case ? In California there are several types of cases that failure to pursue result in criminal liabilities for the prosecutor's, among them spousal abuse, child abuse, child porn. It is one thing to lack the evidence or documentation to pursue, or to continue to investigate but to dismiss with jeopardy attached should be a crime in itself.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
From what I read, the FBI's real problem is that the malware was sent to every visitor to the main login screen, BEFORE they had a chance to log in, and BEFORE any child porn had actually been viewed.
There was this guy too:
Luka Rocco Magnotta (born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman; July 24, 1982) is a Canadian murderer, convicted of killing and dismembering Lin Jun, a Chinese international student, before mailing Lin Jun's limbs to elementary schools and federal political party offices.[9] This act gained international notoriety. After a video depicting the murder was posted online in May 2012,
There is another explanation. They might not want to release it because it might not stand up in court. If it gives them the ability to run arbitrary code on the target machine, if they can places files on that machine, the defendant will claim that the FBI planted those images. I'm no expert on US law but it seems like there would be some issue with the evidence being tainted too, and then everything else i s fruit of the poisoned tree.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Even better would be to stop the victimization happening in the first place. The only way to do that, which was suggested in the UK recently and shot down by the majority of reactionary commentators, is to decriminalize viewing such images. Instead focus on helping people who feel attracted to children to get help, discreetly and without threat of prosecution or persecution, to prevent the future crimes they might otherwise commit.
In the current atmosphere, if someone did feel that way, what are the chances they would go to their doctor and ask for help with a mental illness? No, more likely they will turn to the internet, where there are sites normalizing and justifying their feelings and where the community of fellow paedophiles will accept them.
The way to protect children is not to catch the offender after they already hurt them, it's to stop them breaking the law in the first place.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I agree whole heartedly with this. But I think we are a long long way away from that kind of rational discourse.
I have 2 young kids and so am involved in lots of conversations around safety, paedophiles and murderers from other parents and their compass for risk assessment is so far off it's scary. They genuinely believe that every public toilet has a child molester waiting inside for the chance to grab their kid. The fact that where I live there are almost no cases of strangers attacking children (it's always a family member or close friend), Point out that putting their kids in the car is several orders of magnitude riskier and they will argue it or say that that risk doesn't matter because apparently being killed or seriously maimed is so much less worse than being molested that it doesn't even count.
While people's mindset is like that even having a constructive conversation is impossible.