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The FBI Defends Deploying Malware From A Tor Child Porn Site (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
The FBI issued a press release about the 30-year prison sentence for a 58-year-old Florida man running "the world's largest child pornography website, with more than 150,000 users around the world." But their investigation involved what Gizmodo describes as "a decision controversial to this day" -- taking over the child pornography site and running it "for almost two weeks while distributing malware designed to unmask its visitors." Thursday the FBI described it as "a court-approved network investigative technique" which led to more than 1,000 leads in the U.S. and "thousands more" for law enforcement partners in other countries, leading to arrests in the EU, Israel, Turkey, Peru, Malaysia, Chile, and the Ukraine. Those 1,000 U.S. leads led to "at least 350 U.S-based individuals arrested", as well as actual prosecutions of 25 producers of child pornography and 51 hands-on abusers, while 55 children were "identified or rescued" in America, and another 296 internationally who were sexually abused.
Though Motherboard describes it as hacking "over 8,000 computers in 120 countries based on one warrant," the FBI calls it their "most successful effort to date against users of Tor's hidden service sites," adding that the agency "has numerous investigations involving the dark web." Though they'd soon became aware of the site's existence, "given the nature of how Tor hidden services work, there was not much we could do about it" -- until a foreign law enforcement agency discovered the site had "slipped up" by revealing its actual IP address, and notified the U.S. investigators. The FBI also says the investigation "has opened new avenues for international cooperation in efforts to prosecute child abusers around the world."
The site's two other administrators -- both men in their 40s -- were also given 20-year prison sentences earlier this year.
Though Motherboard describes it as hacking "over 8,000 computers in 120 countries based on one warrant," the FBI calls it their "most successful effort to date against users of Tor's hidden service sites," adding that the agency "has numerous investigations involving the dark web." Though they'd soon became aware of the site's existence, "given the nature of how Tor hidden services work, there was not much we could do about it" -- until a foreign law enforcement agency discovered the site had "slipped up" by revealing its actual IP address, and notified the U.S. investigators. The FBI also says the investigation "has opened new avenues for international cooperation in efforts to prosecute child abusers around the world."
The site's two other administrators -- both men in their 40s -- were also given 20-year prison sentences earlier this year.
under normal circumstances i would be upset. but children were involved and theyre making it sound like they have rescued active sex slave children. therefor i cant say what they did was wrong.
Thirty years? Maybe it's worth that but I find it very strange and disturbing that raping children draws far less a penalty than possessing an image of a naked child.
Why are they not tracking down the people making the images instead of a vast sting operation on patsies looking at them while the FBI is running the site?
That's not the problem. The problem is that the FBI was distributing child pornography for two weeks. This kind of things are always contentious, because setting the limits is tricky. Can a policeman pay a confident with drugs? Can an FBI agent watch a child being raped without intervening because they hope to free more children that way? Can a undercover agent kill some innocent person to keep their cover? As said, the limits are difficult to set.
In the end it's the old question: Does the end justify the means? The answer has always been "It depends". You can say that in this particular case, the answer for you is "yes". But the question is nott, in my opinion, something to dismiss so cavalierly.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
under normal circumstances i would be upset. but children were involved and theyre making it sound like they have rescued active sex slave children. therefor i cant say what they did was wrong.
On the surface, I agree with you.
That said, the problem with your mentality is this little thing called precedent, which creates one hell of a slippery slope.
Today, this activity by law enforcement is "justified" by your moral compass, and a complete lack of analysis to determine if what they actually did was illegal translates into accepted behavior.
Tomorrow, this same activity by law enforcement may be used to silence what they deem as "propaganda". Or illegally search through ISP records to build cases, perhaps by parallel construction. Or enslave and hide the truth based on political contributions. All because it was once accepted by the masses when think-of-the-children was peddled out in front of the illegal activity.
In my opinion, the FBI and most other USA LEO TLAgencies are not morally superior to whomever they go after, not any more, not by any stretch of the imagination. They're merely the enforcers, that that's all to it.
This, and the fact they've been getting away with it for decades, says things about the USA that its population ought to take to heart and think about.
Remember, there might have been other means to reach the goals, and those weren't explored. Even if those were less or not at all practicable, that's just too bad because that's the price for being on that side of the law. Once your position in relation to the fence, or even the law-fence itself, becomes completely arbitrary, you end up with situations like this. No moral compass to speak of, but lots of noise blathering about how successful you were doing a difficult job, yet accepting no criticism about how you've well become possibly even worse than whomever you managed to apprehend. And like as not mysteriously failing to make a dent in actual crime committed. Then it won't be long before bozo will no longer be the worst clown.
In the end it's the old question: Does the end justify the means? The answer has always been "It depends". You can say that in this particular case, the answer for you is "yes". But the question is nott, in my opinion, something to dismiss so cavalierly.
If we stipulate it is acceptable for law enforcement to run a pron site because X children were rescued, we have ceased the negotiations over whether the action is proper.
We have now reduced the equation to a bidding war over what value of X justifies the operation.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The end justifies the means is a rather dangerous attitude. Because the end-goalpost can move quite quickly. After all, disagreeing with dear leader may destabilize the country, and who would want that?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You know, I've heard a similar sentence before. In a speech that was given about 80 years ago. He wasn't talking about child abusers, though...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If it works for child porn, what about muderers? Why not come up with a plan to distribute guns to villains in order to track down killers?
Oh, hang on...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The problem is that the FBI was distributing child pornography for two weeks."
Perhaps you believe that they should have immediately arrested the operator of the site and let the thousands of others continue their activities elsewhere? And let the children remain in captivity? Assuming that the FBI is being honest with us, (?) most will agree that they did the right thing. Those two weeks are inconsequential in comparison.
...omphaloskepsis often...
There is an aspect to this story that may be disturbing to some. That is: we value some human lives higher than others. We have special laws to punish people who harm children, police, pregnant women, etc. We have unwritten laws (yet obvious to observers) that skin color changes the value of some humans. Age is another factor. Consider a situation where you must choose between saving the life of a sweet innocent baby and a crusty old college professor who is leading the research on a cancer cure. How do you value these lives? Which would you save?
...omphaloskepsis often...
It's not as if the FBI set up their own site and curated their own collection of child porn. They simply continued the service for two weeks after their first opportunity to shut it down. If the FBI takes over the leadership of a massive drug cartel, then I think it would also be perfectly reasonable for them to allow the cartel's employees continue distributing drugs for 2 weeks for the purpose of catching them and their contacts in the act of doing something illegal.
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It would seem most likely that if they had just turned the server off then they never would have discovered the location of any children, so the sub-human scum abusing the children would have disappeared into the wind. It was obviously only thru waiting for them to reveal their locations that they had any chance at all of finding any of them, and only then would they have made the discoveries of which of those low-life arseholes were actively abusing children and creating that material.
How the fuck would they have found any child abuser without gathering information? Or do you think the server had a list of primary producers and their addresses just sitting there waiting to be read? You people suggesting that they made abuse of children happen for two weeks should just stop and think about shit.
The end justifies the means is a rather dangerous attitude. Because the end-goalpost can move quite quickly.
A just as chilling thought is that law enforcement has and is gradually slid from a focus on protection to a focus on punishment. Was the "ends" in the law enforcement's view to stop a crime in progress or to catch and convict as many people as possible?
If this had been a fentanyl distribution ring, would they have allowed it to operate in order to arrest as many people as possible, or would they have shut it down in the interest of public safety, even knowing that some of the users would be able to find other outlets?
All this so-called "malware" did was to provide a link to a website that someone could click on, and if someone clicked on it, their IP address was available to the website, which is just how the internet works. If I click on a www.amazon.com link, amazon gets my IP address. That's the same thing.