Slashdot Mirror
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.
It isn't "malware". It is software designed to figure out where these users are.
Because they're visiting porn sites, and they won't get to see the porn unless it can run javascript to try and infect their machines. That's why most porn sites exist.
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?
Some people don't know where to draw the line. You cannot defend a right like protecting your privacy when trying to avoid the immediate violation of other peoples' much more important rights.
Logically, this should be done under very exceptional and fully-justified circumstances; and never preventively, systematically or arbitrarily. Not to mention that "law-enforcers"/governmental entities unfairly abusing this or any other power should be severely punished by each single unmotivated violation of any person's rights.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
> Child abuser aren't humans after all ... human rights apply to everyone.
By declaring, that some people you don't like aren't humans you can always circumvent the human rights. But who know, who is the next person deciding, that YOU aren't a human?
So nope
...But the fact is to substantially harm these networks, such actions are ultimately justifiable.
Yes, ends justify means. It's true here, it's almost always been true.
-Styopa
Because those two are close enough / equivelent?
A break down of how many were identified (not something they desire) versus how many were rescued (something they desperately desire) is probably the single most important number in that story.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Child porn is illegal because distributing it harms children. Doing that in order to catch criminals is not OK.
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
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.
That is, until December 2014, when Chase slipped up and revealed Playpen’s unique IP address—a location in the U.S. The gaffe was noticed by a foreign law enforcement agency, which notified the FBI.
The FBI caught the man accused of creating Silk Road -- the shadowy e-commerce site it describes as "the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today" -- after he allegedly posted his Gmail address online, according to court documents.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I don't like it when I see power getting abused. I don't think this comes even close to abusing power.
The FBI were allowing the servers to continue operating as expected in order to reveal as many users as possible. This is not entrapment because the FBI did not set this whole system up, it was already in existence and already functional. They did not bait anyone in to visiting / contributing that was not already intent on visiting / contributing. This is, I believe, akin to an agent masquerading as part of a crime ring in order to catch the other members. In fact, it's not akin, it's the same. A criminal organisation existed, it was infiltrated and allowed to continue as long as required to bring the whole thing to a proper end, netting as many contributors as possible. In order to do that they had to unmask people, so they did.
Bravo feds, freakin' bravo.
As you clap and reward this activity, perhaps you can tell me how many more children were abused and victimized while the FBI was allowing a site to continue to operate that essentially champions such behavior?
There's a fine line with my moral fuse here. It's naturally shortened when children are affected, so you'll excuse me while I hold my applause. Should they stop child porn? Of course. Will this allow them to expand abuses of power? Of course it will, and likely beyond your line of tolerance. By then, it will be far too late to do anything about abuse of power, since society has now accepted that activity.
Yes, its good they hopefully helped the victims in this case (especially children), but let me re-write the title here to validate the REAL issue we'll face in the future:
"The FBI Defends Illegal Activity to Catch Bad Guys"
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/...
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...
ok we need some sick kids that GOP are going cut off with there healthcare plan to come out or should we wait for the videos of them being kicked out of the hospitals to show up?
There are a lot of stupid people around, and quite a few have a completely unfounded trust in technology. The Tor project itself warns you right on the verification page that "this is not all you need to be secure" and points to the documentation. The thing is, Tor can be used for different purposes. If I just want to keep the insane pervs out that want to see every citizen's (legal) browsing habits, leaving JS active is likely not a problem. If you are a political activist in a country that does not respect human rights, JS should most definitely be off.
That these people were caught with JS on points to another problem of the whole affair: They have only caught the really dumb ones. That means they have not made any real dent in the overall problem, even with this extremely problematic approach.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Transparent troll. Child abusers get a trial and all the same human rights as anyone else, more human rights than their victims. Nobody has a right to commit all their crimes anonymously. In this case, we're talking about a situation where a crime is being committed and the already-established-red-handed perpetrators are being unmasked -- not a situation where hundreds of random people are being unmasked just to see whether they're doing anything criminal (which would be bad of course).
This space intentionally left blank
How on earth is this controversial? They stopped the exploitation of children and put away men that deserve to never see the light of day, so this is anything but controversial, it's the rare time you can say the US hit a home-run. It was bound to happen one day.
There is no line.
I think that there is a line and this is a good example of it. They already know for sure that certain site is extremely illegal (everywhere and without a single but). They also know that accessing that site by accident is almost impossible, that people visiting it are most likely fully aware of its contents. And even under so extreme conditions, I only see acceptable to track visitors and label them as most-likely-offenders, but this assumption would need to be further validated on a case by case basis. I think that any change of these exact conditions would be either abuse or negligence. The line is very thin, but there is certainly a line.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
If your line of reasoning is valid, privacy should be the least of you concerns. Did you know that USA has a freaking armed forces?!? They have developed capability to snipe anyone with ease. If some town is rebellious, they can just carpetbomb it. And don't get me started on nukes. /s
It's great job really
accessing by accident is not impossible, if anything tor links are much less transparent than clearweb links. however the simplest of logging can differentiate the classes of visitors. anyone who loads "holyshitCP.onion" then leaves is probably not a pedo, anyone who starts browsing the image and video archives and downloading CP, is a pedo.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Good clarification. On the other hand, there would always be the question of how a random innocent visitor could find "holyshitCP.onion" (or the more logical "121asdfasf1215454asfaflookinglegalstuff.onion") when only the carefully selected members of a small group should know about it.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I hate that law enforcement breaks laws to hunt criminals. Shouldn't be allowed under any circumstances, right. Right?
The problem with many kiddie porn sites is that they operate on a barter system. You submit some new content in exchange for access to other content. Often, this is done to weed out law enforcement, who would draw the line at anything that would increase demand for further exploitation.
If somehow they managed to keep the site running with only the existing content, then it's not so much of an issue. And I imagine that law enforcement would steer clear of anything that would promote additional production.
One thing that I find sort of amusing (perhaps morbid to others) is that the list of countries where arrests were made includes a few where kiddie porn is frowned on even more than in the USA. And prisoners safety isn't given the same attention as here. Those people won't last long in the general population.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
Because the tor bundle had a Firefox build with javascript enabled.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Anti-monitoring operations by the site operators perhaps? Embed links to images on legitimate websites, with height and width set to zero.
"Often, this is done to weed out law enforcement"
Well, now we know that doesn't work.
I'm sure law enforcement could get hold of some material seized in a previous case if they needed to submit it. We already know from this incident that they are quite happy to distribute it in order to gather evidence.
Well, now we know that doesn't work.
Usually not. It's like the incorrect advice that is passed around by prostitutes: Police officers can't lie about being cops when asked. Yes, they can. But all the hookers I've met still ask, thinking that if I was a cop I'd have to admit it.
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't have a problem with the FBI using tools to gather evidence with a suspicion. Having said that, I don't support ever secretly weakening our software security to provide them secret access - even with a warrant. In this case, that doesn't appear to be the issue. I *do* have a problem with entrapment and fishing expeditions. Some of their actions to catch people involved encouraging the commission of crimes - in terrorism and other cases. I also have a problem with their priorities. We just had our election massively influenced by foreign and global corporate powers. This is a threat to the entire nation. They weren't just asleep at the wheel - they directly undermined one political party at the expense of the other who was clearly receiving support from foreign governments and global corporate powers with strong agendas that undermined the US (EPA, climate change, energy independence, budget, wars, healthcare, etc). They appear from the outside to have had an agenda in opposition to the priorities of the people of the US. Furthermore they seem to be very upset about deviants sharing pics of naked kids but not nearly as vocal when we see kids being physically abused or shot in the back by overzealous members of law enforcement. Their priorities as surfaced by the news I read are completely out of whack. A dad beating up their kid or wife should be pursued with more resources than some dude sitting in front of his computer whacking off to pics of naked kids. We need the FBI and I'm sure they do a lot of great work. They need to work on their PR and/or their priorities to raise their support from the public.
In Japan, pedophiles can buy child sex dolls that appear to reduce harm.
That is easily the most unexpected sentence I have read this year. Having been locked up with many pedophiles and several people I believe to have been falsely convicted of it, I am surprised that I have never heard of this. Wow.
Please do not mistake my meaning. I am extremely glad that these children were rescued, the site was taken down, and that these people were apprehended.
On the other hand, as a guy who has had WAY TOO MUCH experience with the US DOJ, I can promise you that ANY operation like this that survives judicial/appellate review soon becomes normal circumstances. This is why we have the conspiracy statute and the weird definition of Weapon of Mass Destruction in American jurisprudence.
Child molestation is one of the vilest crimes people commit, and with strong encryption it seems like this will be harder to prevent/stop. I don't know the answer, but I do at least want the answer to have had legislative consideration. I think this is one of the hard questions.
I'm not super up to speed on this, so IANAL and all of that.
I know that courts have ruled repeatedly that the victims of child abuse portrayed in CP are re-injured every time an image is viewed. This seems mostly to come up in questions of restitution, and it seems pretty straightforward to me. So, some douche-bag downloads an image (or 1000's) and then uses them to gain access to another group that requires uploads? Those images are now out there forever.
I also read a pedophile's plea agreement once while I was locked up. It contained an acknowledgement that by viewing CP he had increased the demand for CP and as such he had increased the incentive for producers to make more. I'm not sure if/how this would apply, just throwing it out there.
I hate to sound naive, but where does it have a worse rep than in the US?
It's way easier to ignore some random Reddit asshole than the biggest asshole in human history. Let's be frank here, even the biggest internet trolls combined don't come close to being as obnoxious as a guy who tried to exterminate an entire people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"As you clap and reward this activity, perhaps you can tell me how many more children were abused and victimized while the FBI was allowing a site to continue to operate that essentially champions such behavior?"
You're not making sense. If they shut the site immediately, they would lose the leads to whomever was engaging in the crime of actual child abuse. Ie, "we must shut this off immediately because distributing child porn is illegal."
However, in the moments before shutting it off, the system itself gives them evidence of probable crimes in progress.
If my understanding of the situation is correct, it seems like they may have done the right thing to leave it on in order to catch actual abusers.
This would be a lot simpler if the law about strict possession itself were scrapped and instead perhaps something such as "conspiracy to commit child abuse" would be the actual crime here, if people are going to a site where they know the images are being produced from actual kids are being abused (not some digital simulation, comics, modeling of teens in bikinis etc., but real, violation of a person's bodily ownership abuse).
Honestly, no idea. Dealing with something so extremely illegal has never (and will ever) be my business or my concern. But if I was in their shoes, I would make completely sure that only people who I fully trust know about the site. I would never post public (not even partially hidden, which are actually completely public) links anywhere. For what? For allowing a random bot to find the site?
(Side comment: I am currently running some public-web-backlink-counting bots and can confirm that these kind-of-hidden links are used by many sites to improve their visibility and are a big problem for me. When I developed the bots, I wasn't counting on this issue to be so common and that's why didn't come up with a way to avoid it; what, on the other hand, isn't too easy as far as I don't want to ignore kind-of-valid links like the ones associated with technical warnings, programming languages, GUI themes, etc.)
If I had to do anything on these lines, I would set a very weird URL (e.g., asdfasdfaserasrfeaseflalksjnflasrkjasr11111111144444444444888888888.onion) and distribute it exclusively among people I fully trust (ideally, handing it in person). That's why I was assuming in my first comment that random visitors finding the site should be virtually impossible.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I will take advantage of all these ideas (+ my references in some other recent posts to having fully accepted the huge number of stupid people and the impossibility to help them understand even the simplest idea) to highlight that both my sites, customsolvers.com and varocarbas.com, get a surprisingly high number of visits (mostly bots but also what seem real people) from the weirdest places; sometimes visiting valid pages and other times what never was and never will be there. Nothing of this related at all with me, my business (custom software development) or any conscious action which I have ever performed. I also get a relevant number of crawling bots from sites/search-engines from countries/languages/fields which don't seem to make any sense either. Other relevant issue is that I continue getting a relevant number of "visitors" (bots visiting the same page over and over without doing anything else) looking for a tool which stopped being relevant to me quite a few years ago (whose name I will not write in order to precisely avoid further-promoting all this weirdness) or for the years-ago name of my main domain.
I think that all this isn't the consequence of pure chance on account of the huge relevance of this traffic with respect to the in-principle-logical one. Additionally, note that my sites aren’t meant to get a relevant number of visitors (I neither get a penny for visits nor sell any kind of product), random people finding them rarely become clients, virtually nobody gets in touch with me through them (even though the contact-form page gets a surprisingly high number of visits!). They are just meant to be a mere self-promotion of my skills and attitude, which potential clients might want to look at. Also bear in mind that I don't do any kind of SEO/positioning/marketing anything, although I gave a shot at some of these approaches for a short period years ago. In any case, I have never been involved in anything even partially dishonest (e.g., the aforementioned hidden-links from random sites) or spent relevant amounts of money on any online-visibility action.
I have never tried to carefully analyse all these weird issues in order to find a common pattern or acceptable explanation for all this nonsense. As said, I have plainly accepted stupidity as a sadly common reality.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I see no problem here. If the powers that be would restrict this sort of thing to stopping CP, then I'm all for it. Well done to the FBI, either way, on this case.
I think he compared them to vermin. I dimly remember seeing a propaganda movie about it, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1. you use Tor 2. you use a VPN 3. you've been infected with any sort of malware (!) This is public knowledge, google it if you don't believe me
because 4chan will send you to CP sites for the lulz
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
In that case, the question would be answered and the person following a link provided by someone else with not too honest intentions would be deemed innocent (a small detail about which some people don't seem to be fully aware: all what you do online, mainly on others' servers like all what happens in 4chan, is always stored somewhere). As said from the first moment, I would only accept these actions, even under so exceptional conditions, by taking any conclusion as a preliminary assumption which has to be further validated.
On the other hand, one question would still remain in this situation: how did anyone in 4chan know about so illegal and restricted-access content? I only see two options: being one of the bad guys and stupid enough to give away so dangerous information for the lulz; or having had some kind of relationship with the criminal organisation. Either way, it still seems a good source of information to help get more bad guys and that's why I consider that the FBI proceeding is also justified in this specific case.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.