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To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

arstechnica.com

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Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#71

Post by Retra »

gpm wrote: post #60
ChuckMcM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The structure is to keep police officers honest which is more important than a particular person going to jail. The operating principle is that a dishonest police force is more dangerous than a criminal who was caught using illegal evidence. Typically the criminal will commit another crime and if you get evidence against them legally, then you can prosecute them for the new crime.

The "we both go to jail" policy would probably do even betting at keeping police officers honest. The threat of the officer going to jail being significantly worse than the threat of allowing the criminal to walk free. The details are sketchy, who prosecutes the police/prosecutors? But in principle I think it makes sense.

>The threat of the officer going to jail being significantly worse than the threat of allowing the criminal to walk free.

Not if the officer going to jail is being manipulated by their superiors or is otherwise arranged to take the fall for someone else.

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#72

Post by patcheudor »

moomin wrote: post #9

So, let's see now: a man is going free who should probably be going to jail for a long time, because the state doesn't want to disclose the methods of gathering evidence against him, which we can speculate are because they are illegal or sourced from non-law-enforcement agencies. A case with near-identical facts and the same judge _is_ going to trial and, not content with tapping your email, the state now wants to pu…

I wouldn't jump to speculating the technique was illegal. The fact of the matter is that in a criminal trial the US Constitution gives those being prosecuted the right to face their accuser as well as examine tools the accuser used in an investigation. In this particular case the software which presumably uncovered their identity can come under scrutiny from the defense in the form of a source-code review. Without question the defense has the right to a source code review in an attempt to understand how the solution works and if it is trustworthy. Because it's the primary driver of the case and there is no case without it, the choice by the prosecution is to either hand over the source-code or drop the case. In this particular case they are valuing the closed source more than the criminal prosecution, likely to assure an analysis isn't leaked and provided to those who could patch against whatever exploit they are using.

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#73

Post by Retra »

caf wrote: post #55
angry_octet wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a national security issue so there is no justification for those measures. In criminal cases there is a strong constitutional and natural justice basis for the accused being able to examine and attempt to rebut the evidence.

As I understand it those issues are covered by the accused's lawyers being able to examine the evidence on behalf of the accused, which would extend to having it examined by an expert witness who can attempt to impeach it.

Right. How is the accused supposed to provide an honest account to their lawyer if they can't even know what evidence exists against them? They'll have nothing to refute, and their lawyer can't ask them pertinent questions about their own defense.

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#74

Post by rtpg »

hasenj wrote: post #16
woolly wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the majority of it probably isn't 'how the world should be', a man is going free because (we speculate) that the evidence against him was gathered illegally. This bit probably is 'how the world should be'.

How so? In general if a criminal goes free despite having evidence against him just because the evidence was not obtained legally ... it sounds rather wrong to me.

I think it's part of a general principle of making evidence be "clean". A huge paper trail, specific needs to define how the evidence was gotten, etc. All of these make it much harder to do things like forge evidence.

Evidence gotten through illegal means also get a lot of doubt just by default. Imagine a police officer paying somebody to steal evidence for them. The person now how has an incentive to forge evidence.

An important detail of this system is that evidence brought to the table cannot be trusted without a transparent system. Defendants will almost always contest evidence, but this system makes that argument hold a lot less water.

(There's still the issue that police might not be interested in collecting evidence that goes against a prosecutor's case. Don't know how that's solved)

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#75

Post by Clubber »

endgame wrote: post #33
ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious or being facetious? If you are being serious, I'd like to direct you to the wikipedia page on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children "In debate, however, as a plea for pity, used as an appeal to emotion, it is a logical fallacy"

Snarky, mostly. So often the people who want to ram through additional surveillance will do so using "think of the children" rhetoric, as though they were the most important thing in the world. And now we find that when it comes time to actually use these tools to protect the children, the secrecy of the tools is more important.

The general rule of thumb is if a politician is pushing a law to "protect the children," it's a tell that it's a bad law. That's the only way they can sell it. By bad law, I mean permanently lose your rights kind of law. There have been many, but the war on drugs is a big one. It led to the militarization of the police, no knock raids, out of proportion sentencing, stop and frisk, asset forfeiture with no evidence, aggressive prosecution, etc. These laws that were sold to protect children against drug dealers creep into other offenses as well, like RICO and of course the patriot act. Terrorism is another big seller.

>And now we find that when it comes time to actually use these tools to protect the children, the secrecy of the tools is more important.

I don't want to get into too shaky ground, but if you can de-emotionalize the issue, prosecuting the consumer of the material isn't directly protecting anybody. That picture was taken no matter how many people look at it. You wouldn't expect the government to prosecute everyone who looked at the stolen pictures of celebrities that came out a few years ago. The government is now using this to legitimize surveillance, actively attempt to circumvent security (which is illegal), and to hide the circumvention methods. That's bad for everybody. Child porn is horrible, and horrible things happen to children, but an authoritarian government with massive, legal surveillance power is worse. The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#76

Post by kuschku »

jemfinch wrote: post #70
bsder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually bothers me greatly. Not carrying through once charges are filed should be equivalent to "not guilty".

So, in a timeline this: * "We have an eyewitness! File the charges." * "Our eyewitness recanted, dismiss." * "We now have DNA evidence, refile the charges." You actually think the trial should not be allowed to go forward?

Many countries solve that:

You can't present the exact same case again after you filed to dismiss...

...unless a major change has happened, such as a massive amount of new incriminating evidence.

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#77

Post by ScottBurson »

setr wrote: post #69
waqf wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incentive structure for the police That assumes that the police's incentive is simply to convict as many people as possible. Which, if true, raises other concerns.

I think it more assumes that the police's incentive is to maximize the ratio of accusation to conviction as much as possible, which is a reasonable goal. If they were simply trying to maximize the total number of convictions, then this wouldn't necessarily help; the police would just make broaden the kind of cases they'd accuse And ofc, it's the function of the police to maximize the misdemeanor to conviction ratio;…

> maximize the ratio of accusation to conviction

Um -- I think you meant that the other way around :-)

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#78

Post by hawkice »

waqf wrote: post #66
tptacek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting a lot of huffy responses to this question, but it is an entirely legitimate one. In fact, many (maybe most?) western countries don't have the same exclusionary rules the US has. There are other remedies to police misconduct. If you were starting a nation from first principles, it's not an iron law of justice that your courts have that rule. The reason we believe the exclusionary rule works so well is t…

> incentive structure for the police That assumes that the police's incentive is simply to convict as many people as possible. Which, if true, raises other concerns.

I mean, illegally obtained evidence is still evidence. I don't think it's absurd to think police want to convict as many guilty criminals as possible, particularly if the crime is heinous enough to justify risking their own jobs by breaking the law to get evidence.

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#79

Post by caf »

Retra wrote: post #73
caf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it those issues are covered by the accused's lawyers being able to examine the evidence on behalf of the accused, which would extend to having it examined by an expert witness who can attempt to impeach it.

Right. How is the accused supposed to provide an honest account to their lawyer if they can't even know what evidence exists against them? They'll have nothing to refute, and their lawyer can't ask them pertinent questions about their own defense.

I don't really see how that applies to the situation at issue here - the facts that the state wants to protect seem to be around the technical details of the way in which the evidence was acquired (the article talks about source code). The lawyers for the accused don't need to disclose the source code to their client to be able to say "The state's expert witness is going to testify that at such-and-such date and time an IP address which the ISP says was assigned to your account at the time logged into the site under such-and-such account name and access such-and-such content", which is the part the accused can refute. Their testimony on the source code itself wouldn't be accepted anyway.

Re: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

#80

Post by dajohnson89 »

throwawasiudy wrote: post #64

In case it isn't obvious to everyone, the government runs or has tapped most or all TOR exit nodes. This has been going on forever. Nobody knows exactly what the attack is...but if they're willing to drop cases to cover it up, its probably something that either: 1) completely breaks TOR permanently 2) is easy to bypass/block Since TOR has withstood a lot of scrutiny I'm betting on option #2. They found a total break…

Do you have any evidence for the claim that TOR is so badly compromised? My understanding of the article is not that TOR was hacked, but rather that a tor user was tricked into opening a non-tor site and thus giving away his/her IP address.

Also if just the exit node is compromised, encrypted connections are still safe (TTBOMK).

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