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A Tor of the Dark Web

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Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#41

Post by telecuda »

I wish there were a simple way to communicate how large and widespread CP is, and how much law enforcement could use your smarts to go after these guys.

There are more households sharing CP in your community than there are bus stops. (We can roughly map IPs of known CP files advertised over torrent networks.)

There are too few innovators in this space because specifics on CP networks are privy to law enforcement, and investigators are often patrol cops who get promoted into a child crimes unit.

It's fine (and true) to say these technologies are used for many more things than CP, but that's not an excuse to turn a blind eye to it, anymore than Craigslist does to child exploitation.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#42

Post by nikcub »

molo wrote: post #4

A couple questions. 1. Are users of .onion services protected from the server just as well as the hidden service is protected? 2. What reassurances are there that tormail is not a honeypot?

> 2. What reassurances are there that tormail is not a honeypot?

None, which is why you should always use PGP. The advantage of tormail is they provide a free onion interface to email.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#44

Post by jchrisa »

runn1ng wrote: post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

I didn't click through the links described (or even have time to install Tor), but it occurs to me that one may be able to find these guys via statistical analysis of writing style.

Spider the web and then correlate less-anonymous writings with the stuff the ringleaders are saying on the Darknet.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#45

Post by nsmartt »

mynameishere wrote: post #30
runn1ng wrote: post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

freely allowed to say really anything Well, that's allowed on the normal internet for the most part.

That is utter nonsense.

I don't even know where to begin. Technically, you can say whatever you want, but you cannot expect to avoid persecution (or prosecution) if you do.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#46

Post by fatbird »

anonymous wrote: post #36
runn1ng wrote: post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

As wrong as it sounds, maybe it's for the better to have a forum where pedophiles can aggregate knowledge on how to safely (physically speaking) molest children. Also, I have to say that while I find the idea of sex with children repulsive, having a place where you can discuss the topic should be 100% ok. Child rape is awful, talking about child rape is unsettling, but having someone proactively monitor my communicat…

You don't think that enabling them to discuss it, enables them to carry it out? Who's the more effective child predator: the one who does it alone, with little guidance or feedback from others; or the guy who spends time discussing it with a supportive peer group and perhaps carrying out predation with their help?

The only value to such a forum is for monitoring and catching them. If by definition the forum isn't useful for that because it's TOR, then that's a giant negative for me in the existence of TOR. If the cost of assisting dissidents is that children get raped... then I don't know that we should be assisting dissidents this way.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#47

Post by tptacek »

dsirijus wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #21

Tor was not "designed by the Navy" to protect dignitaries in cars or ships or whatever it is this article is alluding to. It was an academic research project for the NRL's CHACS group (NRL : CHACS :: MIT : Lincoln Lab). If you look at the project's publication history, it was almost from the jump (and continues to be today) a project intended to frustrate online censorship. The DOD, via both DARPA and the NRL, contin…

He mentioned that IDEA, not the implementation nor Tor were invented by the Navy. I have no sources on either, but it does seem plausible that solution similar or exactly the same in the concept was used for communication during warfare.

Tor exists at least in part because the US DOD decided that investing money in countering online censorship was a worthy use of military funding. This seems like an important point; it is not made effectively by the article.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#48

Post by jetti »

debacle wrote: post #39
jetti wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind providing a link? I briefly looked at Tor's FAQ and couldn't find anything on that. Also, a business entity wouldn't help in the chance of criminal investigation, which means the money spent creating a business entity would be for naught.

https://blog.torproject.org/running-exit-node

Thanks for the link. It is only in the circumstances of running an exit node. If you aren't running one, then you don't need to worry (as stated by several others already).

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#49

Post by fatbird »

noonespecial wrote: post #31
runn1ng wrote: post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

That's the proof that its working. As you say, when the child molesters are really and truly safe to speak their minds, everyone is. These people would exist anyway. Sometimes humanity sucks. Interesting though, TOR allowed you to study them in a way you would never have been able to otherwise. It merely disgusted you, but it could be a valuable resource to someone who studies how people break and thinks about what m…

Whether or not they exist anyway, it seems obvious to me that a supportive peer group is going to increase their effectiveness at predation.

Perhaps they talk about it so much that they don't get around to doing it--studies on violent pornography and child pornography sometimes find that viewers use them as a safe outlet to actually doing it themselves. But that's a huge gamble. At present, TOR is simply enabling child predators to be better child predators.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#50

Post by S4M »

jchrisa wrote: post #44
runn1ng wrote: post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

I didn't click through the links described (or even have time to install Tor), but it occurs to me that one may be able to find these guys via statistical analysis of writing style. Spider the web and then correlate less-anonymous writings with the stuff the ringleaders are saying on the Darknet.

Interesting idea. Do you have any link of methods to identify people by writing style? Google didn't give me anything. To be honest I am a bit skeptical that it's possible but I'd appreciate to be proven wrong.
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