Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Tor of the Dark Web

slifty.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 212 posts

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#161

Post by Tycho »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #149
thinkingisfun wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can catch some by that, but what then? The remainder will be resistant, and very used to how to phrase things, and also noticing attempts to play them into giving something away. We're also talking about people who exchange tips on how to get at actual children, remember, and you can do that fine without giving anything away. It's like open source, no strings attached, works fine with dead mailboxes. Unless…

If you read "Kingpin", even though the owner of one of the top carding forums could have just traded digital goods and been fine, he choose to dabble in physical goods for the money/whatever. That was how he was caught. I'd surmise the predators are not too different, though perhaps decidedly more cautious.

What is a carding forum?

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#162

Post by x6654321 »

Klinky wrote: post #155
x6654321 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind, the difference is in the legality of the material, and the degree to which said material can be effectively simulated. Due to the illegal nature of the material, and the limited number of people who are interested in it, there is not a developed profession of experts in simulating child abuse. As such, the majority of images of child abuse are created by actually abusing children. Combine that with offend…

What about videos or images of gore where the authenticity may be hard to verify? Do these incidents of people or creatures being maimed or murdered cause people to be more likely to engage in the activities they see? Should they be illegal?

I think it depends on the prevalence of the activity. Right now, there are no recorded instances of someone engaging in violence or murder for the purpose of capturing it as an image or video for distribution. Most of the gore images on shock sites are coincidental video recordings of violent incidents/accidents or documentary images taken after the fact. These are not intentionally recorded "snuff" films, and to date, no true "snuff" film has ever been made, according to Snopes. In the absence of evidence of that sort of behavior, we should stick with the 1st amendment and not criminalize images of video of violence. In addition, it is possible for an adult to consent to being the subject of violence. That's not the case with children.

That's not the case for child abuse photos and videos. The articles linked in this post provide plenty of evidence of child abuse offenders producing images and video of their sexual abuse of children for the purpose of sharing it with other offenders.

In the future, if violence became more like child sexual abuse, I would probably support criminalizing possession of the images, initially narrowly, and then growing as the scale of the problem did.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#163

Post by MrMatters »

Tycho wrote: post #161
nowarninglabel wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read "Kingpin", even though the owner of one of the top carding forums could have just traded digital goods and been fine, he choose to dabble in physical goods for the money/whatever. That was how he was caught. I'd surmise the predators are not too different, though perhaps decidedly more cautious.

What is a carding forum?

It's where people (think mostly the lowest common denominator of wannabe hackers like script kiddies and such, i.e. not just bad but fairly inept) go to learn how to and share information about stealing credit card information, usually leading to minor levels of success if they keep at it, it seems.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#164

Post by poft »

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 am a pedophile and I use Tor.

I use it not to share pictures nor commit crimes but to do what you say is worse: talk to other pedophiles. Tor permits us a safe support forum.

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

Quite the opposite in fact. Dialogue among pedophiles facilitates two things that you might not have expected:

1. Greater awareness of the draconian consequences which generally result from breaking certain laws, and a corresponding discouragement of doing so in the first place.

2. Most importantly, it gives us role models beyond the ugly stereotypes society has created for us: each other. Since role models are by definition templates for action, this makes it far less likely that we'll act as badly as society would expect.

I can't claim that all pedophile forums are like this. But the ones I frequent -- which are among the most popular -- are, and the less we're driven underground, the more our dialogue will resemble my description and the less it will resemble yours.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#165

Post by derrida »

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.

> He mentioned that IDEA, not the implementation nor Tor were invented by the Navy.

Actually a creator and core developer of Tor is from the Navy. The implementation came from this person as much as it did from arma and nickm (the other 2 creators)

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#166

Post by nuje »

x6654321 wrote: post #162
Klinky wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about videos or images of gore where the authenticity may be hard to verify? Do these incidents of people or creatures being maimed or murdered cause people to be more likely to engage in the activities they see? Should they be illegal?

I think it depends on the prevalence of the activity. Right now, there are no recorded instances of someone engaging in violence or murder for the purpose of capturing it as an image or video for distribution. Most of the gore images on shock sites are coincidental video recordings of violent incidents/accidents or documentary images taken after the fact. These are not intentionally recorded "snuff" films, and to dat…

If you could make snuff films in a sustainable way (without disabling the actors and starting a murder investigation), they might well be made. Maybe even with willing victims. There's a scifi/horror plot here somewhere...

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#167

Post by nuje »

runjake wrote: post #76

> They can’t decrypt messages but they are able to track where everything comes from and where it is going. They can’t tell what you’re saying, but they have all they need. He's talking about SSL here, right? For the record, this is completely incorrect. If "they" have access to a trusted CA (and circumstantial evidence says they do), they can MITM and snoop on whatever they want. SSL encryption is not secure against…

No, the thought experiment didn't mention or imply SSL/TLS.

Your claim also only applies to the f'd up CA bundle that browsers ship by default, it's not a property of SSL/TLS.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#168

Post by praptak »

nacker wrote: post #140
praptak wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a world of difference between "citizen spotted using SSH" and "citizen spotted using Tor". In the first case you are just one in a huge number of people using SSH to avoid sniffers. With Tor the authorities know you're doing something you'd rather not be seen doing. It's a much, much bigger red flag.

I'd rather "the authorities" would stop spying on me whatever I'm doing, and I believe everyone should actively send up as many red flags as possible to confuse the bastards. I don't accept the authority of any random gang of thugs over me, from whatever part of the world, period.

Mind the context. People under oppressive regimes do not have the luxury of messing with the thugs just to confuse them.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#169

Post by throw4397901 »

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…

One thing that really bothers me about the whole war on child porn is that there seems to be no difference in gradation to people: people seem to think that a pedophile is the worst kind of human that can possibly exist no matter the circumstances. I think the following three scenarios are very different:

A. An 18 year old falls in love with a 14 year old girl, they're completely comfortable with each other and have some sexual experimentation.

B. A 35 year old captures and rapes a 14 year old girl.

C. 35 year old is attracted to young and innocent, cute-looking girls, and sometimes feels attracted to 10 year old girls on the street in bikinis. He does, however, not deliberately go to swimming pools in order to spot them. He deals with his fetish by watching animated cartoons of young-looking people engaging in consensual sex and dating petite women that have cute manners, well above the age of consent.

Our strategy for dealing with child porn should be aimed at reducing the number of actual children harmed, and turning as many pedophiles from group B into group C as possible. A support group where you can anonymously exchange stories could definitely help.

So long as we, as a society, hold the position that pedophile C is no different from pedophile B, we may pressure people that really don't want to rape children into feeling a kinship with people who do think it is normal to rape children.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#170

Post by setheron »

poft wrote: post #164
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 am a pedophile and I use Tor. I use it not to share pictures nor commit crimes but to do what you say is worse: talk to other pedophiles. Tor permits us a safe support forum. fatbird says: Whether or not they exist anyway, it seems obvious to me that a supportive peer group is going to increase their effectiveness at predation. Quite the opposite in fact. Dialogue among pedophiles facilitates two things that you mi…

are you actually a pedophile? Just curious.
Post reply on HN