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A Tor of the Dark Web

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Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#171

Post by poft »

setheron wrote: post #170
poft wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#172

Post by drKarl »

co-n-sci-o-us wrote: post #120

Tor is the solution to getting hellbanned at HN. That is "censorship", no? Tor is also the solution to your Twitter API woes. Like it or not. I'm sure many SEO people use it to get around Google's restrictions. These are not necessarily uses that infringe anyone's IP. Twitter is UGC. And Google caches the entire web, indiscriminantly. Tor, like the 'net itself, is controversial. It can be used for bad things. It can…

Just curiosity... why is it that you can't post to HN without Tor?

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#173

Post by marvin »

poft wrote: post #171
setheron wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you actually a pedophile? Just curious.

Yes.

...and this is a perfect example of why anonymity on the internet is a good thing which has inherent value. Now we've learned something we wouldn't have otherwise. It's not like people with these paraphelias show up for interviews with the newspaper.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#174

Post by marvin »

DanBC wrote: post #111
pvarangot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while ago Anonymous hacked one of those forums and published the usernames and hashes. Apparently a lot of them where using the same usernames and passwords in another porn-related forums in the "lit" web. Don't know if it resulted in someone being caught by the police or not, but definitely subtler methods such as statistical analysis of writing style are not the only way to get a lead from those forums.

So, Tor is only as good as the person using it. I urge caution against amateur investigations, but it'd be interesting to see what software tools could be written to help law enforcement do a better job. Statistical analysis of text "social web" etc.

Just be careful, if you get too god at this it might be used for things you don't agree with. This is an area that I would steer completely clear of, the same way I'd never help develop chemical or biological weapons.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#175

Post by marvin »

dfc wrote: post #160
qohen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://33bits.org/about/

thats what I thought he meant. I've never understood why that 33 bits meme caught on. I'd like to see an actual step by step identification of someone with 33 bits of information...

Don't take it literally. But it's a very illustrative concept. A single blog post is often enough to uniquely identify someone, if they give a couple of incriminating facts about themselves. (Which school they've studied at, which year, what sports they play would be enough to would narrow your list down from six billion to a couple).

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#176

Post by dumbluck »

Places where illegal content is shared and people communicate for nefarious reasons and tools that create these places are just magnets for those wishing to find such people.

Anyone that chooses to take part in such things is at a heightened risk, no matter what they are doing.

There is no guaranteed right to privacy, regardless what your government decrees or what the tool you're using claims to do.

Those using Tor will be caught and charged as if they are enabling what the others are doing.

Be warned.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#177

Post by drostie »

eliben wrote: post #154

Can you point to a good technical description of how Tor works under the hood?

If you are requesting a very high-level description: https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en . Basically you send an "envelope within an envelope within an envelope" over TLS (formerly SSL) to some node, they open it, read the address on the envelope inside, and send it on, until it gets to the last letter-opener who happens to also be the sort of node which follows instructions on a sheet of paper. Those instructions may be an HTTP request for example, or you might ask them to communicate part of a TLS negotiation with a secure web site, so that they cannot eavesdrop. The envelopes themselves are encryption containers, so that you can't open the envelopes en route to see where they're going.

If you want to understand more details about how exactly you create these "extending" routes and "circuits", the design docs are here:

https://www.torproject.org/docs/documentation.html.en#Design...

In particular, the above picture is a little naive because you cannot send three open envelopes to the exit node for the return trip without the exit node learning who you are by peeking inside.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#178

Post by gws »

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…

In your opinion what is the overall impact on children safety of something like Tor? Positive, negative or neutral? I realize this is tough to answer.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#179

Post by makomk »

ahelwer wrote: post #74
coderintherye wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you have a basis to make the assumption that the forum leads to more predation. What if it works the opposite? We know that violent movies lead to lower violent crime rates, because the criminals who would be out committing violent crimes are instead enjoying going and seeing this movie. The same could be true of people who might otherwise act on their intentions for predation, but are instead satisfied…

The US DOJ has released this excellent memo on why child pornography is illegal, despite the lack of an "obvious" victim (you've probably seen arguments along those lines for why it should be legal if you read Slashdot or Reddit at all): [HUGE TRIGGER WARNING FOR DESCRIPTION OF ABUSE] http://www.justice.gov/criminal/ceos/downloads/ReluctantRebe... The basic reason why the "give them a safe outlet" arguments don't hol…

I've seen that before and it's a really horribly ill-conceived memo. As in, almost certainly helping child abusers justify raping kids levels of bad.

Why? Because it takes the most brutal, violent examples of child pornography that the FBI could find - the stuff that from the discussions I've seen even most pedophiles are disgusted by - and uses that as its justification for why child porn is wrong. Now, this is very effective as a shock tactic for convincing the general public that child porn is evil and must be wiped out at any cost. Unfortunately, one of the main ways pedophiles justify acting on their urges is that they're not like the bad child rapists who torture kids for kicks, they actually care about the children they coerce into having sex with them and would "never harm them". (Again, I've seen this happen in multiple discussions and I believe it's even been documented by various researchers.) Documents like that FBI memo which use kids being tortured as their sole justification for why child porn is wrong can only further help them rationalise their actions.

I know SRS over on Reddit use that document to justify why they won't debate child porn and I have a feeling that's where you got it from. They've basically made it impossible to point out just how big a mistake they're making.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#180

Post by DanBC »

vacri wrote: post #159
DanBC wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.) That was a ridiculously reckless thing for you to do. You've opened yourself up to a variety of legal sanctions. Knowingly, deliberately, breaking the law is a bafflingly dumb thing to do, especially when the conseque…

Comedians constantly talk publicly and on record about having broken the law. Thing is, based on one HN comment, there's nothing to go on. If it goes to court, runn1ng just has to say "I made it all up to get attention". If there's no other evidence of wrongdoing, it'll be hard to make anything stick.

Admitting to breaking the law isn't what I was talking about, although being investigated for a crime involving images of child sexual abuse will be a traumatic experience even if it goes no further than that.

Imagine police raiding your home right now, and removing all computer items, and keeping those for several months (maybe years). Even without trial or conviction you'll have been put through a horrible experience.

Breaking any random law is also not much of a big deal. People break traffic laws all the time. People chose to break laws they consider unjust.

But choosing to break a law about images of child sexual abuse is a stupid thing to do. Being caught will lead to severe repercussions, with life long consequences.

Those consequences include criminal conviction and criminal record, having to register on a sex offenders list, potentially losing the employment he has, loss of employment opportunity in future, loss of travel opportunity, social stigma, etc etc etc.

That's the risk; what's the gain? "I was curious to see what was available"?

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