Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today • Hacker News Board

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#191

Post by salawat » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

ngriffiths wrote: post #162

> a private company shouldn’t have to decide what counts as “illegal” content under threat of legal action. Immediately reminded me of patio11's amazing write up[1] of debanking, featuring banks being deputized as law enforcement for financial crimes (which is completely non controversial), and even used as a convenient tool to regulate other industries that the white house didn't like (kinda controversial). [1]: htt…

I strongly disagree that financial institutions being a de facto extension of law enforcement is "non-controversial".

It may be the way things are; it may be a pre-req of making financial crime tractable; but that does not detract from the fact that every financial institution is in essence, deputized law enforcement, and negate the chilling effect that comes as a consequence thereof on a business environment subject to it.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#192

Post by zahlman » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #6

Its interesting that being unable to find a legal route to dig up dirt on archive.is, they're going the route of CSAM allegations. I first heard of this technique on a discussion on Lowendtalk from a hoster discussing how pressure campaigns were orchestrated. The host used to host VMs for a customer that was not well liked but otherwise within the bounds of free speech in the US (I guess something on the order of KF/…

> gets archive.is to crawl it

Does archive.is actually do any crawling? I thought they only archived pages on request.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#193

Post by AstralStorm » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

How can you even sue without any legal identity? This website and an organisation does not happen to have any. Might as well be some shell company in the Carribeans with no legal standing in France. It's not even good enough for public prosecution, as the tip would then go through French services.

This law is completely backwards, and worse than a SLAPP. If you cannot respond to a report in any way, it should be null.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#194

Post by _yb2s » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #112

_yb2s wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current federal government in the USA actively encourages federal agents to use illegal and unethical methods, and promised them protection and immunity.

The current federal government of France? Of the EU? The article is not about the USA.

This article is specifically an article about an investigation by the FBI- US federal agents.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#195

Post by alansammarone » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

Ntrails wrote: post #186

matheusmoreira wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've given up on trying to change the world. > What will the world will be like in the future is decided by us every day. That's the problem. This "us" you're referring to. People. They're the problem. They have no principles. They stand for nothing. They think they do, but the reality is their principles are easily compromised. They are highly susceptible to manipulation by way of emotion. Powerful emotions like ter…

> The internet that connects us also connects criminals, the cryptography that protects us also protects criminals. Agreed. If only we could also agree that not everyone who thinks this is not a good trade is evil/malignant/stupid etc. idk - it feels like a simple case of priorities. Freedom and privacy are not everyones

evil and stupid are certainly the wrong words. I agree this is a nuanced issue. however, I think it is an objective fact that certain orderings of priorities - in particular, the relative priority of freedom, privacy, security, protection, "justice" (depending on how you want to define that word) are strictly worse than others.

and that assumes it's a zero sum game, which I don't think is true generally. It may be true in the limit, but...we're far from the limit, so to speak. we can have both freedom and privacy and safety. And I think giving up on any one of them is objectively bad, both individually as well as a society.

now, on a different tone - and perhaps this really is subjetive/personal - myself, I'd rather die by my own choices than live by others. literally. I think there's close to 0 value in living a life according to values that others chose.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#196

Post by Dilettante_ » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 4:59 PM UTC

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #178

Dilettante_ wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe, however, that the future does not "exist" in any real sense The future is an immediate result of the present, which is an immediate result of the past. The laws of physics dictate this with no wiggle room. It's complicated and functionally impossible to predict with any certainty, but the future is certain. It is as fixed as the past, and the present that arises from it.

You are mistaking a realization of a random process for the random process itself.

I don't understand but I am interested, would you give a bit more explanation?

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#197

Post by AstralStorm » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #99

breppp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I am naive, just imagine the repercussions of the headline "FBI collected thousands of child rape photos for blackmail" or "Cop work computer was found filled with child porn" Anything linked to pedophilia in the US and elsewhere is without remorse, and will continue that way due to parental fears.

Seizing control of criminal websites is literally standard procedure. Three letter agencies are known for hacking their way into criminal platforms and keeping them running for as long as possible. They justify it as an opportunity to catch high value targets. They're quite willing to literally distribute CSAM from their own servers for months, years on end if that's what it takes. They don't just react either, they…

It's even more legally funny than this. They are also allowed to enact entrapment to some degree and it passed court muster in the US. That because it's extremely hard to use it as a defence.

Note that these actions are illegal in most continental jurisdictions as stings must be devised ahead of time against specific groups of people. There's also Article 6 of ECHR.

In other words, FBI cannot run a sting off an EU site like this, at least definitely not a German one.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#198

Post by sph » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 5:02 PM UTC

verisimi wrote: post #125

forgotoldacc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare has always weirded me out. Back before everyone was using it, a lot of sites would be running just fine for years, then they'd suddenly be shut down for a few days due to DDoS attacks. Then they'd proudly announce they were on cloudflare when they came back. Funny thing was I noticed sites having more frequent downtime after using moving to cloudflare. I don't see those cloudflare pages much these days, bu…

Just one of many protection rackets

I’ve always said that if the NSA doesn’t have its hands on Cloudflare I wonder WTF they’re even doing.

How do you track people on the internet? Make them go through a single gateway that ‘protects’ 90% of websites. Would explain why they’re always so reluctant to block unsavoury websites.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#199

Post by wartywhoa23 » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #107

giancarlostoro wrote: post #100

Friendly reminder that archive box exists to let you self host your own archive service. https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox I dream of a day where archivebox becomes a fleet of homelabs all over the world making it drastically harder to block them all.

I think about the opposite, people reading in the news that FBI is after archiving sites, will not want to launch their own site, except maybe the radical types.

1960s: FBI/CIA invents the term "conspiracy theorist"

2020s: FBI/CIA invents the term "radical archivist"

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#200

Post by shkkmo » Sat, Nov 15, 2025, 5:06 PM UTC

_yb2s wrote: post #194

carlosjobim wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current federal government of France? Of the EU? The article is not about the USA.

This article is specifically an article about an investigation by the FBI- US federal agents.

The article mentions the FBI investigation but is not about that. This article is about a pressure campaign, the letter Web Abuse Association Defense sent to adguard making threats under french law and adguard's investigation in response to that letter.