An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
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Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#2"Eric Eoin Marques, 28—the “largest facilitator of child porn on the planet,” according to the FBI".
I hope he wins the trial for that reason alone. FBI's thinking is very dangerous here. Basically what they're saying is that if they can't monitor/censor freely the content they want then you're a "facilitator" for whatever crime is happening on the network.
If you apply this logic to something else, you'll see how little sense it makes. "If you don't give us your encryption keys, or use PFS, you're a facilitator of terrorism". "If you sell guns, you're a facilitator of gun crime."
If you're an ISP that doesn't block sites that we say are piracy sites, you're a facilitator of piracy (an argument that is already used, and was also used in ACTA, too).
And I could go on and on about this. People should be calling them out on their BS argument. They're just using these arguments to crack down on anything that has remained remotely private, so they can have the total surveillance state they've always dreamed about.
Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#3The big problem with all of this is that despite Tor being a decentralised network, 50% of sites on Tor were centralised in the hands of one provider. For Tor, this is like Amazon EC2 permanently going down. It'll route around the problem and they FBI will have probably stopped a total number of 0 child porn consumers and authors in the process, but it'll be heralded as a success by the FBI because they'll have stopped an individual person from facilitating child porn for a short while by destroying his life and taking out a large amount of legitimate free speech in the form of collateral damage.
Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#4It's weird seeing a post you made a decade ago linked in that thread on webhostingtalk :/
Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#5I think this are the kind of comments that turn people away from the freedom argument. If Eric Eoin Marques is proven beyond reasonable doubt to be the operator of the freedom hosting and that he knew about the child porn content, he should be responsible for the content.
Look at this argument in real world terms. If you are an owner and operator of a motel, and you rent a room to someone who then goes on to rape and kill a girl in that room, you are not responsible for those actions. Even if you made no effort to check the identity of the renter, and accepted cash, you are still innocent, at least morally (legally, depends on the state). However, if you happen to pass by the window of that room, see the occupant killing a girl in that room, you have the moral and legal duty to call the cops.
I would never argue that the tor network, the node operators, the exit node operators, or the internet companies used to run the tor traffic would ever in any way be responsible for the child porn. Likewise, the camera manufacturers, and the manufacturers of all the hardware used to store and distribute said child porn would never be liable for that content. But, surely, the guy who rented the infrastructure to the child porn ring operators would be liable, if it can be proven that he knew for a fact that specific clients of his service used it for child porn.
Now, the reason I say specific clients is because it's not enough to argue that he knew or should have known that some of his clients used the service for child porn. AT&T knows for a fact that some of their clients use the internet connection AT&T provides for child porn, but no one would argue that AT&T is guilty. But specific knowledge equals guilt in my mind.
Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#6"Eric Eoin Marques, 28—the “largest facilitator of child porn on the planet,” according to the FBI". I hope he wins the trial for that reason alone. FBI's thinking is very dangerous here. Basically what they're saying is that if they can't monitor/censor freely the content they want then you're a "facilitator" for whatever crime is happening on the network. If you apply this logic to something else, you'll see how li…
> If you apply this logic to something else, you'll see how little sense it makes. "If you don't give us your encryption keys, or use PFS, you're a facilitator of terrorism"
That's not even remotely the same logic.
> "If you sell guns, you're a facilitator of gun crime."
Nor is that.
> If you're an ISP that doesn't block sites that we say are piracy sites, you're a facilitator of piracy
Nor is that.
To make your gun seller hypothetical fit the Marques allegations fact pattern, for instance, it would have to be a gun seller that is purposefully trying to sell guns to people who are looking to commit crimes with the guns, and who is touting the effectiveness of his guns at being hard to trace.
Basically, they are trying to hold Marques responsible for crime happening on his servers, that he appears to have known about and encouraged.
Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#7So if you are an ISP and have a router in any way used for any kind of networking over internet, you are possibly or most probably facilitator for money laundering, child porn, piracy, terrorism or any kind of online crime that's possible. Or you should have implemented resource expensive deep packet inspection and filtering solutions.
Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#8So if you are an ISP and have a router in any way used for any kind of networking over internet, you are possibly or most probably facilitator for money laundering, child porn, piracy, terrorism or any kind of online crime that's possible. Or you should have implemented resource expensive deep packet inspection and filtering solutions.
Oh please, there is a significant difference between knowingly (let's not kid ourselves) hosting such unsavory material and accidentally sending it along.
The intent of Freedom Hosting was clearly to host questionable material.
Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#9The correlation between the launch of the bank and his arrest is quite suspect.
I believe the hosting was secure however the bank wasn't and it allowed the police to identify him through that.
Once they knew who he was doing the rest was easy.
Re: An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
#10The big problem with all of this is that despite Tor being a decentralised network, 50% of sites on Tor were centralised in the hands of one provider. For Tor, this is like Amazon EC2 permanently going down. It'll route around the problem and they FBI will have probably stopped a total number of 0 child porn consumers and authors in the process, but it'll be heralded as a success by the FBI because they'll have stopp…
Why do HN people feel the need to portray everything the US federal government goes after as a martyr for free speech? Of all the Internet-related crimes, I think stopping pornography depicting minors is one of the least controversial laws to possibly enforce. I know it's more convenient to group everything the FBI, CIA, and NSA do into an "obviously evil" bin, but sometimes you need to appreciate enough nuance to not defend all their online targets on principle. If this isn't one of those times, I don't know what is.
Just like they can always make the argument that they are protecting people with xyz questionable tactics, you can always make the claim that something on the Internet is for the purposes of free speech. That doesn't make you right, or even mean that free speech is the primary legal or moral distinguishing factor even if you are.