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Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

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Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#121

Post by draugadrotten »

MBCook wrote: post #35
kauffj wrote: post #8

> On two different occasions I contacted the FBI about the project and offered to provide full sets of data that I had collected. The FBI twice rejecting a set of information that could have reasonably led to the arrest of several pedophiles seems like a big mistake.

He said he CONTACTED the FBI twice, but does it actually say if he was rejected or simply ignored?

If a person contacts the FBI to say they have evidence of terrorism, pedophilia or money laundering, the first thing that happens is that the snitch gets put on the watch list and gets a wiretap.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#122

Post by richmarr »

argumentum wrote: post #64
tdy721 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am normally a pretty level dude, but in this case I really do believe we are dealing with something supernaturally evil. This isn't snooping on randoms, it's exposing demons for what they are. (Atheist, but science just doesn't have the words for this.)

A a fellow atheist, I agree that evil is a real thing, but I still don't see the need to call it "supernatural". Evil is the opposite of good, so if we agree that actions to promote life, liberty and happiness are good, then actions that promote death, slavery and misery are evil. Simple as that. So there's plenty of evil in nature.

So, lions are evil?

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#123

Post by DanielBMarkham »

ThomPete wrote: post #43

Maybe it's just me but I don't really like the tendency to treat pedophiles as if they are the devils themselves. Let there be no doubt. I have two kids and there is probably no limit to what I would do to someone who did anything to my kids. But it's not as simply as just condemning pedophiles for being that and I ultimately think there is something morally or ethically questionable about this approach. It's fairly…

It's another of those causes like clean water or treating people equally.

Who wants dirty water? Who wants to create second-class citizens? Who likes pedophilia?

As humans we love these issues where you'd be either an idiot or extremely asocial to oppose. We like slogans. We like to feel superior. We do not like nuance, or having to think a lot about things.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#124

Post by christop »

sarahj wrote: post #7

Some of the technical points of this article are simply wrong... > The exit node IP address of the user was easily obtained using the two different methods discussed briefly above. This is really not a vulnerability but simply how tor, and the internet at large, works - hidden services by design protect the service not the user (the user is protected by tor by default) - what the author actually did here was "leak" t…

> the author never really goes on to state why they think Tor is the devil

According to the comments section, the author says "My parenthetical headline that “tor is the devil” was facetious and apparently a failed attempt at dry humor."

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#125

Post by thelamest »

_asummers wrote: post #37
zxcvcxz wrote: post #13

"pedophiles use encryption, so encryption is the devil." seems to be where this is going. That's a slippery slope and a bit unethical to use pedophiles to push an authoritarian political agenda. I bet it's fun to call all his critics pedophile sympathizers and sit upon a moral high-horse of self-righteousness while pushing his authoritarian ideology under the guise of social justice.. That's the thing about these peo…

To be clear, Tor does not provide encryption but anonymization. While your comment is valid (and something I personally agree with) nonetheless, I feel this distinction is important.

For that purpose of anonymization it provides encryption, but with significant exceptions (non-hidden, non-HTTPS services) (when you use Tor correctly and can trust the PKI) (if I understand correctly).

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#126

Post by Ntrails »

Lorento wrote: post #96
ThomPete wrote: post #43

Maybe it's just me but I don't really like the tendency to treat pedophiles as if they are the devils themselves. Let there be no doubt. I have two kids and there is probably no limit to what I would do to someone who did anything to my kids. But it's not as simply as just condemning pedophiles for being that and I ultimately think there is something morally or ethically questionable about this approach. It's fairly…

I agree. I think people hate pedophiles in much the same way they hate(d) gays. Because it's disgusting and perverted, not because it harms people. The fact that some children do actually get harmed and that many people have children themselves that they feel very protective of fuels the emotion of labeling all pedophiles as "evil". If viewing an image of child abuse is wrong. Isn't viewing an image of ISIS beheading…

I've posited that the only law required is prevention of child abuse. Viewing/possession of an image as a crime seems inherently misguided - especially if criminality is going to be defined by assumed intent.

However I have never been able to avoid the counter argument that by allowing (implied consent) a market for cp imagery you may increase demand which will increase the incidence of child abuse in order to satisfy. The bath photo is simply one end of a spectrum.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#127

Post by belorn »

johnnycarcin wrote: post #53
athenot wrote: post #16

As a father of a little girl, this is a depressing read for me. Yes in the back of my mind I know this stuff is going on but it's really sad seeing the collection of data showing people who are partaking in this stuff. Also this gave me a nasty flashback of looking at filenames (never content) of deleted files in the process of gathering evidence against a family member who now sits on the registered sex offender lis…

Tell me about it. Awhile back as a reason to learn some new things I setup a Tor hidden service/page crawler and a basic search engine. For troubleshooting purposes (and to see how popular the site was) I was logging what was being searched for. After about a two weeks of having the site up I shut it down because 90% of the searches were for child porn. As a Tor supporter it was kind of eye opening. I guess though if…

I suspect this is where the myth of 99% of the Internet is made out of porn comes from. It is very easy to get misleading statistics, especially if you have small sample size or where a minority of users are creating the majority of the collected data points.

Add to this the amount of bots out there, and "false" data generated by police, federal investigators and interest groups doing the very thing people pay them to do, and you would really have to design the data collecting system in such a way that it identified who is doing the searching and what their usage patterns are.

For example, If they return every hour on the hour, such result would likely be made by a bot, or if every search is extremely specific, it could very likely be an investigator doing work in a specific case. If I did this kind of research, I would contact professional investigators in order to work together and to collect search patterns so to exclude that kind of traffic.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#128

Post by e12e »

ikeboy wrote: post #66
api wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, and I think the problem is the framing. Call it rape porn, because it is. What would you think of someone trading files like "REAL video of ISIS soldiers gang raping and beheading girl!" Child porn, especially the "hard core" sort alluded to here, is in the same category. I do dislike the OP's guilt by association and vigilantism though. There's a reason we have a proper justice system. Imagine if someone…

The obvious counterpoint is that beheading videos are legal to watch. The last time this came up on HN that I remember, someone linked to these posts by Rick Falkvinge: https://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-mu... https://falkvinge.net/2012/09/11/child-porn-laws-arent-as-ba...

I support the fight against child pornography - but I can't support making certain types of media illegal to possess or watch. For one (small) thing you get into the absurd case were the court will have to commit the same crime to verify a crime was committed.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#129

Post by facepalm »

ThomPete wrote: post #43

Maybe it's just me but I don't really like the tendency to treat pedophiles as if they are the devils themselves. Let there be no doubt. I have two kids and there is probably no limit to what I would do to someone who did anything to my kids. But it's not as simply as just condemning pedophiles for being that and I ultimately think there is something morally or ethically questionable about this approach. It's fairly…

Just as heterosexuals don't rape people all the time, most pedophiles probably don't either. I think an estimated 2% of the population are pedophiles. I feel sorry for them.

However, if they prove to be a danger to the kids, they have to be locked away or something. It's just because we don't know a better way to treat the issue.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#130

Post by jules »

majc2 wrote: post #120
TheDong wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're watching game of thrones, you are watching people kill each other. You are committing a crime. See how that's silly? There are people who watch animated child porn and they are ruled as criminals even though no actual child was directly harmed. There are people who watch snuff films, where people actually are killed, and the viewers are not breaking the law in most states. Perhaps you would argue that snuff…

Having done a small amount of volunteer work with children, I've had some exposure to child protection issues. Often, its a spiral downwards (IIRC its typically called the spiral of abuse), where the person in question erodes mental barriers so that they see the behaviour as normal. I don't accept the "just watching" argument - it is child abuse. What you must understand is that it normalises the behaviour in that pe…

Is there any actual evidence for this? By the same token you could say that watching Game of Thrones will make you a murderer.

I could easily see it being the opposite: relieving sexual pressure could make people less likely to actually harm a child.

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