Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot • Hacker News Board

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#181

Post by anewhnaccount » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 8:51 AM UTC

rnovak wrote: post #62

jrcii wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author appears to believe that "Tor is the devil" because "4,000-5,000 hidden services are running at any given time. Secondly, the content served by these sites is almost universally illegal or immoral (by my definition anyway). A conservative estimate would be maybe 1 out of 200 or so hidden service websites contain content I would deem worthy of the protection an anonymous network provides. Sites featuring fre…

Except that the approach the author used is in my opinion completely flawed. The author states he started from 1 (one) seed URL, and then crawled the sites, visiting links. But that's not valid, as you'd only ever come across a possible fraction of what exists. To be able to make any authoritative claim, he would need to scan the entire IP-space, like an actual search engine would. I'm not condoning pedophelia or any…

>scan the entire IP-space, like an actual search engine would

Which search engines do that? I was under the impression crawling was the way "actual" search engines worked.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#182

Post by jules » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 11:51 AM UTC

majc2 wrote: post #179

jules wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any evidence there.

It's based on his work with child abusers - he's one of the leading academics in the UK on this issue, I don't know what kind of evidence your expecting.

Opinion is not evidence, regardless of whose opinion it is. We didn't decide on the existence of the Higgs boson by asking Stephen Hawking's opinion.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#183

Post by ikeboy » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 1:20 PM UTC

e12e wrote: post #128

ikeboy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

That doesn't seem like a strong argument, because it applies to a lot of other things as well, like illegal drugs. (And if the court relies on witnesses to establish that drugs were possessed, they could technically do the same by cp.)

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#184

Post by branchless » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:17 PM UTC

jrcii wrote: post #10

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 appears to believe that "Tor is the devil" because "4,000-5,000 hidden services are running at any given time. Secondly, the content served by these sites is almost universally illegal or immoral (by my definition anyway). A conservative estimate would be maybe 1 out of 200 or so hidden service websites contain content I would deem worthy of the protection an anonymous network provides. Sites featuring fre…

Honest question - what examples are there of literature that can only be obtained on the dark web? Perhaps I'm closeted but I'm unaware of such books.

For example right now I'm reading a sci-fi book that remains unpublished in Russia, but it's available in the west. Or the other day had a browse of "steal this book".

Genuinely curious.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#185

Post by digler999 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:00 PM UTC

geek_slop wrote: post #151

zxcvcxz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he wasn't explicitly offering child porn then how can he assume people who visited his honey pot were looking for child porn if they didn't explicitly state it? Sure the guy offering pictures seems like a pedophile, but what about the others?

More than one offered pictures and in fact, according to other sources, seems to be a frequent method for pedos to prove to the hidden service operator that they are indeed "legit".

you wasted valuable time and resources of law enforcement. good on you