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Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

arstechnica.com

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Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#11

Post by afarrell »

tallanvor wrote: post #6
tyfon wrote: post #3

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

Unfortunately we've seen that law enforcement in the US is able to get away with doing some rather despicable things in the name of fighting crime. Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. After all, how can we defend our own morals and ethics if we're willing to ignore them for "reasons"?

> Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals.

I think you want to look at systemic effects and the potential for bulger-style corruption. Distribution of child porn does not do direct harm. It does harm by being a system that supports child abuse and we have collectively decided that child abuse is harmful enough to the fabric of our society that it is worth dismantling the systems that support it.

So here, the ends justify a certain scoped set of means, but also impose a duty of competence in deploying those means and a duty to stay within their scope.

Note that We don't currently have any penalties for crossing the bounds of that scope.

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#12

Post by bfuller »

tallanvor wrote: post #6
tyfon wrote: post #3

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

Unfortunately we've seen that law enforcement in the US is able to get away with doing some rather despicable things in the name of fighting crime. Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. After all, how can we defend our own morals and ethics if we're willing to ignore them for "reasons"?

Isn't that the whole reason it's a drug "war"?

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#13

Post by bfuller »

tallanvor wrote: post #6
tyfon wrote: post #3

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

Unfortunately we've seen that law enforcement in the US is able to get away with doing some rather despicable things in the name of fighting crime. Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. After all, how can we defend our own morals and ethics if we're willing to ignore them for "reasons"?

Isn't that the whole reason it's a drug "war"?

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#14

Post by L-four »

tallanvor wrote: post #6
tyfon wrote: post #3

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

Unfortunately we've seen that law enforcement in the US is able to get away with doing some rather despicable things in the name of fighting crime. Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. After all, how can we defend our own morals and ethics if we're willing to ignore them for "reasons"?

As the saying goes "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster."

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#15

Post by gravypod »

tyfon wrote: post #3

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

I wonder how that would work as a defense for the people hosting it: "No your honor I wasn't distributing child porn by hosting this site. I was trying to operate honey pot for the officers to find."

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#16

Post by Programmatic »

tetrep wrote: post #4

> Earlier this year, federal judges in Massachusetts and Oklahoma made similar rulings and similarly tossed the relevant evidence. Thirteen other judges, meanwhile, have found that while the warrants to search the defendants' computers via the hacking tool were invalid, they did not take the extra step of ordering suppression of the evidence. The corresponding judges in the remainder of the cases have yet to rule on…

I think that a warrant that allows the exposure of your IP address through intrusive software that exploits a security weakness is valid, assuming that you receive the software after visiting a site and performing a criminal action. It's suitably narrow, and allows further (appropriate) searching.

The alternative (that I can't say that I mind too much, either) is to prohibit ever catching Tor users no matter what online criminal activities they perform, assuming you can't get their real IP through other means.

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#17

Post by jasonkostempski »

tallanvor wrote: post #6
tyfon wrote: post #3

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

Unfortunately we've seen that law enforcement in the US is able to get away with doing some rather despicable things in the name of fighting crime. Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. After all, how can we defend our own morals and ethics if we're willing to ignore them for "reasons"?

They don't, or rather aren't supposed to, commit crimes to catch criminals. The laws are written with verbiage indicating who can and can't do what and under what circumstances. There is no real law that just simply states "thou shall not kill" that applies to everyone in every role in every situation. And even if law were equal to ethics, I don't think most people hold ethics without exceptions to whatever general descriptions they use to communicate them.

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#18

Post by Lawtonfogle »

chrischen wrote: post #5
tyfon wrote: post #3

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

You could argue that the FBI's use case does not harm, perpeutatue, or endorse the exploitation of children any further. It would be a different story if the FBI also commissioned new content to run the site.

Since distribution and even possesion are crimes because they hurt children this argument does not hold up.

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#19

Post by pc86 »

tyfon wrote: post #3

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

1) Law enforcement agents are allowed to participate in illegal activity in order to catch criminals. Otherwise it'd be pretty damn easy to root out undercover cops. 2) Honeypots are not entrapment, which has a very specific legal definition. The person needs to be "normally law-abiding" and can't be otherwise already disposed to commit the crime in question. Not only that, but in most states (not sure about Federal law which would be what applies here) the defendant needs to actually resist the illegal act and be further coerced by an agent of the government.

So taking over a pre-existing site centered around illegal activity and simply seeing who uses it is about as far away from entrapment as you can get.

Re: Judge: child porn evidence obtained via FBI’s Tor hack must be suppressed

#20

Post by pilif »

acveilleux wrote: post #9
pilif wrote: post #2

easy fix for the prosecution: Use parallel reconstruction. I'm sure they're on this as we're commenting here. Once the information has been gathered, it's out there. You can't unsee it. It will always be there. Now, I don't think we should protect child porn users, but this is a general issue with mass surveillance. Laws change and suddenly somebodies actions that were once legal and are now illegal will be useful fo…

Parallel reconstruction is not so easy when the case is already at trial as you can bet the defendant will not be doing whatever it is law enforcement need to now find evidence of. Time machines are still not available.

No. But they can find other means of proving that the defendant has done what you know they have done.
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