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Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

geekslop.com

141–150 of 185 posts

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#141

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…

What's interesting is that most people these days would agree that sexual orientation is not a choice. This is fine when we are talking about equal rights for homosexuals, but for some reason is abhorrent when we are talking about a orientation that is undesirable for society. (And thus classified as a mental disorder).

Even if there is no crime involved, and there won't ever be. I blame the media for misusing the word "pedophile" to mean child molester.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If watching a crime is a criminal offence, you better lock up the viewers of CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. I do think their ought to be laws against the distribution of this kind of material (there probably are?), and there is no question that producing it is a criminal offence, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Watching a report about a crime is not the same as consuming a product that was produced and shared or sold by the criminal that committed the crime. You are actively supporting the criminal, either through money or through community. On a different note: There is nothing wrong with regulating how footage of crimes can be shown to protect the victims and even the offenders. I know this argument is hard to make on HN,…

ISIS produces their beheading videos specifically for them to be shared and viewed by as many people as possible. By watching these videos, you are actively supporting ISIS by paying any attention to what they are doing and therefore granting them legitimacy. If videos of rape are illegal,then videos of murder should be too.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#143
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…

Bear in mind that at least some of the "14 year old sex" searches are done by 14 year old children who do not know any better.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#144
post #120
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…

Good reasoning is not a blasé attitude. It's an approach of setting aside personal feelings and instead having a discussion to get to the root of the problem and discuss the merits of opinion.

The fact is that anyone who simply goes around arguing that something is morally good or bad better have solid reasons for doing so.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#145
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this has long been my concern. Is pedophilia something that can be rehabilitated? Is it mental illness? A sexual orientation? By providing people with no choices are we creating underground networks? To me there are echoes of drug prohibition here. I go fucking crazy thinking about my kids getting taken. When I watched true detective i was seriously ready to throw up. Particularly chilling was the last line: "we'…

BBC Panorama had an excellent episode exploring these very questions. At least I think it was Panorama. I tried searching for it but all I get are hits about Jimmy Savile. They found a young man who selfidenties as a pedophile, who was actually willing to go on camera and talk about his desires and urges. It was quite fascinating, and I do see many parellels not just to the war on drugs but to homosexuality as well.…

I want to say that this was Channel 4 instead. I think it aired last year.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#146
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their argument doesn't appear to be "Tor is bad because it can be used for bad stuff" but "Tor is bad because it is overwhelmingly used for bad stuff today ". That seems to be a meaningful distinction to me. (I don't really care about the argument/premise itself, I just find your sloppy attempt at a counter-argument to be weak)

Since we're talking about the devil: The biblical standard for acceptable collateral damage is kind of interesting. God in the old testament said he wouldn't smite a city if there are at least 10 righteous people in it. /theologynerd http://biblia.com/bible/nkjv/Gen%2018.20%E2%80%9333

[deleted]

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#147
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Recently I noticed that most people I would consider evil, are actually people doing what they think is right but with the wrong information - as well as people giving into basic animal instincts that as a society we aim to rise above. Saying that, I have definitely met people with malicious intentions, who are definitely 'evil' (or lacking a severe amount of empathy for their fellow beings). I am not sure people wit…

I consider a modern, secular definition of "real" evil to be based in the malicious or intentional "taking" of something from someone else for your own gain. That could be stealing for profit or taking life for non-defensive reasons or it could be forcible rape or other coercion that takes away someone's right to control what is done to their person.

Not a complete or concise definition but the general theme I notice when I think about what I personally consider "evil" is the elevation of your own desires over the safety or well-being of others. In a way, evil (for me) is based on what helps humanity/society or hurts it. It's based in our natural instincts for empathy and the ignoring of those "higher" motives in favor of more primitive drives to take, hurt, kill, rape, or enslave.

For me, good versus evil is not so much about religious or Hollywood ideas of light vs. dark or god vs. devil but the more familiar battle between our "animal" side and our "human" side.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#148
post #2

Is it just me, or the rhetorical question in the title ("why I now think Tor is the devil") never got answered? Also not clear whether the Dark Web spider project was just to later seed the honeypot sites to appear legit, or was it a project on its own? The quote "The reports are published nightly on a hacker-related Dark Web site that I am involved with" hints at the latter, and then I'd double don't understand why…

It did seem a bit strange with "I created a pedo honeypot and gasp horror it attracted a bunch of pedos!!"

The biggest thing he demonstrated is that a percentage of pedos would run an executable from some guy on Tor if he asks nicely. How can it be hard for the FBI to catch those guys?

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#149

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 fairly well established that many pedophiles where in fact victims of pedophilia in their childhood themselves This point is oftentimes overlooked. Also, the word "pedophile" is oftentimes conflated with "child molester", which makes it impossible to distinguish the individuals who are pedophiles but have not (and have no intentions to) act on those desires. I found this article to be a worthwhile read on the…

Not all pedophiles are child molesters, yes.

But more importantly, not all child molesters are pedophiles. Just like any other form of rape, a significant portion of cases has more to do with power than with attraction. Sexual abuse is abuse first.

The problem with child porn (in the strict sense of "pornography involving real children") is that all child porn is child abuse. So someone had to be abused to produce it and they depict actual victims in the act of being victimised. This is why possession is illegal, just as possessing other pictures of victims being victimised without the victim's consent is illegal (in countries with real privacy laws anyway) -- with the obvious addition that children can't give consent in the first place.

Of course the (understandable) moral panic doesn't help. While it's obvious why actual child porn should be illegal by default, it's not as obvious why the same goes for non-pornographic material (unless your definition of pornographic is simply "what someone could masturbate to", in which case you might as well extend it to everything).

An intuitive argument is that the proliferation of "child porn substitutes" (e.g. drawings, "naturalist" photography, etc) increases the risk that pedophiles might act on their drives. But considering that pedophilia is neither sufficient nor necessary for child abuse, that doesn't seem as clear cut. Also the numbers seem to indicate that for "normal" pornography, proliferation actually results in a decrease of sexual assaults (i.e. the "release valve" counter-argument).

Legalizing it all is obviously wrong. Banning it all (as in those parts of the world where you might become a registered sex offender just because a shop clerk finds out you took a photograph of your own child in an entirely non-sexual setting) is obviously wrong, too. But I don't think we can have a reasonable discussion about this issue as a society before we've learned to accept that morality isn't defined by arbitrary commandments and every human is different.

Re: Running a Dark Web pedophile honeypot

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't really finish reading the article. I hope the original author will realize that hanging on to his anger will only perpetuate the crimes committed against his daughter. His characterisation of permanent damage done to his daughter makes me wonder if she will ever be able to escape the trauma in his eyes . Will he be able to provide a safe place for her to go where people know about her past but care only ab…

So your argument is that, because this guy says that child rape does permanent damage, you can tell that his parenting probably hurts his daughter more than being repeatedly raped did?

His parenting isn't worse than her abuse, obviously.

But he should still chill the fuck out. Yes, bad things happen. But no, you're not permanently broken. You can grow up and have a normal life.

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