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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

#31

Post by pbhjpbhj »

afarrell wrote: post #11
tallanvor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Distribution of child porn does not do direct harm. //

IMO it does, both to the user and the subjects of the pornography.

It's most likely the lesser harm compared to the original creation; though I'm not sure you could certainly say that in absolutely all situations.

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

#32

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ErikHuisman wrote: post #7
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 still be running the site and not facilitate and distribute child pornography. For example always throw a server error AFTER a user entered its credentials. This way you can still track users.

The problem then is that you've not recorded the user committing a crime (or committing a lesser crime, eg soliciting), only them preparing to commit one.

They could have tried a con like "we lost the site, gaussed it to avoid detection, please re-upload" and collared people for distributing. Not sure how well that would go though.

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

#33

Post by sathackr »

joshstrange wrote: post #29
voxic11 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't just take it over though. They made major improvements which caused the traffic to increase 8x during the time they operated it.

Do you have a source on this? I haven't read this about the case previously.

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawyer-dark-web-child-porn...

"As a result, the number of visitors to Playpen while it was under Government control [increased] from an average of 11,000 weekly visitors to approximately 50,000 per week. During those two weeks, the website’s membership grew by over 30%, the number of unique weekly visitors to the site more than quadrupled, and approximately 200 videos, 9,000 images, and 13,000 links to child pornography were posted on the site,”

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

#34

Post by vlehto »

aw3c2 wrote: post #25
chrischen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could argue that "mere" possession of such material does not either, yet that is not how the law is interpreted.

Could there be some kind of "allowed CP database"? I'm asking because I might donate my old childhood photos to such database. I really would not mind if someone jacked of to that stuff. If that could help to prevent some pedophile acting out their urges, it would be really great.

Is this too weird idea for HN?

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

#35

Post by joshstrange »

sathackr wrote: post #33
joshstrange wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source on this? I haven't read this about the case previously.

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawyer-dark-web-child-porn... "As a result, the number of visitors to Playpen while it was under Government control [increased] from an average of 11,000 weekly visitors to approximately 50,000 per week. During those two weeks, the website’s membership grew by over 30%, the number of unique weekly visitors to the site more than quadrupled, and approximately 200 videos, 9,000 images,…

Thank you for the link, based on the original comment I thought they added new feature/wrote new code (which is not outside the realm of possibility) but this would point to just better hardware and a better internet connection.

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

#36

Post by bitwize »

runholm wrote: post #22
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.

Police in Norway is absolutely allowed to break the law to be able to catch the real culprits and not just the visible parts of criminal networks. Here [1] is a case from April where the police imported 12 kg of cocaine as part of a deal with a man trying to smuggle the cocaine. The result was that they got the whole cell of Albanian smugglers and not just their german scapegoat. [1] http://www.dagbladet.no/2016/04/2…

I think you can build a better case for police buying, or offering to sell, drugs in order to catch criminals than this. Cocaine that isn't actually insufflated doesn't harm anyone. The FBI distributed images of child abuse which are illegal to own or distribute because, so the theory goes, the child is further abused every time someone new sees it. Therefore the FBI was complicit in further abuse of those children. Whether or not LEOs are allowed to commit crimes as part of an investigation, that crosses a serious ethical line. We wouldn't tolerate cops posing as hitmen and committing actual murder to keep the ruse up. Why should we tolerate this?

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

#37

Post by sathackr »

joshstrange wrote: post #35
sathackr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawyer-dark-web-child-porn... "As a result, the number of visitors to Playpen while it was under Government control [increased] from an average of 11,000 weekly visitors to approximately 50,000 per week. During those two weeks, the website’s membership grew by over 30%, the number of unique weekly visitors to the site more than quadrupled, and approximately 200 videos, 9,000 images,…

Thank you for the link, based on the original comment I thought they added new feature/wrote new code (which is not outside the realm of possibility) but this would point to just better hardware and a better internet connection.

Np.

The defense lawyer says otherwise, but he's the defense lawyer.

Always good to have the source of info so that context can be applied correctly.

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

#38

Post by lallysingh »

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #26
lallysingh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally I'd like to see something like an "Internet District" court with technically trained judges that have jurisdiction over warrants on the internet.

Maybe a "World Police"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America%3A_World_Police

Well we're already that :-). But leave the internet-level stuff to judges who focus on that, instead of the one closest to some random fbi office. At least that way the judges can see & learn how these things play out, and give some informed judgement that has a chance of setting good precedents.

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

#39

Post by logfromblammo »

pc86 wrote: post #19
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…

This leads to the failure mode wherein all those predisposed to commit crimes of a certain nature aim to become undercover police officers tasked with combating those crimes.

Then they can commit their favorite crime with impunity, at the expense of those too dumb to become cops first.

No one can be above the law. No one. If an undercover officer commits crimes to avoid breaking cover, the police department is culpable, and must pay some penalty. Since a corporate entity can't be jailed, I'm not certain what form of punishment would encourage it to minimize those lesser crimes committed in pursuit of the "big fish", but it is very clear that impunity is dangerous, destructive, and corrupting.

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

#40

Post by Programmatic »

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #28
Programmatic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 onl…

To me, the slippery slope seems to be, how do you know that all the exploit did was obtain the IP address, and not add or alter files on the filesystem, or allow the system to be further compromised by other parties?

I don't think a warrant for specific information changes that calculus; collecting additional information outside the scope of the warrant would be illegal regardless.
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