from the officially-confirmed-to-be-denied dept.
Cryptome has released an email from a former Giganews employee alledging that Giganews is being run by FBI agents who purposefully host child pornography and engage in surveillance of their Virtual Private Network (VPN) services and Usenet groups. From the email:
Special Agent Scott Kibbey is central to the whole Giganews operation, including Data Foundry, but with different names. This agent is a top exec for Data Foundry, a top admin for Giganews, the Golden Frog front company run from the same Usenet servers for VyprVPN, and the other Usenet fronts Usenet.net, Supernews, Rhino Newsgroups, and Powerusenet. Another business front name they used when I was there is Powerhouse Management. Kibbey rolled out the OS images, kernels, patches, setup the entire VyprVPN service including the detailed logging which is easily accessible to him and the other government agents working there.
[...] This is my warning - that all of the content being downloaded and shared on the Usenet network is going through the authorities! Giganews customers are being logged! The log file is called the "gigauth" on their "cruncher" servers which logs every connection by every customer, which are then archived. This means Usenet uploaders are helping the feds monitor the distribution of Usenet content if their newsgroup provider peers with Giganews!
Giganews vehemently denied the allegation:
Giganews has always supported the Open Internet and fought for the personal freedoms that the Open Internet enables. Unfortunately, one of those freedoms is the ability for anyone to say almost anything they want, whether or not it is true or factual, and for others to believe it. Yesterday, Giganews was accused of being an FBI operation by an ex-employee through the well-known Cryptome.org. This accusation is completely false, and the accuser offers no evidence to support the claim.
Cryptome is standing by the leaker, Nick Caputo.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @07:01AM
If they wanted to lure people in, they are doing a piss-poor job of it with their VyprVPN product which is well known for keeping logs for at least 30 days.
The least they could do is lie and say they don't keep logs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arslan on Thursday September 18 2014, @07:03AM
I would think the FBI would have at least one...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @07:57AM
they probably have many
the FBI loves kiddy pr0nz
sick fucks
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nyder on Thursday September 18 2014, @08:13AM
Isn't that illegal?
Wouldn't that be like the FBI selling crack to the big dealers so they can keep tabs on who's doing the drugs?
Wouldn't that be like the FBI kidnapping young kids and then holding auctions to see who the human traffickers are?
I could go on, but I call this entrapment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Thursday September 18 2014, @08:26AM
In criminal law, entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a criminal offense that the person would have otherwise been unlikely to commit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @09:02AM
So sounds very much like entrapment... We can play what if games till the cows come home but at the end of the day we're none the wiser.
(Score: 5, Informative) by metamonkey on Thursday September 18 2014, @03:57PM
Entrapment:
FBI Agent to you: "Hey, wanna blow up a building? You should totally blow up a building. Here's some bombs. You should totally blow it up."
Not entrapment:
You to FBI Agent: "Hey, I totally want to blow up a building, and I heard you've got bombs. Gimme some bombs so I can go blow up that building."
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday September 18 2014, @09:57PM
Entrapment: FBI Agent to you: "Hey, wanna look at some kiddy porn? You should totally look at some kiddy porn. Here's some photos. You should totally look at them."
Using your example, how is this not entrapment?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Friday September 19 2014, @04:02PM
Because they're not encouraging you to commit an act you wouldn't do otherwise? They're just advertising that they have these things. They're not trying to convince you to take them. It's no different than a police officer in a hooker costume on the corner. So long as she's just standing there and not calling you over, it's not entrapment. You have to go looking for it.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday September 19 2014, @03:52AM
How was your nap, Mr. van Winkle? Allow me to help you understand the current definition of entrapment.
FBI Agent to you: "Hey, wanna blow up a building? You should totally blow up a building. Here's some bombs. You should totally blow it up."
That's not entrapment -- that's the FBI heroically stopping a terrorist plot to blow up a building^Wcity. Oh, and the fact that the terrorist plot proceeded so far before our heroes stopped it merely underscores the need for [fascist program du jour] to be expanded.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday September 18 2014, @10:25AM
I don't know about the feds but I can say the state cops in most states damned well DO entrap!
In the late 90s/early 00s (when the Win9X stank was still wafting around) I would use my off time at the shop I was working at to run the bosses channel dedicated to Windows problems, which it was clearly labeled that is what it was and all the posts were clearly labeled with such "sexy" topics as "Windows 98 won't boot" "WinMe black screen", "sound crashes", the usual shit you had to deal with with Win9X. Well one day out of the blue (I was told later by a county mountie customer it was because America's Most Wanted had made it a "thing") the people in the chat just started suddenly getting fucking harassed by this supposed 15 year old girl that wanted to talk dirty and every time I'd run a WHOIS on the IP sure enough, it would come back "city of" this or that so I ended up having to post at the top of the page "BEWARE POLICE PRETENDING TO BE YOUNG GIRLS ATTEMPTING TO CHAT" and I swear the last few months at that job I spent more time banhammering and cursing cops than I did helping folks with their PC problems! And before anybody tries to claim different yes they were cops, in fact the boss got a VERY asskissy letter apologizing delivered registered mail after he was on there telling one to knock it of only to be threatened by the cop for "interfering in a police investigation" or some shit. Cop picked the wrong one to fuck with since the bosses' brother was a county judge and big state muckety muck, one call to big bro and they suddenly were kissing bosses' ass like you wouldn't believe.
So I don't know if its as bad now (probably worse since we have seen the FBI run honeypots that don't record the referrer, making them ripe for trolls to use for a Rickroll) but at least when I was working chat they were entrapping like hell, trying to send everybody pics, trying to get them to talk dirty, they were fucking sleazy and all they got was being told to fuck off as the people there cared more about getting their PC fixed than dealing with their dumb asses.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday September 18 2014, @08:39AM
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @03:32PM
Once they have the suspects pinpointed, they can construct a parallel course of investigation and prosecute.
As for being worse than the other people, well, of course not, they are the "good guys"!. Everything goes after that.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @09:19PM
Wouldn't that be like the FBI selling crack to the big dealers so they can keep tabs on who's doing the drugs?
Not the FBI, drug importation is handled by the CIA. [fromthewilderness.com]
(Score: 1) by Zedrick on Thursday September 18 2014, @09:07AM
I don't believe it, but I don't really care if it turns out to be true. I'm not interested in child pornography, only movies and TV-series (which are perfectly legal to download but not upload where I live), and I sometimes use VyprVPN to access geo-restricted stuff.
The only complaint I have about Giganews is their "usenet browser" mimo which still feels lika an alpha-release after several years. But there are plenty of alternatives.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday September 18 2014, @12:03PM
Which country is that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @03:20PM
> Which country is that?
Nearly all of them. Copyright restricts distribution. But receiving copyrighted materials isn't a crime.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday September 18 2014, @12:11PM
Let them prove their practices by an on-site surprise audit?
In the meanwhile they can suffer the Usenet Death Penalty. But any usenet poster is likely aware that everything can be recorded. And NSA won't honor the X-No-Archive flag ..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Indy_Muad'dib on Thursday September 18 2014, @01:49PM
the bulk of filesharing networks are govt ran.
download any server.met for emule, the 38.107.160 subnet which is 95% of servers is based out of Quantico Virgina.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 18 2014, @02:19PM
Based on information and belief, Software Tool & Die, run by Barry Shein, shared offices with UUNET.
Based on information and belief, UUNET's main reason for existence was to act as a concentrator of USENET feeds to that the USENET could be monitored.
Based on information and belief, Software Tool & Die was scanning USENET for content and automatically operating upon that content as early as 1992.
Based on information and belief, Software Tool & Die is closely linked with CAMERA, the rabidly anti-Palestinian organization.
For more information, please see http://web.archive.org/web/20040408124353/http://www.orafraud.org/Oracle/terminator.html#Software Tool & Die & UUNET [archive.org].
Food for thought - all indications are that FBI's active infiltration of USENET has been going on for over two decades.