Absinth writes:
From MSNBC, "It (the site) attempted to operate as a 'discussion-only' forum where people could share their sexual interest in young boys without committing any specific offenses, thus operating 'below the radar' of police attention. Having made contact on the site, some members would move to more private channels, such as email, to exchange and share illegal images and films of children being abused.
The statement said Europol analysts had cracked the security features of a key computer server at the center of the network which uncovered the identities of suspected child sex offenders. And, after his arrest, the forum's Dutch administrator helped police break encryption measures that shielded users' identities, allowing police to begin their covert investigations.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement( ICE ) has also issued a news release."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:02PM
I read the same story as reported on the Guardian's website: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/18/fourt een-arrested-operating-child-porn-site-tor [theguardian.com]
How about quoting Tor's website as to why it exists? Only taking "authorities" words on what Tor is? The Guardian should know better, and if they're now lumping Tor in with bad guys only, we're screwed plain and simple.
I am very sad to see -- of ALL publications -- the Guardian emphasize Tor was being used without giving some background into what Tor is so people have context. The comments by the public to the story are "I don't know what Tor is but I assume it's only used by criminals, etc...". I use Tor Browser Bundle. Will I never get another job due to failed background checks because my ISP reports I'm hitting Tor entry nodes??
Who here uses Tor Browser Bundle? I've seen comments on THIS site that folks are afraid to use it, or don't trust it. Am I alone in this? If the folks who frequent this website don't support Tor it seems it should not be supported, from a purely pragmatic point of view. I've actively supported Tor in the past, and still do. Am I being stupid? I have a family and live in the US.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:09PM
Yes, it's official, the "Darknet" is now a single network, that is also known as Tor: they have become synonymous in the eyes of the US ICE (from the link):
(Score: 3, Informative) by CoolHand on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:45PM
I agree that the government seems to be starting a campaign of FUD against our last vestiges of freedom and privacy... What can do, though, except to ignore that and continue doing the right thing?
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday March 19 2014, @11:52PM
If you "keep doing the right thing" you better not be in the USA, as I talked to a friend in the state crime lab when Tor and Freenet first made headlines and he says there is a VERY real chance that using them could get you decades in prison.
The reason why is this...child porn distribution laws were written when distributing involved making a hard copy and actually sending it to someone and they have never been updated to reflect the Internet age. What does that have to do with Tor? Simple, if I ask you to take a box from here to the next town over but don't hand you the key to the box and the cops pull you over and find drugs and CP in the box? You are an accomplice and accessory after the fact to cp distribution since you helped to make it happen....see the problem now? You are running an exit node and a guy requests CP based on the laws of many states YOU are the distributor as much as the website, the same goes for Freenet and their cache. Doesn't matter that you can't personally get access to the cache anymore than you having the key to the box matters, you helped a crime be committed so you are going to prison.
Here is the part that will REALLY piss you off.....its ALL FOR NOTHING. That is right, even LEOs know its a joke, a waste of time, they are destroying civil liberties for no gains at all. Know where the most CP comes from? Not the net...its USPS and Fed Ex. That is right, they trade encrypted DVDs. My friend has stacks of 'em, without the passwords they are paperweights and by using mail drops its damned near unstoppable. The ones they catch over the net are more than 90% according to my friend "socially retarded porn addicts" which if you were to lock them into a room with a child would run to the nearest corner and try to claw their way out of the room as they have as little contact with living people as humanly possible. One they busted hadn't left his house since 1994 and had to be tranqed like an animal.
So there ya have it, use any of that software and depending on the state you could be looking at as much as 60 years. That is what happens when you make pictures and/or descriptions of a crime equal to or greater than a crime itself, you have to mangle precedent and the law so badly to do so that you give prosecutors a gap they can drive a truck through and since "suspected child pornographer" makes for great headlines and helps their political careers they have no reason not to go for it and use it whenever possible. He said he didn't know how many that his lab threw into prison for 50+ years that were so obviously mentally ill that it wasn't even funny and since the ones actually raping the kids and filming this shit are often halfway around the world nobody will pay to follow the actual crime back to its source. he is so disgusted with it he is looking for another job, he said 4 years of therapy from having to look at this shit only to know you aren't making a damned bit of difference is just too much for him.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by melikamp on Thursday March 20 2014, @01:07AM
child porn distribution laws were written by sex-crazy prudes who did not believe in the freedom of expression by individuals, be it via talking, printing, or (God forbid) Internet posting. One immediate consequence of these laws is that it is not possible to have an honest and informed discussion about child abuse, or even to report the evidence of child abuse without a very real risk of a book being thrown at you. IMHO, it is far from coincidental that the same world-wide organization that spreads an idiotic and twisted moral teaching about sex is being implicated in institutionalized child abuse.
There, fixed it for you.
To drag the Internet into this discussion is to miss the point. If it is legal to slice people in half with chainsaws in videogames... if it is legal to share movies of people killing each other, then it should be legal to share pictures of anything. Not commercially. Not taking the pictures. Not abusing children (or anyone, for that matter). But there is absolutely no coherent argument that can be made for making it illegal to share a photo of a person, other than something related to privacy.
(Score: 1) by DNied on Thursday March 20 2014, @08:52AM
If you only run the TOR browser, you aren't an exit node.
(Score: 1) by Hairyfeet on Thursday March 20 2014, @07:12PM
But without exit nodes the whole system doesn't work. If what we have seen lately is true more and more of the exit nodes are being run by nasty actors like the NSA so you may as well just be sending it straight to the government and cut out the middle man.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by tathra on Monday March 24 2014, @01:09AM
So does that mean we can charge the CIA/NSA/what have you with distribution of child porn?
I know its the mantra of the DEA and all, but you can not break the law to enforce it. Breaking the law is illegal by definition.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:51PM
I don't see what's wrong with the statement you've quoted. Tor does "allow" (enhance) online anonymity by routing internet traffic in a way that conceals the user's location (IP address), doesn't it?
I don't see the article making any statement on why Tor exists. It doesn't go out of its way to imply "as used by criminals!"
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Insightful) by koja on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:51PM
Honestly I am not running a Tor relay just because I don't want SOME traffic it might be used for. Less than 100% libertarian probably...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:20PM
I ran a TOR node for about 1 day.
I started digging around on the 'darknets' and 'websites'. The crap on there is the most seedy of seedy. I came quickly to the conclusion I did not want to help these people out. I thought I could help people in other countries get access to information. What I found was it may be used for that. But its main purpose is to break laws and be 'anonymous' while you do it. It did not fit my moral compass at all. Shame :(
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:17PM
That is the unfortunate reality. The same tools that provide a measure of shelter to oppressed people under the thumb of tyrannical governments, pretty much by necessity can also be used to shelter scum wishing to hide their actions from more legitimate authorities. I don't really see any other option, especially considering just how blurry the line can be between tyrants and legitimate authorities.
So the question becomes, which is more important? To give shelter to those with a legitimate need, or to deny it to the scum?
I suppose we could try things like TOR routing blacklists that deny access to know scum-oriented sites, but even if such a thing is technically feasible (I don't know) that seems like something that would be prone to lots of abuse, while being only mildly effective - much like the internet porn filters various governments have tried to implement.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @04:59PM
> So the question becomes, which is more important?
> To give shelter to those with a legitimate need, or to deny it to the scum?
There will always be scum, even in the most totalitarian system they will be there, if nothing else they will insert themselves into the system itself under the guise of being responsible for stopping scum and using that privileged access for their own ends. The oppressed, by definition, won't have that kind of ease of access.
(Score: 1) by idetuxs on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:24PM
Even? I read your next sentence but, totalitarian system aren't supposed to stop scum. Not at all. That's not in the definition.
If you think totalitarian governments stop bad people. Then the media (or whoever) have done a good job.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:52PM
Of course that's what totalitarian systems are for. That's ALWAYS the justification they hang their hat on. And it sort of works too, for example you could walk the streets of moscow in the dead of the night under the USSR without fear of being mugged or raped, that's not true now. The fact that the people running them also get a lot of benefit out of the arrangement does not negate that. Two things can be true at the same time. In fact, the world is rarely ever black and white.
(Score: 1) by tathra on Monday March 24 2014, @01:15AM
their definition of "scum" isnt the same as yours.
(Score: 1) by idetuxs on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:28PM
Mod up please.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:50PM
> I came quickly to the conclusion I did not want to help these people out.
Do you have a problem paying your taxes? They pay for public roads that child molesters drive their victims on. What about all the innocent people killed in wars you funded?
What about the next snowden? Would you prefer that he not be able to confidentially expose official malfeasance if it means some pedos have to work even harder to stay underground?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @04:57PM
Do you have a problem paying your taxes?
That is a spurious argument and you know it.
The *intended* use of tor is to be anonymous. However, most people just use it to do things that are basically illegal. Using a road is not the same thing and you know it. You are using the 'buh buh buh this other case' argument. Which is basically the same as saying 'but all my friends are doing it'.
What about the next snowden?
What about him? Notice he didnt really use TOR? For good reason. His data was better handed off to some reporter.
Would you prefer that he not be able to confidentially expose official malfeasance
It is not my job to make it easier or harder for law enforcement to do its job. You are using the argument that we should make it easier for them to do their jobs using the very tool intended to help people out to hide from them?
My beef with TOR was it is sold as a 'save the people from oppression' tool. When we all can log in and see with our own eyes what is going on.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:03PM
> That is a spurious argument and you know it.
No, that is a spurious argument and you should know it because you didn't bother to explain why. Declarations without support are not valid arguments, if anything they are an admission that you can't actually support your claim.
See how I just provided you with an example of how to do it correctly?
Do what I say and what I do! Here's another one:
> Notice he didnt really use TOR? For good reason. His data was better handed off to some reporter.
Forest and trees man! Snowden was an expert in the technology, the tor browser bundle is designed for people who are not experts. Expecting all whistleblowers have that kind of technical expertise is to make modern whistleblowing impractical.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dotdotdot on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:32PM
This. I couldn't sleep at night if even 1% of the traffic I was relaying was this kind of stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @04:05PM
> Less than 100% libertarian probably...
Certainly less than 100% anarchist.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:31PM
That definition doesn't seem judgemental at all to me. I think you're overreacting.
(Score: 0) by bluefoxicy on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:46PM
What bothers me more is the summary indicates that the feds hacked into some computers and then arrested a bunch of people. Feds r haxing ur computr nao?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @06:29PM
Do you live in a cave dude? It's public knowledge the feds do attack computers now, on a massive scale, in an automated way. Watch http://cdn.media.ccc.de/congress/2013/mp4-lq/30c3- 5713-en-de-To_Protect_And_Infect_Part_2_h264-iprod .mp4 [media.ccc.de]
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Thursday March 20 2014, @02:11AM
Yeah, maybe they should've used DE-Mail [media.ccc.de] for their private communication...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @05:53PM
Maybe the text changed, but right now the article just says:
"The underground website was a hidden service board on the Tor network of Darknet, investigators said, referring to a hidden online network sometimes used for illicit activities. "
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bluefoxicy on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:55PM
I'm not sure how to address this.
The Dutch administrator who was arrested was running a site for people to discuss their... uh... interests? That's kind of a facet of self, immutable. You can't really arrest people for being pedophiles, it's not right. It'd be like arresting people for being turned on by rape fantasies because rape is bad.
The administrator set up a discussion forum. If he wasn't actively facilitating exchange of child pornography, and if the forum members weren't actively detailing their sexual exploits (questionable itself: are they just talking tough about things that never really happened?), then he's not really party to any crime. Summary indicates that members would move off-list to discuss things privately and exchange illegal materials.
What I see here is along the lines of "you've done nothing actually illegal or really wrong; but we don't like you and are going to somehow pin all kinds of shit to you so we can punish you for being weird and icky." Living in a world where we've largely agreed that we have no business treating people bad because they have attributes we dislike, I find this disturbing. Until there's intent to commit a crime (conspiracy) or involvement in an actual crime, people should be free of legal harassment.
Hopefully something is missing in this story, otherwise how am I not next because "oh you know all that scary hacker shit, you have things that could steal credit cards, we should arrest you for like... hacker." I've been banned from places for discussing penetration testing before--not for listing tools and techniques, but for mentioning that I worked for a company that did a security audit in which we broke into some power company's server, found it wasn't on a DMZ, and proceeded to embed deep into their core network and hijack their domain controller and exchange server. "OH U R HACKER! NO HACKERS HERE *BANHAMMER*"
Germany had a law going on the books that would send the police at you for discussing security vulnerabilities, so you know it could happen. First the freaky people who tolerate pedophiles, then the freaky people who can break your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Wednesday March 19 2014, @04:05PM
Penalizing a law-abiding venue for the illegal actions of those present is nothing new. There's a pub not far from where I live that has been closed down countless times for drugs offenses committed on the premises by the clientele. The reputation this pub has with the local police means that, among the 4 pubs in a 100-yard radius, it's the only one that gets visits from undercover officers soliciting narcotics.
I wonder how long it'll be before being caught running a TOR exit node gets you put on the sex offenders register...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:55PM
> offenses committed on the premises by the clientele
That is how your example is different from this case.