SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The FBI is not eager to reveal (more) details about methods it used to identify Tor users as part of a child pornography case. FBI's Operation Torpedo previously unmasked Tor users by serving them malicious scripts from secretly seized .onion sites.
The FBI is resisting calls to reveal how it identified people who used a child pornography site on the Tor anonymising network. The agency was ordered to share details by a Judge presiding over a case involving one alleged user of the site. Defence lawyers said they need the information to see if the FBI exceeded its authority when indentifying users. But the Department of Justice (DoJ), acting for the FBI, said the details were irrelevant to the case. "Knowing how someone unlocked the front door provides no information about what that person did after entering the house," wrote FBI agent Daniel Alfin in court papers filed by the DoJ which were excerpted on the Vice news site.
The Judge ordered the FBI to hand over details during a court hearing in late February. The court case revolves around a "sting" the FBI carried out in early 2015 when it seized a Tor-based site called Playpen that traded in images and videos of child sexual abuse. The agency kept the site going for 13 days and used it to grab information about visitors who took part in discussion threads about images of child abuse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:28PM
No, it doesn't have to operate that way, it was officially decided to operate that way because the alternative that was seen as equally just was to convict the officer of criminal activity on the ground of officially admitted testimony.
Personally, I'm more in favor of the second option, but that's not what the courts decided.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday April 01 2016, @12:59AM
Personally, I'm more in favor of the second option, but that's not what the courts decided.
The second option would allow martyrs to illegally collect evidence to convict someone even if we properly held cops accountable, which we probably wouldn't. I care more about stopping abuses of government power than stopping bad guys.