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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @12:24AM
"Knowing how someone unlocked the front door provides no information about what that person did after entering the house"
So the FBI had a key (or other unlocking device) to access the Tor browsers? Who gave them that device? Were they permitted to have access to that device?
... but that's essentially just repeating the view of the defence lawyers. What could this access lead to?
Knowing how someone unlocked the front door may provide information about what a person could do after entering the house.
Suppose the FBI have a key to an exclusive place, and none of the users of that place were aware of this access. This would mean the FBI can enter and leave at their leisure without anyone else knowing about it, and potentially without it being logged. This may give them the ability to plant things with impunity -- the only way things can get into that place is by being put there by the users, so if it's there then it must have come from one of the users.
If that access is not logged, then there's no guarantee that the FBI only made one access, and no guarantee that they did nothing other than observing things. It is established that malicious scripts were used, so why not plant files as well?