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from the the-user-is-the-weakest-link dept.
From the Wired article, "Instead of going for the easy bust, the FBI spent a solid year surveilling McGrath, while working with Justice Department lawyers on the legal framework for what would become Operation Torpedo. Finally, on November 2012, the feds swooped in on McGrath, seized his servers and spirited them away to an FBI office in Omaha.
A federal magistrate signed three separate search warrants: one for each of the three hidden services. The warrants authorized the FBI to modify the code on the servers to deliver the NIT to any computers that accessed the sites. The judge also allowed the FBI to delay notification to the targets for 30 days."
The FBI modified the .onion sites to serve a malicious script which was used to de-anonymize users. It's worth noting that only those using Tor improperly would be vulnerable. The FBI tracking payload required scripting to be enabled in the browser--a common blunder among inexperienced Tor users.
(Score: 2) by RaffArundel on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:14PM
Perhaps there was a threshold, otherwise there would be a lot of wasted court time if not. I can imagine the defense would definitely seize the click-bait approach - a "Rick-Roll" defense most likely, since I doubt there would be a lot of sympathy for goatse/tubgirl in the courtroom.
However, my concern is more around if using an anonymizing service lowered the bar. I could see the government saying "yeah, he clicked once, but WHY WAS HE HIDING HIS TRACKS IF IT WAS AN ACCIDENT?!?!" which sets a very bad precedent. I'm less concerned over hemocyanin's quote from TFA, which is much appreciated, that this was "an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment" from the defense lawyers. They actually obtained warrants and set up a sting operation under judicial review and approval. I like that better than the "secret-court-with-no-oversite-or-fake-a-911-call-to-send-in-the-overmiliterized-police" approach in other cases.
If it were up to me, I'd shut it down or replace the page with a big fat notice: "law enforcement was here". The idea of people doing this disgusts me, which is why it is hard to talk about "rights" rationally when there is a legitimate think-of-the-children argument. Sting operation would be tempting, but you are targeting consumers not creators, so not worth it IMO.