FBI Hunt For Child Porn Thwarted By Tor 714
v3rgEz writes "Documents released by the FBI provide an unusual inside look at how the agency is struggling to penetrate 'darknet' Onion sites routed through Tor, the online privacy tool funded in part by government grants to help global activists. In this case, agents were unable to pursue specific leads about an easily available child pornography site, while files withheld indicate that the FBI has ongoing investigations tied to the Silk Road marketplace, a popular, anonymous Tor site for buying and selling drugs and other illegal materials."
Sounds similar to the problems that plagued freenet.
FBI angry? (Score:4, Funny)
FBI SMASH TOR!
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's Pure Evil, and I don't like it. Not to mention that it might encourage the creation of more (and we need to arrest people based on maybes and blame them for the actions of others even if they didn't pay them a single cent). Oh, and it's far easier to catch people who look at pictures than it is to stop those who are doing the molesting.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7_zMdNRAmo [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8APlx9btTn8 [youtube.com]
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're posting links to videos (without including any description of what's in the video) in the comments to a child porn story???
As has been pointed out above, if one of them happens to be kiddie porn, everyone who clicks on it suddenly become a sex offender (at least in the US) through no fault of their own. Maybe that was your point, i don't know.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just pictures. Better the creeps inside jacking off than outside doing it personally. Isn't it time to get the government out of the bedroom?
If you've ever stumbled onto CP through any of the random image polling scripts from the image sites, what you see can be soul crushing. The looks on the children's faces are that of absolute depression and mental anguish. These children never had the option to say 'no' or reject what was happening to them... they were forced into their situation and what is happening to them will destroy their entire futures. They didn't start doing drugs and have to resort to porn to pay for their addictions, they were kidnapped and didn't know what was happening until their childhoods were irrevocably destroyed.
I support tracking down anyone who is sharing these images, since it leads to either one single person not sharing them with others, or (hopefully) maybe to the source. Yes, some people who are deprived of images will proceed to attempting abductions in real life; BUT these same people have a fairly high chance of doing the same thing with or without pictures. The larger idea of stopping these pictures from going out is to stop the BUSINESSES of child porn. There are people that kidnap and rape children just because they get paid for it. That is one of the things the government is trying to stop. Take away the subscribers and even if you can never find the source, at least the businesses stop getting paid and hopefully do less abuse to children.
TOR is awesome... it allows people in countries that are locked down to communicate freely and see beyond the propaganda that their governments are forcing on them; unfortunately though, in a system with absolute anonymity there will be those sick individuals that post and share images that society as a whole knows are horrible. Some of those will never be traceable, and that is sad but also the entire point of the TOR project. I would like to be able to trace them and shut them down, but that same ability would allow oppressive governments to shut down whatever they didn't like when they see dissenting opinions.
One other point: I have read the thread so far and it seems that a large portion of the people are complaining that Japanese hentai are what people get busted for. While that may be true in rare occurrences like someone sharing gigabytes of CP manga... I've worked with law enforcement on CP cases, and they really don't care that much about comics. Yes it's part of the law, but at least in the US, the FBI normally goes after the people with REAL CP and not cartoons. And even then, they go after the people with true collections and not 1-2 images in their cache that they stumbled into while searching random sites. Please link me to a news article that proves me wrong if people are getting busted for single images, since I am only an individual person and could have missed something. And before someone says "they don't report on small time CP busts," yes they do. Every time I've been involved with a CP case, the media is all over it as soon as they find out. They love to put the 'bad guy gets busted' stories in the news.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
One other point: I have read the thread so far and it seems that a large portion of the people are complaining that Japanese hentai are what people get busted for. While that may be true in rare occurrences like someone sharing gigabytes of CP manga... I've worked with law enforcement on CP cases, and they really don't care that much about comics. Yes it's part of the law, but at least in the US, the FBI normally goes after the people with REAL CP and not cartoons. And even then, they go after the people with true collections and not 1-2 images in their cache that they stumbled into while searching random sites. Please link me to a news article that proves me wrong if people are getting busted for single images, since I am only an individual person and could have missed something. And before someone says "they don't report on small time CP busts," yes they do. Every time I've been involved with a CP case, the media is all over it as soon as they find out. They love to put the 'bad guy gets busted' stories in the news.
If they don't care about comics, why are the comics illegal. There is no harm in sharing even gigabytes of hentai images and the law that allows busting people for possesing/sharing virtual child porn is clearly bad. And yes, there are people who had problems just for small amount of hentai images, see here: http://www.animenation.net/blog/2010/08/02/sweden-fines-translator-for-having-hentai-images/ [animenation.net] (arrested for one scanlation) or here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.175488-Hentai-Collector-Sentenced-to-Jail-Over-Obscene-Material?page=1 [escapistmagazine.com] (arrested for six books)
It's history repeating itself again. We saw similar nonsense when Lolita from Nabokov or Howl from Gingsberg were initialy published. How many people will need to be busted for lawmakers to get the the idea that the illegality of something must be based on it's level of social dangerousness and not on some false and ever-changing morality? The proponents of those bans often say that hentai/Howl/Lolita/whatever has no artistic value and is obscene, so it should be illegal, but who are they to judge the artistic value of something? And even if something realy has no artistic value, is it enough to justify its ilegality if it is otherwise harmless? I don't think so.
I agree with the rest of your post (creation and sharing of child porn involving real children should be prosecuted, maybe with some exceptions to cover cases like 17 years old partners e-mailing nude images of themself to each other).
HOW TO TAKE DOWN TOR FOR AMERCIA (Score:5, Insightful)
Seed "dark sites" with child porn.
Then, stop it "for the children".
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
So once a person rapes the child, there is no reason to even consider letting the child go. After all, the punishment for murder is the same, so why increase the risk of getting caught by letting the kid go?
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this "letting the kid go" thing you are talking about? The vast majority of child abuse happens in the home, by the parents.. Kids getting abducted and raped is pretty much the exception as far as I know. People don't abuse kids because they want to hurt them, they do it because they [think they] love them.. and killing is rarely going to be a part of that
Not to mention, that letting the kid live has other advantages.. firstly, you told them not to tell and you might get away with it (vs a dead kid is pretty obvious) and secondly, you might get to do them again (you can do that with dead kids but not for long I guess).
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
As horrible as child abuse is, it is utterly irrational grandstanding to say that child abuse is worse than murder. If I asked you if you would rather be raped or killed, do you really mean to tell me that you would answer "killed"? If not, then murder is worse than any form of abuse. The heinousness of a crime is directly proportional to its effect on the victim. There can be no crime more heinous, therefore, than any crime that deprives the victim of his or her existence unwillingly.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Child abuse is special because it occurs when a child's personality and identity is developing. Severe mental disorders often occur due to child abuse, especially repeated child abuse. One example is borderline personality disorder which occurs more often among children who are repeatedly raped.
Severe mental disorders don't always occur, but the fact the the worst types of mental disorders occur to child abuse victims makes it a special type of crime. It elevates it above crimes like assault and rape (which
Re: (Score:3)
Do you still wish to die? If so, do you think everyone else feels that way? I think the problem with murder is that the person is simply gone, and there is absolutely no way they can recover from that (as in, live anything like a normal life in any way).
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things:
First, although this isn't an extremely rare reaction to abuse, it is by no means the norm. The sex abuse victims I've known (admittedly a small sample size) have not wished that they were dead. Such a reaction is not healthy, and can get worse with time. If you truly feel that way, please seek proper counseling from a trained medical professional. Help brings hope. You can recover from this.
Second, not to diminish your experience in any way, but what you're describing is a fairly well-understood psychological phenomenon. The problem with your argument is that the reaction you describe isn't limited to sexual abuse (or even actual abuse). A certain subset of the population reacts in this way because of bullying, physical abuse, serious financial losses, relationship breakups, and any number of other crises in their lives.
Clearly a guy dumping his girlfriend isn't guilty of something as heinous as murder, or else we're all in trouble. Yet for some people, it is just as bad. For this reason, you cannot judge a crime's heinousness based on how a particular individual is affected by the crime, but rather based on the typical effect. Most people would rather live than die, including most victims, and calling abuse a worse crime than murder is essentially claiming that even the abuse victims who do not feel that they would rather have died would still have been better off dead.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not even remotely a valid interpretation of what I said. What I said was that the fundamental problem with the argument that death is preferable to child molestation is that in the vast majority of cases it isn't. When it is, it is caused by either the circumstances being particularly heinous or the victim being particularly susceptible.
The heinousness of a crime in the general sense should not be gauged based upon unusually extreme examples of that crime. It is a crime to rob a bank. It is a crime to rob a bank by dropping an atomic bomb on it and sucking up the molten gold using a giant vacuum cleaner. Robbing a bank is not (typically) tantamount in heinousness to nuking a city.
The victim being particularly susceptible/vulnerable, as a rule, means that the victim needs more/better counseling, not that the crime was more heinous (unless the reason for choosing that victim was because the victim was particularly susceptible/vulnerable).
At no point did I suggest that anyone "suck it up". Quite the opposite. The only acceptable response to a post like that is to recommend professional counseling. Suicidal thoughts are nothing to screw around with.
You parsed that sentence wrong, though I'll admit that my elision of two implied words could cause someone to read it that way. Reinsert the implied words "limited to" and you'll understand the intended meaning:
...the reaction you describe isn't limited to sexual abuse (or even limited to actual abuse).
In other words, not only is it not limited to the sexual abuse (a narrow category), but it is further not even limited to actual abuse (a broader category that includes the former). Many people experience those symptoms even in some situations where they merely perceive abuse, but no actual abuse has taken place. The key point was that until the person (whether an actual victim or not) chooses to stop acting like a victim, no healing can take place, and the fact that some people react in this way to any one particular crime is irrelevant in determining its heinousness because some people react that way to every crime to some extent (and to many, many things that are not crimes).
Re: (Score:3)
I was sexually abused as a child. I wish I had been killed instead.
If you *ACTUALLY* wished for this then you would have offed yourself shortly after. The fact is that people throw the words "I wish I'd been killed instead" around so much that it actually has no meaning anymore. The only people who really wish this cease to live.
So why are you still alive?
I'm making some assumptions here. For one you're on the internet browsing slashdot, your spelling and grammar are good so it looks like you've gotten to be a functioning member of society. Why do that if you would rather
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was sexually abused as a kid. It did fuck me up a bit, but not too badly, and I got over it. I'm now a relatively happy, well adjusted person - currently single, but have had numerous normal, healthy relationships.
If you're seriously suggesting that I'd be better off dead, you can go fuck yourself.
CP produced without sexual abuse of children (Score:5, Informative)
innocence kids were raped to make it
Not under some countries' definitions of child pornography, which include drawings produced entirely without the involvement of children.
Re:CP produced without sexual abuse of children (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is indeed/ totally ridiculous.
Child abuse (sexual or violent or otherwise) is a crime, and rightfully so.
Possessing recordings of a crime (images, video, whatever), is usually not a crime (though I'm not so sure about those "snuff movies" or whatever they're called where people are actually killed in the process of making them).
Creating or owning drawings of a crime that never took place for real, should not be a crime. That'd fall under freedom of speech (with possible limits where specific individuals or groups are targeted).
What you see in movie theatres are often rather violent movies (especially coming out of Hollywood): people being murdered is something you very commonly see. Now I assume those people don't actually die, yet they do their best to make it look as if they really die. With lots of blood and so. A crime, but the recording of it is no problem at all.
Similar for erotic movies. A bit less accepted by many people, the porn industry is thriving. And that also includes movies depicting rape and possibly other crimes. This again is also considered totally legal. Now these people are not actually being raped as in they take part in the scene consensually (consent given in return for a big enough cheque), yet again the movie makers do their best to make it look like the actual crime is taking place.
In case of porn involving minors receiving consent is not possible, so the act is illegal, and the people involved should be tracked down and prosecuted. The evidence of the crime is there: the movie, presumably shot in high resolution, good quality; not grainy surveillance camera stuff.
It'd be rather more effective for police to try to track down where this move was shot, who was involved shooting it, and prosecute those people. This should be relatively easy with the top-notch video evidence that is available of the crime.
Re:The RightThingToDo(TM). (Score:5, Interesting)
"I now firmly believe it should be a offence to knowingly posses what the GP described (images of pre-pubecent child rape, or for that matter any rape). Yes that opinion puts a limit on free speech but it does not have to limit the visual and theatrical arts. Yes it's debatable if jacking off to CP is harmful/helpful to society, but contrary to popular opinion around here we do in fact live in a democracy and the vast majority of the population (including me) think prosecuting these people who jack off to rape videos is The RightThingToDo(TM), like me they are not going to change their minds just because someone, somewhere, (allegedly) abuses the justice system once in a blue moon*."
A couple of things....
First, I feel bad for pedophiles. I didn't used to really, in fact I never really thought about it until I was hanging out with some friends and ended up watching that train wreck "to catch a predator". The biggest alcoholic in the group had one of those clarity moments and said "boy, for all my bad addictions, I am so glad I don't have that desire" (though, admittedly I have seen them claim people on that show were going to meet "kids" as old as 16, which, is getting into those fuzzy areas...shit 16 is legal here...)
You know...I am glad I don't either. Yes, as much as I want to be against law in all cases, its good to stop the rape of children, and dealing with the people who do that is a good thing, and justified. The ones who just jack off to kids... yah maybe they are a danger and need to be dealt with too but... there is a difference in action and, arn't these people sick? It seems like, prison isn't exactly the right answer, though, leaving them be is probably not a good idea either.
Now that said... "but contrary to popular opinion around here we do in fact live in a democracy and the vast majority of the population (including me) think prosecuting these people who jack off to rape videos is The RightThingToDo(TM)"
No, its a constitutional democracy, and actually a republic. The point of a constitution is that majority opinion is great for many things but, is not the right way to decide civil rights, because it really means not having them. It takes a lot more than majority opinion to take those away, or it was supposed to. Turns out the system can be pretty well gamed when few understand and less care.... and has been.
Re:The RightThingToDo(TM). (Score:5, Interesting)
The fucked up part is it's worse than you describe. If you're a pedophile, you can't even seek help; if you mention your desires to a counselor, it is immediately to be considered as though you have described a planned crime in detail and to be reported to police immediately following the session. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what happens after that.
So, if you have ever find yourself sexually attracted to a minor, you're kind of screwed. If you don't see anything wrong with it and you act on it, you're probably going away for that. If you do see something wrong with it and seek help, you're probably going away for that.
Prison is an eventuality for a pedophile. If you seek help, you will be reported and arrested; if you don't seek help, you will eventually act on it.
Re:The RightThingToDo(TM). (Score:5, Insightful)
Enforcement doesn't seem appropriate, let along not being enough.
Let me try on a few hats, here (and make it clear that I am wearing a hat, that all that comes with that hat goes away once I remove it). Let's just suppose, for a moment, that I'm a drug addict.
Now, I recognize that using drugs is destroying my life, so I seek help. I go speak to a counselor and tell them I have these urges and I need help ot figure out why I have them and what I can do to essentially make them go away. They help me and I no longer feel that I need to use drugs.
Now, let me remove that hat and let's suppose, for a moment, that I'm a pedophile.
Now, I recognize that actually doing anything with or to a child would irreparably harm them, so I seek help. I go speak to a counselor and tell them I have these urges and I need help ot figure out why I have them and what I can do to essentially make them go away. Later that day, I am arrested, my home raided, all of my family photo albums and computer equipment confiscated to be searched for images of child porn. A thumbnail of a girl of unverifiable age is found in my browser cache, I'm tried and convicted on charges of posession of child pornography and face 5 years in prison.
Why? I never touched a child, the girl in the image (a thumbnail, with no accompanying full-size image found in my browser cache, indicating that I likely never even looked at it or knew it was there) may well have been over 18, and I was seeking help so that I would not harm anyone. I did nothing wrong. So, why?
Now, let me remove that hat. I rather enjoy my freedom and situations similar to the one I describe above have happened in my country.
Re:The RightThingToDo(TM). (Score:4, Informative)
A common tactic used by pedophiles is to trivialise the offense by broadening the definition until it becomes meaningless, for example the congressman who was caught sending sexually explicit texts to 14yo boys
That's not pedophilia. It's still wrong, but it's absolutely *not* pedophilia. Pedophilia is an attraction to pre-pubescent (or pre-pubescent-looking) children. If you're attracted to tits and shapely hips, you're not a pedophile. If you're attracted to fully functional penises, you're not a pedophile.
The reason I piss in the wind to point this out is that misusing the word 'pedophile' cheapens its meaning. Calling someone who has a relationship/flirts with teenagers a pedophile lumps them in with people who molest 4-year-olds, when reality is that the things are *completely different*.
--Jeremy
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with OP. Assuming you didn't compensate the producer of the images, you in no way contributed to the market of child pornography. In saying this, I in no way condone the production of this material or in any way suggest that I like the stuff (I do not).
The problem I have is that mere possession of images should never be illegal in my opinion. The reason I say this is because it is extremely easy to accidentally download this material. I don't think people's lives should be ruined because they clicked on a bad link accidentally. The mere accusation can pretty much ruin your life, and there certainly have been cases where this has happened.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming you didn't compensate the producer of the images, you in no way contributed to the market of child pornography.
I don't disagree with most of your points except your first. The fact others download and view the material provide validation and acceptance to the producers which probably is worth far more than money, and it also contributes to a sense of normalization of their behavior for all participants. Taking away money won't stop CP any more than taking away all CP will stop child sexual abuse but it does help discourage it.
Re: (Score:3)
but it does help discourage it.
I don't believe the fact that it might help discourage it warrants prosecuting the people who didn't even rape anyone over maybes (maybe they encouraged more child porn to be made). I think it's just a waste of time.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think where things go a bit astray is that authorities view child pornography almost exactly like they do the drug trade. You have producers, dealers, and users.
Producers of drugs and child pornography fill the same basic role: they create a product for which there is a demand.
Dealers are a little different. Drug dealers, of course, take money in exchange for the drugs. Child porn "dealers," on the other hand, would be those running websites, most of which are free. I think very few people are making any actual money from it.
Then you have the users/consumers. When it comes to drugs, users consume the drugs themselves (usually.) Since child porn has gone almost 100% digital, though, there is no "consumption" in the sense that a person uses up a finite product. People who view child porn can also share it (read: make copies) so they can also be "dealers."
Authorities try to go after all three tiers in the child porn market, just like they do with drugs, seemingly failing to realize that money is not a key factor in child porn the way it is with drugs. It makes the most sense to focus on the producers of child porn, and those who operate websites distributing it, rather than people who may have downloaded it. In other words: attack it the way copyright infringement is generally attacked, by going after those who make the infringement possible rather than trying to hunt down large numbers of individual infringers. (This is not meant to draw any kind of moral parallel between copyright infringement and child porn, nor between drug use and child porn, it's just about enforcement strategy.)
On the other hand, I can kind of see why they go after individual users: publicly embarrassing people either due to their drug use or taste for child porn could be seen as a significant deterrent. But then that's really nothing to do with any kind of justice, it's just a cynical use of the system to make people behave a certain way.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
The fact others download and view the material provide validation and acceptance to the producers which probably is worth far more than money
I think you are seriously overestimating how valuable it is for a child abuser to know that there are people who like watching what he is doing. Producing and distributing child sex abuse imagery is one of the riskiest things a person can do -- almost no countries would hesitate to imprison people for it, and the jail sentences are often long or indefinite. Emotional validation is nowhere near sufficient to justify taking such risks; money or some other form of trade (e.g. one abuser trading new pictures with another) is basically a necessity.
Sure, there is the occasional idiot who produces child abuse images for the reason you stated; such people are sometimes caught when the police are going after low-hanging fruit i.e. people whose only crime is possession of child abuse images. The really dangerous people are the ones who are not so stupid, the ones who take real precautions and who demand some form of payment for their images/videos. My understanding is that most of the child abuse imagery out there today was produced by that second category, by the people who are turning it into an enterprise of sorts. Those were the sort of people involved with Dreamboard (for those who do not remember, this was a truly depraved website for trading images of child abuse that was recently taken down), the sort involved with Yardbird (a group that used anonymous remailers and Usenet, which had escaped notice by the police until one of their members was inadvertently arrested), the sort who run "modeling" agencies in Eastern Europe, and so forth.
The problem, of course, is that the sort of people I described above are not doing the sort of stupid things that allows the police to catch "low hanging fruit." These are not people who share their images on Kazaa (the FBI has an ongoing program to catch people who do), they are the sort of people who know how to mitigate and manage risk and how to use opsec to protect themselves. Catching them is a challenge, which is why it only happens rarely and only after years of investigative work.
Of course, law enforcement agencies need to keep up their arrest numbers and need to remind people that they are catching "pedophiles." Thus you see efforts to catch low-hanging fruit, e.g. honeypot websites, efforts to catch people who download sex abuse images from peer-to-peer networks, arrests for possession of such images. These efforts do little to combat the production of child abuse imagery, and only catch idiots and people who were either curious or who just wanted to satisfy some bizarre urge. People who produce child abuse imagery have no way to count how many people are sharing those images on peer to peer networks, so even if your point were valid, such efforts are pointless.
The original reason for making the possession of child abuse imagery illegal was the assumption (which at the time was valid) that anyone who possesses such imagery must have purchased it. That assumption is not valid in this century; I would be willing to be that the majority of people who possess child abuse imagery did not pay for it or in any way contribute to its production. We may find the images disturbing (and I would be suspicious of someone who does not), we may have difficulty understanding why anyone would want to masturbate to such imagery, we may not understand why people who collect and create detailed categories of such imagery, but we should not allow our disgust or our poor understanding of psychology lead us to assume that the low-hanging fruit represents a serious threat to children. There is a difference between someone with perverse fantasies and someone who is actually harming children.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's worst is that we reach the point where raping a child and killing the child comes up with almost the same jail time. So what's the logical thing to do if you're a rapist?
Hint: A dead witness cannot testify.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
A good friend of mine is serving 180 months for child pornography. Did he produce it? Sell it? Rape children? No. He ran an IRC fileserver and it was uploaded by a user. His upload directory was accessible, which is admittedly an idiotic thing to do. Some FBI agent across the country found it on his server and started the ball rolling. Eventually his house was stormed by agents and all computer equipment seized. He had deleted the files long before this point, but of course they were easily recovered.
He was charged with four (or five? Been a few years) offenses, all of which carried a sentencing recommendation of five years. All but one that is -- advertising. This charge was included as the behavior of an IRC file server (i.e. "Type !hotxxxpics to access my server") is considered by the law as advertising. The majority of the charges violate 18 USC 2252A which deals with possession. The advertisement charge violates 18 USC 2251 which deals mostly with creating and selling. Everything would've been covered with a five year sentence, but the advertisement pushed it to fifteen. The feds have been tossing this advertisement charge in wherever they can get away with it to raise the mandatory sentence. Google it. Or don't, as you'll likely be red flagged by some FBI drone.
All court proceedings occurred in the state where the FBI office is located despite the fact that there is a federal courthouse in a town less than an hour from here. A request for change of venue was denied. Your tax dollars paid to buy him bus tickets across the country, food and lodging while he was there, and bus tickets back. Upon the urging of his federal public defender, he eventually plead guilty. As noted by his PD, the 180 month sentence is higher than the sentence recommendation for voluntary manslaughter or conspiracy to commit murder.
This friend is a decent person, father of three, whose life has been functionally ruined. He left his children in elementary school, and will be released as they finish college. He did something ridiculously stupid and will pay for it for the rest of his life as he is subject to "lifetime supervised release." He's met murderers and rapists who are serving shorter sentences. My suggestion was to plead to possession, as, well, he was possessing it, but to fight this advertisement shit tooth and nail. His PD made it clear that he was absolutely not interested in doing so as it was not likely to work and he'd end up with a longer sentence than he would by pleading guilty to all of it. Your tax dollars will be paying for his incarceration for fifteen years because some jackass uploaded CP to his file server and some FBI agent noticed it. Apparently others have already tried (and failed) claiming an eighth amendment violation. This is widespread and completely out of control.
Veered somewhat off topic ... sorry ... someone mentions how CP is prosecuted and I get a little pissed. Thanks for letting me vent.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, he would have probably served a shorter time if he actually was a pedo who raped and killed his own kids without taking pictures of it.
This would be ridiculous if it wasn't so sick.
Re:Raped, maybe, killed, no (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you serious? I can see a financial fine, but prison time? For what? Keeping his computer unsecured?
Boy, if that gets punishable with time I'd guess it's time to invest in prison stock!
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop being pedantic. That's very likely what he was referring to. Prosecuting people over pictures of imaginary children is just ridiculous.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop being pedantic. That's very likely what he was referring to. Prosecuting people over pictures of imaginary children is just ridiculous.
Yet many western countries do this. They also prosecute people over picutres of adults that the court decides might look like a child, and they can also prosecute a husband who has a picture of his wife's tits if his wife is, or looks, under 18.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
And calling "manga" illegal is about as misleadingly stupid as calling "books" or "movies" illegal just because it's possible to create child pornography in the medium. These aren't subtle distinctions, if you can't tell the difference between a comic book and child porn you are a pretty twisted person.
Cartoon depictions of child sexual activity (commonly found in manga) is against the child porn statutes in many countries. So, yes, I can tell the difference, but the law can not.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Cartoon depictions of child sexual activity (commonly found in manga)
Bullshit. Your local Barnes & Noble is filled with manga volumes completely bereft of child porn.
It'd be just as (in)accurate to say, "Graphic depictions of sexual abuse (commonly found in Spanish literature)" or "Vivid roleplaying of homosexual violence (commonly found in sports)."
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Funny)
"Vivid roleplaying of homosexual violence (commonly found in sports)."
Don't complain.
At least playing rugby keeps them off our streets and out of our zoos.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to a strict interpretation of the law, in the US, possession of a manga cartoon is worse than several violent crimes.
which is equivalent to saying:
According to a strict interpretation of the law, in the US, possession of a Japanese comic books is worse than several violent crimes.
which is completely false. Only the possession of manga that explicitly depict sexual activity involving children could be considered illegal. Just like how movies aren't illegal, only movies that explicitly depict sexual activity involving children are illegal.
This is the exact same point Dahamma tried to bring up. His post was pretty clear, at least to me. Maybe you should read it again.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/06/27/u-s-citizen-arrested-in-canada-for-manga-on-laptop-faces-minim/ [comicsalliance.com]
And this was a few seconds on Google. It happens.
Re: (Score:3)
Jeez, since when did NAMBLA have such a big following on slashdot?
Yes, they're guilty by association! They must be part of that group!
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess since the thinkofthechildren crowd became worse.
Simple egoism. NAMBLA won't affect me, the thinkofthechildren crowd might. We're at the point where you could go to jail if some pervert judge gets a boner over your kid's pics that you thought were innocent.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Funny)
Jeez, since when did NAMBLA have such a big following on slashdot?
I'm a big fan of Marlon Brando
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
My parents had a scrap book that had pictures of me butt naked in a kiddie pool in the back yard. By today's standards, they would be considered the most dangerous criminals in the world.
Pictures of kids used as sexual imagery is icky as hell, but let's not bullshit here: it's all an excuse to stop people from downloading movies. The entire child porn hysteria is ridiculous. And if a "child was raped" to make the porn, then the rapist needs to be arrested, for rape.
Pictures is pictures. Rape is rape. And until the FBI starts treating the ongoing sexual abuse by clergy and football coaches as seriously as child porn, it's pretty clear that the whole child porn mania is just a cover to control the Internet. There's a worldwide criminal enterprise that enables child rape and they are hiding behind "religious freedom". There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that there are dozens if not hundreds of cardinals and one pope that should have done perp walks long ago. Child porn my ass.
beat you to it... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, I was 28 at the time.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you really going to try to tell me that if nobody wanted to see CP, those that produce CP would stop making it?
CP is a behavioral issue. People would continue to make CP because _they_ enjoyed it, not because they thought someone else might enjoy it.
Anyone in the CP market to make a _profit_ would certainly suffer, but really I bet the number of CP producers turning a profit is quite small...
That is not how economics works (Score:4, Insightful)
In the case of child abuse images, it is not necessarily true that anyone who possesses such images actually did pay for them. Like anything else that can be downloaded, child abuse imagery can be downloaded at no cost online, and people so exactly that. Arresting someone who was never willing to pay for child abuse images does absolutely nothing to the demand for those images.
If you want to combat the economics of child abuse imagery, you need to reserve prosecution for people who actually paid for the images in their possession. Otherwise, you are just going after the low-hanging fruit, while leaving the truly dangerous people -- the people who are abusing children -- untouched.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
If there's no demand, there's no supply
therefore it is valid to go after demand
Worked great for pot. We started imprisoning potheads in Federal pens, and no one grew weed anymore! *dusts hands* Mission accomplished.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree with you completely
But why do you think your observations have any relevancy to the production and consumption of CHILD pornography?
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the demand is a mental condition that is not caused by CP.
If you're not a pedo, you don't want to look at pictures of children being raped. If you are, you do.
The pictures don't cause the condition, so reducing the availability of the pictures is not going to reduce the demand for them.
However, reducing availability of the pictures could cause people with the condition to go and rape children because they can't get their jollies from the pictures.
So clamping down on CP will have no impact on the numbers of pedos, and could conceivably increase the occurrence of child rape. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you completely
But why do you think your observations have any relevancy to the production and consumption of CHILD pornography?
Increased availability of porn is positively correlated with a reduction in sexual violence. Why exactly would his observation NOT have relevance?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-sunny-side-of-smut [scientificamerican.com]
Re: (Score:3)
For example, maybe if people watch cp enough they will want to try it out with their own kids or other children.
I think that's about as valid as saying that someone who watches pornography will go off and rape someone simply because they don't have anyone to have sex with. I haven't seen any evidence (which I believe is incredibly important) to support such a thing.
Re:Why is CP illegal? (Score:4, Funny)
Well yeah, because fuck zombies.
Re: (Score:3)
there is a law that stops them from doing just that it is called the statute of limitations it keeps them from prosecuting you for a crime that you committed years. by the time they manage to brute force decrypt all of the layers of encryption that tor uses even with magical quantum algorithms that don't exist yet on hardware that dose not exist yet. not to mention all of the pytabytes of each years accumulated encrypted traffic the statute of limitation would kick in and it would be pointless to go through
It doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is important enough that it takes priority over liberty and freedom of speech. Nothing.
Nothing? Not shouting fire in a crowded theater? How about if someone rapes your daughter, films the act, and puts it on a billboard across the street from her school?
Freedom is important, but it is not an absolute.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately technology is forcing us to decide -- a repressive police state that enforces your views of censorship, or a society that allows free speech. What little middle ground there ever was is rapidly vanishing.
Child porn, hate speech, etc are awful -- but we've seen what's first up against the wall when the censors get their way -- criticism of the law itself.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Not shouting fire in a crowded theater?
I find it somewhat unlikely that people would get up, scream, and trample over everyone else to get out of the building because someone screamed something that they don't know to be true. And even if they did, I'd say they should be the ones paying for any damage they did to other people.
How about if someone rapes your daughter, films the act, and puts it on a billboard across the street from her school?
Prosecute the rapist.
Freedom is important, but it is not an absolute.
That depends on where your priorities lie. In some cases, and to some people, it might be.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
What if someone kills your daugther? Should we pass a bill to bring her back to life? Or maybe we just put the murderer in jail.
If I had to choose, I would much more prefer to have CP pictures floating around than having a wide-spread surveillance network looking into *all* aspects of my life.
This is a fine act of improving quality of our lifes. On one hand being killed or raped makes the victim's life pitiful (or gone), on the other - eliminating this danger is impossible and makes everybody's life poor (no one has managed to solve this problem, not even China or NK).
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
So while freedom may not be absolute, we are not really talking about an edge case where free speech does not apply. We are talking about an important technology that enables free speech in places where there are few protections, which happens to see some use among child abusers (and the free speech issues relating to sharing child abuse imagery are not really settled -- not all the people who possess or share such imagery are producing it, and it is even less likely that someone who uses Tor to download such images has in any way paid for or encouraged its production).
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing? Not shouting fire in a crowded theater?
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences of speech. Libel, inciting a riot, reckless endangerment, and conspiracy all do not limit the speech but the actions that arise from the speech.
How about if someone rapes your daughter, films the act, and puts it on a billboard across the street from her school?
Freedom is important, but it is not an absolute.
Use the film to prove the rape, prosecute the bastard and send him to a prison where someone else shows him what it is like. Also, prosecute the billboard owner for obscenity. Lets face it. The worst thing happening in that hypothetical situation is not that someone took pictures. It was rape.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Child porn is the reason I can't in good conscience run a telephone network.
Child porn is the reason I can't in good conscience run an ISP.
Child porn is the reason I can't in good conscience run a shipping company.
Child porn is the reason I can't in good conscience run a camera company.
Your conscience needs adjustment. Every sufficiently useful and/or popular tool will be used for crime at some point.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
Er. I happily pay taxes, because I enjoy the services they purchase. Roads, regulation of industries, national defense, etc. Sometimes I don't agree with the purpose to which my money is put - but as long as my perspective is properly represented and considered, I don't feel that my taxes are 'theft at gunpoint.' The representatives as a group may opt to take a path different from the one I would personally choose, but that doesn't mean what I've given is wasted.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the same black and white thinking as good and bad of TOR and the internet. The internet is good because it allows us to transport information, but it can also be used for hate speech and incitement so it's bad and needs to be banned. TOR allows people in repressive countries to speak their mind, that's good, but it's bad that it can transport CP so it needs to be banned.
NOTHING in this world is black or white. And no technology is good or evil, don't punish technology, punish the ones that abuse it. Is a car evil because a guy ran over his cheating wife? No, the guy is. Is a gun evil because a murderer used it to kill a witness? No, the guy is.
Are taxes evil because some politician squanders it? No, the politician is.
Make up your minds (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom of speech, or government monitoring of all communications.
Decide which one you want and accept the consequences of your decision.
Re:Make up your minds (Score:4, Insightful)
I like TOR, and I think it should stay around, I'll fight to make sure it stays legal, but I am disappointed that it hasn't lived up to its original promise and potential.
Those are the only two choices? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is absolute tyrannical control over communications really the only alternative to pure unstoppable anonymity?
Maybe I'll take C), where the government obtains valid, reasonable, limited, warrants for the monitoring of communications, carries out those warrants, and finds the bad guys.
I can't believe this got modded "insightful"... methinks the mods (and the parent) need to read up on the logical fallacy called the False Dilemma.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cynical me just thinks this is part of a plan to reduce your freedom and anonymity on the internet.
If it was just "a" plan, I would be so happy. Seems like they have several.
Working as intended then (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it kind of the POINT of a darknet that nobody can trace who's who? Sounds to me like the system is working as designed.
Yes, it will be used to break laws. But that's when you break out the actual investigative skills instead of relying on tech work and unrestricted wiretaps.
Re:Working as intended then (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume that the criminal group you're going after is shipping physical objects. Tracing information obviously will require heavy tech skills, but old-fashioned investigative work works well in the physical world.
Place an order on their site for the product, the drugs or whatever. Odds are they ship through an existing service, FedEx or something - it's simply implausible that they do the actual delivery themselves. With a simple warrant/subpeona, you can get the shipping info, find where it was shipped from.
Once you know where it's being shipped from, it's stakeout time. Repeat the buys a few more times, while recording everyone who ships a package from that location. You should be able to narrow it down rather quickly by process of elimination.
Now, the actual stuff you bought probably can't be used as evidence - it's probably entrapment, but IANAL so I can't be sure. But if they're shipping the stuff you bought, they're also shipping stuff to the actual customers.Catch the courier (who's most likely not a high-level guy, just a small-time crook doing the grunt job), and get him to roll over on the guys he works for. From there, it's literally the same routine as taking down any criminal enterprise.
Is it a lot more work than just serving up a subpeona and instantly getting every detail on the site operator? Yeah. But it's doable with as little tech skills as "being able to *use* Tor".
This is why we can't have nice things (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is why we can't have nice things (Score:5, Informative)
I can see where this is going... (Score:5, Insightful)
FBI: "There are secret anonymous corners of the internet, where people are trading illegally downloaded movies!"
Public: "So what?"
FBI: "That isn't all. They're ALSO buying and selling.... MARIJUANA!"
Public: "We don't care."
FBI: ".....AND CHILD PORNOGRAPHY"
Public: "Nooooooooooooo! Here's $50 million in extra funding and new broad new powers for your agency."
FBI: "We promise only to use them for your own good."
You're doing it wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they believe that they need to crack the encryption, that just means they're going after the wrong people. Instead of wasting time going after the darknet sites and/or their customers, they should be focusing 100% of their efforts on trying to identify A. the kids and/or B. the locations where the videos were shot. This approach has several advantages:
In contrast, by going after other people in the chain, you *might* occasionally get an actual child abuser, but usually you just ruin the lives of people who did something stupid and probably would not have actually harmed anyone's child. It's a bit like the difference between jailing people who are using guns to kill people and jailing everyone who carries a gun in the wrong part of town because a few of them might kill people....
Re: (Score:3)
People are dumb enough to leave the EXIF tags on unaltered JPEGs fresh from the camera. So those might help trace the victims.
Thank you Captain Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
"they should be focusing 100% of their efforts on trying to identify A. the kids and/or B. the locations where the videos were shot."
Wow! I'm going to call the FBI right away and suggest they try and find out who and where those kids are so they can be rescued! I'm sure they haven't already thought of that one!
Yeah, I'm sure it's a piece of cake tracking down the precise identity of some random abused youth locked in a completely generic concrete basement. There are only millions upon millions of generic concrete basements out there in the world.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're completely missing the point. Law enforcement, like anything else that involves time and effort, is a zero sum game. Every minute they spend wasting their time chasing distributors and downloaders and other penny-ante criminals (who have almost zero chance of bei
Re:Thank you Captain Obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Law enforcement, like anything else that involves time and effort, is a zero sum game.
You have no idea what a zero sum game is, so stop using it. A zero sum game is one where all the gains and losses add up to zero, like for example a poker game with no rake. All the money is simply moving around and one man's gain must be another's loss. If a criminal escaped a life sentence that's a huge gain for him but you can't say there's an equal and opposite loss for the police, it's not like they have to go to prison instead. Law enforcement like most games are not zero sum. Time is zero-sum yes, if you spend more time on one thing you must spend less on another but it'd be 24 hours per day even if all they did was sit around and eat donuts all day. If time is the "game" then that's as good a solution as any other.
I support the FBI on this one. (Score:4, Funny)
We need to get the child rape off the internet and back in the church where it belongs.
Re:I support the FBI on this one. (Score:4, Insightful)
How is that a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
It's just bit. There is no difference to the network between an image of child porn and a manifesto to free Tibet.
If you can find the source of one you can find the source of the other.
So the "problem" is actually a case of "working as designed".
Re:How is that a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the "problem" is actually a case of "working as designed".
Exactly. The "news" here is that the FBI can't penetrate an anonymous network.
Am I the only one that finds this reassuring?
The real reason? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whilst I am of course against child pornography, I get the feeling this isn't the real reason. Instead child-porn is now the catch-all excuse the FBI/NSA/CIA/whoever will use every time to try and legislate against any and all kinds of encryption, sharing or anonymising system that they can't get into.
No politician will stand up to defend our rights if it means they also risk being perceived as possibly defending child abuse.
I'm far more inclined to believe the real interest behind this is the RIAA/MPAA who want to make it impossible to anonymously share files at all and/or the gov itself who want to monitor every email, IM and keystroke we make online.
WARNING "For the children" excuse = NEW LAW COMING (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason why this was released to the public, was to drum up support to make programs like TOR illegal in the US.
You have been warned. Once the government uses the "For the children" excuse... or "Child pornography" excuse... it should immediately make you take notice that the government is trying to outlaw something.
In this case, its dark nets, because as we all know that is where piracy is heading, and they want to stop it.
Re:WARNING "For the children" excuse = NEW LAW COM (Score:4, Insightful)
The only reason why this was released to the public, was to drum up support to make programs like TOR illegal in the US.
You have been warned. Once the government uses the "For the children" excuse... or "Child pornography" excuse... it should immediately make you take notice that the government is trying to outlaw something.
In this case, its dark nets, because as we all know that is where privacy is heading, and they want to stop it.
Fixed that for you.
Dangerous freedom. (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem? (Score:3)
Surveillance thwarted? Sounds like TOR is functioning exactly as it should.
If there's any actual "problem" here, that problem is the FBI.
Gun Control and Crypto-control (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading the comments on this thread, I'm realizing that likely within our lifetimes, we'll be having the same debate about strong cryptography that we're now having about guns, likely spurred on by stories like this about pedophiles, terrorists, "hackers" and all those other scary people on the internets.
Some of the same talking points are already in use ("We'll need them when the government comes for us", "Only criminals need them", "If they're banned, only criminals will have them and we'll be defenseless", etc), and strong cryptography, much like guns, are something that the governments and law enforcement fear as they can make it possible for people to break the law (just or otherwise) without the government being able to stop them.
I hope I'm wrong, and of course, you can't quite ban code so easily, but still, a scary future and an unpleasant debate may well be ahead.
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe it's a two-sentence headline...
"FBI Hunt for Child Porn. FBI Thwarted by TOR"
Re:TOR needs to clean its ranks (Score:5, Insightful)
the same argument could have been made about many other services, including the internet itself.... some people still believe the web is just a porn service, and refuse to use it, well... their problem. everything can be used for good and bad, but i get your point, tor DOES seem to be attracting more illicit usage than what it was initially intended for, what it actually needs, is more legal users to out-shadow the bad ones, most people don't even bother with tor, leaving mostly the criminals to use it.
Re: (Score:3)
Criminals are going to use it. No matter what. Even no matter what it is, really.
If you want to decrease the proportion of illegal to legal users of Tor, there's two ways. One, reduce the number of illegal users. This is impossible. Second, you could increase the number of legal users. If half the country is using Tor for everyday browsing, the Feds literally will not be able to keep up - they can't interrogate everyone.
No, it is not possible (Score:5, Insightful)
Both of these goals make it impossible for Tor as a system to prevent people from sharing child sex abuse images. Anything that could be done to prevent such sharing could just as easily be used by the Chinese to prevent dissidents from disseminating their information. Anything that could be done to track down people who share child sex abuse images could be used by China to track down dissidents and persecute them.
That is the trade-off: protecting free speech and dissidents who live under repressive governments necessarily thwarts the FBI's attempt to track down people who share child sex abuse imagery. This is a matter of priorities -- do we want to protect dissidents, or do we want to prevent child abuse images from being shared?
Re: (Score:3)
completely defeating the purpose of the entire system, as no one will use tor again.... who are you going to trust with the keys to that backdoor?
Re: (Score:3)
Easy. You create a voting system in which at least 80% of the key fragments are required in order to open the lock, and you distribute those key fragments evenly among about a thousand random individuals spread around the world. If you can convince at least 800 of those 1000 people to help you decrypt a particular bit of traffic, you can have the data.
The hard part is figuring out a way to generate a public-private key pair without any single computer or individual ever having the entire private key durin
Re:Actually Surprised... (Score:4, Insightful)
...guess I thought Tor probably already had an FBI/CIA back door.
... and this article disproves that how? If the FBI had a back door to Tor, the first thing they'd be doing is running articles like this one. That way everybody who wants to do something outside of FBI purview starts logging in, and Tor becomes one big honeypot for them to skim.
I want Tor to exist and succeed for privacy and free speech, especially for people in less free countries than the US. I also know victims of childhood sexual abuse and the lasting effects it has. The FBI breaking or backdooring Tor means that kiddie porn producers get rounded up, but it also means that free speech loses one more haven. I have no idea who I'm cheering for here.