Three Privacy Groups Challenge The FBI's Malware-Obtained Evidence (eff.org) 118
In 2015 the FBI took over a Tor-accessible child pornography site to infect its users with malware so they could be identified and prosecuted. But now one suspect is challenging that evidence in court, with three different privacy groups filing briefs in his support.
An anonymous reader writes.
One EFF attorney argues it's a classic case of an unreasonable search, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. "If the FBI tried to get a single warrant to search 8,000 houses, such a request would unquestionably be denied." But there's another problem, since the FBI infected users in 120 different countries. "According to Privacy International, the case also raises important questions: What if a foreign country had carried out a similar hacking operation that affected U.S. citizens?" writes Computerworld. "Would the U.S. welcome this...? The U.S. was overstepping its bounds by conducting an investigation outside its borders without the consent of affected countries, the group said."
The FBI's evidence is also being challenged by the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the EFF plans to file two more challenges in March, warning that otherwise "the precedent is likely to impact the digital privacy rights of all Internet users for years to come... Courts need to send a very clear message that vague search warrants that lack the required specifics about who and what is to be searched won't be upheld."
The FBI's evidence is also being challenged by the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the EFF plans to file two more challenges in March, warning that otherwise "the precedent is likely to impact the digital privacy rights of all Internet users for years to come... Courts need to send a very clear message that vague search warrants that lack the required specifics about who and what is to be searched won't be upheld."
Obligatory Mencken quote (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken
And don't forget (Score:4, Insightful)
James Comey and friends spent 2 weeks as the biggest distributors of child porn on the planet, when they took over a child porn website, added server capacity, and kept it running. I get that we want to catch the bad guys, but the FBI is way overstepping its bounds lately. If you agree with the concept that distributing child porn harms the children over and over again, then the FBI itself is responsible for unimaginable amounts of harm to kids.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is pretty obvious you never heard the 'whoosh'.....
Re: (Score:2)
That its the stiff that oozes from AC ears isn't it?
And there we see again the worth of ACs. A post designed to provoke or hurt, nothing more. Pathetic really.
Does your life have a point?
Here is your source (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Except that the FBI isn't catching rapists by arresting CP customers. They're arresting masturbators. They should arrest child rapists - and everyone involved in the production of CP.
"What if?" (Score:2)
Foreign countries try to hack the computers of US citizens all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
Keeping an eye open on SSH port probes from Estonia, China, and various parts of the USSR is a pretty good hint that foreign crackers attack US based systems constantly.Tracing it to a foreign security is more difficult. "The Cuckoo's Egg", written by Cliff Stoll, gives a fascinating view into the very real difficulties of tracking, reporting, and getting attacks against government and military operations by Markus Hess, who was apparently working for the KGB at the time.
I wouldn't claim that all the cracke
Re: (Score:2)
Check your server logs. Ours get automated breach attempts thousands of times a day from countries all over the world. Usual tests are for wordpress bugs and ssh with many usernames and passwords.
The thousands of ssh login attempts I've been seeing have lately been exclusively for root. I'm guessing there's some IOT thing that allows root logins.
Meanwhile my server has never allowed a root login over ssh, in 18 years. I wish they'd use nmap to fingerprint my box and then go away, knowing it won't let them in no matter how hard they try.
US hacked Brazil (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Australia, 1965.
Being an ally of the US merely means you are pre-pwnd and held in contempt.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with the FBI's choice of tactics. (Score:2)
I doubt very seriously that they advertised "kiddie porn here!", or worked to pump up their page rank on search engines. I'm reasonably sure that all of the visitors to their operational website were fully aware of exactly what they were doing, including the illegal nature of the material they were looking for. The website surreptitiously installed malware on their hosts, but this seems little di
It's not unreasonable search (Score:1)
It's a sting/honeypot.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Nope. A honeypot ends with the information that is wilfully given up.
A sting is a very specific and very targeted operation governed by very specific rules.
This is nothing like either of those. But hey if you know better I'm sure the ACLU would like to hear from you because I'm sure they wouldn't want to waste the money if someone is so sure that they will lose. I mean what do they and the EFF know.
Re: (Score:2)
they wouldn't get jack shit for being so ineffectual.
They can happily lose 100 times if for that 1 time they do something that actually benefits the people rather the governments / corporations. I suppose we should all just fold over to any request by any regime like the good complying spineless citizens we are.
Have you considered going into motivational speaking?
I'd like to see a Third Amendment defense, too. (Score:5, Informative)
Spying on the population was a big driver behind the THIRD amendment:
While forcing the colonists to provide housing and upkeep for the soldiers sent to oppress them was an economic issue, there was more to it than that.
A soldier "quartered" in a colonist's house also served as a spy for the crown and its army. He eavesdropped on the conversations of the family and visiting friends. He had the opportunity to view their records when they weren't home (or even if they were). He reported anything suspicious to his unit. His presence inhibited getting together with others to hold private discussions, especially about opposing (by protest or otherwise) anything the government was doing. He was a continuous walking search, fed and housed by the people he was investigating.
It seems to me that law-enforcement and intelligence agency spyware, such as keyloggers and various data exfiltration tools, is EXACTLY the digital equivalent: It is a digital agent that "lives" in the home or office of the target. It consums the target's resources (disk space, CPU cycles network bandwidth) to support itself. It spies spying on the activities and "papers" of the target, reporting anything suspicious (or anything, actually) back to its commander, to be used as evidence and/or to trigger an arrest or other attack. It is ready, at a moment's notice, to forcefully interfere with, destroy, or corrupt the target's facilities or send forged messages from him.
Spyware is EXACTLY one of the most egregious acts (one of the "Intolerable Acts") that sparked the American Revolution. I'd love to see the Third brought back out of the doldrums and used against these "digital soldiers" the government is "quartering" inside our personal and private computing devices.
Phrasing! (Score:4, Insightful)
First they came for pedophiles, then they came for me.
dammit, it wasn't meant to be a pun, it was meant to be an insightful commentary on how we can judge a society by how it treats the most despised and how they can use the same tools on the rest of us, dammit I did it again, I mean spy tools. Now because of you people and your twisted imaginations nothing can undo iterations of that pun from being in my head.
This is the problem with infringing anyones rights, it turns wisdom into a bad joke.
Re: (Score:2)
Not even the police should be above the law. If police behave like they are above the law then the very child rapists you talk about avoid punishment because the police have not observed the law. Worse is if they punish the wrong person due to their assumptions.
Your premise is mired in your anger towards the type of offender as opposed to protecting the integrity of democracy. No one wants these sorts of crimes, which also means we need to better ways than destroying freedom to prosecute them.
FBI commits a criminal offence? (Score:3)
Given that they have demanded the extradition of British citizens who have spied on US government websites from their homes in the UK, logically the FBI can be charged with the same offence...
Re:Serves them right (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the part about this not being about them, but about unconstitutional search of *any* suspect. Just because these suspects are alleged to have committed particularly unpopular crimes does not mean a different set of rules applies. If the FBI uses child porn as the wedge issue to get precedent allowing unreasonable searches, we all suffer, not just the child porn consumers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Serves them right (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the same thing at all. The marked bill thing only comes into play after other collaborative evidence is revealed, like the video footage of the theft. Simply possessing the marked bill does nothing and even if you where handed a "hot" marked bill by a robber won't place you in the same legal boat that he is in.
Yes child porn is very bad, but our laws on unreasonable searches don't allow for blanket searches (by law enforcement, private security into a private venue is not the same, you can walk away from the door, not a police search). IMO, child porn and drunk driving are two subjects that america is playing with fire with the whole "these things are so bad they must supersede the constructional protections we all enjoy to stop it."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed. There is nothing so bad that ignoring constitutional protections is a good idea. That is why these protections were created. Otherwise you end up with the "despicable crime du jour" being enough to not give people constitutional protection. It starts with CP, then there are a few steps, and then it becomes being gay, or having sex while not being married, or being an atheist or disagreeing with the government. That is exactly the reason why these limits on government power are not conditional.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a digital bait car. Just being infected isn't enough to convict you, but it's more than enough to investigate. When they pull up an HD full of CP, it'll be pretty clear on whether you accidentally stumbled onto that Tor hidden service or not.
Slashdot likes to forget that we've seen more than a few stories about people who had CP planted on them where the investigators figured that out right away once they examined the hard drive (and then charged the real culprit). It's not hard when they've been
Re: (Score:2)
I know you're trolling me, but the simple answer would be to get permission from the car's owner before driving it. That has certain other advantages, like not needing to hotwire the damn thing just to drive it.
There's nothing analogous for the FBI putting malware disguised as child rape onto a CP hosting site on the dark web and investigating everyone who downloads and executes it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not going to. The only chance we have is migrating liberty-minded people to New Hampshire for the purpose of forming a free society. That can only happen in a state like New Hampshire that is small enough population wise to gain an influence politically while having the prosperity and jobs necessary for such a migration to work. These are reasons the Free State Project's participants voted New Hampshire in. This and of course it's one of the best states in terms of various freedom indicators already. From the majority being neither affiliated with democrats nor republicans and of which both democrats and republicans being unlike that of the rest of the country. The other reason being New Hampshire has shown itself to be welcoming to freedom.
Ok, with you so far...
There are no car insurance requirements, no seat belt laws, no general purpose sales taxes, no gun control laws (we just got rid of mandatory concealed carry permitting), among various other laws/factors. The state is low taxes and taxes are a violation of ones rights in that they depend on force to achieve largely social and political objectives. But to do that you must steal other peoples property and otherwise utilize violence to achieve those objectives.
So what you're telling me is that New Hampshire has no models in place to mitigate or prevent abuses and that essentially people can't be held accountable for their actions, so people that abuse others are free to continue to do so without being forced to make amends for the ills they commit.
Re: (Score:1)
Well, see, that's the beauty of it. Without government and bankruptcy law, debt slavery becomes a valid option. After all, if you cannot discharge your debts, the only thing you can do is keep working and hoping to make enough payments to at least cover the interest.
Of course, without government's shield of limited liability, it would be insane to incorporate in New Hampshire, which is why everyone will continue incorporating in Delaware while enslaving peons living in the "Libertarian utopia".
Re: (Score:3)
The bank is not the FBI. The bank isn't actively investigating you or attempting to persecute you. Many of the restrictions that prevent the governments from tracking their citizens do not apply to private companies for good reason.
In any case, the bank identify their product, they do not track the end user. This is more akin to the uploader watermarking the picture so it can be identified later when the FBI goes searching through files. This is very different from the FBI pretending to be a bank and saying
Re: (Score:3)
The other issue is the use of malware. They could easily have used it to plant evidence.
There is a danger of such tactics being used by others too. Imagine if Pizzagate had been enhanced by planting illegal material on servers and PCs owned by Democrats. Imagine if someone gets into Trump's Twitter account and posts a browser screenshot that happens to show a dodgy background tab along side the thing he wants to show, "by accident".
Re: (Score:2)
In fact, it is so easy to plant evidence using malware without leaving a trace (except the malware itself), that I would be extremely surprised if that is not already being done. In any sane legal system, anything obtained by techniques beyond purely passive observation (and planting malware is anything but) needs to be regarded as tainted and inadmissible.
Re: (Score:1)
>You're missing the part about this not being about them, but about unconstitutional search of *any* suspect.
It's not an unconstitutional search because it violated the 4th amendment. It was ruled unconstitutional because the warrant was deemed invalid because it was issued by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District, which, at the time was procedurally prohibited because of the "Rule 41(b) Venue for a Warrant Application" in the Search and Seizure section of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. I
Re: (Score:2)
You're missing the part about this not being about them, but about unconstitutional search of *any* suspect. Just because these suspects are alleged to have committed particularly unpopular crimes does not mean a different set of rules applies. If the FBI uses child porn as the wedge issue to get precedent allowing unreasonable searches, we all suffer, not just the child porn consumers.
You're missing the part about this not being about them, but about unconstitutional search of *any* suspect. Just because these suspects are alleged to have committed particularly unpopular crimes does not mean a different set of rules applies. If the FBI uses child porn as the wedge issue to get precedent allowing unreasonable searches, we all suffer, not just the child porn consumers.
Its like photo-radar. The infraction goes against the car owner, not the driver. Can they prove that the owner or another specific person did the download at that precise time?
Re: (Score:1)
Tell me again, how many years have people been trying to re-litigate Roe vs Wade?
Re:Serves them right (Score:5, Insightful)
People who look at CP deserve everything that comes to them. Including malware
Define "Child Porn" for us.
Maybe it's just naked children? If that's the case, my parents should be in jail for life and then some.
On the other hand, I have seen very old photographs of pre-teen and teen girls that were just frolicking at the beach. They looked very happy. The name of the photographer escapes me, but outside of puritanical societies he's considered a great photographer. (DuckDucking for it is turning up nothing and I don't want to press it with Google or some other search engine that spies on people) I was at a gallery outside of the USA that doesn't have Byzantine laws written by repressed pedophiles and homosexuals that are out to prove something.
The photos were not in the least arousing in any sort of way and the children were hardly being exploited. It was just photographs of kids at play.
Some great art has naked children all over it. Some of them are called cherubs.
If the children are being hurt, we go after the producers. Going after consumers will be a never ending endeavor of whack-a-mole.
Now as far as porn where children are being victimized and abused, how about we solve the problem of HOW those children end up there in the first place.
But we won't America is all about being at "war" with symptoms of problems and not about actually solving them.
Re: (Score:1)
Probably David Hamilton [wikipedia.org], who recently committed suicide under suspicion of having raped some of the underage girls he photographed decades ago. Perhaps not the best example to be used in defense of photographs of naked children.
Re:Serves them right (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably David Hamilton, who recently committed suicide under suspicion of having raped some of the underage girls he photographed decades ago. Perhaps not the best example to be used in defense of photographs of naked children.
Of course he's a witch! He wouldn't have been accused of witchcraft if he wasn't a witch. Stands to reason.
Re: (Score:2)
" (DuckDucking for it is turning up nothing and I don't want to press it with Google or some other search engine that spies on people)"
You know Google saves search results because that's part of their business model. Because you don't know what DuckDuckGo's business model is, you don't know whether they are spying.
Re: (Score:1)
"Lascivious is an American jargon indicating immoral sexual thoughts or actions. It is generally used in the legal description of criminal acts in which some kind of sexual activity is prohibited to differentiate that activity from an “innocent” conduct. It is often used to describe pornography. However, lascivious is not limited to pornography. For example, lascivious cohabitation refers to living with a member of the opposite sex, and having sexual intercourse with him/her without entering int
Re: (Score:2)
The photos were not in the least arousing in any sort of way
To you. Remember we live in a world where people get aroused by the correct looking trees. I'm not saying anything about the legality of the picture, just know that whatever photo you were looking at, someone somewhere has likely masturbated to it. The probability of it goes up if the photo is of a person.
Re: (Score:3)
zOMG!! Won't somebody please think of the trees?
Child Pornography Defined. (Score:2)
Define child porn for us.
Fair enough.
Child pornography is a form of child sexual exploitation.
Federal law defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor (persons less than 18 years old). Images of child pornography are also referred to as child sexual abuse images.
It is important to distinguish child pornography from the more conventional understanding of the term pornography.
Child pornography is a form of child sexual exploitation, and each image graphically memorializes the sexual abuse of that child. Each child involved in the production of an image is a victim of sexual abuse.
While some child sexual abuse images depict children in great distress and the sexual abuse is self-evident, other images may depict children that appear complacent.
In most child pornography cases, the abuse is not a one-time event, but rather ongoing victimization that progresses over months or years. It is common for producers of child pornography to groom victims, or cultivate a relationship with a child and gradually sexualize the contact over time.
Furthermore, victims of child pornography suffer not just from the sexual abuse inflicted upon them to produce child pornography, but also from knowing that their images can be traded and viewed by others worldwide.
Once an image is on the Internet, it is irretrievable and can continue to circulate forever.
The permanent record of a childÂs sexual abuse can alter his or her live forever. Many victims of child pornography suffer from feelings of helplessness, fear, humiliation, and lack of control given that their images are available for others to view in perpetuity.
Unfortunately, emerging trends reveal an increase in the number of images depicting sadistic and violent child sexual abuse, and an increase in the number of images depicting very young children, including toddlers and infants.
Child Pornography [justice.gov]
It can be a useful exercise for the geek to have a look at the registry of sex offenders for his state or county. No better way I think to dispel the fantasies he promotes about child pornography.
You actually think CP sites on Tor are innocent!? (Score:2)
> Define "Child Porn" for us.
The kind of child rape and torture that's on that sort of site is so bad that the people who work on these cases develop PTSD. Yes iffy cases exist, but a dedicated CP site on Tor is not the kind of place that is dedicated to random innocent pictures.
This malware is the digital equivalent of a bait car. If they're actually innocent, they should be challenging how it was determined that they were using the computer. There's a safe harbor for people who stumble across CP acc
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the cite. It's amazing how many people on Slashdot are suddenly eager to defend the rape of children...
Yeah, I'm real sure that they're going to a Tor hidden service to show off a few innocent baby pics or people that are 1 day less than 18. Makes perfect sense /s
Re: (Score:2)
read this, it shows how insane things have gotten.
http://beforeitsnews.com/eu/20... [beforeitsnews.com]
Re: (Score:1)
But we won't America is all about being at "war" with symptoms of problems and not about actually solving them.
When the factions that control the state are in perpetual war with each other, solving difficult sociological problems invokes an unnecessary risk.
Re:Serves them right (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe their is a saying about this. It goes something like.
"For those who defend against unjust laws, they typically find themselves defending scoundrels as those are the one these unjust laws first target".
Basically it comes down to you either defend against an unjust law even when it is used against someone you hate because otherwise that legitimizes it and set the precedence to be used on you and others like you as well.
Definition of a liberal? (Score:2)
A conservative who has just been arrested...
Of course a conservative is a liberal who has just been mugged...
Re: (Score:1)
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll make sure they add your name to the list of people to be tortured. I mean really. We all know the only people who use the term CP are paedophiles that look at that stuff.
The whole mantra of paedophiles being dangerous to children is little more than fear mongering by bigots and opportunists (media, politicians, prison industry, etc) to profit or otherwise make a name for themselves. They've blown the rare terrible tragedy of psychopaths raping and murdering little children into a "paedophile epidemic"
Re: (Score:3)
People who look at CP deserve everything that comes to them. Including malware
To me, the key point is: can the FBI be dead certain that anyone who runs this malware got it from their salted CP images?No possibility that the malware could spread to innocent parties? No possibility that it could be contracted by someone who misspells a URL?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
OH NOES!!!! Somebody did something bad to a child somewhere! THIS IS AWFUL. Here, let me surrender all of my rights and freedoms so the nice men in their cheap suits can bring the wrongdoers to "justice." I mean, it's totally ok because they'll only ever go after evil kiddie porn hoarders, right?
This is a thing you'll hear about called "the slippery slope." A person who isn't interested in seeing the big picture and the long term game might see it a justifiable breaking of the law and basic due process. One
Re: (Score:3)
Incidentally, the US military bombing children seems to be completely fine....
Re: (Score:3)
And if you do not defend the rights and freedoms of scumbags, pretty soon, nobody will have rights or freedoms. That is the thing so many idiots (like you) do not understand.