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FBI’s Deep Web Child Porn Ring Questions Role of Gov’t in Society

174 points by minamisan 10y ago

darawk 10y ago
I don't really understand the objection to this. Continuing to operate the site for a short period in order to catch more pedophiles seems fine to me. They weren't abusing children themselves, and shutting down the site wouldn't have prevented the continuing abuse of children by its users. All shutting it down immediately would have done is prevented them from sharing the photos with each other, which seems like an extraordinarily small price to pay to catch even a single additional child molester, let alone a whole community of them.
- fad0om 10y ago
  The "they weren't abusing children themselves" argument could equally apply to consumers of child pornography. If law enforcements argument that distribution and viewing of CP is equivalent to re-abusing the victim then it should equally apply to them.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > Continuing to operate the site for a short period in order to catch more pedophiles seems fine to me. Was that what happened, though? We saw that there were more logins, but were those unique logins? Did those additional 39,000 logins result in a significantly higher number of arrestees? Or were all 186 people who were prosecuted part of the initial 11,000? Do we, as people not involved in the investigation, even get to find this out?
  - darawk 10y ago
    Does it matter? I mean, why else would they operate this site but because they think they might get more information? Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried.
    - lifeisstillgood 10y ago
      I'm in your side in this - we grant a lot of latitude here, because the harm prevented is much greater.
    - JayNeely 10y ago
      If I spend my grandmother's retirement fund on lottery tickets, maybe I'll win her a lot more money, maybe I won't -- should I try? Of course the likelihood of effectiveness matters. As does the potential harm you're risking. What the article is arguing is that keeping the site up allowed for a much greater distribution of the photos -- to potentially many, many more individuals who continue to elude prosecution, and may continue to spread those photos themselves. At the time the FBI took over the site, there were 11,000 weekly user logins. During the additional time they ran it, it grew to 50,000 weekly user logins. Out of a potential 50,000 individuals, the FBI is able to prosecute only 186. pavel_lishin is asking a fair question when he wonders if allowing a potential 39,000 additional individuals to download those photos and potentially distribute them elsewhere actually resulted in any additional prosecutions, and if so, is that number worth it compared to the (potentially massive) amount of additional distribution the FBI enabled?
      - darawk 10y ago
        You're missing the point, I think. IMO, it is unequivocal that in theory continuing to operate the site for some time could lead to substantially more arrests. Whether or not the FBI succeeded in doing so is an operational matter. If they failed to exploit this opportunity properly, that doesn't invalidate the concept. Now, you could criticize their operational use of this power, but that is entirely distinct from criticizing, in general, the use of this sort of tactic. Which, I think, on its face, is clear can be an effective one.
- a3n 10y ago
  If the actual owners were observed by the FBI operating the site for two weeks, and served N specific images, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm? Yes? If the original owners sold to new owners, and the FBI observed the new owners serving the same N specific images for two weeks, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm. Yes? If the FBI muscled in and took over the site, serving those exact same N images for two weeks, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm? Yes?
  - darawk 10y ago
    Yes, but that is a tradeoff that has been made in nearly every non-trivial investigation of organized crime in the history of investigation or crime. You can always get the people at the bottom first, but you let them roam free committing crimes for a time so that you can take down the entire entity. The tradeoff ought to be evaluated on a case by case basis, of course. Because you are trading some small harm for the theoretical reduction in some greater harm. However, I think it's pretty clear that stopping actual child abuse is much more important than preventing the dissemination of child pornography.
    - syshum 10y ago
      1. Based on DOJ and Court rulings what the FBI did here was actual child abuse. The FBI abused children in the course of their investigation. The Official DOJ and US Supreme Court position is that any distribution, or viewing of child porn images is in fact child abuse. As such the FBI running the server is in fact child abuse. 2. Who were these mythical "kingpins" you believe the FBI was seeking, in every case publicly known about prosecution resulting from this operation is about simple possession of child pornography, Not production. From my understanding of the cases not a single child porn producer has been prosecuted, and I believe the FBI has stated most of the images are very old and previously known to the FBI or other agencies. That made that statement to attempt to curb some of the outrage. Given that however it contradics your reasoning for them to continue operating the server as they had already caught the largest "kingpin" the server owner. It would seem they worked backwards in this operations, they caught the top guy first then used the server to sweep up the "street level" or bottom level persons.
- themaninthedark 10y ago
  >They weren't abusing children themselves, and shutting down the site wouldn't have prevented the continuing abuse of children by its users. By that logic the people who were using the site to view child porn should not be arrested. Only those that produce it should.
  - darawk 10y ago
    Well, to be honest, i'm not so sure that they should be. Why should you be prosecuted for looking at child pornography? Because you and I find it morally abhorrent? You may be able to argue that it creates a demand for the product, which leads to more abuse, but that argument is tenuous and ought to be born out by something other than conjecture before it's etched into law. That being said, I suppose it's irrelevant what we think the law ought to be, the law does define the consumption of child pornography and therefore the facilitation of that consumption to be a crime, and by extension to be causing some kind of harm. However, all investigative agencies via undercover and covert informant based work engage in this sort of behavior, that either supports indirectly or prolongs unnecessarily some level of criminal behavior in order to infiltrate and stop a greater criminal syndicate from operating. This is not even remotely unprecedented, and, in my view is a fundamentally sound principle to follow. If you can prevent substantially greater harm (actual child abuse) by temporarily facilitating a very small harm (consumption of images of child abuse), you should do so.
    - themaninthedark 10y ago
      I agree with your points about the legality of the material and share the thought that more research should be done. What doesn't sit well with me is the government directly running or supporting illegal behavior. If they had infiltrated the server and backdoored it(say by offering tech support) while the owner ran it I would not have any problem. When they took over the server by not shutting it down they became the top of the criminal syndicate not just someone providing support. I have similar problems with when they arrest a group of 'terrorists' by actively recruiting people, putting together a plot, providing the (fake) explosives and finally using tactics akin to brainwashing and abuse the get the 'terrorists' to carry out the plot so they can be arrested. The entire reason they have leeway is so they can get the head of the organization, not so they can be the head. Addendum: I want to thank you for being able to discuss this without being emotional and resorting to personal attacks. It is rare to get this nice of a discourse on such a subject.
FLUX-YOU 10y ago
I'm guessing this wasn't in the FBI's Approach to Cyber Threats speech
aliakhtar 10y ago
Given that this comes from a highly questionable source (bitcoin.com, run by Roger Ver, a guy convicted for sending explosives in the mail, a bitcoin investor, and libertarian who revoked his U.S citizenship so he wouldn't have to pay taxes, and is highly biased against the government), this should be taken with a massive grain of salt. If this were even slightly true, there would be reputable news sites all over this story by now. Edit: http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/294341-fbi-denies-speeding-up-child-porn-site-during-investigation http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/294341-fbi-denies-s... > In February 2015, the FBI seized control of the site and operated it for two weeks so that the agency could distribute malware to users with the intention of identifying suspects. > The Department of Justice (DOJ) denies that charge, writing in case documents, “The Government Played No Role in Creating the Crime for Which Chase is Being Prosecuted or Otherwise Encouraged His Criminal Conduct. Chase created the Playpen website, not the government.” > The FBI has also denied claims that during their operation of Playpen, agents improved the site’s performance, helping it run faster. > “Chase claims absent actual factual support that the government enhanced or improved the website’s functionality,” the DOJ said. > Even if the FBI did upgrade Playpen’s performance, criminal defense attorney Norman Pattis says, it would have little impact on the case. > “I don’t think there would be much implication at all,” Pattis said. “I think the defense is misapplying entrapment.” > “Speeding up access doesn’t create the desire to do it,” he added. “The fact that people come to the market looking for it already doesn’t make it entrapment.” > The DOJ justified the FBI’s actions in continuing to operate Playpen after arresting Chase. They wrote that shutting down Playpen immediately “might have answered the immediate issue of child pornography trafficking on Playpen, it would have done nothing to address the larger problem.”
- spenvo 10y ago
  >If this were even slightly true, there would be reputable news sites all over this story by now. The FBI has openly admitted to running the server http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-website-sharing-thousands-child-porn-images/79108346/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-websit...
- 4ad 10y ago
  > If this were even slightly true, there would be reputable news sites all over this story by now. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-website-sharing-thousands-child-porn-images/79108346/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-websit... https://www.rt.com/usa/356896-fbi-kiddie-porn-playpen/ https://www.rt.com/usa/356896-fbi-kiddie-porn-playpen/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/23/fbi-improved-dark-web-child-porn-site-lawyer/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/23/fbi-improved-dark-web-ch... http://gizmodo.com/traffic-surged-to-a-child-porn-ring-after-the-fbi-took-1785649054 http://gizmodo.com/traffic-surged-to-a-child-porn-ring-after... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160614/19243034713/judge-playpen-case-fbis-warrant-is-valid-even-if-claims-about-no-privacy-ip-addresses-are-not.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160614/19243034713/judge... http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbis-unprecedented-hacking-campaign-targeted-over-a-thousand-computers http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbis-unprecedented-hack...
ajamesm 10y ago
It makes sense that a porn ring would question the role of government in society. How to be taken seriously, step zero: proofread
Forge36 10y ago
It introduces an interesting question on tactics. Stopping child porn is good, reducing gun trafficking is good. It's not clear how that is done currently. In place of continuing to host the content to catch predators, could the government covertly transition sites they run from hosting to linking to other sites? Making their site "more robust to takedown"? Encouraging users to instead link to other sites? The resulting contributions can then be used to go after and prosecute, and even shut down (some of) the submitted sites? I don't know if it's possible to do that transition well, at some point the site is just a host of links (like HN or Reddit). At some point they'd become the largest aggregator of child porn, at which point they can go after the most popular or prolific producers. This of course is also along the lines of locate and punish, and doesn't explore helping the people who make, distribute, or consume. Addressing the demand for the content I don't like the idea of a strike system however catching and treating people and moving to prosecuting the people who reoffend after treatment is harder to do, I don't even know how monitoring to detect offenders after catching them once.
- gizmo686 10y ago
  It also re-introduces the question of goals, which is to often overlooked in any discussion that involves the word "child". Specifically, most people I talk to eventually agree that a bigger goal is to stop the production of child porn, more so than it is to stop the distribution of child porn. Even if the FBI was not activly catching consumers with this approach, flooding the market with already existing child porn (which the FBI should have access to), would help starve out producers, and reduce total production. When the FBI prosecutes the consumers of their honeypot, it has the added benefit of shrinking the total market (both directly, and by spreading the perception that consuming child porn is not safe because of the chance that it is a honeypot).
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
    While I agree with the priorities, one problem with this is that you would be using potentially degrading involuntary pictures of other people. Maybe it would be possible to find sufficient victims who would agree to have their pictures used for the cause? I don't know.
joshuaheard 10y ago
The rule should be that law enforcement cannot commit a crime in order to catch a criminal. For instance, they cannot be part of a bank robbery, or murder someone. This reminds somewhat of the "gun walker" case where the ATF let illegal guns flood the market in order to track the buyers, which resulted in the death of a border patrol agent and countless others along the border. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
- S_Daedalus 10y ago
  The funny thing is, I suspect that many people believe that to be the law already, if cinema and television audiences are anything to go by. That's quite scary really, because it simply isn't true. You can't entrap, but that has a very specific meaning. Even if it were against the law though, with the system as it is prosecutorial discretion and grand juries that insulate LEO's from murder would do so for lesser crimes (and do).
- dogma1138 10y ago
  That's an unrealistic approach CIs and undercover agents are needed to break apart crime syndicates because otherwise you'll end up arresting the "street level" peddlers and nothing more. Now as far as entrapment goes there are legal definitions for it under most cases law enforcement isn't allowed to change the outcome of an event. For example it is ok for an undercover officer to sell you drugs in a sting operation but it is not ok to come to you and convince you to do drugs and then sell them to you. For the most part wether the fbi was operating this server or not the people who visit the server came there out of their own free will in an attempt to acquire child pornography. If the fbi did not operate the server they would still have acquired it just from a different source. The ATF sting was a pretty shitty operation with dubious legal backing but it's not an case for not running intelligence gathering or sting operation, it's just evidence that they should be planned and executed better and that certain restrictions should apply especially in cases where public safety might be put at risk.
  - pixelbash 10y ago
    > If the fbi did not operate the server they would still have acquired it. I'm a little dubious of this brand of logic. The one that goes if X was not supplied they would just get it from the <potentially slightly harder to find &/or riskier> place. Perhaps, but surely the point is to reduce the incentive by making it harder/riskier - as making it impossible is generally not a viable option?
dkarapetyan 10y ago
So pedophiles obviously don't choose to be pedophiles. I'm certain it is a biological vagary. There should be a better way to treat people that are a certain way because of biology and not choice. The other issue is I'm not sure if FBI did the right thing here. For whatever brief period this was state sponsored and sanctioned pedophile ring.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  It's really not clear why and how one does become a pedophile, that said the FBI was going after the producers and dealers of child pornography not the consumers. For the most part the consumers are being left out of major prosecutions, one can also make an argument that blocking all sources of CP might increase sexual assault cases involving children if the users cannot get their relief that way. But this overall isn't a clear cut case.
  - 1_listerine_pls 10y ago
    > one can also make an argument that blocking all sources of CP might increase sexual assault cases... mmm... I don't see how one could argue that without actual data.
    - probably_wrong 10y ago
      The idea has been thrown around for a while, but of course, there's no way to get a definite truth on the matter. Here's one article[1] claiming a possible link between availability of porn and abuse. But I'm sure there must be at least one other study arguing the opposite. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21116701 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21116701
  - aerovistae 10y ago
    It's a chore sometimes not to break the vulgarity rules here. You do understand that child pornography is created by the rape of children? You're saying, "Well, it could be argued that if we stop letting these guys rape them, possibly more children might get raped. We should let it go." No.
c3534l 10y ago
I mean, wasn't the government supposed to learn you can't do this sort of shit, I dunno, countless government scandals involving essentially the same thing? If your involvement in an illegal industry is such that the market is composed primarily of you, you're probably doing something immoral. The ends do not justify the means, especially when you're given a privileged position of power. In my opinion, those FBI agents involved in this operation should be tried on criminal charges. The fact that no one spoke up has very concerning implications about the ethical culture at the FBI.
__s 10y ago
Response in this thread seems rather contrasting with response to the similar Australian operation (Argos). I may not be grasping the differences tho
tajen 10y ago
As opposed to the illustration of the article, one needs to note that child pornography includes a photo, a drawing or a 3D CGI representing anyone below 18 years old. Given the recipient rarely has the ID card on file, it's hard to prove it to the judge, even if the porn model was 22. Not even talking about age fabrication, which turns unsuspecting viewers into felons. I wonder how well the distinction is applied, or far this can be pushed by the FBI to take down a someone. On the other hand, needless to say that actual child porn is disgusting.
- gizmo686 10y ago
  I am not a lawyer. The law [0] seems to provided an affirmative defense if "the alleged child pornography was not produced using any actual minor or minors." This defense does not apply if (emphasis added) "such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct." My reading of this is that it is legal to have a pornagraphic drawing of a child character . It only become illegal when the drawing is of an actual minor. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A
deleted 10y ago
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mtgx 10y ago
Kind of reminds me of CIA's drug trafficking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi... Or even FBI's own terrorist factory. It's all "for a good cause," I'm sure. https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/ https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-te... And now they want us to let them backdoor encryption, because they've clearly proven themselves such upstanding and trustworthy "good guys" so far.
Animats 10y ago
The real problem with the FBI's "Innocent Images" program is that too much of the FBI's resources are devoted to it. As of about 5 years ago, the FBI's "cyber security" operation was about 50% "national security" (much of which is trolling for wannabe terrorists), 40% child pornography (much of which is trolling for people who want child porn), and 10% online fraud. The first two are easy; FBI people can sit in their offices in Baltimore and do much of that. It brings up their numbers. Solving online crimes is really hard, involving tracking through multiple countries, and is likely to be unsuccessful. This is why law enforcement shouldn't be allowed to set their own priorities. The institutional goals and the goals of the taxpayers who pay them don't match.
- driverdan 10y ago
  The US Secret Service actively investigates online fraud. They have operations around the country investigating things like credit card fraud and identity theft. The most well known was Operation Firewall, although that happened back in 2004. They still run these operations, although it seems to be smaller scale since we haven't heard of such large busts in a while.
- woliveirajr 10y ago
  Governance. Those who execute the law enforcement shouldn't define priorities, except for the daily basic investigation.
  - akshatpradhan 10y ago
    Does the FBI read HN? I don't think they realize how much they're missing out from not reading this feedback and actually giving it a few seconds worth of contemplation =/.
    - Animats 10y ago
      There's been substantial criticism of the FBI's terrorist entrapment efforts. Too often, they find out about someone mouthing off about "Death to America", and gear up a sting operation to encourage them to commit some act for which they can be convicted.[1] Most of them are wannabes, not real threats. The FBI director once said of the group convicted of planning to below up the Willits Tower in Chicago that their plans were "aspirational, not operational". In the case of the “Newburgh Four,” a judge said the government “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles,” and had, in the process, made a terrorist out of a man “whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope.” It's not entirely the FBI's fault. They're under heavy political pressure to stop every terrorist plot. Every time some nut actually does something, they get criticized for missing them. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/fbi-terrorism-stings_n_5606468.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/fbi-terrorism-sting...
mirimir 10y ago
It also questions Tor Project's effectiveness at educating its users. Especially users engaged in high-risk activity. Once PlayPen had been compromised, this FBI operation relied entirely on exploiting a Firefox vulnerability to drop malware that phoned home, bypassing Tor. Putting tor daemon and userland in separate VMs would have prevented user compromise. Even firewall rules might have prevented it. Why doesn't Tor Project focus more on user safety? Edit: We hear about this because defendants in criminal cases are questioning FBI practices. And because criminal cases in the US are public, unless there are national security issues. But we probably don't hear about similar efforts elsewhere against political dissidents etc.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  Whonix does that exact form of security Every state action prompts people to implement the security they already knew they should have been using
roel_v 10y ago
As a meta-point, I wonder why people who (apparently) see themselves as bitcoin/privacy advocates think it's a good idea (from an efficiency-towards-that-goal perspective) to defend child molesters, or attack people trying to catch child molesters. Maybe they're just not very capable of making the distinction between their personal convictions (about the boogey-man government) and how to realistically achieve certain goals on privacy advocacy, but talking about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...
Pica_soO 10y ago
Lets assume that on the WhatsApp-Team there is a least one father or mother. Lets further deduce that s/he implemented on his own time the following filter in Pseudo-Code: From Conversations => Select(p1.age < 18 | p2.age < 18 ) => Select(p1.age > 16 & p2.age > 16 ) => Filter(FamilyGraph.Related(p1, 1, p2) => NNFilter(Contains(conversation.content,sexual)) => CreateReport(vicitim= NNFilter(p1.conversation.history, traumatized) | NNFilter(p2.conversation.history, traumatized), suspects = SUB(conversation.person, victim)) Now lets assume this sort of technology is already in place, but you just will never know, the sort of quantum observation, that just leads to remarkable good police work - because lucky guesses.. Which is one of the reasons why abuse cases happen in third world countrys nowadays. This is something that should be deployed worldwide. Oh, compiler is done building - better worlds, all of them.

174 points by minamisan 10y ago

I don't really understand the objection to this. Continuing to operate the site for a short period in order to catch more pedophiles seems fine to me. They weren't abusing children themselves, and shutting down the site wouldn't have prevented the continuing abuse of children by its users. All shutting it down immediately would have done is prevented them from sharing the photos with each other, which seems like an extraordinarily small price to pay to catch even a single additional child molester, let alone a whole community of them.

fad0om 10y ago
The "they weren't abusing children themselves" argument could equally apply to consumers of child pornography. If law enforcements argument that distribution and viewing of CP is equivalent to re-abusing the victim then it should equally apply to them.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
> Continuing to operate the site for a short period in order to catch more pedophiles seems fine to me. Was that what happened, though? We saw that there were more logins, but were those unique logins? Did those additional 39,000 logins result in a significantly higher number of arrestees? Or were all 186 people who were prosecuted part of the initial 11,000? Do we, as people not involved in the investigation, even get to find this out?
- darawk 10y ago
  Does it matter? I mean, why else would they operate this site but because they think they might get more information? Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried.
  - lifeisstillgood 10y ago
    I'm in your side in this - we grant a lot of latitude here, because the harm prevented is much greater.
  - JayNeely 10y ago
    If I spend my grandmother's retirement fund on lottery tickets, maybe I'll win her a lot more money, maybe I won't -- should I try? Of course the likelihood of effectiveness matters. As does the potential harm you're risking. What the article is arguing is that keeping the site up allowed for a much greater distribution of the photos -- to potentially many, many more individuals who continue to elude prosecution, and may continue to spread those photos themselves. At the time the FBI took over the site, there were 11,000 weekly user logins. During the additional time they ran it, it grew to 50,000 weekly user logins. Out of a potential 50,000 individuals, the FBI is able to prosecute only 186. pavel_lishin is asking a fair question when he wonders if allowing a potential 39,000 additional individuals to download those photos and potentially distribute them elsewhere actually resulted in any additional prosecutions, and if so, is that number worth it compared to the (potentially massive) amount of additional distribution the FBI enabled?
    - darawk 10y ago
      You're missing the point, I think. IMO, it is unequivocal that in theory continuing to operate the site for some time could lead to substantially more arrests. Whether or not the FBI succeeded in doing so is an operational matter. If they failed to exploit this opportunity properly, that doesn't invalidate the concept. Now, you could criticize their operational use of this power, but that is entirely distinct from criticizing, in general, the use of this sort of tactic. Which, I think, on its face, is clear can be an effective one.
a3n 10y ago
If the actual owners were observed by the FBI operating the site for two weeks, and served N specific images, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm? Yes? If the original owners sold to new owners, and the FBI observed the new owners serving the same N specific images for two weeks, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm. Yes? If the FBI muscled in and took over the site, serving those exact same N images for two weeks, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm? Yes?
- darawk 10y ago
  Yes, but that is a tradeoff that has been made in nearly every non-trivial investigation of organized crime in the history of investigation or crime. You can always get the people at the bottom first, but you let them roam free committing crimes for a time so that you can take down the entire entity. The tradeoff ought to be evaluated on a case by case basis, of course. Because you are trading some small harm for the theoretical reduction in some greater harm. However, I think it's pretty clear that stopping actual child abuse is much more important than preventing the dissemination of child pornography.
  - syshum 10y ago
    1. Based on DOJ and Court rulings what the FBI did here was actual child abuse. The FBI abused children in the course of their investigation. The Official DOJ and US Supreme Court position is that any distribution, or viewing of child porn images is in fact child abuse. As such the FBI running the server is in fact child abuse. 2. Who were these mythical "kingpins" you believe the FBI was seeking, in every case publicly known about prosecution resulting from this operation is about simple possession of child pornography, Not production. From my understanding of the cases not a single child porn producer has been prosecuted, and I believe the FBI has stated most of the images are very old and previously known to the FBI or other agencies. That made that statement to attempt to curb some of the outrage. Given that however it contradics your reasoning for them to continue operating the server as they had already caught the largest "kingpin" the server owner. It would seem they worked backwards in this operations, they caught the top guy first then used the server to sweep up the "street level" or bottom level persons.
themaninthedark 10y ago
>They weren't abusing children themselves, and shutting down the site wouldn't have prevented the continuing abuse of children by its users. By that logic the people who were using the site to view child porn should not be arrested. Only those that produce it should.
- darawk 10y ago
  Well, to be honest, i'm not so sure that they should be. Why should you be prosecuted for looking at child pornography? Because you and I find it morally abhorrent? You may be able to argue that it creates a demand for the product, which leads to more abuse, but that argument is tenuous and ought to be born out by something other than conjecture before it's etched into law. That being said, I suppose it's irrelevant what we think the law ought to be, the law does define the consumption of child pornography and therefore the facilitation of that consumption to be a crime, and by extension to be causing some kind of harm. However, all investigative agencies via undercover and covert informant based work engage in this sort of behavior, that either supports indirectly or prolongs unnecessarily some level of criminal behavior in order to infiltrate and stop a greater criminal syndicate from operating. This is not even remotely unprecedented, and, in my view is a fundamentally sound principle to follow. If you can prevent substantially greater harm (actual child abuse) by temporarily facilitating a very small harm (consumption of images of child abuse), you should do so.
  - themaninthedark 10y ago
    I agree with your points about the legality of the material and share the thought that more research should be done. What doesn't sit well with me is the government directly running or supporting illegal behavior. If they had infiltrated the server and backdoored it(say by offering tech support) while the owner ran it I would not have any problem. When they took over the server by not shutting it down they became the top of the criminal syndicate not just someone providing support. I have similar problems with when they arrest a group of 'terrorists' by actively recruiting people, putting together a plot, providing the (fake) explosives and finally using tactics akin to brainwashing and abuse the get the 'terrorists' to carry out the plot so they can be arrested. The entire reason they have leeway is so they can get the head of the organization, not so they can be the head. Addendum: I want to thank you for being able to discuss this without being emotional and resorting to personal attacks. It is rare to get this nice of a discourse on such a subject.

FLUX-YOU 10y ago

I'm guessing this wasn't in the FBI's Approach to Cyber Threats speech

aliakhtar 10y ago

Given that this comes from a highly questionable source (bitcoin.com, run by Roger Ver, a guy convicted for sending explosives in the mail, a bitcoin investor, and libertarian who revoked his U.S citizenship so he wouldn't have to pay taxes, and is highly biased against the government), this should be taken with a massive grain of salt. If this were even slightly true, there would be reputable news sites all over this story by now. Edit: http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/294341-fbi-denies-speeding-up-child-porn-site-during-investigation http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/294341-fbi-denies-s... > In February 2015, the FBI seized control of the site and operated it for two weeks so that the agency could distribute malware to users with the intention of identifying suspects. > The Department of Justice (DOJ) denies that charge, writing in case documents, “The Government Played No Role in Creating the Crime for Which Chase is Being Prosecuted or Otherwise Encouraged His Criminal Conduct. Chase created the Playpen website, not the government.” > The FBI has also denied claims that during their operation of Playpen, agents improved the site’s performance, helping it run faster. > “Chase claims absent actual factual support that the government enhanced or improved the website’s functionality,” the DOJ said. > Even if the FBI did upgrade Playpen’s performance, criminal defense attorney Norman Pattis says, it would have little impact on the case. > “I don’t think there would be much implication at all,” Pattis said. “I think the defense is misapplying entrapment.” > “Speeding up access doesn’t create the desire to do it,” he added. “The fact that people come to the market looking for it already doesn’t make it entrapment.” > The DOJ justified the FBI’s actions in continuing to operate Playpen after arresting Chase. They wrote that shutting down Playpen immediately “might have answered the immediate issue of child pornography trafficking on Playpen, it would have done nothing to address the larger problem.”

spenvo 10y ago
>If this were even slightly true, there would be reputable news sites all over this story by now. The FBI has openly admitted to running the server http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-website-sharing-thousands-child-porn-images/79108346/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-websit...
4ad 10y ago
> If this were even slightly true, there would be reputable news sites all over this story by now. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-website-sharing-thousands-child-porn-images/79108346/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-websit... https://www.rt.com/usa/356896-fbi-kiddie-porn-playpen/ https://www.rt.com/usa/356896-fbi-kiddie-porn-playpen/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/23/fbi-improved-dark-web-child-porn-site-lawyer/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/23/fbi-improved-dark-web-ch... http://gizmodo.com/traffic-surged-to-a-child-porn-ring-after-the-fbi-took-1785649054 http://gizmodo.com/traffic-surged-to-a-child-porn-ring-after... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160614/19243034713/judge-playpen-case-fbis-warrant-is-valid-even-if-claims-about-no-privacy-ip-addresses-are-not.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160614/19243034713/judge... http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbis-unprecedented-hacking-campaign-targeted-over-a-thousand-computers http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbis-unprecedented-hack...

ajamesm 10y ago

It makes sense that a porn ring would question the role of government in society. How to be taken seriously, step zero: proofread

Forge36 10y ago

It introduces an interesting question on tactics. Stopping child porn is good, reducing gun trafficking is good. It's not clear how that is done currently. In place of continuing to host the content to catch predators, could the government covertly transition sites they run from hosting to linking to other sites? Making their site "more robust to takedown"? Encouraging users to instead link to other sites? The resulting contributions can then be used to go after and prosecute, and even shut down (some of) the submitted sites? I don't know if it's possible to do that transition well, at some point the site is just a host of links (like HN or Reddit). At some point they'd become the largest aggregator of child porn, at which point they can go after the most popular or prolific producers. This of course is also along the lines of locate and punish, and doesn't explore helping the people who make, distribute, or consume. Addressing the demand for the content I don't like the idea of a strike system however catching and treating people and moving to prosecuting the people who reoffend after treatment is harder to do, I don't even know how monitoring to detect offenders after catching them once.

gizmo686 10y ago
It also re-introduces the question of goals, which is to often overlooked in any discussion that involves the word "child". Specifically, most people I talk to eventually agree that a bigger goal is to stop the production of child porn, more so than it is to stop the distribution of child porn. Even if the FBI was not activly catching consumers with this approach, flooding the market with already existing child porn (which the FBI should have access to), would help starve out producers, and reduce total production. When the FBI prosecutes the consumers of their honeypot, it has the added benefit of shrinking the total market (both directly, and by spreading the perception that consuming child porn is not safe because of the chance that it is a honeypot).
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  While I agree with the priorities, one problem with this is that you would be using potentially degrading involuntary pictures of other people. Maybe it would be possible to find sufficient victims who would agree to have their pictures used for the cause? I don't know.

joshuaheard 10y ago

The rule should be that law enforcement cannot commit a crime in order to catch a criminal. For instance, they cannot be part of a bank robbery, or murder someone. This reminds somewhat of the "gun walker" case where the ATF let illegal guns flood the market in order to track the buyers, which resulted in the death of a border patrol agent and countless others along the border. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

S_Daedalus 10y ago
The funny thing is, I suspect that many people believe that to be the law already, if cinema and television audiences are anything to go by. That's quite scary really, because it simply isn't true. You can't entrap, but that has a very specific meaning. Even if it were against the law though, with the system as it is prosecutorial discretion and grand juries that insulate LEO's from murder would do so for lesser crimes (and do).
dogma1138 10y ago
That's an unrealistic approach CIs and undercover agents are needed to break apart crime syndicates because otherwise you'll end up arresting the "street level" peddlers and nothing more. Now as far as entrapment goes there are legal definitions for it under most cases law enforcement isn't allowed to change the outcome of an event. For example it is ok for an undercover officer to sell you drugs in a sting operation but it is not ok to come to you and convince you to do drugs and then sell them to you. For the most part wether the fbi was operating this server or not the people who visit the server came there out of their own free will in an attempt to acquire child pornography. If the fbi did not operate the server they would still have acquired it just from a different source. The ATF sting was a pretty shitty operation with dubious legal backing but it's not an case for not running intelligence gathering or sting operation, it's just evidence that they should be planned and executed better and that certain restrictions should apply especially in cases where public safety might be put at risk.
- pixelbash 10y ago
  > If the fbi did not operate the server they would still have acquired it. I'm a little dubious of this brand of logic. The one that goes if X was not supplied they would just get it from the <potentially slightly harder to find &/or riskier> place. Perhaps, but surely the point is to reduce the incentive by making it harder/riskier - as making it impossible is generally not a viable option?

dkarapetyan 10y ago

So pedophiles obviously don't choose to be pedophiles. I'm certain it is a biological vagary. There should be a better way to treat people that are a certain way because of biology and not choice. The other issue is I'm not sure if FBI did the right thing here. For whatever brief period this was state sponsored and sanctioned pedophile ring.

dogma1138 10y ago
It's really not clear why and how one does become a pedophile, that said the FBI was going after the producers and dealers of child pornography not the consumers. For the most part the consumers are being left out of major prosecutions, one can also make an argument that blocking all sources of CP might increase sexual assault cases involving children if the users cannot get their relief that way. But this overall isn't a clear cut case.
- 1_listerine_pls 10y ago
  > one can also make an argument that blocking all sources of CP might increase sexual assault cases... mmm... I don't see how one could argue that without actual data.
  - probably_wrong 10y ago
    The idea has been thrown around for a while, but of course, there's no way to get a definite truth on the matter. Here's one article[1] claiming a possible link between availability of porn and abuse. But I'm sure there must be at least one other study arguing the opposite. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21116701 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21116701
- aerovistae 10y ago
  It's a chore sometimes not to break the vulgarity rules here. You do understand that child pornography is created by the rape of children? You're saying, "Well, it could be argued that if we stop letting these guys rape them, possibly more children might get raped. We should let it go." No.

c3534l 10y ago

I mean, wasn't the government supposed to learn you can't do this sort of shit, I dunno, countless government scandals involving essentially the same thing? If your involvement in an illegal industry is such that the market is composed primarily of you, you're probably doing something immoral. The ends do not justify the means, especially when you're given a privileged position of power. In my opinion, those FBI agents involved in this operation should be tried on criminal charges. The fact that no one spoke up has very concerning implications about the ethical culture at the FBI.

__s 10y ago

Response in this thread seems rather contrasting with response to the similar Australian operation (Argos). I may not be grasping the differences tho

tajen 10y ago

As opposed to the illustration of the article, one needs to note that child pornography includes a photo, a drawing or a 3D CGI representing anyone below 18 years old. Given the recipient rarely has the ID card on file, it's hard to prove it to the judge, even if the porn model was 22. Not even talking about age fabrication, which turns unsuspecting viewers into felons. I wonder how well the distinction is applied, or far this can be pushed by the FBI to take down a someone. On the other hand, needless to say that actual child porn is disgusting.

gizmo686 10y ago
I am not a lawyer. The law [0] seems to provided an affirmative defense if "the alleged child pornography was not produced using any actual minor or minors." This defense does not apply if (emphasis added) "such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct." My reading of this is that it is legal to have a pornagraphic drawing of a child character . It only become illegal when the drawing is of an actual minor. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mtgx 10y ago

Kind of reminds me of CIA's drug trafficking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi... Or even FBI's own terrorist factory. It's all "for a good cause," I'm sure. https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/ https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-te... And now they want us to let them backdoor encryption, because they've clearly proven themselves such upstanding and trustworthy "good guys" so far.

Animats 10y ago

The real problem with the FBI's "Innocent Images" program is that too much of the FBI's resources are devoted to it. As of about 5 years ago, the FBI's "cyber security" operation was about 50% "national security" (much of which is trolling for wannabe terrorists), 40% child pornography (much of which is trolling for people who want child porn), and 10% online fraud. The first two are easy; FBI people can sit in their offices in Baltimore and do much of that. It brings up their numbers. Solving online crimes is really hard, involving tracking through multiple countries, and is likely to be unsuccessful. This is why law enforcement shouldn't be allowed to set their own priorities. The institutional goals and the goals of the taxpayers who pay them don't match.

driverdan 10y ago
The US Secret Service actively investigates online fraud. They have operations around the country investigating things like credit card fraud and identity theft. The most well known was Operation Firewall, although that happened back in 2004. They still run these operations, although it seems to be smaller scale since we haven't heard of such large busts in a while.
woliveirajr 10y ago
Governance. Those who execute the law enforcement shouldn't define priorities, except for the daily basic investigation.
- akshatpradhan 10y ago
  Does the FBI read HN? I don't think they realize how much they're missing out from not reading this feedback and actually giving it a few seconds worth of contemplation =/.
  - Animats 10y ago
    There's been substantial criticism of the FBI's terrorist entrapment efforts. Too often, they find out about someone mouthing off about "Death to America", and gear up a sting operation to encourage them to commit some act for which they can be convicted.[1] Most of them are wannabes, not real threats. The FBI director once said of the group convicted of planning to below up the Willits Tower in Chicago that their plans were "aspirational, not operational". In the case of the “Newburgh Four,” a judge said the government “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles,” and had, in the process, made a terrorist out of a man “whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope.” It's not entirely the FBI's fault. They're under heavy political pressure to stop every terrorist plot. Every time some nut actually does something, they get criticized for missing them. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/fbi-terrorism-stings_n_5606468.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/fbi-terrorism-sting...

mirimir 10y ago

It also questions Tor Project's effectiveness at educating its users. Especially users engaged in high-risk activity. Once PlayPen had been compromised, this FBI operation relied entirely on exploiting a Firefox vulnerability to drop malware that phoned home, bypassing Tor. Putting tor daemon and userland in separate VMs would have prevented user compromise. Even firewall rules might have prevented it. Why doesn't Tor Project focus more on user safety? Edit: We hear about this because defendants in criminal cases are questioning FBI practices. And because criminal cases in the US are public, unless there are national security issues. But we probably don't hear about similar efforts elsewhere against political dissidents etc.

cloudjacker 10y ago
Whonix does that exact form of security Every state action prompts people to implement the security they already knew they should have been using

roel_v 10y ago

As a meta-point, I wonder why people who (apparently) see themselves as bitcoin/privacy advocates think it's a good idea (from an efficiency-towards-that-goal perspective) to defend child molesters, or attack people trying to catch child molesters. Maybe they're just not very capable of making the distinction between their personal convictions (about the boogey-man government) and how to realistically achieve certain goals on privacy advocacy, but talking about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...

Pica_soO 10y ago

Lets assume that on the WhatsApp-Team there is a least one father or mother. Lets further deduce that s/he implemented on his own time the following filter in Pseudo-Code: From Conversations => Select(p1.age < 18 | p2.age < 18 ) => Select(p1.age > 16 & p2.age > 16 ) => Filter(FamilyGraph.Related(p1, 1, p2) => NNFilter(Contains(conversation.content,sexual)) => CreateReport(vicitim= NNFilter(p1.conversation.history, traumatized) | NNFilter(p2.conversation.history, traumatized), suspects = SUB(conversation.person, victim)) Now lets assume this sort of technology is already in place, but you just will never know, the sort of quantum observation, that just leads to remarkable good police work - because lucky guesses.. Which is one of the reasons why abuse cases happen in third world countrys nowadays. This is something that should be deployed worldwide. Oh, compiler is done building - better worlds, all of them.