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Founder of Tor Freedom Hosting arrested in Ireland, awaiting extradition to USA
- waffle_ss 13y agoLink came from a Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_the_freedom_hosting_arrested_held/ http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_th... This is a pretty big deal as lots of Tor hidden services were apparently hosted on Freedom Hosting, including TorMail.
- chmike 13y agoThe article is indeed very confusing about the charges aginst that person. Is he directly actively involved in child porn or is he only the owner of a tor hosting site ?
- unimpressive 13y agoRelated Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154246 I was actually under the impression prior to seeing this that the TOR website used "freedom hosting" and was compromised. Nice to see this unintentional clarification.
- revelation 13y agoIf Freedom Hosting was compromised by the Feds, why is he still arrested? That points to his cooperation, when the alternative would be that the Feds did this themselves, but certainly thats not legal, now is it?
- snitko 13y agoNot legal, haha. "Not legal" is a concept invented for the rest of the society and it means nothing to Feds. Source: NSA revelations.
- rustynails77 13y agoThe article is vague on whether or not he made, or just distributed the videos. Will this open the doors to be able to catch the monsters abusing young children, or is this just a game of whack-a-mole?
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoDenying file hosting to abusers is valuable even if no abusers are caught. Impeding the ability to sell child porn makes it harder to make money off it, which reduces the impetus to create new material. But yeah, the article is hideously vague. The Reddit link implies that the guy knowingly allowed kiddie-porn purveyors to host with him even after being alerted. If that's true, fuck 'im, let him rot. I'd like to get some more solid sources, though.
- scotty79 13y ago> Denying file hosting to abusers is valuable even if no abusers are caught. Yeah. It works so well for drugs. They give out harsh punishments to the drug users to reduce the market for drugs. This just raises the price and number of providers grows because with elevated price as a provider you can earn much more per unit and your risk and cost of providing unit haven't changed. If they were actually serious about fighting child abuse they'd make distribution of child abuse photos legal, drive down the price of it to the bottom and use supple info to track the people who actually abuse children instead of the people who are just sick in the head in a way that makes them like looking at abused children.
- Selfcommit 13y agoI imagine the market for drugs is substantially larger than the market for child porn.
- Dylan16807 13y agoSo the latter should be easier to crash?
- adamnemecek 13y agoI wonder how/whether safe harbor will apply.
- drivingmenuts 13y agoAt this point, it doesn't matter anymore. The US is going to do what the US is going to do. Whether or not he is guilty or innocent, the US will ensure that it is inconvenient for him to do anything until such time as it is impossible for him to do anything.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ihsw 13y agoIn other news oxygen has been banned from distribution due to child pornographers utilizing it while producing child pornography. Environmentalists across the world cry foul as vast swaths of forests are slashed and burned in an effort to control oxygen production. Conservationists have been branded "supporters" of child pornography, and incidentally the logging industry has seen its largest growth ever and jobs are plentiful.
- seivan 13y agohttp://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_the_freedom_hosting_arrested_held/cbge599 http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_th... TL;DR Your analogy is broken. Go fix. Edit; Apparently the person in question was aware.
- sillysaurus 13y agoPlease don't blindly copy paste from reddit without at least making it applicable to what the parent comment actually said. They didn't say anything about camera makers.
- GuiA 13y agoTL;DR: fuck taxi drivers and public transportation?
- jlgreco 13y agoYour analogy is shit. The circumstances under which a "getaway driver" can be charged are not nearly as generous as you make them to be. If you genuinely had nothing to do with the crime other than unwittingly being the getaway driver (say, if your job was transporting around many people at once... a bus driver), then you would not be held accountable. Should bus drivers have to ensure they don't drive anyone committing crimes? Of course not, that is patently ridiculous. Do yourself a favor and exercise a few brain cells before you blindly suck up bullshit reddit is spewing.
- eurleif 13y ago
- redthrowaway 13y agoInteresting. Freedom Hosting had been a target of Anonymous' Operation Darknet from the beginning--they're well-known for refusing to take down exploitative sites. Operation Darknet is, itself, a pretty interesting phenomenon: Anonymous hacks onion sites, then hands over user information to the FBI for investigation. Anonymous does what the FBI legally can't, and in exchange they're not prosecuted for it. I can't find the article now, but I recall reading an interview with an FBI agent in Wired or Ars or some such where he described the anons as "Internet Superheroes". (sic) That, in and of itself, is kind of curious. Curiouser? One of the original Op Darknet principals was Sabu. You may remember him as the hacker the FBI rolled and got to bust up LulzSec. Sabu was turned by the FBI on June 7th, 2011.[1] Operation Darknet began several months later, in October, 2011.[2] The obvious question, then, is this: Did the FBI use Sabu to entice Anons into attacking child porn networks, thereby evading the laws against them doing it themselves? Did they use the fact they turned a well-known hacktivist to help them deal with criminals they lacked the legal tools to go after? Is this arrest the culmination of those efforts? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabu_(hacktivist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabu_(hacktivist) [2] http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/anonymous-attacks-child-pornography-webs/231901499 http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/anonymous-at...
- znowi 13y agoThis is interesting. Isn't Anon supposed to be pro Tor and privacy? I suspect there's more to it than child pornography allegations.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Shank 13y agoAnon can be any group of anonymous people, though. They aren't a singular collective - any "branch" so to speak can work on what they please. The fact that they're targeting child exploitation shows that there are really talented members of Anonymous who are willing to do the unthinkable for proper morals.
- pavs 13y agoSlightly off-topic. I often read about how non-americans are extradited to US for legal reasons. How often does US citizens get extradited to non-US countries? I honestly never read of any such incident.
- kornholi 13y agoThe guy in the article has US citizenship though
- ajarmst 13y agoAnd Irish citizenship, which means that for nearly all purposes, his US citizenship will be irrelevant to how he is treated under Irish law. Dual citizenship complications are more an issue in third countries. If you are a citizen of the country you happen to be in, that usually trumps everything else.
- _delirium 13y agoIt's reasonably common for U.S. citizens to be extradited for crimes they're alleged to have committed while on a trip to another country [1]. I would be interested to know if any have been extradited for "virtual" offenses, however, i.e. to a country they have not visited, but which argues they violated that country's laws via the internet, or some other indirect mechanism. [1] e.g. http://praguemonitor.com/2013/05/28/dahlgrens-extradition-%C4%8Dr-would-be-first-us-citizen http://praguemonitor.com/2013/05/28/dahlgrens-extradition-%C...
- cupcake-unicorn 13y agoThis is a terrible article - not enough background information. I'm assuming this has to do with some Tor exit node thing, like all the other people who get charged with this?
- mariuolo 13y agoDid they ascertain where the servers are located? Otherwise how can the US claim jurisdiction in lieu of Ireland?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- babarock 13y agoSlightly off-topic, but I never understood the obsession of legal enforcement with child pornography. Don't get me wrong, the idea of pre-pubescent children being exploited by pornographers horrifies me as much as anyone, but it always felt so ... random. Maybe I'm wrong and the problem is a lot more widespread that I think it is, but I think that there are so many more crimes committed online. Yet, almost every time some morally righteous politician talks about regulating the Internet, he or she mentions "Child Pornography". I can see how the words would have the desired effect in a political speech, but is it really THAT common a problem? Where did that come from? Call me paranoid, but it feels like this term came out of an orchestrated propaganda campaign to scare uptight puritan Americans from the Evils of the Internet, similar to the propaganda movies we can see about marijuana in the sixties.[1] > The court also heard that a search of Mr Marques's computer revealed he had made inquires about how to get a visa and entry into Russia. And it's valid to consider this suspicious? I've queried how to get entry into Russia before, I hope that didn't trigger any kind of alarm. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bm2koyUqmU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bm2koyUqmU
- INTPenis 13y agoI can tell you don't have children. Politicians almost always have kids. It changes your perspective on things. Suddenly they're number one and you'll do anything you believe is right for them. Including outlawing soft drugs and filtering the internets.
- pasquinelli 13y agoi have children and i think people are hysterical with pedophileophobia.
- chii 13y agoanother word for that is 'selfish' - they are making laws, enacting rules and enforcing behaviour which their constituents did not really want, simply because it's something they wanted for themselves. I don't want my politicians to have a perspective which only includes themselves. Unforutnately, its all far too common.
- froggyDoggy 13y agois this actual Child porn offence OR is this, the TOR network is used for child porn (bullshit)?????
- GigabyteCoin 13y agoHow did they ever determine he was in fact the owner of Freedom Hosting?
- aluhut 13y agoInteresting how the Major Consensus Narrative changed making the USA an evil place for everyting related with freedom on the net.
- ToothlessJake 13y agoIn the thread on the apparent code injection portion of this topic[1], I heavily suggested governments with the US at the least being responsible for the deed[2]. With a corporation like Endgame Systems being a probable contractor for the act[3]. Something I've brought up a few times with my commentary previously and mentioned by some here is governments using tactics they prosecute others for: "There are even target packs for democratic countries in Europe and other U.S. allies. Maui (product names tend toward alluring warm-weather locales) is a package of 25 zero-day exploits that runs clients $2.5 million a year." Sometimes using the very tools made by those hunted, prosecuted, renditioned: "The Cayman botnet-analytics package gets you access to a database of Internet addresses, organization names, and worm types for hundreds of millions of infected computers, and costs $1.5 million." How long can citizens of nations involved in enabling and hiring these mercenaries keep faith in the law of the land, let alone those tasked to uphold it? How long can the tiered system of the monitored/hunted/renditioned and the legally immune last, with the legally immune being paid by the former? Stop attempting to code around this human issue. Please. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154246 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154819 [3] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems
- marvin 13y agoSo wait. Is this guy actually a child pornographer, or does he simply run an anonymizing service which is incidentally used to distribute child porn? The first would appear to me to be just, the second would be a perversion of justice with a good pretext.
- nilved 13y agoAs far as we know it's the latter.
- andrewcooke 13y agothis has info on what freedom hosting is, for those that are confused (click "continue...") - http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion.to/wiki/index.php/Freedom_Hosting http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion.to/wiki/index.php/Freedom_Host...
- belorn 13y agoWhen news papers write articles about legal matters, I wish they stop combining different terms and concept as if they were synonymous. The title says he is a dealer. The subtitle says he is a facilitator. The text says he is a allegedly involved in distributing. Lastly, The warrant says he is a distributor and promoter. Most of those are quotes, but it confuses the matter to the point of ridiculous. I know what a distributor is. I can guess dealer is a synonym to it. Everything else is just wage hint of "wrongness" with no solid legal ground.
- josteink 13y agoSo let me get this straight: someone defending freedom of speech is criminalized to the point where the US will use their political influence to hunt him down worldwide. Land of the free indeed.
- rikacomet 13y agoand thus, TOR comes to an end.
- nilved 13y agoNot even close. Tor took a big hit, but it will recover.
- bobbobbob33 13y agoSo for us legit users of Tormail, will we ever get our mail back?