4 ms·

Personally I'm glad some random guy can't hand off a whole bunch of IPs to the FBI and tell them they're all pedophiles. I'm sure it would cost thousands of dol

• bennettfeely 11y ago
  > In this particularly disturbing case, a father of three hints that he is willing to share pictures of his children. > npt@hotmail.com: hi im a married dad of 3, i prefer girls from pt to jb. I’m looking forward to joining in and sharing in the community A little later in the article there is an entire section devoted to his findings that many visitors of the site were predators seeking to do more than look at photographs. In addition, > Many visitors offered photos from their “private collection” as a means to bribe me for entrance to the website. They took care to note that the material they were offering me was original.
  • zxcvcxz 11y ago
    Isn't that pretty much what the author was doing? Offering child porn to people on tor? How do we know the people contacting him weren't trying to honeypot him?
    • bennettfeely 11y ago
      > None of the websites contained any illegal content. Since I am not a legal authority (nor an expert in the law), I had to scale back the content. No illegal pictures nor files existed on any of the sites. In fact, each site contained exactly one image – a decorative background image to give the site a bit of flair (hidden service sites are notoriously lean). None of the honeypot sites explicitly offered to provide illegal content and instead, served to lure the user in by a vague promise of what may be found behind the locked door. Admittedly, this was a huge disadvantage over a FBI-driven honeypot and likely the reason why many visitors did not register and quickly moved on after landing on the home page. Later on he explains, > Scans on the server dropped and some of the users who opted to run the software appeared to be government or private researchers.
      • zxcvcxz 11y ago
        If he wasn't explicitly offering child porn then how can he assume people who visited his honey pot were looking for child porn if they didn't explicitly state it? Sure the guy offering pictures seems like a pedophile, but what about the others?
        • geek_slop 11y ago
          More than one offered pictures and in fact, according to other sources, seems to be a frequent method for pedos to prove to the hidden service operator that they are indeed "legit".
          • digler999 11y ago
            you wasted valuable time and resources of law enforcement. good on you
• paulhauggis 11y ago
  "but if you really want to help children you need to go after the people producing/hosting child pornography." Who says the people viewing it aren't abusing children?
  • tremon 11y ago
    Who says the people commenting on HN aren't abusing children?