
The takeover: how police ended up running a paedophile site - elemeno
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/13/shining-a-light-on-the-dark-web-how-the-police-ended-up-running-a-paedophile-site
======
theonemind
For six months, the police provided strong incentive to actively commit new
child abuse, because they were running a site that required active uploading.

Really, possession and distribution of these images should be legal. Then
pedophiles wouldn't feel the need to hoard it. They could easily get it
online. However, obviously, the _acts_ in them should be completely illegal.
With the current system, pedophiles hoard images, and on sites like this,
they'll want _new_ material.

Much like the war on drugs, I don't think second-order effects have been
considered in policy. Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are
going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography. This leads to a
knee-jerk "ban it" reaction. I think the "reasoning" stops right there. For
every additional concept it takes to solve a test problem, you lose 75-80% of
students. Likewise, I feel like lawmakers and the public have at least a
75-80% loss rate considering the second and third order effects of their
policies.

~~~
jsmeaton
No. Absolutely no. It can not ever be legal to own or distribute this kind of
material. Imagine this kind of material exists of a child that you know. And
it was legal for people to send this image to others, and to post it online
unhindered. When the child gets older they can find this stuff of themselves
and be revictimised over again.

Fuck that. You think not as much would be created if access was easier? I
highly doubt that. I personally don't know anyone that keeps one or two
regular porn links bookmarked - it's always onto the next thing.

> Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut
> reaction of disgust to child pornography.

This quote here bothers me greatly. Sexually normal? EVeryone but pedophiles
should be disgusted by this kind of child abuse.

~~~
RHSeeger
My problem with our laws has more to do with the crimes that don't have
victims. \- Individual in high school takes provocative picture of themselves
and sends it to their significant other... pedophile. \- Person writes story
involving underage sex... pedophile \- Person draws picture involving underage
sex... pedophile \- Take a picture of sexual situations with someone that
looks underage, but isn't... pedophile

These things (arguably?) don't have real victims, yet people have their lives
ruined over them.

There's also the argument that being a pedophile is a mental condition. The
fact that a person with such a condition can use fictional (stories, drawings,
etc) material to mitigate their desire for actual damaging materials can be
considered (once again, not with argument) a good thing; they are aware they
have a problem and are looking to handle it in a way that does not cause harm
to others.

Note: I'm a father of a young daughter, the very concept of young children
being harmed by pedophilia sickens me. But the fact that a teenage boy can
have their life ruined because their girlfriend (voluntarily) texted them a
provocative picture is almost as horrible.

~~~
jsmeaton
I agree with you but that's not the kind of material discussed in the article
or by original commenter. Exploitation of children is evil. A 16 year old
sending a dick/boob pic to their same age boyfriend/girlfriend and being
arrested seems like unintended consequences.

~~~
drunken-serval
However, it's currently being treated the same by some law enforcement
entities.

~~~
surge
Mostly by prosecutors looking to make a name for themselves by putting another
sex crime conviction on their record and not giving a damn about the long-term
consequences of the young life they ruined.

------
Fede_V
The cops who have to look at these awful images to track down those monsters
are heroes. I cannot imagine having to do that every day without ending up
completely broken up inside.

~~~
Ensorceled
My brother says the key for him is to stay focused on the victim and what he's
trying to accomplish: stop the abuse or find them and stop the abuse, find
their abuser, convict their abuser so it doesn't happen again.

If you constantly get angry or upset, you'll have a very hard time doing it
for long.

------
toxik
Great job all around, but I think the elephant in the room here is that the
police was effectively enabling pedophiles to exchange videos of the sexual
abuse of small children. I'm not convinced this feels 100% kosher to me.

~~~
grpdn
If police had not used the opportunity to collect evidence on many others
before closing the site then the paedophiles would have just dispersed before
reorganising somewhere else. In the long run I suspect that the total amount
of child abuse material exchanged has been reduced.

~~~
chongli
That line of reasoning is very dangerous. The police have been successfully
sued [0] in the past for using innocent people as bait to catch suspected
predators. The argument that catching the criminal prevents future
victimization does not excuse the act of allowing innocent people to be
attacked without their consent.

[0] [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/jane-doe-wins-case-against-
pol...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/jane-doe-wins-case-against-police-
force-1.163867)

~~~
grpdn
It's not an approach without drawbacks or ethical grey areas, that's for sure.
Going by the article that OP submitted my personal take on it is that the
police made an acceptable trade-off in that instance. Had my child been abused
by somebody involved in that forum in between the police's initial
infiltration of it and closing it down I'm sure that my feelings would be very
different.

That's an interesting case that you linked though, I'd be curious to read more
details about it.

~~~
chongli
After a bit of Googling, I turned up this novel [0] by the Jane Doe who
successfully brought the suit.

As for the original ethical question, I believe the tradeoff is an utilitarian
one. Personally, I find utilitarian arguments totally unconvincing because the
measure of utility is subjective. People read about the murder of a stranger
in the morning paper, finish their breakfast, and carry on with their day
without a second thought; the murder had a miniscule effect on them. For the
victim, on the other hand, the entire universe has been permanently destroyed,
causing an infinite loss of utility.

[0] [https://www.amazon.ca/Story-Jane-Doe-Book-
About/dp/067931275...](https://www.amazon.ca/Story-Jane-Doe-Book-
About/dp/0679312757)

~~~
grpdn
Thanks, I may well track down that book.

I've never explicitly thought about the issue in utilitarian terms but it's
given me something to think about.

------
pdimitar
Is it just me finding it very strange how such child predators have
"diligently kept a ledger" of their acts, with names?

I am obviously not a criminal psychiatrist but this seems all too convenient
and the paranoia in me screams that such evidence might be planted. Then
again, maybe these monsters need to periodically validate themselves by
looking through that "ledger"...

~~~
smoyer
You could make the same argument for why serial killers shouldn't keep
trophies ... but they do.

The trophies are said to allow the killer to relive their crime - perhaps the
ledger is an effort to validate the paedophile's acumen as a business person?
Or maybe he was making enough cash that he needed to accurately launder it
through his other businesses?

~~~
blowski
Also similar to how the Nazis kept extremely detailed records in concentration
camps.

------
ikeboy
Apparently it _is_ possible to investigate such sites without hacking, just
regular investigative work. Who'd have thought?

------
ludamad
I wonder how many of their tactics they withheld from the story, given that
child abusers will be taking notes. At least there's not much that can be done
about location recognition.

~~~
DanBC
There were some hints in the article.

Forensic teams look at brands. Coca Cola labeling isn't identical across the
world, and is very common, so leaving a bottle of coca cola in the room can
provide a hint to location. (There was a programme on BBC Radio 4 that
mentioned programmers getting together with police to develop machine-
recognition of coca cola bottles. Sadly, the BBC search is _hopelessly poor_ ,
so I'm unable to find the programme.)

There's other stuff, like wallpaper patterns and fabric patterns in windows.

There's a bunch of image processing, the most obvious example being swirly-
face man, but there are plenty of others.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil)

------
rdl
This is the "The Love Zone" (TLZ) case, I believe (which was a Tor HS). Not
sure what country the gag order applies in, but I suspect not the United
States.

------
adsteel_
"The disarray was typical of a predator’s home."

Is this true? Do sexual predators tend to live in wildly unkempt and unwashed
homes?

------
DanBC
> Paul Griffiths, a police officer from England with a cropped haircut and a
> hard stare, worked on Argos in Queensland as a victim identification
> specialist, scanning gigabytes of images and videos each week looking for
> clues – a brand of food, a grain of wood – that might give away a child’s
> location. Above his desk was a whiteboard scrawled with two dozen usernames:
> the forum’s most wanted.

You can help law enforcement identify locations by using an app to take
photographs of hotel rooms.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12058357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12058357)

~~~
05
Why bother, NSA has all the private data it needs to do this on a scale that
could actually work, like hotel room pictures geotagged by your smartphone, as
well as your indoor pictures from your house.. Of course, you're really naive
thinking this will only (or even predominantly) be used against child
molesters..

~~~
halomru
Well, NSA's mission is foreign intelligence and counter intelligence. Fighting
crime isn't related to their tasks at all. And I would really prefer if it
stayed that way.

------
willvarfar
When they first took over the first user account, did they post any new
images? Or were they able to move quickly enough to take out the webmaster
before they got kicked?

------
HappyTypist
Epic sleuthing.

