
FBI’s Deep Web Child Porn Ring Questions Role of Gov’t in Society - minamisan
https://news.bitcoin.com/fbi-child-porn-role-govt/
======
Animats
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.

~~~
seizethecheese
> much of which is trolling for wannabe terrorists

Forgive me for being pedantic, but it's "trawling." Trolling is another thing
entirely.

~~~
praptak
Trolling, the original meaning, makes sense too:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_\(fishing\))

~~~
seizethecheese
Thank you, I learned something new.

------
joshuaheard
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)

~~~
dogma1138
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.

~~~
syshum
Legal Protections against entrapment are very minimal and not what people
think.

FBI routinely creates, plots, then recruits people for made up terrorism
plots, then arrests them

The DEA, in partnership with the ATF, recently ran a operation where they
recruited people to rob fake stash houses, then arrested the people that were
coerced into the plot

Entrapment is often used in prostitution stings as well.

None of these instances are tossed by the courts, entrapment is very much
alive and well in the legal system

>>>>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.

While true, there are some very significant problems with this. For decades
now the basis of the law against viewing child pornography is that each time
the image is viewed the child is victimized. Thus by running the server for
even 1 second the FBI was, according to the law, victimizing children in order
to catch criminals.

If you then claim is no children were actually harmed by the FBI's action then
one has to start looking at the very foundation of the Child Porn laws.

Personally I think the ethical and moral position (and should be the obvious
one) is that the FBI should not, under any circumstances, be distributing
child porn. Period.

Edit:

Sources for above can be found in this comment
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12432737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12432737)

~~~
dogma1138
I think the concept of some one watching child porn that was produced in the
80's and converted from VHS to DVD is harming a child today is a bit odd one.

Don't get me wrong going after the producers of new material is very important
just as it is important to go after the human traffickers that facilitate the
production.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It might normalize child pornography in someone's mind. They could keep
watching it long enough to the point where it just seems like another genre,
albeit the only genre that works for them. They could start manufacturing
their own, to join other rings and trade.

I know it's all maybe's and could-be's, but they're maybe's and could-be's
that ruin children's lives.

~~~
Hondor
That's been the argument against porn in general, and against strip clubs and
against prostitution. Without good science behind it, it's just more made-up
political rationalizing. You could equally argue the opposite that having
access to porn satisfies people so they don't need to use real children.
Without science, we can't know.

I recently saw an interview with a conservative Indian figure about porn where
one man said "I'm not harming anyone by watching porn in my room" and the
conservative man responded with "You might become corrupted and turn into a
sex maniac". It sounded like hilariously backward thinking, but that's still
how many people think of child porn.

~~~
nylsaar
Your argument is corrupt. It doesn't take science to recognize morality. Each
and every child in a porn video is someone's son or daughter. Each and every
child has value. Society chooses to make and enforce laws which dissuade
deviant behavior. Erode the moral foundation of a society is to watch it
crumble.

~~~
sdoering
Absolutely. You are right. No science needed to identify morality. Therefore
lot's of western countries are inherently immoral. Letting gay people openly
kiss each other? Some states even let gay people marry. What an abomination to
thy Lords rulings.

Not to speak of black people being allowed to vote. To marry without consent
of their owners.

Sorry - but do you really need more examples, that arguing with an universal
morale is just one big smelly pile of bullshit?

Morale and societal norms change and shift over time. We develop and there is
no basic morality, just societal contracts. And that is good. We do not need
an entity enforcing or dictating our morals. We need rationality to identify
the right rules to live as a society and then a system to enforce these rules
in the best possible way (not that we do have that in place anywhere in the
world). But given your comment/idea and our current systems I rather live in
our current systems. I just do not want to be ruled by some morality
dictators.

------
dkarapetyan
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
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.

~~~
aerovistae
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.

~~~
gizmo686
s/rape/statutory rape/g

In our current environment, this is mostly a pedantic distinction because
almost all child porn is produced in an otherwise abusive environment.

Also, the definition of child porn is far broader than what would be required
to meet the definition of rape, which requires penetration. [0]

The definition of child porn is also sufficiently broad to include any
pornographic image that _depicts_ an identifiable minor in a sexual act,
whether or not said minor was actually ingaged in said act, or involved in the
production in any way.

The FBI also has a stash of already created child porn. Any harm resulting
from the creation of said porn has already been done, and is therefore not a
reason to not use it in order to reduce future harm.

[0] Technically, many jurisdictions do not have any form of "statatury rape",
but instead use other crimes like sexual abuse.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _s /rape/statutory rape/g_

We're not talking about a 25 year old filming his 17 year old girlfriend
giving him head here. This is the kind of stuff where the people involved
_cannot consent_. Your spellchecker is broken.

~~~
Hondor
The idea the some people "cannot consent" is disproven by the fact that some
countries allow underage people to have consensual sex with each other but not
with overage people. Somehow they can consent sometimes but not other times.
Where I'm from, it's common for kids to be having sex at 13. They "can't
consent" but somehow do it anyway without breaking the law.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'm not talking about 14 year olds; I'm talking about people in single digits,
and children who can't walk yet.

------
tajen
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
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)

------
mirimir
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
Whonix does that exact form of security

Every state action prompts people to implement the security they already knew
they should have been using

------
darawk
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.

~~~
a3n
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
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
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.

------
Forge36
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
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
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.

~~~
Forge36
I agree that distributing images of people without their consent is wrong. I
hadn't considered identifying and distributing material from people willing to
help stop child porn. I can't imagine what that approval process would need to
be or how to ensure the process would be carried out. It does avoid starving
the market which could lead to an ideas in production. With a goal of ending
production of child porn, not consumption, a very different approach may be
taken.

I'm not advocating no punishment for consumers, however only focusing
police/FBI resources on producers (as that doesn't appear to be the approach
today) and pushing the expenses of care/treatment for consumers elsewhere (the
healthcare system?) Could lead to a more significant reduction in both
consumption and production.

------
c3534l
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.

------
mtgx
Kind of reminds me of CIA's drug trafficking:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking)

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-
te...](https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-
isis-grave-threats/)

And now they want us to let them backdoor encryption, because they've clearly
proven themselves such upstanding and trustworthy "good guys" so far.

------
Pica_soO
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.

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

------
roel_v
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...

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

------
ajamesm
It makes sense that a porn ring would question the role of government in
society.

How to be taken seriously, step zero: proofread

------
aliakhtar
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-s...](http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/294341-fbi-denies-
speeding-up-child-porn-site-during-investigation)

> 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.”

~~~
4ad
> 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-
websit...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-website-
sharing-thousands-child-porn-images/79108346/)

[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-
ch...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/23/fbi-improved-dark-web-child-porn-
site-lawyer/)

[http://gizmodo.com/traffic-surged-to-a-child-porn-ring-
after...](http://gizmodo.com/traffic-surged-to-a-child-porn-ring-after-the-
fbi-took-1785649054)

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160614/19243034713/judge...](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)

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbis-unprecedented-
hack...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbis-unprecedented-hacking-
campaign-targeted-over-a-thousand-computers)

~~~
aliakhtar
So, a site was made by a pedophile, they got that guy, and then kept the site
online so they could make further arrests of people who viewed the site.

That's a massively different picture than what you get by reading the article,
and the headline 'FBI's deep web child porn ring'. It wasn't FBI's child porn
ring, it was this guy's child porn ring.

~~~
gcb0
but after the creator is in jail, it's 100% the fbi that host and promotes the
site.

there are law against entrapment. but when fbi agents get on a chat room
anonymously and send someone a link "want to see this illegal content?" now
the person who could have zero interest in the matter will just want to check
it out to see if it's true, for whatever reason, which could very well be to
report to the authorities if it is true. but now, since the person was
entrapped, the fbi can just deny the anonymous entrapment and prosecute the
person for arriving on the site by their own means and drive.

~~~
Natsu
You have to be more active than just stumbling across it. If you stumble onto
CP accidentally and either report it to the police (only) or delete it and
show no one, you're fine. Read the USC if you're curious about the details,
but no, you can't get busted just because you ran into it.

Entrapment only comes into play if you convince someone to commit a crime they
weren't already predisposed to commit. So if you give them a link that says
"here's CP" and they download half the site and add it to their collection,
it's hard to argue that the cops made you collect CP. In general, if all the
police did is provide you a chance to commit a crime and you did so, you were
busted, not entrapped.

I suggest this as an entertaining introduction to the law on the concept:
[http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633)

~~~
jbicha
> If you stumble onto CP accidentally and either report it to the police
> (only) or delete it and show no one, you're fine.

Please do not assume you'll be fine if you self-report to the police.

~~~
Natsu
You would normally just send an anonymous tip:

[http://crime.about.com/od/childporn/qt/porn_report.htm](http://crime.about.com/od/childporn/qt/porn_report.htm)

