
Results of operation against child exploitation enterprise on Tor network - alternize
http://www.dhs.gov/news/2014/03/18/secretary-johnson-highlights-results-operation-dismantled-underground-child
======
etiam
"[...]the Darknet’s Onion Router, also known as Tor"

Dear me. That would sound quite insidious, and possibly coherent, to someone
with population average knowledge about TOR. So the DHS is telling us this Tor
is something dark and sinister and used by exploitative paedophiles.

I wonder what comes next..

~~~
gumby
"...So the DHS is telling us this Tor is something dark and sinister..."

Good thing then that the Government is on the case working hard to shut down
this evil thing the Government funded and helped deploy.

I'm so glad the Government is here to help since you must always be on guard
against mailign actors like the Government and we need all the help we can
get!

------
sharemywin
Let me start off by saying I in no way agree with the content of the website
that was shutdown. With that said. I assuming that if the government can track
and shut a website using tor that other governments can track and shutdown
political activist websites as well. so much for tor.

~~~
DougWebb
The BBC article[1] says they were caught by a mistake made outside of Tor:

 _But the porn ring was broken when an item was sent through the US Postal
Service to a child, Ice Cyber Crime Centre Programme Manager James Kilpatrick
told Reuters. That development led the authorities to Mr Johnson._

If they can track Tor sites directly, they're not saying. To me this sounds
like Bitcoin: it's anonymous as long as you never ever link a transaction to a
real-world identity. Once you do, everything that was once anonymous is now
linked to you.

This isn't really new either; for a long time now you could create a fake
identity and use it for whatever purposes, and your real identity would be
protected and separate until you made a mistake which linked the two.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-26639092](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26639092)

~~~
001sky
parallel construction

~~~
pbhjpbhj
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

That was my thought too [though I didn't know the term] - Tor has been
compromised in the past hasn't it?

~~~
IceyEC
Tor hasn't been compromised, the Firefox installation that Tor is shipped with
has been exploited before though.

------
Shank
I'm not going to lie, at the heart of this story is good news. Tor has
consistently been a save heaven for child exploitation. This news is fantastic
considering that these were genuine criminals that have been stopped and
victims contacted. For once, I'm happy with DHS.

~~~
belorn
Boats has consistently been a save heaven for smugglers.

The Post office has consistently been a save heaven for drug dealers.

And so on. Those kind of statement is kind of pointless since each are just
technology used by criminals and non-criminals alike. I would rather have
people praise DHS for succeeding in doing technical heavy investigations,
rather than focus on how much a save haven a specific technology is.
Otherwise, it just lead demonizing of technology which is never a good thing.

------
vilhelm_s
More discussion on reddit (including links to some of the indictments):
[http://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/20rq0l/authorities_bust...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/20rq0l/authorities_bust_tor_child_porn_ring_unrelated_to/)
[http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/20qzi6/pedophile_rin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/20qzi6/pedophile_ring_that_operated_through_tor_nabbed/)

Note that this seems to be unrelated to the Freedom Hosting exploit---I still
wonder when we will see the results of that.

~~~
youkonley
The freedom hosting exploit took place in early August. What do you think is
taking so long before we see the results of that effort?

~~~
corin_
According to this press release, the site admin in this case was arrested back
in June and has been in custody ever since, so maybe that's just how long it
takes to tie up all the strings on this sort of thing?

------
thejosh
Excellent, give them nowhere to hide and long prison sentences. I hope they
rot.

------
terranstyler
It's time to shut down Tor once and for all. I hear Al-Qaeda is using it, too!

~~~
explorigin
Relax downvoters, this is sarcasm.

~~~
corin_
For the record, I downvoted it because I don't think that sort of sarcastic
comment (posted on its own, adding nothing useful to the conversation) doesn't
belong on HN, not because I missed the sarcasm.

~~~
terranstyler
Actually, it wasn't only sarcasm but kind of a TLDR.

The long version is: "This would make for a suitable precursor to a renewed
attempt on cracking down on some of the liberties in the internet. I
personally don't believe in gov't institutions being nice and I find it most
sad that this being a farce is the first thing that comes to my mind.

Unfortunately, where I come from, child porn is the #1 official reason for any
attempt of internet censorship."

~~~
corin_
Presumably people reading it would be split into two groups, those who
understood it as the long version (and therefore already know the argument)
and those who don't realise what it's a TLDR for. So either way it's still not
adding to the conversation, in my opinion.

------
jonlucc
Can someone explain why this falls under DHS and not the FBI?

~~~
reubenmorais
There seems to be a big overlap between the FBI and ICE-HSI. Both agencies
have legal authority to investigate the same types of crimes, and they have
similar man power (both have ~35k employees, but the FBI has twice as many
special agents [0][1]). Perhaps more interestingly, the DHS reports directly
to the president, while the FBI is under the Department of Justice. Though the
DOJ is under the attorney general, who is also under the president, so maybe
this difference isn't interesting at all.

To me it looks like the US government wanted to double the FBI's size without
saying that's what they were doing.

[0] [https://www.ice.gov/about/offices/homeland-security-
investig...](https://www.ice.gov/about/offices/homeland-security-
investigations/)

[1] [http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/faqs](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/faqs)

~~~
djKianoosh
That's a relatively large jump to conclusion you made. I doubt there's anyone
in the US government (where, exactly, in the hierarchy do you suppose) that
would have the skill to get that past congress (congress sets the budget for
all of DHS btw).

As for the missions, from both your links:

"The mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against
terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal
laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice
services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and
partners. It performs these responsibilities in a way that is responsive to
the needs of the public and faithful to the Constitution of the United
States."

"HSI conducts criminal investigations against terrorist and other criminal
organizations who threaten national security. HSI combats worldwide criminal
enterprises who seek to exploit America's legitimate trade, travel and
financial systems and enforces America's customs and immigration laws at and
beyond our nation's borders."

Yes there's quite a bit of overlap there. Maybe the key difference is that
ICE's mission talks about customs and immigration laws specifically.

~~~
reubenmorais
>I doubt there's anyone in the US government (where, exactly, in the hierarchy
do you suppose) that would have the skill to get that past congress (congress
sets the budget for all of DHS btw).

What do you mean? The Homeland Security Act of 2002 did pass congress.

------
joering2
Good job well done. Always feels better to work without competitors, right
Haliburton?

~~~
gadders
Haliburton has a Child Porn division?

~~~
garrettgrimsley
Child sex slaves would be DynCorp's specialty[1][2], but Halliburton has a
Human Trafficking division named KBR.[3]

[1]
[http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-2115403...](http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-21154038/)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-
documents...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-
documents/213720)

[3]
[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jmOzaTXaM...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jmOzaTXaMkCsqiqqmIK6gc_rpg1g?hl=en)

------
bigd
I'm surprised I've not read "they were tricking young teenagers in sending
pornographic materials in 4chan/b/ rate-my-penis threads".

------
a3voices
It bothers me that you can be arrested for just being a member of a website.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It bothers me that there were apparently 27000 members but they only have 300
active investigations [perhaps more will arise as they sift through the data].

Does it also bother you that just conspiring to kill someone is a crime?

~~~
DanBC
It's gently worrying that some people have their ode titites stolen, and one
use for those stolen identities is to register an account on a website sharing
images of child sexual abuse.

Let's hope law enforcement are careful about arrests.

~~~
jerf
They need to be _really fucking_ careful. For child exploitation charges, the
accusation is damn near as good as conviction, because if you end up in prison
on a charge like that, even just to await trial, your fellow prisoners will
also dispense "justice", heavy scare quotes.

