
Founder of Tor Freedom Hosting arrested in Ireland, awaiting extradition to USA - waffle_ss
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/fbi-bids-to-extradite-largest-childporn-dealer-on-planet-29469402.html
======
redthrowaway
Interesting. 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-
at...](http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/anonymous-attacks-
child-pornography-webs/231901499)

~~~
nikcub
I'm interested in knowing how evidence obtained via Anonymous can be submitted
in a court of law. When I did evidence collecting work as part of infosec work
there are very strict criteria if the evidence is going to be used in a police
case[1].

We have to sign off on everything and record how we obtained the information
and have been told by a number of lawyers that in no way are we allowed to
break the law when collecting evidence that could be forwarded to police or
prosecutors.

Private detectives go through the same thing as well. If they are carrying out
a private investigation for a corporate client they can't submit evidence that
has been obtained illegally to be used at trial. For eg. you can submit
evidence from public surveillance, but you can't submit anything that you
obtain by hacking email accounts or placing a recording device on private
property.

From what I understand, there are very very strict rules about both gathering
evidence and then chain of custody. The person who collects the evidence has
to sign off on it and then be prepared to testify in a court to back up what
they found. I know for certain that this applies in the USA, UK and Australia.

I wonder how the FBI are able to use evidence collected by Anonymous, or if
they just use that work as a basis for their own investigations which start
from scratch. I can't imagine a judge would be impressed when told that key
evidence was obtained via an illegal breakin perpetrated by a group of
hackers.

Re: Sabu. I've read everything there is on that case and don't recall a
reference to his handlers prompting him on Operation Darknet. The timing also
doesn't seem to work - Sabu was taken offline last March while this arrest is
the culmination of a 12-month investigation, which would suggest it started
around 5 months after Sabu's work with the FBI was completed.

[1] Just a note - I was usually against prosecuting the defacement style
hackers or guys who were just poking around for fun. In all my work i've only
ever been involved in two cases where evidence I collected (IP addresses,
email addresses etc.) ended up being used in an investigation and in both
cases it was phishing attacks from Russia.

~~~
jakobe
Interesting fact: How evidence was obtained is only important in the US. For
example, in Austria where I live, it doesn't matter how the evidence was
obtained.

In Austria, if someone illegally spies on you, the information they collect
can be freely used in court. It is not important where the evidence comes
from, it is only important if the evidence is credible or not.

This doesn't mean that the police can do whatever they want; if they torture
someone, a potential confession would be worthless because it wouldn't be
credible. And if the police used illegal means, that would bring about a
separate trial (in theory).

But courts in Austria never have to pretend that some evidence doesn't exist.

~~~
rpgmaker
>But courts in Austria never have to pretend that some evidence doesn't exist.

Those restrictions are important to safeguard people's rights. The US since
its founding has always had a bias for protecting individual civil rights, in
theory at least. I rather this way of doing things.

~~~
stcredzero
Presumption of innocence is not directly enshrined in the US constitution.
Some local jurisdictions purposefully relax it for the sake of balance. (For
example, it is done in places where it is seen as much too hard to convict for
rape.)

------
babarock
Slightly 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)

~~~
scythe
>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?

Yes, it is, but no, it isn't. I present, for your consideration, _the most
depressing number in the world_ :

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2FS0145-2134(96)00180-9](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2FS0145-2134\(96\)00180-9)

"female and male child sexual abuse prevalence estimates [...] were 14.5% and
7.2%"

That's one in seven girls, one in fourteen boys. CSA is quite honestly the
most insane and awful aspect of Western society bar none. And _decades_ of
crackdowns, teacher-initiated interventions, and, well, spying on every phone
call in the country have failed to make a real difference.

So we target child pornography. We target child pornography because child
sexual abuse is the biggest social problem in the modern era, and we don't
know what else to do about it. I don't, honestly, know of any real evidence
that there is much to be accomplished this way. Porn isn't correlated with
rape and even though in this case there's no way that the porn could be made
ethically it's a bit like stomping termites in a sinking boat.

The thinking is really that by damaging pedophiles' online support network
they will be discouraged from engaging in such repulsive acts. Unfortunately,
while I'd like to see it work, it doesn't make sense to me: people were raping
children long before fiber optics got involved.

I don't really have a good answer. I hope this guy rots in jail.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/NIH_child...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/NIH_child_sex_abuse_disorders_graph.svg)

~~~
derefr
> We target child pornography because child sexual abuse is the biggest social
> problem in the modern era, and we don't know what else to do about it.

In other words, we're executing on the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician's_syllogism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician's_syllogism)
:

1\. We must do something

2\. This is something

3\. Therefore, we must do this.

~~~
threeseed
So your implication is that going after child pornography is a wasted effort ?

Because I would argue that sharing of child pornography encourages people to
create it. In the same way every other discussion board encourages people to
contribute content.

~~~
derefr
Like any other content industry, exploitative pornography (which includes
child pornography, rape and forced bestiality pornography, hidden-camera
pornography at brothels or stuck in toilets, etc.) has both a primary market
and a secondary market. (I'm going to speak in these economic terms in the
rest of this, because it's kind of disgusting to be more concrete.)

The original producers are part of the primary market, and only pay attention
to the consumers that participate in the primary market. The secondary market
--where open sharing of "used" content goes on--is ignored by the primary
market.

The primary-market producers for exploitative pornography consist mainly of
two types: individuals who film their own acts of exploitation to use _as
currency in trade_ for the films of exploitation-acts of others; and
professionals, usually members of a crime syndicate that has humman
trafficking business, who sell their content on the black market in less
reputable countries. In both of these cases, the produced works are _scarce
goods_ : as few people will see them as can be managed.

 _Leaks_ to the secondary market are bad for the producers in the primary
market; not only do they increase supply for the consumers in the primary
market (and thereby drive down demand), but they also make it much more likely
that law-enforcement will get their hands on the offending media, and be able
to analyze it for clues to the individual or group's whereabouts, or just as
proof in a trial. Thus, the producers in the primary market tend to enforce a
loan-shark-like "you break my trust, I break your knuckles" policy on the
redistribution of their content.

The incentives are basically just entirely missing for anyone in the primary
market to specifically release content to the secondary market. Anyone who
"just wants the attention" and releases multiple videos will soon be tracked
down and arrested.

Picture it like someone who is manufacturing some form of illegal-but-sought-
after drug, like MDMA. Have you ever heard of someone who _makes_ MDMA--not a
redistributor, but an originator--giving away large quantities of it to people
they don't know, just for the attention? That's just throwing away your
assets, your safety, and your profitable business all at the same time, isn't
it?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
So if I could summarize that: Given that producing child pornography is
illegal, making its _distribution_ illegal acts as a sort of de facto
extraordinarily draconian copyright law in favor of the unlawful producers.
Which increases the market incentive to violate the law against production
because many of the non-producing "pirate" distributors are driven out of the
distribution market by law enforcement, reducing competition and thereby
increasing profitability for the producers.

~~~
derefr
No: "many of the non-producing 'pirate' distributors are driven out of the
distribution market by law enforcement" is exactly the opposite of the case.
Law-enforcement has the _smallest_ impact on the secondary-market
distributors.

 _Producers_ , whose content get leaked to the secondary market, get caught by
law-enforcement, because each video available to law-enforcement is one more
piece of evidence that can be used to track and trap them.

The consumers in the primary market will get in trouble _with the producers_
for their leaking to the secondary market--much in the same way that Microsoft
will get mad at you for leaking your company's Windows/Office MAK key. If a
producer has only given copies of a video to five primary-market consumers,
it's quite easy to figure out which of those consumers is responsible for the
leak. The law doesn't have a good way to catch these people; but the producers
do. (In a lot of cases, this amounts to literally being "in trouble with the
mob.") Note that this knocks a consumer out of the _primary_ market--but
_increases_ the amount of free content available in the secondary market.
Since producers and consumers are taken out of the primary market in equal
numbers when this happens, supply/demand stays constant.

The "pirate" re-distributors in the secondary market--the people these primary
consumers leak _to_ \--don't care about any of this. They have no personal
relationships with the primary market, and are not personally involved in it,
other than in consuming and sharing the content produced there. They also
don't have to share any personally-identifying details about themselves to
participate in the secondary market (they can just be a TORified IP address,
unlike the primary market which operates more through established contacts.)

However, by and large, the secondary market is overwhelmingly larger than the
primary market--and so, when a Best Buy repair tech finds exploitative
pornography on someone's hard disk, that person will likely be a member of the
secondary market. Catching anyone from the primary market requires these
social-engineering-based busts that you hear about--where someone infiltrates
a primary market--precisely because there's no social "path" from the
secondary market back into the primary market.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> _Producers_ , whose content get leaked to the secondary market, get caught
> by law-enforcement, because each video available to law-enforcement is one
> more piece of evidence that can be used to track and trap them.

It seems to me that the same materials (or even more) would be available for
discovery by law enforcement in the secondary market if the secondary market
(i.e. redistribution) didn't carry large criminal penalties.

> The consumers in the primary market will get in trouble for their leaking to
> the secondary market--much in the same way that Microsoft will get mad at
> you for leaking your company's Windows/Office MAK key--because, if a
> producer has only given copies of a video to five primary-market consumers,
> it's quite easy to figure out which of those consumers is responsible for
> the leak.

The ability to punish leakers is somewhat irrelevant unless there is near 100%
success in doing so and the secondary market is entirely eliminated, which
seems implausible.

> Since producers and consumers are taken out of the primary market in equal
> numbers when this happens, supply/demand stays constant.

Are you assuming a 1:1 relationship between suppliers and consumers for some
reason?

> The "pirate" re-distributors in the secondary market--the people these
> primary consumers leak to--don't care about any of this.

Regardless of whether they care, changing availability in the secondary market
will affect demand in the primary market because would-be participants in the
primary market may satisfy their demand in the secondary market.

------
ihsw
In 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
[http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_the_freedom_hosting_arrested_held/cbge599)

TL;DR Your analogy is broken. Go fix.

Edit; Apparently the person in question was aware.

~~~
jlgreco
_Your_ 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
The allegation seems to be that he had actual knowledge of child porn being
hosted on his service, and did nothing about it.

~~~
Dylan16807
Actual knowledge meaning what, precisely? Had he seen it himself? Had a court
told him it existed? Had someone he trusted told him it existed? Had someone
he didn't trust told him it existed? Had an anonymous comment called him a
pedo host without even specifying a domain?

~~~
jlgreco
Exactly, we don't know enough to make strong statements about this, though it
is nevertheless clear that the analogy of the poster "calling out" the quality
of another analogy is itself utter shit.

~~~
gcb0
What can you do about content exiting your tor node? Ifit's external requests
you can block certain targets etc... But what else besides shutting down?

~~~
eurleif
This was a hosting service for onion sites, not a tor exit node.

------
waffle_ss
Link came from a Reddit thread:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_the_freedom_hosting_arrested_held/)

This is a pretty big deal as lots of Tor hidden services were apparently
hosted on Freedom Hosting, including TorMail.

~~~
chmike
The 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 ?

------
marvin
So 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
As far as we know it's the latter.

------
revelation
If 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
Not legal, haha. "Not legal" is a concept invented for the rest of the society
and it means nothing to Feds. Source: NSA revelations.

~~~
ewoodrich
So we're just gonna use that as a citation for everything now?

~~~
krapp
Yes, the NSA revelations have officially rendered all pretense at American
jurispridence null and void. There is only Obama with his murder squads, which
have been clearly established.

~~~
rdouble
Are the murder squads under the same command structure as the death panels? Or
are those two different departments?

~~~
krapp
They were separate, but now they're out of the same IRS office now due to
sequestration.

~~~
Uchikoma
I've seen them, they are not separate.

------
pavs
Slightly 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
The guy in the article has US citizenship though

~~~
ajarmst
And 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.

~~~
pestaa
Unless Ireland values its US relationship more than its citizens.

~~~
barking
It's up to the judiciary and not the government. And if he doesn't like the
courts' decisions (presuming he goes to the supreme court) he can then take
his case to Europe, afaik.

------
rustynails77
The 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
Denying 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
> 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
I imagine the market for drugs is substantially larger than the market for
child porn.

~~~
Dylan16807
So the latter should be easier to crash?

~~~
Selfcommit
Not at all, I don't support what happened in any way.

The parent comment was stating that making a resource scare only makes it more
valuable... my point was that the market for child porn is so small that using
the scarcity argument is not a great comparison.

------
belorn
When 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
So 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.

------
unimpressive
Related 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.

------
GigabyteCoin
How did they ever determine he was in fact the owner of Freedom Hosting?

------
cupcake-unicorn
This 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?

------
froggyDoggy
is this actual Child porn offence OR is this, the TOR network is used for
child porn (bullshit)?????

------
mariuolo
Did they ascertain where the servers are located? Otherwise how can the US
claim jurisdiction in lieu of Ireland?

------
andrewcooke
this has info on what freedom hosting is, for those that are confused (click
"continue...") -
[http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion.to/wiki/index.php/Freedom_Host...](http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion.to/wiki/index.php/Freedom_Hosting)

------
adamnemecek
I wonder how/whether safe harbor will apply.

~~~
drivingmenuts
At 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.

------
aluhut
Interesting how the Major Consensus Narrative changed making the USA an evil
place for everyting related with freedom on the net.

------
rikacomet
and thus, TOR comes to an end.

~~~
nilved
Not even close. Tor took a big hit, but it will recover.

------
ToothlessJake
In 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)

