
8chan served with search warrant [pdf] - anigbrowl
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.casd.626722/gov.uscourts.casd.626722.1.0.pdf
======
Waterluvian
I don't know about 8chan but when it comes to 4chan, there's a certain _sport_
in what people comment in threads. There's countless threads of people
claiming to be planning something awful (terrorism, suicide, robbery, eating
Taco Bell, etc.) And in the comments you'll see people say all kinds of
things, that if taken at face value, are pretty horrible (and maybe even
criminal conspiracy.)

But the crux is that these people are not serious (though I'm sure some are),
they're just saying it for the _sport_ of calling the bluff of anonymous
people they perceive as trolls or brooding teens.

It's like the scene in Futurama where Hermes is threatening to jump off a
building to his death and Bender says, "Do a flip!"

This doesn't make it right. And doesn't absolve them of the legal hot water
they'd find themselves in. But I hope these individuals, if charged with a
crime, get lawyers who will vigorously defend this point.

Edit: I want to re-state that I emphatically do not hold any opinions on this
topic. I'm just trying to share a bit about what these image boards can be
like.

~~~
floatingatoll
Their lawyers may try, but if their speech is found to have encouraged law-
breaking, they can still be convicted and jailed — regardless that they only
did it for sport.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-
tim...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-
using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/)

> In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively
> overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the
> Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by
> members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless
> the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and
> is likely to incite or produce such action"

~~~
nothal
I'm not convinced that's the proper reading of that law. FWIW, I'm not a lower
just a person with an appreciation of legal questions. I was under the
impression that the word 'imminent' implied you had to reasonably be aware
those people were going to commit a crime immediately. For example if you're
at the front of a mob of angry people and tell them to go loot a shop. I think
it would be hard to convincingly say that on a website where 99% of users are
joking that posters were inciting crime directly.

~~~
pas
Knowing is a very fuzzy bar here. There are/were people who turned to 4chan's
/b/ (or other boards) for a very twisted way of guidance. ("Should I kill
myself?", "shoot up the school", do "an hero" etc.)

Of course in these cases the Internet Hate Machine's response is the same, but
the intensity and effectiveness varies.

Is any single commenter legally responsible? Probably not. And not because
they lacked intent, but because 99.9% of these threads are empty trolling. So
they could be almost sure knowing nothing would happen.

However, if someone does this for years in the hopes to participate in a
thread that is not a dud, well that's of course a different state of mind, but
it'd be hard to prove.

------
neilk
I have no expertise in the legalities here.

But I’ve found that quite often, on the internet, when you think you’ve found
a forum of hilarious ironic commenters... a lot of them are very sincere.

Irony is currently used as a conscious strategy by the extreme right. They
know that it gets a pass from ordinary people. While permitting the sincere to
organize in plain sight.

I don’t know what to do about this, but this is the world we’re living in.

~~~
sixothree
The kekistan flag is a great example. Few people would ironically fly a nazi
flag in the real world. But a green version gives them some cover.

For the record I have witnessed people flying this flag in my city. There is
no denying they were hate filled racists.

~~~
SuoDuanDao
I was actually quite fascinated by the Kek phenomenon for religious reasons -
I'm very into alternative/marginal religious movements, so worship of an
egyptian chaos god was pretty fascinating to me. I also rather liked the
Kekistan flag when it first started, and had no idea it was a palette swapped
version of a nazi flag until much later.

Do you think I'm a hate filled racist?

~~~
tptacek
The swastika also has a fascinating religious history, and has deep meaning to
people throughout Asia. You'd have a hard time explaining that as a reason to
fly a Nazi flag in the US, and few people would be interested in a complaint
about people being close-minded about what the swastika represents. You could
display a Buddhist swastika, but you'd have to be very careful of how you
presented it and the context in which it was presented.

It's hard to have too much sympathy for people who casually evoke "Kek" and
then are shocked to learn people believe them to be white supremacists.

~~~
cheschire
I find the act of displaying a flag publicly to be passive aggressive in
itself. I grew up in America where the flag was used as a way to force people
to unify (remember post 9/11?) and then I moved to Germany where the only time
I’ve seen flags displayed publicly are for sports teams, either local or
national, and only for the length of the competition.

Having been away from the blatant flag waving for so long, it really jumps out
at me now when I visit America occasionally. It’s not just that flags are a
pride thing, it’s that they’re trying to draw attention to the pride a person
has. But why should I care about their pride? Why force me to notice it?

~~~
13of40
I just got back from my first real trip to the UK, and while I was there (in
the Cotswolds and south) I saw a handful of the red-cross-on-white English
flags at various places. It wasn't clear, and I'd be curious to know, if that
meant "Fuck the union, we will rise up!" or simply "You are currently in
England."

~~~
JoeSmithson
In rural England the English flag has almost no political connotations on the
part of people that fly it. It basically means the second one. For example
almost every village church will fly it. They have probably been doing so in
some cases for 500 years and don't give the political implications any
thought.

It is slightly evocative of a kind of gentle conservatism which has mild
undercurrents of racism/xenophobia for some people because rural England is
overwhelmingly white and slightly old fashioned. (People call this "Jam and
Jerusalem")

Basically it reminds people of the village council from Hot Fuzz.

(Source: grew up in Dorset)

Completely separately to this is has a recent history (80s) where it can be
seen almost like a Confederate Flag in some contexts. It was aggressively
adopted by fascists and also the subject of a tabloid conspiracy where they
suggested immigrants hated it so people started flying it as an anti immigrant
"this is our land" type thing.

This isn't the context you saw it in, but it's impossible to completely
disentangle this new meaning, everyone is aware of it.

~~~
taneq
> mild undercurrents of racism/xenophobia for some people because rural
> England is overwhelmingly white and slightly old fashioned

The people of an area are mostly white and that makes them racist? Do you
think black people in mostly-black areas are racist too or is it only racist
to be white?

~~~
JoeSmithson
I don't know, I've never been black or a part of a overwhelmingly black
community.

~~~
acollins1331
Good to know you only form opinions based on anecdotal evidence.

~~~
JoeSmithson
Is this your first day in human society? A user asked for an explanation of a
highly nuanced aspect of rural English culture and I gave an answer based on
my actual life lived in that culture.

There is no way to get from my comment to your comment without bringing a
mountain of your own pet grievances and preconceptions to the table.

~~~
taneq
OK, so it's more that you've observed this mostly white area to be mildly
racist (which seems reasonable), rather than saying that this area is mostly
white and therefore mildly racist (which is how I read your post above.)

------
ineedasername
Here's the crux of their reasoning & requested information in seeking the
warrant, from the linked PDF:

 _As discussed above, Earnest made a posting in which he thought to draw
attention to his forthcoming attack on the Chabad of Poway, share his views
through his open letter, and offer people the opportunity to observe the
attack itself. Several people responded, both individuals who were taken aback
about the posting as well as people who were sympathizers. As a result, some
of the individuals may be potential witnesses, co-conspirators and / or
individuals who are inspired by the subject posting. Based on agents' training
and experience, following attacks such as those conducted by Earnest, other
individuals are inspired by the attacks and may act of their own accord. For
example, as described above, Earnest himself was inspired by the Christchurch
event in New Zealand.

Regardless of the nature of the comments, the evidence sought to be seized as
described in Attachment B is relevant as evidence of Earnest's bias and
motivation in committing the hate crimes set forth in Attachment B. Even
comments made in response to the subject posting or about it are relevant to
Earnest's motivation for his violent attacks to the extent that as explained
above, some of the posters may be potential witnesses, co-conspirators and/or
individuals who are inspired by the subject posting. As discussed above,
Earnest stated in the subject posting, "I've only been lurking for a year and
a half, yet, what I've learned here is priceless." This information suggests
that Earnest was inspired and/or educated by individuals who commented on his
threads.

Based on this information, there is reasonable cause to believe that the
information sought, specifically IP address and metadata for all commenters,
constitute evidence of his motivation in committing the offenses described
herein and are thus relevant and material to an ongoing criminal
investigation, information that may be sought by an order issued pursuant to l
S U.S.C. § 2703(c) and (d). That is, the information may lead to the identity
of individuals who inspired and/or educated Earnest or are aware of his
motivation in committing the attacks._

~~~
maxheadroom
My only qualm is with this portion:

> _...and / or individuals who are inspired by the subject posting_

That's a very overarching goal as it would, in theory, require continued
surveillance of _all_ subjects to determine inspiration - either in the past,
present, or even the future, yeah?

I mean, you can't just take a snapshot of time,

time_t now = time(0); tm *gmtm = gmtime(&now);

and consider that no other people would be "inspired" in the future by this
event, yeah?

------
jackweirdy
"In contrast with (my) generation, which had spent most of its time online
learning to code so that it could add crude butterfly animations to the
backgrounds of its weblogs, the generation immediately following had spent
most of its time online making incredibly bigoted jokes in order to laugh at
the idiots who were stupid enough to think that they meant it. Except that
after a while they did mean it, and then somehow at the end of it they were
white supremacists. Was this always how it happened?" Patricia Lockwood,
London Review of Books, Feb 2019

~~~
tyrust
I don't see the value of such broad generalizations.

~~~
dmos62
I agree. The whole citation reads unsavourably. To paraphrase: my generation
used said medium to be creative, while that other generation used same medium
to express bigotry. That's the kind of statement that puts up a forest of red
flags about the author's credibility.

------
manfredo
So, the FBI is asking for IPs used to comment in two posts whose authors later
committed acts of terrorism. Doesn't surprise me, I had thought they would
have done this already.

~~~
dev_dull
I'm surprised there's an actual search warrant. I would think these websites
get so many requests for IPs that there's not some way the websites hand it
over without a warrant.

~~~
astrange
Websites in the US (which doesn't, I believe, include this one) have to follow
the Stored Communications Act, which specifically forbids disclosing customer
information just because someone asked.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
Maybe for the actual communication, but not IP addresses:

[https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d2ca30a5-542c...](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d2ca30a5-542c-48ed-a700-c6dad7911357)

------
otakucode
I have always thought of 4chan, at least their 'random' board, as akin to a
sort of performance art. It reminds me of the experimental film scene in the
70s and 80s in NYC. The theaters were filled with prostitutes, pimps, thugs,
drug addicts, etc. The experimental films which were shown were not anything
that could be shown to mainstream audiences, things like Andy Warhol's 'films'
that were downright pornographic, or just a camera pointed at the Statue of
Liberty for 24 hours, just experiments with the medium. Also shown were works
by the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky and others who went on to create other
bizarre cult classics. While the things being done in those theaters had no
real place in the mainstream, many of the people in the audience at that time
as children or young adults went on to become the most popular directors and
influential filmmakers of the 90s through to today. There is no question that
they were grimy, deviant, subversive places where crimes of various sorts took
place. But they were also important artistic and cultural crucibles, and the
experiments that took place there sometimes happened upon techniques or ideas
that later enriched our world. It's not always pretty to see how the sausage
is made.

~~~
pjc50
The difference is that the New York scene produced Warhol and 4/8chan produced
mass murderers. The intent and result matters.

~~~
collyw
Mass murderers were live streamed on facebook, why doesn't that get the blame?

~~~
krapp
Facebook does get the blame. Many people on HN at least do blame Facebook for
spreading hateful propaganda and fake news and for fueling acts of genocide.
Twitter gets blamed as well.

But the chans are unique in that their culture (ironically or not) actively
encourages and demonstrates the beliefs that lead to such violence. The
shooter in this case mentioned having been inspired by /pol/ and mentioned the
New Zealand shooter, who is being treated as a hero and a martyr by /pol/.

Facebook and other social media get blamed for _passively_ encouraging
violence and hate, while the chans get blamed for actively encouraging it as a
cynical and ironic piss-take on society.

------
kyledrake
I'm a little confused why they're going with a search warrant here instead of
a subpoena. The only reason they would want to do this usually is if the admin
was refusing to comply with a subpoena, but the search warrant says nothing
about this AFAICT. This is pretty unusual for FBI evidence gathering
procedure.

~~~
chippy
4chan has always been transparently cooperative with law enforcement whenever
they ask. They don't demand subpoenas or are obstructive - I imagine 4chan has
good relations with various agencies.

8chan is another beast and I'd imagine that site to be as toxic as what goes
on. I would imagine no good relations nor prior willingless to play ball. They
state they "comply with US law" and are "responding" to the police. Doesn't
seem as friendly as 4chan's approach.

Of course in the US it's common to "never talk with the police" so I should
affix by saying that I'm a European and have more trust in the law

~~~
zcid
I hesitate to demonize 8ch solely on the basis that they require legal
protocol to be followed. I expect all organizations to require warrants before
handing over data to the authorities.

~~~
kyledrake
Subpoenas aren't warrants and we are just as legally required to oblige them
if they are valid and signed by a judge. One can get thrown in jail for not
complying with both of them, so if one is pushing back, they better be really
fucking prepared for the consequences of that action. For a subpoena/warrant
for legitimate data collection of online extremists, that's not a battle one
is likely to win. Like with all things in life, one really need to pick their
battles sometimes.

I'm more inclined to believe that this FBI agent is not familiar with standard
operating practices, seeing as his biography describes him as spending most of
his career working on drug gangs, which is a somewhat different beast than
online domestic terrorism work.

Relationships aren't really with the organization (RE the 4chan comment),
they're more with the individual agents and pretty decentralized. I've never
had the same FBI agent twice, for example.

------
dsl
The original 8chan thread has been removed, but here is their own follow up
thread regarding the investigation:
[https://8ch.net/pol/res/13196423.html](https://8ch.net/pol/res/13196423.html)

(Warning: 8chan...)

~~~
AYBABTME
The comments in there are disgusting, wouldn't have thought that people
actually believe and preach this crap.

~~~
briga
Well, mass-shootings wouldn't happen if there weren't people who believed it.
It turns out that anonymous 'edgy' internet forums are an ideal breeding
ground for that sort of ideology.

The absurdly offensive dialog that goes on there is often just an act people
put on to fit in with the crowd in a consequence-free environment--most of
them are probably just harmless lonely teenagers with nothing better to do.
But it would be hard to tell at a glance which posts are serious and which
aren't.

~~~
shearskill
Harmless lonely teens who may be play-acting on 8chan are encouraged to become
true believers by the rest who are sincere. The shooter involved in this case
stated that he’d only been on 8chan for a year and a half and had learned much
in that time. At some point the “fun” of it crosses a line for minds that have
a strong enough foundation to leave it behind, those that stay become invested
in the ethos. They embrace the allure of being the righteous underdog in a
battle for the “future of white America”. Empathy and compassion are the
enemy.

------
avar
tl;dr: The FBI wants the IP addresses of people who commented on an 8chan
thread created by the Poway synagogue shooter[1] prior to his attack in an
effort to find any co-conspirators.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poway_synagogue_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poway_synagogue_shooting)

~~~
dewyatt
It sort of sounds like they want to put every individual that posted in that
thread on a watchlist.

~~~
dsl
Watchlist? Jail.

Material support to an act of terrorism.

Edit - from the search warrant application: "will be found evidence of
violations of federal law, namely, intentional obstruction, by force or threat
of force of persons in the free exercise of religious belief, resulting in
death, in violation of 1 S U.S.C. § 247(a)(2), willfully causing bodily injury
to persons through the use of a firearm because of the actual or perceived
religion of said persons, resulting in death, in violation of 1 S U.S.C. §
249(a)(l), and damage to religious property, in violation of lS U.S.C. § 25
247(a)(l )"

Edit 2: Lots of legal eagles on HN today that are upset at the word
"material." Sorry? If you read the full search warrant it sounds like he
torched a synagogue, and was encouraged to follow up with a shooting.

~~~
userbinator
Even those saying no and telling him not to do it?

~~~
krapp
>Even those saying no and telling him not to do it?

Would this be an example of the dry irony the chans are so well known for?

------
molticrystal
The below was from the twitter account of 8chan in regards to Poway and the NZ
shooting.

\-------------------------------

8chan (8ch.net) ‏Verified account @infinitechan Apr 28
[https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/1122494322283167745](https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/1122494322283167745)

The Poway shooter's post on 8chan was taken down NINE minutes after creation.
There are only screencaps available and no archives exist since the post was
deleted so quickly. The loudest groups publicizing this crime and giving
attention to this CRIMINAL are the fake-news media.

\-------------------------------

8chan (8ch.net) ‏Verified account @infinitechan Mar 16

The 8chan administration is responding to law enforcement regarding the recent
incident where many websites were used by a criminal to publicize his crime.
We always comply with US law and won't comment further on this incident so as
not to disrupt the ongoing investigation.

=================================

From what I can tell the current 8chan is a fork of
[https://github.com/ctrlcctrlv/infinity](https://github.com/ctrlcctrlv/infinity)

It does seem that the IP addresses are stored with the POSTs if this is the
code they are still using or are based on
[https://github.com/ctrlcctrlv/infinity/blob/2bc5b6dbf31af50f...](https://github.com/ctrlcctrlv/infinity/blob/2bc5b6dbf31af50f54e73f88569496e19b143aad/inc/functions.php#L1265)

On a side note, even if the posts were erased from the database, with the salt
for the hashing function of the IP addresses known which make the 3 byte ID,
the board and thread id, you could recover the IP addresses & aliases and
cross-check with the ISPs to see which ones were accessing 8chan at the time.

Here is a code on how the IDs were generated, at least at one point in time:

return substr(sha1(sha1($ip . $config['secure_trip_salt'] . $thread . $board)
. $config['secure_trip_salt']), 0, $config['poster_id_length']);

[https://github.com/ctrlcctrlv/infinity/blob/2bc5b6dbf31af50f...](https://github.com/ctrlcctrlv/infinity/blob/2bc5b6dbf31af50f54e73f88569496e19b143aad/inc/functions.php#L2745)

~~~
irvwash
The fork lives at
[https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB](https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB).

IPs are hashed at
[https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB/blob/master/inc/functions.p...](https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB/blob/master/inc/functions.php#L38).
Hashing them was part of the point of the fork.

    
    
      $identity = crypt($userIP, '$2a$07$' . $hashSalt . '$');
    

poster_id is probably called with the hashed IP address.

~~~
molticrystal
I won't say I didn't miss anything, but it seems that function is used for 3rd
parties, and the real ip is still stored in the database anyway at least until
deletion of a post

    
    
        $query = prepare(sprintf("INSERT INTO ``posts_%s`` VALUES ( NULL, :thread, :subject, :email, :name, :trip, :capcode, :body, :body_nomarkup, :time, :time, :files, :num_files, :filehash, :password, :ip, :range_ip_hash, :sticky, :locked, :cycle, 0, :force_anon, :embed, NULL)", $board['uri']));
    
    
    

>poster_id is probably called with the hashed IP address.

But even if the database was wiped, as far as I can tell, poster_id still uses
the old method posted below. So as long as the secure_trip_salt hasn't
changed, which probably wouldn't unlike $hashSalt which was meant to rotate,
and you could get the threadid and postid from a screenshot or archive, by
running the range of ipv4 addresses through the function, you would get due to
the uniformity property of sha-1, approximately 256 aliases of which one is
from the poster.

So if I was the FBI and 8chan was not able to provide IP addresses, I would
ask what the secure_trip_salt was and generate the table and match it to all
the posts in that thread or at least the most significant ones, then trim down
the matching IPs. After that I would query to isps or other entities who own
or monitor the remaining IP addresses, and using the timestamp, get the
identity of the person, if they weren't using a secure VPN that does not log
and I could not deanonymize.

\------------------------------

Poster id still is used as follows:

The files:

templates/post_reply.html templates/post_thread.html

Contain:

    
    
        {% include 'post/poster_id.html' %}&nbsp;
    

And poster_id.html contains:

    
    
        {% if config.poster_ids or (mod|hasPermission(config.mod.show_ip_less, board.uri)) %}
         {% if post.ip == config.tor_ip_hash %}
           <span class="poster_id" title="This user is posting via the Tor hidden service.">000000</span>
         {% elseif post.thread %}
           <span class="poster_id">{{ poster_id(post.ip, post.thread, board.uri) }}</span>
         {% else %}
           <span class="poster_id">{{ poster_id(post.ip, post.id, board.uri) }}</span>
         {% endif %}
        {% endif %}
    
    
    

Which still call the poster_id function in
[https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB/blob/master/inc/functions.p...](https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB/blob/master/inc/functions.php#L2620)

which returns:

    
    
        return substr(sha1(sha1($ip . $config['secure_trip_salt'] . $thread . $board) . $config['secure_trip_salt']), 0, $config['poster_id_length']);

~~~
irvwash
The "ip" field used to hold the plain IP address, so it's still called that,
even though it now holds a hash.

The post() function fills it in like so:

    
    
      $query->bindValue(':ip', isset($post['ip']) ? $post['ip'] : $identity);
    

It's called from
[https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB/blob/master/post.php#L988](https://github.com/OpenIB/OpenIB/blob/master/post.php#L988),
but $post never gets an 'ip' key, so it always uses $identity (which was
created using getIdentity(), which currently hashes the IP address).

I think the method you describe for checking whether a post could have come
from an IP address would work, if they gave up all the relevant salts.
secure_trip_salt isn't supposed to change. hashSalt is also needed, because
the IDs are generated using the hashed IP addresses, but it's changed
infrequently from what I remember (changing it logs out all moderators because
sessions are tied to IP addresses, so it's easy to notice).

~~~
molticrystal
Thanks for locating that line. I think between the two of us we've figured out
all the relevant parts of the system and assessed what is going on with post
ids and ips in the database.

At minimum, from my understanding, ipv4 addresses look 100% recoverable with
the database and $hashSalt, and 3 upper octets recoverable as long as you have
hashSalt, secure_trip_salt and an archive of the thread.

Of course this is just from the board software perspective, so the next layer
in assessing the privacy of the users with regards to what the FBI can get, is
the server, hosting, and upstream providers whether intentional or otherwise
may have additional identifying information , for example cache or logs that
can be correlated with the posts.

------
vivekd
I'm an early adopter of 8chan. I don't participate in the more racist or
extreme boards on 8chan.

I want to argue that there is value in 8chan. For example during the egyptian
protests, one of the most popular boards was devoted to egyptian content. I
don't know what they were talking about because it was in Arabic but I'm glad
that the egyptian people had that forum.

Right now one of the top 50 boards is HKpol. It deals with the protests in
hong kong and he content is mostly written in chinese.

Yes we can criticize anonymous free speech forums for their misuse, and I can
certainly see how they might be misused. But I think forums for anonymous free
speech can also provide a lot of benefit, particularly for people living in
parts of the world where they might face persecution for wanting basic
freedoms.

------
p_rude
Ironic racism is still racism and in my experience the "irony" usually just a
flimsy facade for a person's true feelings

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So, basically, "I don't understand irony so everyone must be evil"?

~~~
faissaloo
It's more so the case that dogwhistling and irony have a very blurry line.

~~~
fastball
I'm unconvinced that "dog-whistling" is something worth worrying about.

~~~
faissaloo
That's ok, reality doesn't require your input.

~~~
fastball
Despite your rudeness, I'll remind you that the burden of proof that "dog-
whistles are worth worrying about" is not on me.

It's an intriguing concept, but the negative impacts of such behavior (as well
as if it actually even exists) needs to be proven, not assumed.

~~~
Can_Not
There's a ton of research and discussion out there, checkout the Alt Right
Playbook video series on YouTube to help you get up to date with everyone
else.

~~~
fastball
I've watched all of the "Alt Right Playbook" videos and don't remember
'research' that went beyond "I've noticed people doing this thing and here is
why I think they're doing it".

The actual tangible impact of such behaviors, as far as I'm aware, has not
been properly studied.

------
baruchthescribe
This thread was deleted from 8chan less than ten minutes after it was created
- too fast for even any archives to be created - and the poster was instantly
condemned as a criminal for carrying out this criminal act. That is an
extremely impressive response, especially when compared to anything from Big
Tech.

I haven't quite figured out the timelines in the court documents but it's
clear that the authorities were in the subsequent discussions and took the
screenshots themselves because of the (You) markers next to their comments.

~~~
mikeyouse
8Chan deletes any threads that contain threats (with the associated logs and
details) and then immediately reposts them as images in a different thread.
They actively abet heinous acts.

~~~
hackermailman
Or the original poster does this themselves after being banned, hence the
(You)'s in the screenshots and mods are busy reviewing a hundred other flagged
threads while these new threats are reposted. 8chan is user created and
managed the mods aren't exactly professional any fool can create a board.

------
AnaniasAnanas
8chan supports for posts via tor. I do wonder how many of the posters there
used it, making fbi unable to locate them.

~~~
irvwash
Tor posters are assigned an ID of "000000". I only see two posts with that ID
in the screenshots in the document.

------
Causality1
I visited 8chan once several years ago shortly after it was founded. What I
saw there convinced me it's not a place you want to frequent, especially from
your own internet connection. If someone said to me "hey you have just got to
see this thing on 8chan" I'd walk somewhere with open wifi first.

~~~
jasonvorhe
I would reconsider if I ever want to have contact with the person suggesting
that again.

------
OrgNet
How many time did they fax those screenshots?

------
x38iq84n
I understand 8chan is like 4chan but with less regulation and more
controversy... Why is it registered or operated from the US, instead of, say a
company in Tuvalu that rents servers from a company in Pakistan, but the
encryption keys are with the company that manages the servers, from South
Sudan?

~~~
cf498
Because of the US free speech laws. The US is the location where the rest of
the world usually hosts there problematic content. It is, or was, also rampant
with non nude child pornography sites. While illegal in most of Europe (and
other countries I assume), the situation in the US seems to be very different.
The whole thing came up in Germany when the government used the numbers of
chiid pornography sites they couldnt take down to push for a censored
internet. Most of those sites were hosted in the US.

If you host your stuff in Sudan or Tuvalu or Pakistan, you simply get removed
on the first report. Why should they continue to host you? The same thing
happened a while back with a Ukrainian or Russian ISP provider who didnt react
to reports, the whole ISP was simply dismantled. Only because the cooperation
between the countries governments isnt optimal doesnt mean the local countries
will turn a blind eye to abuses from their servers.

------
anongraddebt
From what I can tell, 'polite' and 'respectable' culture (a.k.a the dominant
culture) in America is center-left if not minimally progressive. At least,
this is the case for social issues.

In the 90's, the dominant counterculture was some version of leftism. On the
fringes, there was vitriol and anger towards the 'polite' and publicly
'respectable' dominant culture of the time - some version of evangelical and
catholic right-wing ideology. Atheism was still edgy. Raging against an
undefinable machine had artistic meaning.

We can throw in as many other causal factors as we want in an attempt to
explain the current socio-political state of the country, but we can't really
deny that it looks as if the new counterculture exists somewhere on the right.

\----

I remember the days when John Stewart was edgy. Now, you'd be hard pressed to
find a mainstream comedian, who focuses on politics (Colbert, Noah, etc.),
that isn't clearly center-left. The coastal, cosmopolitan, affluent, center-
left culture is practically a monolithic gate keeper of what is and isn't
'respectable'.

~~~
supergauntlet
>We can throw in as many other causal factors as we want in an attempt to
explain the current socio-political state of the country, but we can't really
deny that it looks as if the new counterculture exists somewhere on the right.

If you're arguing this in good faith I'm sorry, but this is outright delusion.
The political ideology that controls the highest office in the country and
half of the legislature is counterculture? Seriously? Can you see how absurd
this claim is?

~~~
shearskill
The “alt right is the new punk rock” is one of their marketing pitches.
Apparently it works, but only for a certain demographic.

~~~
pdkl95
"Nazi Punks Fuck Off"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs_Q4hEqmA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs_Q4hEqmA)

------
TheLuddite
Good, serious measures should be taken against these Internet cesspools.

~~~
Bakary
From a law enforcement perspective, it's better to have them all in one spot.

------
DataWorker
Strange they don’t have that information already. Could this be a parallel
construction sort of a thing where they pretend they don’t have the data
already?

~~~
meowface
The FBI can't just ask the NSA to hack every US company every time they want
some information from it. I'm sure they do for the big dogs, as revealed from
their collaboration in targeting Tor hidden services, and for anything
concerning espionage and national security, but the vast majority of the time
they're stuck trudging through the long legal process like every other law
enforcement institution (such as your local PD). I doubt 8chan was high on
their radar before this attack.

~~~
DataWorker
How could 8chan not be on their radar after Christchurch?

~~~
anigbrowl
Knowing about it and having the multiple kinds of know-how and budget to
monitor it are two very different things.

------
ronsor
I've said it many times: 4chan is a hive of degeneracy and 8chan is where
people that have been banned from 4chan go.

~~~
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
Unlike 4chan, 8chan isn't a centralized website managed by a single moderation
team. Much like on reddit, anyone can create a board on 8chan and there are
thousands of them.

Because of that, I don't think it makes sense to treat 8chan as a single
community.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
Why would someone that isn’t part of that culture go off and use 8chan and the
branding and it’s culture instead of Slack or IRC or any other option?

~~~
pzone
The chan format is very different from Slack or IRC. Anonymity by default plus
image and animation attachments makes it a unique medium.

------
sugarbaby--
Hebe was less dangerous than /pol/

------
shaki-dora
The "oh it was _ironic_ " defense sounds especially weak when OP subsequently
shoots up a synagogue. Guess he didn't get the irony? And neither did the
Christchurch incel a few weeks earlier? That incident should have maybe
informed the community's opinion on the future viability of that particular
excuse.

It's also telling that both un-ironic murder sprees resulted in general
approval, and no visible signs of regret on these boards. Or, you know,
shutting them down.

~~~
MBCook
Ken White’s rule of goats:

“The Rule of Goats applies. Slightly paraphrased — for this family newspaper —
the rule states: If you kiss a goat, even if you say you're doing it
ironically, you're still a goat-kisser.”

You don’t get off scott-free just because you say “I was only being ironic“.

~~~
beatgammit
Let's say I am on a forum talking theoretically about robbing a bank (say I'm
a fan of the PayDay series or something). Let's say that someone on that forum
ended up robbing a bank, perhaps using information that I provided.

Did I commit a crime? Am I am accomplice?

There's a big difference between planning a real crime and planning a
fictitious one, but they can look identical to an outside observer.

As for your quote, I don't think it really applies here. You can say all sorts
of trouble things, but I don't think you can accidentally become an
accomplice, at the very least need motive.

~~~
krapp
>There's a big difference between planning a real crime and planning a
fictitious one, but they can look identical to an outside observer.

The /pol/ boards on 4chan and 8chan aren't role playing boards. No one there
is discussing race war in the context of an ARG or a fictional universe. The
people being ironic here know perfectly well they are ironically supporting
actual racists who actually sometimes commit violence in the real world.

~~~
Dylan16807
>The /pol/ boards on 4chan and 8chan aren't role playing boards.

They often are. Lots of threads are about fictitious things. Don't make me go
there to find examples.

> The people being ironic here know perfectly well they are ironically
> supporting actual racists who actually sometimes commit violence in the real
> world.

That's different.

If you post something racist, that's a _general_ statement and lots of people
will see it.

If you post about a story someone is telling, with _specific_ facts, you have
no idea if it's connected to reality or not.

~~~
krapp
>They often are. Lots of threads are about fictitious things. Don't make me go
there to find examples.

Not a fictitious _setting_ , which makes the comparison to a game forum inapt.
It would be reasonable to assume that someone discussing theft on a GTA forum
is not discussing theft in the real world. It would not necessarily be as
reasonable to assume that someone posting anti-semitic or racewar content on
/pol/ isn't referring to the real world, or to assume insincerity as a
default.

It certainly wouldn't be reasonable, if you were that person, to assume
_everyone else_ was as insincere as you were, or, if you were a racist, that
you weren't talking to a comrade in arms.

~~~
Dylan16807
There is a difference between being a comrade and a specific scenario being
real.

