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Para2016

Waste of time and money if the goal was to stop drug trade. If on the other hand the goal was to see what law enforcement can do/utilize new tools for cybercrime, that's just dandy, I guess.

I would like to see their productive interventions on child porn and sex trafficking. Instead we get this tedious and unhelpful war on drugs that ultimately is futile.

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American authorities have primarily focused on the exploitation/trafficking side of the dark web. In some cases, I would expect that mention of pursuing "darknet markets" is a more media-friendly euphemism for real operations that are focused on the trafficking of guns and/or people.

Hundreds were arrested in the FBI's Operation Pacifier [0], and their cases are still actively working through the courts. We don't hear much about Operation Pacifier, and I assume that's by design.

For security-aware technologists, however, there is an important detail: the feds have some heretofore-undisclosed exploit that is used to de-anonymize Tor users, which gets referred to as "the malware".

They're so interested in keeping the details of this secret that they dropped all charges on one of Operation Pacifier's biggest offenders, because he had a skilled lawyer who convinced the judge that the government would have to disclose more details about how it unmasked him to ensure that his constitutional rights had not been violated.

It's interesting that the tool used gets referred to as "the malware". Is this a real-world use of the Intel ME or just your run-of-the-mill trojan? Is there a backdoor in the Tor Browser Bundle, and that's why the government still allows such easy access to it? Is the claim of "malware" just a diversion to prevent people from learning that they have a crack for the Tor network itself? Dunno. Would be interesting to find out though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pacifier

It could be some some super secret technique. I suspect it probably relies on Javascript though, or they'd probably hoard it for military ("cyber") use.

Tor is reasonably secure but if you run JS or download and execute files from Tor you will probably reveal your IP to a determined attacker.

While true, you'd think they wouldn't throw out the case if all they have to say is "We tricked him into running some weird JavaScript". There may be some deterrence benefit in making people think the government has an uber-secret exploit, but I don't know if they'd throw out all the charges on a high-level suspect just to create that sentiment (since there will surely be other times to posture about that kind of thing).

There's an app people can use to take photographs of hotel rooms. You take one photo from the doorway, and one of the bed.

This gets uploaded to a database for law enforcement to use to find locations when they get images of child sexual abuse that happens in hotels.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12058357

And there's also this article about one such takeover of a site that distributed images of child sexual abuse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084471

Few months ago there was an article on HN how FBI took over child porn web ring and allowed it to run "normally" for about three months before all major players were "locked on" and simultenious raids took place. Can anyone find that article?

Were you thinking about this?

https://www.vg.no/spesial/2017/undercover-darkweb/?lang=en

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16554686

Police can legally commit crimes while investigating crimes.

EU police have led several large-scale onionland raids focusing on child trafficking in the last few years, and more recently have been making simultaneous international arrests of producers and distributors. The problem is the same with the drug war unfortunately, these sites are basically a hydra.

That would be cool to read a take down story about that instead of drugs.

That makes me curious though, it sounds like in the drug takedown the users are largely spared but the dealers are targeted. Is it the same for child porn/trafficking? I would prefer they go after everyone in those rings..

I think a lot of more progressive(?) places let drug users off because it's more or less a victimless crime (no one has to be harmed in making and distributing drugs, though some producers certainly do that, but so does any capitalistic system; the cartels aren't significantly worse than buying from Apple) and they really just need help.

Child pornography is never a victimless crime.

" the cartels aren't significantly worse than buying from Apple"

No.

From what I've read (including one of your sibling comments), when it comes to CP there is much less of a seller and user dichotomy. Many times people are both consumers and producers. Some sites/networks will even require someone to submit new content before they can join to see other content (although I don't have a source for this and don't particularly care to dig one up).

I have heard that child porn is actually more difficult to take down than drugs because the crime network topology is much more decentralized, with lots of the abusers acting as both producers and consumers. Drug trafficking on the other hand is much more asymmetrical and hierarchical so taking out an important drug dealer has a much more disruptive effect on the network (at least on the short term).

There's also the case that many drug buyers live in jurisdictions where the consequences to them of being found to buy recreational drugs are minimal (Even in this case, the consequences for buyers were some police pointing out "hey, we know"), so they aren't particularly incentivized to cover their tracks or use more secure measures than they would for e.g. facebook, as opposed to child porn which is taken seriously in every jurisdiction. I imagine this leaves the police with fewer entry points.

I don't think narcotics should be illegal, but law enforcement definitely does go after child exploitation and sex trafficking on the darknet as well. The FBI (very justifiably) burned at least two different NSA-developed exploits to identify people on child sex abuse websites.

I guess they focus on drugs because there is big money and real goods involved, both of which make it much easier to track down identities.

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