While tor might have some legitimate uses, I think 99% of the time it's used for trolling or illegal stuff. It's a pain in the ass for me because I have to keep reblocking it when the ips change.
I'd very much like to see some protection for carriers, be they network operators, or "softer" Tor etc operators.
Yes the most heinous things on the Internet will crawl through. I'm not a supporter of child pornography -- but shouldn't we focus on finding those making porn, actively abusing kids, rather than those distributing it?
Is there even a real economic incentive to distribute that filth?
False dichotomy.
Regardless on how you stand on distributing child pornography, a person actively distributing it from their connection and a person allowing others to route CP via their connection are logically equivalent in my opinion.
False equivalence.
Someone can simultaneously support anonymous communication without supporting CP (philosophically, if not practically).
They're not specifically allowing distribution of CP, they're allowing distribution of all anonymous communication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_sys...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4841-bt-given-14-days-to-...
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/isps-defend-new-porn-fi...
(Though I agree that Deep Packet Inspection and Ad Injection may technically be considered a form of "looking at users traffic", albeit an automated one.)
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/government-confir...
The act of murder is illegal.
Why is this different for child molestation films? I think we can put both murder and child abuse as horrible crimes.
I personally don't agree with this line of thought, as that line of thinking leads down a dark road. I think Jessie Slaughter, the Star Wars Kid, and relatives of those beheaded/executed publicly abroad likely suffered measurable emotional damage from the spread of those videos, but we'd be idiots make that illegal. The mass media in general profits immensely off of the embarrassment and emotional suffering of individuals, and while the practice is abhorrent, censoring such media is not the right thing to do.
So far as I know, there has been at least once case where the victim of child porn successfully sued a person for damages because he was in possession of her photos and videos. I don't know the case name, but I read about it on the "cyb3rcrim3" blog, which I highly recommend for people wanting/needing to know about the law plays out with regard to such issues.
Murder is rare. Films of actual murder are even rarer. Brutal snuff type films can be faked.
Child sexual abuse is not rare. Films and photographs of child sexual abuse are not that rare. Films and photographs of children being abused are hard to fake.
People who are caught with images of child sexual abuse tend to have large collections - tens of thousands of images. People need images to trade with other collectors. Researchers think that the collecting aspect drives creation of images of child sexual abuse.
What is a picture of child exploitation? Perhaps, a picture of a baby naked? Or how about a kid doing somewhat lewd acts fully clothed? Or how about pictures by others of those child beauty pageants?
Who actually describes lewd? Or is it in the eyes of the beholder of the picture for those gray areas?
Next, "child porn" pictures are a possess-only crime, no mens rea required. So, how do we tell if a picture is a legal 18 yr old, instead an evil completely morally corrupt (but legal to fuck) 17 year old?
via http://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decisions/2012/May12/70opn12.... and quoted in more depth elsewhere in this thread.
Notice when the controversy is about our "normal" kids, all of a sudden everyone thought the law was too harsh. For everyone that thinks any criticism of CP possession laws is support for pedophiles, do you support every 17 year old girl becoming felons for sexting their boyfriends?
Text messages are push, so how would you defend against this as a receiver?
Text and pic messages are push, but (at least on my phone) pictures aren't downloaded until you access the message, at which point it's marked as "read". So at least one valid defense is to have not accessed the message -- you can't knowingly possess it in that case.
What if you've already accessed it? US CP laws explicitly allow an "affirmative defense" [0] if you possess only a small number of images and, upon discovering this possession, either immediately destroy them or immediately turn them over to law enforcement [1]. So if you receive a sext message from someone underage, quickly deleting it should shield you from prosecution (IANAL TINLA [2].)
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_defense - in essence, affirming the facts of the case, but offering a justification/excuse that demonstrates one is not culpable.
[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A section (d)
SCOTUS ruled* that children photographed not engaged in lewd acts does not commit a crime.
In other words: Children nudists are legal to photograph. Kids in bathtub are legal to photograph. A 13 year old "seductively" sucking on a banana, fully clothed, is illegal. ? A guy fapping to pictures of legal children nudists makes those pictures illegal?
So... What rules would be appropriate for the spirit of the law?
Why? Because I don't see viewing bad stuff as a crime. But I believe that most people who want to see a snuff film are not murderers, while I believe that most people who are interested in child porn are pedophiles who likely offended.
The real offence is the making of porn that involves kids.
Also; I think it is really weird that possessing (or distributing) any media file can carry a minimum 6 year sentence. That's more than manslaughter. If for no other reason that it pretty much renders everyone vulnerable to blackmail by very easily planting evidence.
I'm not a predator, and I'm not really trained or experienced in criminal justice or psychology, so everything I say about how they think is pure speculation.
But I'd suppose that there is economic incentive:
(1) Direct payment. I'm sure some people are probably willing to buy such content. I'm also sure that, if somebody else can figure out how to charge buyers and receive money, without leaving a trail back to themselves, some people are willing to sell such content.
(2) Reciprocation/barter. Instead of trading money for content, they could trade content for content between individuals. For people who publish to message boards and the like, I assume they're trying to reciprocate for value they receive from others' posts. Or encourage others to post more, perhaps even saying they'll post an image from their collection for every image posted by someone else.
(3) Enjoyment of the act of posting itself. One of the reasons people choose a criminal lifestyle -- or any extreme lifestyle, really -- is the pleasure of taking risks. Distributing illegal content is risky and some people may enjoy it for that reason.
But then that would have to be conclusively proved (another possibility is that paedophiles are less likely to prey on real children if they have access to child porn. Based on studies of porn in general, I'd doubt that, however).
Are loaded questions like these really necessary? As opposed to your misinformed comment below, ISPs are generally not required to keep logs in many jurisdictions and even if they are and fail to do so, they aren't made responsible for the crime that was committed over their infrastructure. The same standards should apply to Tor operators.
> While tor might have some legitimate uses, I think 99% of the time it's used for trolling or illegal stuff.
This number is pulled out of thin air.
> It's a pain in the ass for me because I have to keep reblocking it when the ips change.
Exit node IPs are documented on a public list for exactly that reason.
You mean you'd like to shutdown all of core routers on the internet?
Or UPS for that matter.
Also UPS maintains logs of who sends and receives stuff, so they can easily track down anyone sending child porn or whatever through their service.
Someone else's child porn is going in your taxi when you are a taxi driver.
Someone else's child porn is being recorded at your house when you rent your house to someone unknown to you.
By your line of logic we should all sit still and do nothing because otherwise we may be helping a pedophile.
Interesting how many downvotes I got here...
Many police use Tor on a day-to-day basis in their investigations. It's just as useful for the police to need anonymity as it is anyone else. Tor provides an easy-to-use system to identify the exit nodes.
Ignorance of the reality is no excuse.
You're abandoning central pillars of modern law here, namely the presumption of innocence as well as the right not to incriminate oneself.
I agree so far.
> Until proven otherwise, the 'tor' user [operator?] is a suspect
The burden of proof lies with the police, not with the suspect. If the police fails to come up with reasonable evidence, the operator is to be acquitted, furthermore the operator has to do nothing to aid the police. It's definitely not up to him to prove the child porn isn't on his computer.
This is an important point. Consider what happens if the seized hard drives were encrypted (I don't know whether this is the case). Then it's virtually impossible for the police to prove that the operator was downloading the data himself. The operator on the other hand is not required to give up his passwords. In the end it all comes down to the question of whether relaying data via Tor is in itself enough to constitute an offense. And this is the question we all care about so much, because it will have implications for all exit node operators in the area.
> watch a few episodes of CSI if you want to get a rough idea how it works.
Oh come on.
Please don't watch CSI if you want to see how anything works. CSI is bullshit from top to bottom. If you want to see reality, watch "The Wire".
Maybe you should stop spreading misinformation then: ISPs are not generally required to log IPs, neither on global scale, nor on European scale, nor on Austrian scale. The last two ISPs I've used, for example, were both exempted from the recently passed data retention law.
The irony is that the raided guy owns an ISP himself that (as far as I know) wouldn't be required to log IPs. If the data would have been distributed directly over that equipment, he would not be liable. Even if I'm wrong and he would have been required to keep logs and didn't, he could only be charged with that particular offense. But since the traffic went over Tor he is now at risk to getting his life ruined.
People seem to care more about this guy's life being ruined than all the kids' lives ruined.
I guess you're right though. Children being victimized is a small price to pay for free movies on bittorrent.
If you're going to go straight to the "hurr this is just about piracy" stupidity there's no need to waste any time talking with you.
Me? Personally? I don't have a use for Tor. (Yet.) I can't speak for any other user though. I've never had some information that I wanted to get out that could get me in serious trouble or needed to access some information my government deemed punishable for accessing. I haven't ever required anonymity beyond what a simple proxy can provide.
What about people in oppressive regimes? China? Korea? Various middle east countries? Do you really think you can speak for every user in the world?
More importantly, are you ready to silence an unknowable amount of people to prevent people from jerking off to a picture? Do you really think that if some AI was spun up tomorrow that could completely erase child porn from the internet transparently, that children would stop being abused?
I like how you handwave "civil liberties" too. Really if you're a user of this site you should be well aware of the expansions of government power attempted and passed in the cloak of "stopping the molestation of children" (which is a bit like stopping piracy actually, in that both are endless battles that can't be won).
Want to drastically curtail civil liberties or give police a ton of power? Name your bill the "anti child abuse and pornography prevention act" or similar and it becomes untouchable.
The fact that some politician out there has tried to push a bill that he shouldn't under the guise of protecting children has NOTHING to do with a raid on a Tor operator here.
>has you somehow convinced that child pornography isn't a big deal
How the hell did you draw that conclusion? Where did I say it wasn't a big deal? I said that civil liberties are a bigger deal than child abuse (which is a statement I absolutely stand by) for a couple of reasons.
First, you'll never get back a lost right whether that be privacy or freedom of speech or bearing arms or what have you - once its gone, it takes a revolution to claw it back. And the fact that government overreach is usually passed in the guise of flag or child safety makes losing civil liberties a real threat that deserves to be objectively evaluated.
Second, a child that's been molested will grow up with some serious issues, granted - then they become an adult with fewer rights than their grandparents, ostensibly to protect other children. If you're following along at home and want to count the injustices, overreach + abuse is worse than abuse alone.
>The fact that some politician out there has tried to push a bill that he shouldn't under the guise of protecting children has NOTHING to do with a raid on a Tor operator here.
Except for the fact that it's "some politician" or "some detective" following their emotions when enforcing the law instead of following common sense which causes these bad raids in the first place. An exit node is a public service used by other people. You don't fucking seize someone's means of communicating (and very potentially livelihood) with that knowledge in mind. It's shoddy police work at the absolute least, and downright malicious (great way to discourage Tor nodes) at worst.
How about you answer the question I asked you in the other post? Are you willing to silence an undefined number of innocent people to make a failed attempt at banning the transfer of data (not the abuse of children, which will continue even if the internet were to go away tomorrow)?
Make sure you understand that, please, even if you disagree with everything else I've said here. Even if you go full reductio ad absurdum, raiding every person on this planet who has ever downloaded an image of child abuse still isn't going to stop child abuse. With that knowledge in mind, you should ideally take a more balanced look at the law and its unintended consequences.
Now, would I get rid of the internet if it meant getting rid of Child Pornography? Obviously not. I wouldn't get rid of handguns if it meant attempting to stop murder in the United States as well.
Here's the issue with your outlook: You act as though it is one or the other. You must take down the internet entirely or you must allow all child pornography to flow freely through your computer. Your outlook on the law isn't balanced at all. You won't give up any civil liberties because you feel you shouldn't compromise on it.
>It's not the 'transfer of data'. Abuse of children might still happen, but this promotes it. You're creating a 'market' for it, where as before it might not have existed.
Downloading (not buying) CP doesn't facilitate its production anymore than downloading a blockbuster movie facilitates its production.
>You won't give up any civil liberties because you feel you shouldn't compromise on it.
You think I should? How and why? You seem to think that curtailing the use of an anonymous communications tool because evil people use it is a reasonable solution, and I think that's preposterous.
Supply emerges to meet demand. There are people out there who want child porn, and others who provide it to them.
Governments clamping down on Tor exit nodes doesn't affect that demand, but it does have a harmful effect on our means of private communication online.
There's practically no privacy left on the Internet anymore. Everything we do is logged and analyzed somewhere somehow (Google, Facebook, NSA, local ISPs and governments etc), and we're being gradually stripped of our rights everywhere.
It really is important that there's at least some privacy-providing tool available to all of us online. Child porn being transferred through the same tool is not really even a "price to pay" for that privacy, because as long as there is demand, it will get transferred somehow in any case.
The real child pedo rings, the ones that are the real danger, are composed of powerful people who work in corporations, levels of government, the judiciary, and royalty. As they say, this one goes right to the top.
Sorry to ruin your day, but the global pedo ring will never be stopped until the the system allows powerful and connected perpetrators to be prosecuted. Busting some ISP Tor supporter, guilty or not, is going to do nothing to the real global child crime networks.
You can go on spouting your nonsense about Tor just being for CP and downloading media, but the internet is getting more and more censored every day. Someone went to jail in India for clicking "like" on a post that spoke out against a politicians. How long until this comes to your country? Things like Tor are the only thing that will keep the internet free over the long term, if it can be done at all.
But no, let's just shut the whole thing down and go back to smoke signals because some asshole out there might otherwise see a picture of a naked kid that was taken 20 years ago.
How about we legalize child porn? The vast majority of the time when it gets brought up is in the context of using it as a pretext to attack civil liberties of law abiding citizens.
When there is a child porn arrest it almost always ends up being a honey trap run by the FBI using decades old photos, so it's not like there are many children being protected by these laws.