An in-depth guide to Freedom Hosting, the engine of the Dark Net
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I hope he wins the trial for that reason alone. FBI's thinking is very dangerous here. Basically what they're saying is that if they can't monitor/censor freely the content they want then you're a "facilitator" for whatever crime is happening on the network.
If you apply this logic to something else, you'll see how little sense it makes. "If you don't give us your encryption keys, or use PFS, you're a facilitator of terrorism". "If you sell guns, you're a facilitator of gun crime."
If you're an ISP that doesn't block sites that we say are piracy sites, you're a facilitator of piracy (an argument that is already used, and was also used in ACTA, too).
And I could go on and on about this. People should be calling them out on their BS argument. They're just using these arguments to crack down on anything that has remained remotely private, so they can have the total surveillance state they've always dreamed about.
That's not even remotely the same logic.
> "If you sell guns, you're a facilitator of gun crime."
Nor is that.
> If you're an ISP that doesn't block sites that we say are piracy sites, you're a facilitator of piracy
Nor is that.
To make your gun seller hypothetical fit the Marques allegations fact pattern, for instance, it would have to be a gun seller that is purposefully trying to sell guns to people who are looking to commit crimes with the guns, and who is touting the effectiveness of his guns at being hard to trace.
Basically, they are trying to hold Marques responsible for crime happening on his servers, that he appears to have known about and encouraged.
mtgx's logic is severely flawed. The intention is, if nothing else, very important. Let's not kid ourselves, he knew what he was hosting and what kind of content he was facilitating the distribution of.
The copyright "maximalists" seem to think everyone should be able to accurately detect piracy, effortlessly - but in fact it is unreasonable to expect service operators to know the names of the latest Hollywood movies, or to have any way of knowing what files are authorized by the copyright holders, for which recipients, and which are not authorized.
In contrast, there are, I assume, signs of CP which would alert any reasonable person - it requires neither special knowledge nor knowledge of other parties' business relations.
Just like they can always make the argument that they are protecting people with xyz questionable tactics, you can always make the claim that something on the Internet is for the purposes of free speech. That doesn't make you right, or even mean that free speech is the primary legal or moral distinguishing factor even if you are.
While it might be uncontroversial, some people would still prefer if the state used effective and evidence-based methods to prevent child abuse, rather than using ineffective, costly, and what ever method that get most media attention.
For example, mandating that schools has trained counsels at staff is a prime example in identifying and preventing child abuse. Having a trained expert which kids, parents and teachers can go to is important line of defense. New teachers should also receive basic training when studying at the university, so they can detect psychological, emotional, social, and physical signs of abuse.
Current studied methods in creating effective prevention program also includes group-based sexual abuse prevention education for children (http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/...). Sadly, the efforts in creating more effective prevention efforts is sadly somewhat low priority (see linked document).
It should also be noted, that in that whole document, more strict Internet regulation is not mentioned at all as effective prevention method. Feel free to speculate widely why the researchers did not mention it.
Then they do some old fashioned police work, and you get cynical responses like yours. They didn't warrantlessly wiretap anyone, or violate anyone's rights, to take down someone who was knowingly breaking a horrific law.
Look at this argument in real world terms. If you are an owner and operator of a motel, and you rent a room to someone who then goes on to rape and kill a girl in that room, you are not responsible for those actions. Even if you made no effort to check the identity of the renter, and accepted cash, you are still innocent, at least morally (legally, depends on the state). However, if you happen to pass by the window of that room, see the occupant killing a girl in that room, you have the moral and legal duty to call the cops.
I would never argue that the tor network, the node operators, the exit node operators, or the internet companies used to run the tor traffic would ever in any way be responsible for the child porn. Likewise, the camera manufacturers, and the manufacturers of all the hardware used to store and distribute said child porn would never be liable for that content. But, surely, the guy who rented the infrastructure to the child porn ring operators would be liable, if it can be proven that he knew for a fact that specific clients of his service used it for child porn.
Now, the reason I say specific clients is because it's not enough to argue that he knew or should have known that some of his clients used the service for child porn. AT&T knows for a fact that some of their clients use the internet connection AT&T provides for child porn, but no one would argue that AT&T is guilty. But specific knowledge equals guilt in my mind.
The intent of Freedom Hosting was clearly to host questionable material.
Let's put in daily means, either if you are a landlord or an hotel owner you are not obliged to question your guests criminal activities nor if you are a road provider you are obliged to question your passengers intends. This is exactly the job of the law enforcement.
If you are served for denying access to some criminal and you do not comply matters change.
In this case you are expected to take measures even if it is not your business to judge someone and you are held responsible.
A Freedom Hosting account cost a one time fee of $5 or was free with an invite from an existing member. It offered unlimited space and bandwidth, an onion domain (“xxx.onion”), “Fast Network with 24/7 Uptime,” PHP and MySQL support with unlimited MYSQL databases [...]
A one-off payment of $5 per site? I can't see how the hosting company could make any sort of profit whatsoever, and probably not even break-even (although it does depend on how many sites per server, and how much bandwidth the Tor links can actually take)
If an established hosting provider decided that they also wanted to offer hidden-service hosting, and it was misused without their ability/requirement to police it, I think it'd be a different matter (although gathering evidence that a particular .onion site was hosted with them would be problematic, certainly).
One of the problems here is that as purely hidden services provider (and presumably, some relatively anonymous form of payment, cash-in-the-mail or whatever), there's no practical way for legal authorities to contact them about investigations, or even determine who has jurisdiction.
In current situation, without concrete or even any evidence hosting provider is held responsible as facilitator for child pornography. AFAIK this "business model" for encrypted and stealth mode hosting is not unlawful so law enforcement is trying to facilitate unavailable law with holding the "suspect" with related but not actualized crime.
Comparing it to a normal service like a road provider or a hotel is just laughable. They have legit business. FH was primarily used for unsavory business. That totally changes the equation. The intent behind the service is pretty damn important.
Actually it's all about control of money.
Anyone who thinks the government, FBI, etc gives a damn about 'safety of the children' is hopelessly naive. And is exactly the kind of person who'll be fooled when the government _says_ they are 'doing it for the children'.
This is the same government that has bought 1.6 billion rounds of hollow point ammunition (and is buying more), and also forces ever-increasing numbers or ever more toxic immunization shots on infants. While denying the Autism and auto-immune disease epidemics have anything do do with inoculations. Oh, and also cheerfully fired hundreds of tons of depleted uranium munitions into Irag and Bosnia, resulting in vast suffering of countless deformed children, for thousands of coming generations.
Gaol Marques and shut down Freedom Hosting to "protect the children"?
Bullsh*t.
Or, due to recent publicity surrounding internet monitoring capabilities of various agencies, they decided to move fast before countermeasures appear. If it were still a secret, they probably wouldn't risk tipping off their (bigger fish) targets to their abilities, but now it's use-it-or-lose-it.
And it'd be great PR to justify all those surveillance capabilities with the general public.
</tinfoil>
Or, it's just a coincidence.