Results of operation against child exploitation enterprise on Tor network | Hacker News Reader

Results of operation against child exploitation enterprise on Tor network

dhs.gov

27 pointsalternize43 comments

"[...]the Darknet’s Onion Router, also known as Tor"

Dear me. That would sound quite insidious, and possibly coherent, to someone with population average knowledge about TOR. So the DHS is telling us this Tor is something dark and sinister and used by exploitative paedophiles.

I wonder what comes next..

"...So the DHS is telling us this Tor is something dark and sinister..."

Good thing then that the Government is on the case working hard to shut down this evil thing the Government funded and helped deploy.

I'm so glad the Government is here to help since you must always be on guard against mailign actors like the Government and we need all the help we can get!

Let me start off by saying I in no way agree with the content of the website that was shutdown. With that said. I assuming that if the government can track and shut a website using tor that other governments can track and shutdown political activist websites as well. so much for tor.

There's lots of ways they could be caught that don't lead to the conclusion that Tor is useless - maybe they used it poorly (JavaScript enabled being the biggest issue I've heard of, but I'm sure there's other "best practice" stuff that Tor users ought to be following), maybe they got caught outside the Tor network (it says the USPS was involved for example). You could have the most secure and anonymous system in the world, if you are sloppy around it then it won't matter.

The BBC article[1] says they were caught by a mistake made outside of Tor:

But the porn ring was broken when an item was sent through the US Postal Service to a child, Ice Cyber Crime Centre Programme Manager James Kilpatrick told Reuters. That development led the authorities to Mr Johnson.

If they can track Tor sites directly, they're not saying. To me this sounds like Bitcoin: it's anonymous as long as you never ever link a transaction to a real-world identity. Once you do, everything that was once anonymous is now linked to you.

This isn't really new either; for a long time now you could create a fake identity and use it for whatever purposes, and your real identity would be protected and separate until you made a mistake which linked the two.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26639092

parallel construction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

That was my thought too [though I didn't know the term] - Tor has been compromised in the past hasn't it?

Tor hasn't been compromised, the Firefox installation that Tor is shipped with has been exploited before though.

conspiracy theory

If you have something to actually point towards parallel construction rather than "it could be", please provide those. Otherwise, term wars define that conspiracy theory always beats parallel construction.

Agreed. Even a conspiracy theorist has to admit it unlikely for the Postal Inspector to have jurisdiction over this kind of operation unless something was sent through the mail. DHS doesn't typically even involve themselves in this kind of thing.

I'm not going to lie, at the heart of this story is good news. Tor has consistently been a save heaven for child exploitation. This news is fantastic considering that these were genuine criminals that have been stopped and victims contacted. For once, I'm happy with DHS.

I definitely agree, an international task force fighting that kind of people would be a nice thing as well, if it doesn't exist yet.

Boats has consistently been a save heaven for smugglers.

The Post office has consistently been a save heaven for drug dealers.

And so on. Those kind of statement is kind of pointless since each are just technology used by criminals and non-criminals alike. I would rather have people praise DHS for succeeding in doing technical heavy investigations, rather than focus on how much a save haven a specific technology is. Otherwise, it just lead demonizing of technology which is never a good thing.

I guess this is part of the balancing act. We want to have something that can provide us some privacy, but in turn can be used by criminals for stuff like this.

I don't know where to draw the line. I feel when you hear about children being exploited, somehow my own privacy is of little regard in comparison to kids who have adults exploiting them for these kinds of reasons.

More discussion on reddit (including links to some of the indictments): http://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/20rq0l/authorities_bust... http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/20qzi6/pedophile_rin...

Note that this seems to be unrelated to the Freedom Hosting exploit---I still wonder when we will see the results of that.

The freedom hosting exploit took place in early August. What do you think is taking so long before we see the results of that effort?

According to this press release, the site admin in this case was arrested back in June and has been in custody ever since, so maybe that's just how long it takes to tie up all the strings on this sort of thing?

Excellent, give them nowhere to hide and long prison sentences. I hope they rot.

It's time to shut down Tor once and for all. I hear Al-Qaeda is using it, too!

Relax downvoters, this is sarcasm.

For the record, I downvoted it because I don't think that sort of sarcastic comment (posted on its own, adding nothing useful to the conversation) doesn't belong on HN, not because I missed the sarcasm.

Actually, it wasn't only sarcasm but kind of a TLDR.

The long version is: "This would make for a suitable precursor to a renewed attempt on cracking down on some of the liberties in the internet. I personally don't believe in gov't institutions being nice and I find it most sad that this being a farce is the first thing that comes to my mind.

Unfortunately, where I come from, child porn is the #1 official reason for any attempt of internet censorship."

Presumably people reading it would be split into two groups, those who understood it as the long version (and therefore already know the argument) and those who don't realise what it's a TLDR for. So either way it's still not adding to the conversation, in my opinion.

If I read this right, the perpetrators used Facebook and other social networks to trick kids into sending them sexual pictures. How is it a website which allows for this to happen still operational? Won't somebody think of the children!

Can someone explain why this falls under DHS and not the FBI?

Good question. The article clearly states it was an ICE investigation. ICE is under the DHS umbrella.

Would the NSA be involved in something like this?

Mission creep.

There seems to be a big overlap between the FBI and ICE-HSI. Both agencies have legal authority to investigate the same types of crimes, and they have similar man power (both have ~35k employees, but the FBI has twice as many special agents [0][1]). Perhaps more interestingly, the DHS reports directly to the president, while the FBI is under the Department of Justice. Though the DOJ is under the attorney general, who is also under the president, so maybe this difference isn't interesting at all.

To me it looks like the US government wanted to double the FBI's size without saying that's what they were doing.

[0] https://www.ice.gov/about/offices/homeland-security-investig...

[1] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/faqs

That's a relatively large jump to conclusion you made. I doubt there's anyone in the US government (where, exactly, in the hierarchy do you suppose) that would have the skill to get that past congress (congress sets the budget for all of DHS btw).

As for the missions, from both your links:

"The mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners. It performs these responsibilities in a way that is responsive to the needs of the public and faithful to the Constitution of the United States."

"HSI conducts criminal investigations against terrorist and other criminal organizations who threaten national security. HSI combats worldwide criminal enterprises who seek to exploit America's legitimate trade, travel and financial systems and enforces America's customs and immigration laws at and beyond our nation's borders."

Yes there's quite a bit of overlap there. Maybe the key difference is that ICE's mission talks about customs and immigration laws specifically.

>I doubt there's anyone in the US government (where, exactly, in the hierarchy do you suppose) that would have the skill to get that past congress (congress sets the budget for all of DHS btw).

What do you mean? The Homeland Security Act of 2002 did pass congress.

I' m guessing DHS (specifically the USPIS) had jurisdiction because the original offending material was found in the mail according to the press release. The arrest of the suspect led to the website stuff, but USPIS / DHS would still likely handle the case as primary.

Good job well done. Always feels better to work without competitors, right Haliburton?

Haliburton has a Child Porn division?

Child sex slaves would be DynCorp's specialty[1][2], but Halliburton has a Human Trafficking division named KBR.[3]

[1] http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-2115403...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents...

[3] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jmOzaTXaM...

I'm surprised I've not read "they were tricking young teenagers in sending pornographic materials in 4chan/b/ rate-my-penis threads".

It bothers me that you can be arrested for just being a member of a website.

None of them was arrested for "just being a member of a website."

It bothers me that there were apparently 27000 members but they only have 300 active investigations [perhaps more will arise as they sift through the data].

Does it also bother you that just conspiring to kill someone is a crime?

It's gently worrying that some people have their ode titites stolen, and one use for those stolen identities is to register an account on a website sharing images of child sexual abuse.

Let's hope law enforcement are careful about arrests.

Indeed, being a member =/= having your identity registered as a member. Indeed you'd need plenty more than "your home IP accessed this site on multiple occassions" to move beyond reasonable doubt.

They need to be really fucking careful. For child exploitation charges, the accusation is damn near as good as conviction, because if you end up in prison on a charge like that, even just to await trial, your fellow prisoners will also dispense "justice", heavy scare quotes.

The charges were:

    Daniel Nolan Devor, 39, of Brunswick, Ga., charged with conspiracy to produce child pornography, distribution of child pornography and receipt of materials involving the sexual exploitation of minors
    John C. Foster, 44 of Tipp City, Ohio, charged with conspiracy to produce child pornography, distribution of child pornography, and receipt of materials involving the sexual exploitation of minors
    Aung Gaw aka Michael Gaw, 25, of Fremont, Calif.,  charged with receipt of child pornography
    Vittorio Francesco Gonzalez-Castillo, 26, of Tucson, Ariz., charged with conspiracy to produce child pornography
    Sean Jabbar, 32, of Minneapolis, Minn.,  charged with receipt of child pornography
    Christopher Jamieson, 30, of Douglassville, Ga., charged with receipt of child pornography
    Andrew Korpal, 29, of Granger, Ind., charged with receipt of child pornography
    Nicholas Saine, 27, of Seattle, Wash., charged with receipt of child pornography
    Christopher Schwab, 25 of New Orleans, charged with production of child pornography, distribution of child pornography, and receipt of child pornography
    Stanley Zdon, III, 27, of Tuckerton, N.J., charged with conspiracy to produce child pornography

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