'Dark Net' keeps FBI from investigating child porn
 

Seems to me the US is once again using child pornography as a political weapon, this time to attack anonymity on the internet. Way to go FBI.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47815897...d#.T9ohcT5YvGE

UPDATED: The TOR Project has clarified that it does not in fact instruct law-enforcement agents on how to exploit vulnerabilities in the service, and that its spokesperson was misquoted when speaking to Ars Technica.

Citing an inability to infiltrate the Web's hidden underworld ? the "dark net" ? the FBI halted a child pornography investigation, according to recently released documents obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request.

Last September, Jason Smathers of MuckRock submitted a FOI request for any records mentioning "Silk Road," an anonymous retail site, which, as he explained, "is well-known to be an illegal marketplace for items such as illegal drugs, guns and credit card fraud."
Smathers' FOI request was prompted by a man who, last June, called the Detroit FBI office to report that he'd found a dark net site called "TSChan" which appeared to be hosting child pornography.

Silk Road and TSChan are just two of the numerous offending sites hosted on the "dark net," a part of the Internet deliberately hidden from view and accessible only through IP-anonymizing portals such as The Onion Router, known as TOR. For months, child pornography sites hidden on the dark net have been in the crosshairs of the Anonymous hackers. In three separate hacks, all part of its " OpDarknet" campaign, Anonymous has taken down and leaked the personal information of suspected members of illegal child porn sites.

According to the FOI request, the FBI acknowledged the impossibility of tracing TSChan, and halted its investigation.

In the FBI's Complaint/Assessment Form, the FBI said, "Complainant had no other information about who the subjects of the pictures were or who would have posted the pictures. Also, because everyone (all Internet traffic) connected to the TOR Network is anonymous, there is not currently a way to trace the origin of the website. As such no other investigative leads exist."

On Aug. 2, the case was closed without further investigation.

The FBI's unwillingness to delve into the dark net is shocking to Karen Reilly, the development director at the TOR Project, the group behind the anonymizing software. She told Ars Technica, "Saying that you have no leads is ridiculous."

Reilly said the TOR Project regularly instructs law enforcement agencies on how Tor works.

So you think the government instructed the FBI to claim that they couldn't pursue criminals using the Dark Net as an excuse to increase anti-anonymity laws in the USA?

Ok, maybe.

But wouldn't that hurt the reputation of the FBIs abilities? What's more important?

I do find it interesting that the FBI just gave up. Maybe it really is that anonymous and wouldn't hold up in court?

Edit; I bet that article is nonsense.

I say this cautiously from a windows computer, microsoft is the bad guys.

It may not be as simple as asking a (known) host who the customer is, but I'm sure there's still ways of gathering clues, even though the location of the site cannot be determined. If they think outside the box (is that possible for the FBI?) they may be able to find a way to trip up the site owner, or one of its users. For example, an exploit that reveals the site's true IP.

Wizard of Oz.

They know how to exploit it as a relay. They play dumb so they can continue to monitor.

Not saying this is the case, but sometimes the press is used for misinformation. I find it difficult to believe the FBI just gave up and were out matched in the tech field.

i really hope the FBI is manipulating the media and giving these weirdos and criminals on TOR a false sense of security - if not, way to go FBI, why not take out full page ads in newspapers getting the word out that there's a place on the Internet where you can do anything - sell heroin, hire a hitman, set off a dirty nuke in Times Square - and the FBI can't trace you.

Yea Screw those freedom of expression weirdos! Fucking creepers wanting intellectual freedom and shit.... sickens me.

Think of the childrens.

One must be seriously naive to believe that the FBI is not involved knee deep in such dark places on the web. If it was honestly that difficult to get into illegal sites on the web, then there wouldn't be anyone there for criminals to peddle their illegal wares to.

Law Enforcement agencies have those places on lock and simply bide their time in regards to investigations.

Yes, such announcements are used as political tactics, but they serve a greater purpose overall in emboldening criminals so that they fuck up more often and get caught as a result.

Law Enforcement agencies have an open source encryption system "on lock"??
I suppose they also have I2P and Freenet "on lock" and have magical keys to my girlfriends panty drawer.

yea.... no

Wouldn't make the assumption anything for public consumption isn't

lol yeah, i had no idea there were sites only accessable through proxies.

You can believe whatever you want, but trust and know that some of the very same software and systems that people use to "anonymize" their online experience was coded by or is supported by persons who were either trained by or are sympathetic with certain LE agencies.

Not to mention those who already have been caught doing dirt and are informants in one form or another.

A medium-level hacker can get in and out of the dark corners of the web with relatively ease. So imagine how easy it would be for someone who has been specifically trained and has the freedom to break through certain ISP restrictions on a global level. Then, combine that level of access with a government budget that gives them the best equipment and immunity from prosecution.

I would even go as far as saying that some of the very same groups on the web that claim to be against government and "big brother" are simply recruitment organizations.

And yes, they could even have magical keys to your girlfriend's panty drawer. She might even be one of them. It's very easy to plant persons into someone else life to monitor their movements and actions.

Trust no one. It's just that simple.

i agree with you. the fbi is farrrrrrrrrrr from stupid.
ds

um.......there is a tremendous amount of hard drugs being sold on SilkRoad and so far I haven't heard of one bust linked to SR.

I thought that the deep web and dark net were two different things. I didn't know that you could access dark net via Tor.

Means they now have full access and want people to be comfortable accessing from their home computers... :2 cents: Hope they catch them creeps.

Deep web = Sites that contain databases whose contents are not directly crawlable by standard web crawlers such as Googlebot, so they won't show in a normal web search.

Dark web/Dark net = Sites which require alternate access methods such as TOR.

At least that's my understanding.

QFT :thumbsup

I thought

deep web = things that aren't crawlable by standard web crawlers, with them being stuff that you can get to via Tor.

dark net = more like private networks that people use Freenet to get to, and that it is not information that as easily (comparatively) found as what you can find on Tor.

I could be totally wrong though. I haven't been to either one, though the idea beckons me like a siren song, for some reason. It's like wanting to take a trip through the worst neighborhood in town, just to check it out.

TOR is both a proxying service for standard websites (and to a lesser extent, other internet services), and also a way to access "hidden" websites that are exclusive to the TOR network, using the .onion pseudo-TLD.

Deep web is as I stated, content that can be accessed with a normal browser and some human input (such as a search term), but not by an automated crawler.

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