FBI Stymied When It Comes To ‘Dark Net’ Kiddie Porn Sites
For those of you not familiar with the term ‘Dark Net’ it is the part of the Internet that is accessible using services like the Tor Network which utilizes online anonymizing encryption technology to hide the location of anyone connecting to the network.
It is also referred to as a shadow internet where people can do pretty much as they please with little fear of being tracked or identified. As such it is actively used by activists in countries with oppressive regimes and by people involved in illegal activities.
According to newly released documents from the FBI the agency is pretty much helpless when it comes to stopping something like the trading of child pornography on the dark net.
This became really apparent in June 2011 when a man showed up at the Detroit office of the FBI to report finding a child porn site called TSChan, which he had come across when trying to find a dark net site called Silk Road. The man told the FBI that is looked like a child porn site because of the nature of the images of very young children some of whom were in diapers.
He told the FBI that he had been trying to find the Silk Road site, a dark net drug market, through a dark net directory called The Hidden Wiki but when he came across the TSChan site he felt that he had to take the information to the FBI.
The problem is that the FBI couldn’t, due to the very nature of the dark net, do anything with the information. From the documents:
“Complaintant 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.”
The end result was the interviewing agent recommending that the case be closed down.
via Gawker
Comments
About the Author
Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
Related Posts
If You Thought “Person Of Interest” Was Just A TV Show The FBI Has Other Ideas →
FBI Computer Breached, Hacker Group Says They Have 12 Million Apple IDs →
Here’s The Ultimate List Of Keywords To Use To Let The Government Know It’s Cool To Spy On You →
