Unsealed Warrant Shows FBI Malware Affected Innocent Tor Users While Agency Ran More Than 20 Child Porn Sites
from the supporting-justifications-cited:-1.-the-ends dept
Thanks to the ACLU’s push to unseal documents related to the FBI’s targeting of TorMail users and Freedom Hosting, the warrant affidavits supporting its NIT deployment have been released by the agency. Joseph Cox of Motherboard reports:
In 2013, the FBI received permission to hack over 300 specific users of dark web email service TorMail. But now, after the warrants and their applications have finally been unsealed, experts say the agency illegally went further, and hacked perfectly legitimate users of the privacy-focused service.
“That is, while the warrant authorized hacking with a scalpel, the FBI delivered their malware to TorMail users with a grenade,” Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in an email.
The 99-page affidavit [PDF] is lightly-redacted but contains some completely uncensored and surprising admissions from the agency. Contrary to its post-release statements about the scope of the “narrowly-tailored” warrant not being exceeded, the actual contents show the deployment of the NIT to unmask Tor users is much more aligned with Soghoian’s “grenade” description.
As Cox points out, the TorMail affidavit [PDF] says the NIT would only be delivered to logged-in, specifically-targeted TorMail users.
[T]he NIT… will be deployed on the TARGET ACCOUNTS while the TARGET ACCOUNTS operate in the District of Maryland, to investigate any user who logs into any of the TARGET ACCOUNTS by entering a username and password.
In reality, the deployment occurred the moment a user landed on any site utilizing Freedom Hosting — not just the child porn sites the FBI had taken control of. And the number of sites the FBI was running during this investigation is staggering.
According to the new documents, the NIT was used against users of 23 separate websites.
If you thought the FBI’s admin efforts for two separate child porn websites (in two investigations spaced a couple of years apart) were questionable, you have to wonder about the morality (or legality) of the US government becoming one of the world’s largest distributor of child pornography. Researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis notes that, according to her numbers, the FBI could have been operating close to half (if not more) of the child porn websites in existence.
And, as for the claims the FBI didn’t exceed the scope of the warrant: that’s clearly not true. The warrant was issued in Maryland and was delivered to users all over the world. The supporting affidavit contains descriptions of one site apparently located in Hungary, but never makes any attempt to limit the FBI efforts to within US borders, much less Maryland.
The NIT violated Rule 41 limitations and then exceeded the FBI’s own assertions about targeting specific users. It continues to deploy the same malware against Tor users with a similar lack of concern for jurisdictional restrictions or its implicit invitation for foreign law enforcement agencies to engage in the same tactics against US citizens.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, child porn, doj, fbi, malware, nit, playpen, warrant
Comments on “Unsealed Warrant Shows FBI Malware Affected Innocent Tor Users While Agency Ran More Than 20 Child Porn Sites”
Red line
Up until this point i’ve been skeptical of the fears about government malware. At its best, when it’s authorized with a warrant and targeted narrowly, it can be a reasonable (imo) tool to defeat end-user encryption and put the backdoor argument to rest.
But what is described here is unforgivable. Users of specific services or software cannot be justified targets merely for choosing those services or software. If this proves to be the new norm, laws are not sufficient to protect our rights anymore.
We are more concerned with the ends, we stopped looking at the means being used… because they are only used on “Bad People”(tm)… until we figure out they think everyone who isn’t them is bad people.
We are past the point of stopping this, we need to demand that things be stopped.
We need full reviews & disclosures.
We need people held accountable.
We need punishments.
We need to make sure we don’t keep heading towards not looking any different than the dictatorships we call out around the globe.
We had a horrible problem, so we screwed innocent people and ran at least half of the places you can get the horrible things & spread more of it… by undermining the checks & balances of the law and many of our cases have fallen apart because what we did was so stupid the courts say WTF is wrong with you people!?
Re: and ? ? ?
these things will be resolved, how, exactly ? ? ?
bear in mind (paraphrasing) freddy douglass’s quote: power never devolves voluntarily…
hmmm, ok, now what ? ? ?
voting for (t-rump/killary) will solve these problems ? ? ?
…or exacerbate ? ? ?
well, (meta-ironically) fortunately and unfortunately, at the same time, Empire is both reaching its peak and falling, at the same time…
hard rain coming…
based on a true story…
Re: Re: and ? ? ?
They could be resolved if people stopped worrying about trying to exercise control over others based on strongly held religious beliefs, and punished the representatives of the people who are doing nothing to protect the country.
WHO?
Who is watching the watchers and who gets punished when the watchers violate the law. Do those mythical punishments have the same voracity as the general public punishments, if not why not. This an aside from operating a porn site illegally and spreading malware.
Well, you know the old saying… you can’t make an omlette without breaking a few laws, court orders and constitutional amendments that guarantee against unreasonable searches and siezures.
I love that old saying. It just rolls off the tongue.
Re: Re:
You’d have thought the Constitution’s framers would have thought about this ahead of time and put in some sort of bill or amendment or something.
But then, anything not allowing unlimited personal nuclear weaponry seems to be government overreach…
If they had nothing to hide...
then they had nothing to fear.
I think the FBI said it best when they said they’d rather 100 innocent people be accused of child pornography and go to prison for it than one guilty go free.
Innocent TOR user? No such thing
Expect a correction from the FBI any time now: there is no such thing as an "innocent" TOR user. The FBI sees TOR users hiding things…and people with things to hide are terrorists.
Re: Innocent TOR user? No such thing
The FBI sees TOR users hiding things…and people with things to hide are terrorists.
Almost, they see non-government people hiding things as terrorists, the government of course is not only allowed to hide things it’s their Right to do so, because of course they need to be able to keep secrets, despite insisting that the public can’t.
It has become painfully obvious, to even the most thick-headed civilian, that thanks to corrupt vetting practices at the FBI, it’s resources are now being controlled and utilized by an elite group of pedophiles who now work INSIDE the agency.
Nope
The FBI broke the law, ignored warrant limitations and even jurisdictional limits, and disregarded the rights of the people.
Nope…still not surprised.
So...what else was on Freedom Hosting?
That is, the FBI vastly overreached it’s warrent, and infected everone who visited a website hosted on Freedom Hosting.
Just for giggles Mike Masnick, which sites would that be????
Thanks!
If you need child porn...
just connect with the FBI, they have a ton.
from 1 site to site 20. How long before it turns out they were saving files as well as distributing them, hmm.
It was cops had the best dope, now they have the best CP, how sad. If you have to kill somebody to catch a killer it is time to give up the ghost.
“you have to wonder about the morality (or legality) of the US government becoming one of the world’s largest distributor of child pornography.”
Perhaps this should be addressed by properly asking the right question of the FBI, which is:
“In the past 20 years, how many child porn producers have been arrested?”
I suggest having a box of tissue nearby, because the answer is going to make you cry.
Funding the FBI is no different than other departments. If the FBI is “doing its job”, then it means they get the lion’s share of the money.
From the agency which wastes no time in setting up fake terrorists.
Stop and think about the ramifications regarding an agency sitting on the world’s largest collection of child pornography and the surprisingly timed “arrests” of people, most of whom are consumers, not producers.
Re: Re:
Producers have money; producers fight back.
Much easier to make showy convictions of "consumers." The public defender won’t even make you prove it was child porn, and will most likely help arm-twist the "consumer" into a plea.
Expediency is not Justice
Unsealed Warrant Shows FBI Malware Affected Innocent Tor Users While Agency Ran More Than 20 Child Porn Sites
In US government lingo the Affected Innocent Tor Users were simply collateral damage and are completely expendable especially when viewed through FBI’s prism of expedient motives.
Don’t worry, Congress will soon make it retroactively legal.
Clinton started this:)
Governor Clinton’s Arkansas was the northern terminus for the importation of cocaine under Drug cZar Bush, Nixon was a lawyer for Pepsi during their Burma heroin operation, any reactor GE builds around the world, we own the waste products (weapons grade plutonium) and our FBI promulgates child exploitation images and probably targets anthrax for social engineering the american mind.
Nothing to see here.
It will happen again.
It will happen again, Guaranteed! With this sort of collateral damage, a dissection and analysis of the methods used by the FBI to spread their malware is needed, if for no other reason so that the general public can protect themselves from a rogue government.
Many people used TorMail for legitimate uses.
Did they check mr podesta emails for pedophiles kewords?
Child Porn: It's for te children, now fortified with FBI approval and dissemination
Dissemination by the FBI….what would THAT look like? Eeeew.
Wow- how do we stop these goodguys? A few wankers who may/could/might hurt a kid aren’t enough for me to eradicate privacy of citizens, while granting a criminal gov’t child porn distribution rights. And every time there is a pedo-sweep 80% are gov’t or priests and rabbi’s; teachers and cops.
Not to mention that more kids are killed every year by their mothers in America, than kids raped by strangers ( which is shockingly rare.)