One can argue that he had to know about it, perhaps so, but the way he's being portrayed by LE and media is as if he was the kingpin of child porn. That's far from the truth. Freedom host served half of the Tor network, including perfectly legitimate services like Tormail, wikis etc.
I think his mistake in not cloaking the identity used to purchase servers can be explained this way: He was never planning to host CP starting out (or do anything else illegal for that matter). He probably thought universally recognized no-liability laws would apply to Freedom Host just as any other hosting business. Perhaps he later went down a darker path, but at that point it was too late.
The fact that he now pleads guilty means absolutely nothing however. Remember, he was extradited from his country to USA, and while he should never have been sent there, he now have to adapt to the way the "justice system" works over there and it works kind of like this: 5000 years in jail or take a plea deal and get away with 15-30 years. Even if he is innocent, you need to realize that when you're facing a kangaroo court and subsequent rotting away in jail for life it might be better to pick the lesser evil.
> Freedom Hosting has long been notorious for allowing child porn to live on its servers. In 2011, the hactivist collective Anonymous singled out the service for denial-of-service attacks after allegedly finding the firm hosted 95 percent of the child porn hidden services on the Tor network. In the hearing yesterday, [FBI Agent] Donahue said the service hosted at least 100 child porn sites with thousands of users, and claimed Marques had visited some of the sites himself.
This is completely the wrong way to think about it. Remember the Defender's Dilemma: to run an illegal business like this, your opsec needs to be perfect: every single possible channel of information leakage (including the "unknown unknowns"), every minute, every hour, every day, forever. You need to be lucky every time, the feds only need to be lucky once.
When you focus on the specific mistakes that people made and thus call them "sloppy", you're missing all the things they did right; you might not have made those mistakes if you were in their position, but you would've made different mistakes.
Imagine all of the criminals out there who are running operations so well oiled that they leave little exposure for being caught.
The internet is designed to send data from point A to point B. Keeping point A and point B truly anonymous means that the internet won't work.
Tools like Tor don't really protect you, it's more like they make it hard enough to figure out who you are that only people with strong incentives will track you down.
Read and write encrypted packets to alt.anon ?
Sure, this works for torrenting TV shows. If you are the number one peddler of child porn on the planet however, this won't help you for very long. The FBI (or whatever national police force is trying to find you) will just go to the access point, realize you're connected remotely and triangulate your position with (essentially) some signal-strength meters in much the same way the FCC tracks down particularly disruptive unlicensed broadcasters.
Didn't help Ross. It's a bad idea to do illegal stuff in public.
I hear some people arguing that in business "not breaking the laws" is not the problem unless they get caught and even in that case, it is a problem only if the consequences end up costing more than the gain they receive in doing it.
So a person with those value may end up breaking the law. Are you saying it is ok?
It may even be a social duty.
Different people have different values and believes in what is just or unjust. I agree that some laws may need to be changed. But should we not have discussions on changing the laws instead of breaking them?
This obviously implies a good democratic system so it may be different is some nations.
Everybody does. Everybody must, because delegating the decision in itself is merely an option of that decision. Whether you obey power, follow your own greed, defer to social norms, or carefully weigh your own values and the consequences of your actions for yourself, all people are moral agents whether or not they realize which path they are following.
You raise a reasonable objection; I'm not advocating murder or wanton lawlessness. But here's a whole category of illegitimate laws that should be disobeyed: prohibitions born out of moral panic. These laws don't restrict actual harm, whether immediate like violence or accreted like pollution. They restrict the mere chance of harm by denying individual agency, out of fear that it could possibly be used for harm by even the tiniest number of people.
That's why simply discussing these laws isn't enough. They originate in fear and blindness that can't be reasoned against. The mere word of the thing evokes a fear response that shuts down thought: "drugs", "guns", "homosexuality", "racial integration". Good people have to be willing to break the law to show the difference between the panic and the actual outcomes.
Societal progress doesn't come from people musing about what they think they'd like to try, if only it were legal. It comes from people who risk everything to say "This forbidden thing is actually good and we know because we've done it, and it's so important that even banning it won't stop us".
Yes, even under a "good Democratic system".
El Chapo, an actual drug cartel member who is directly responsible for thousands of deaths, only got a single life sentence.
Ross got screwed on his sentencing and it is totally unjustified.
Free Ross!
It's also quite ironic that an organization that has assassinated numerous people are attempting to destroy the reputation of one of their enemies by claiming that he attempted to assassinate somebody.
The United States Government (USG) enjoys a monopoly of violence (consent of the governed). However, a citizen (or group of them -- org/corp) does not enjoy such rights. Your comparison is invalidated.
Who exactly is consenting to be governed? I know I'm not consenting but I also know that some other people support the government that purports to govern them. Is it enough for one person to consent or does something magic happen at a particular number or portion?
Nah. We have these things called elections (and representational democracy). In general that mechanism decides how society will progress forward from a political perspective.
The US government, acting in accordance with its constitution invades and occupies Canada. Congress creates 13 new states corresponding to the previous provinces and territories and elections are held. Almost all of the elected members from the newly annexed areas are opposed to the annexation and introduce a bill to allow the 13 new states to secede from the US but the bill is overwhelmingly defeated by members of Congress from the other 50 states.
Does the US government in this scenario enjoy the consent of the governed?
If they do, imagine that the original US population was more split on the issue so that the secession bill would have passed with Canada divided into 13 states. However the pre-annexation Congress anticipated this and resolved to make Canada a single state that would consequently not have sufficient representation to pass the bill even with the support of opponents from some of the other 50 states.
Does the US government still enjoy the consent of the governed in the second scenario?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/03/five-stup...