Details about the full extent of the FBI's hacking of child pornography sites hosted on the Dark Web have been revealed by Motherboard. The website reports that the federal agency used unusual means to gather evidence to prosecute the sites' users.
To do this, the service hosted the site on its own servers for 13 full days.
During the period, the site was operating normally. In short, the FBI was accepting child sexual abuse images for distribution (which is against all legal process), so that it could collect IP addresses and distribute malware that transmitted information about the site's users.
The goal, of course, was to arrest the site's members, and it seems that the goal continues to sanctify the means..
The result of this investigation? The harvesting of IP addresses and other information from more than 1,300 people who either logged in or posted something on the website during that period.
The Court confirmed that the FBI operated the site, also known as “Playpen,” from February 20, 2015, to March 4 of the same year. The site had more than 215,000 registered users at that time.
According to USA Today, 137 people have been charged with criminal acts so far. In a statement issued for the agency, former FBI agent Ron Hosko explained the reasoning behind these types of actions:
“We had a window of opportunity to get into one of the darkest parts of the internet, and we didn’t have much choice but to do it. There was no other way.”
In another update on the case (revealed by Motherboard), it appears that the FBI routinely hacks computers in various countries, including Denmark, Greece, and Chile, in coordinated EUROPOL operations, such as Operation Pacifier, which led to a series of arrests around the world.
The unusual decision to continue to allow the distribution of illegal material was expected to be used by some advocates who argued that the arrests were fraudulent.
