Man found guilty of child porn because he ran a Tor exit node(lowendbox.com)
lowendbox.com
Man found guilty of child porn because he ran a Tor exit node
https://lowendbox.com/blog/man-found-guilty-of-child-porn-because-he-ran-a-tor-exit-node-the-story-of-william-weber/
585 comments
Not necessarily. Making that statement, setting up in a country that has enough issues to make it plausible, and then not paying the bribe would also make a lot of sense. See also: no log VPNs that actually were logging.
Worst case scenario they shut down, collaborate fully with the police and keep all the profits up til then. Better case scenario they make a deal with the police and keep operating and making profits while covertly providing assistance. Best case scenario the issue never comes up and they make all the profits without having to spend those expenses.
My impression is that in this kind of shady web hosting the companies never last that long so you wouldn't want to invest a lot in bribes and multiple data centers and so on when you could lie and make short term profit.
Note also that corruption isn't a boolean flag. First off the cop make take the exact same strategy: take your money, do nothing else, and hope their boss never gets interested in you while planning not to protect you if anything comes up. Furthermore there are all sorts of anticorruption efforts in that area linked to US aid. That doesn't mean there isn't corruption, it does mean that if a major US corp works with the FBI in a major investigation the local police may rather piss you off than lose critical aid funding.
Worst case scenario they shut down, collaborate fully with the police and keep all the profits up til then. Better case scenario they make a deal with the police and keep operating and making profits while covertly providing assistance. Best case scenario the issue never comes up and they make all the profits without having to spend those expenses.
My impression is that in this kind of shady web hosting the companies never last that long so you wouldn't want to invest a lot in bribes and multiple data centers and so on when you could lie and make short term profit.
Note also that corruption isn't a boolean flag. First off the cop make take the exact same strategy: take your money, do nothing else, and hope their boss never gets interested in you while planning not to protect you if anything comes up. Furthermore there are all sorts of anticorruption efforts in that area linked to US aid. That doesn't mean there isn't corruption, it does mean that if a major US corp works with the FBI in a major investigation the local police may rather piss you off than lose critical aid funding.
Which vpn was no-log-but-logging? I was shopping around for an alternative after mullvad blocked port forwarding, but it seems like no one else is as trustworthy. Not that I need it for my “attempt to port forward smash ultimate from within crummy hospital internet” purposes, but hey, principle of the thing and all that.
All of them.
I am all-but-certain that NordVPN doesn't. I am in possession of records from a recent police investigation in which law enforcement subpoenaed NordVPN and the company replied, essentially, that they had no information connecting a particular IP address, at a specific date and time, to any specific user.
(I am a reporter who covers law enforcement and crime.)
(I am a reporter who covers law enforcement and crime.)
Are you sure you're not thinking of Mullvad?
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35638917
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35638917
Yes. This is a totally unrelated case that never made the news.
Countless examples of Nord supplying logs.
They all have to keep logs or would be banned from offering services to US citizens.
Are you sure you aren't thinking UK?
In the US, you have to be a common carrier to be covered by CALEA. Internet services are not required to keep logs.
I could be wrong though.
In the US, you have to be a common carrier to be covered by CALEA. Internet services are not required to keep logs.
I could be wrong though.
Provide just one example. Am curious.
Here is a general text on that:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-wit...
Exact examples are hard to find in the press. One that comes to mind is from a Belgian Telco company that was internally hacked by an employee hiding behind NordVPN. Nord when approached by the telco responded with the usual no logs, but after the telco involved the Interpol, logs were given and the attacker doxxed.
Exact examples are hard to find in the press. One that comes to mind is from a Belgian Telco company that was internally hacked by an employee hiding behind NordVPN. Nord when approached by the telco responded with the usual no logs, but after the telco involved the Interpol, logs were given and the attacker doxxed.
> Here is a general text on that: https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-wit...
This article (edited multiple times!) is not evidence of anything, let alone Nord co-operating with law enforcement to log customer data.
> Exact examples are hard to find in the press.
You said there are countless examples of Nord logging user data, why are you backtracking now?
> One that comes to mind is from a Belgian Telco company that was internally hacked by an employee hiding behind NordVPN. Nord when approached by the telco responded with the usual no logs, but after the telco involved the Interpol, logs were given and the attacker doxxed.
Give source or it did not happen.
This article (edited multiple times!) is not evidence of anything, let alone Nord co-operating with law enforcement to log customer data.
> Exact examples are hard to find in the press.
You said there are countless examples of Nord logging user data, why are you backtracking now?
> One that comes to mind is from a Belgian Telco company that was internally hacked by an employee hiding behind NordVPN. Nord when approached by the telco responded with the usual no logs, but after the telco involved the Interpol, logs were given and the attacker doxxed.
Give source or it did not happen.
>This article (edited multiple times!) is not evidence of anything, let alone Nord co-operating with law enforcement to log customer data.
Not sure what is not clear from this: “We will comply with lawful requests as long as they are delivered according to all the laws and regulations," NordVPN says. "We are a company that protects the security and privacy of our customers, but we operate according to laws and regulations.”
Why you don't find articles googling is that Nord puts a lot of effort in removing or burring it (google their dispute with TorGuard). Same what they tried to do with the breach in 2018, they half-ass disclosed at least 6 months later after being known to them. (at a point in time the breach already leaked)
Example I gave was a talk in a hacker conference, with no recording (common request for hacker conference talks).
Not sure what is not clear from this: “We will comply with lawful requests as long as they are delivered according to all the laws and regulations," NordVPN says. "We are a company that protects the security and privacy of our customers, but we operate according to laws and regulations.”
Why you don't find articles googling is that Nord puts a lot of effort in removing or burring it (google their dispute with TorGuard). Same what they tried to do with the breach in 2018, they half-ass disclosed at least 6 months later after being known to them. (at a point in time the breach already leaked)
Example I gave was a talk in a hacker conference, with no recording (common request for hacker conference talks).
Here’s one such subpoena and reply (full PDF linked in the article):
https://blog.getfoxyproxy.org/2017/11/04/secret-service-subp...
https://blog.getfoxyproxy.org/2017/11/04/secret-service-subp...
Then that is a service then which might be safe for people who's opponents are the police. But some people also worry about threats from the obscenely rich, from their own intelligence agencies, from foreign intelligence agencies, from organized crime, and/or from popular mob outrage.
Your experience doesn't indicate the safety of the service against those other threats, and not only may they not be correlated but they may be anti-correlated. E.g. I bet both CIA and mob run VPN services are really good at saying no to the police.
The fundamental thought that drives my opinion on this subject is this:
We already know for a fact that some state actors do broad scale full take surveillance of the internet. VPN services are even more attractive to monitor because the users are somewhat self-selecting as people who have something to hide, more intel bang per megabit monitored. Without surveilling VPNs these entities would have a blindspot in their expensive internet monitoring machine, so its important just for completeness sake. The VPN provider game is also a much lower barrier to entry, smaller players that don't have the power to push around AT&T can get in on it. Russia, for example, isn't in that much of a position to engage in world wide telecom monitoring (except perhaps that one fiber that goes through sibera and has really low latency between europe and china)-- but they sure can stand up some VPNs and get the worlds traffic to come to them.
Plus, if you run a VPN service people will pay you to run their secret data through you. It's a profit center even before you get to the potential revenue streams from abusing your position. Perhaps it becomes so profitable that you'd prefer to protect it and so you minimize your abuse, but the optimal amount of abuse will pretty much never be zero.
So, If you're the head of a clandestine service or serious organized crime group and you haven't launched at least one VPN service you should be immediately fired for grave incompetence.
The best reason to not run one would just be that you've already infiltrated many existing ones through operatives and backdoored hardware.
And also the heat you take running these services is much easier to deal with if you have 'connections' either of the run-by-a-TLA sort or the we-have-blackmail-material-and-can-break-your-fingers sort. And corrupt VPNs have a whole extra potential revenue/benefit source so they can afford to under-price any honest competition.
Given that, we should expect that many VPNs are honeypots. Probably not all of them, but by their very nature it should be hard to impossible to tell which.
Your experience doesn't indicate the safety of the service against those other threats, and not only may they not be correlated but they may be anti-correlated. E.g. I bet both CIA and mob run VPN services are really good at saying no to the police.
The fundamental thought that drives my opinion on this subject is this:
We already know for a fact that some state actors do broad scale full take surveillance of the internet. VPN services are even more attractive to monitor because the users are somewhat self-selecting as people who have something to hide, more intel bang per megabit monitored. Without surveilling VPNs these entities would have a blindspot in their expensive internet monitoring machine, so its important just for completeness sake. The VPN provider game is also a much lower barrier to entry, smaller players that don't have the power to push around AT&T can get in on it. Russia, for example, isn't in that much of a position to engage in world wide telecom monitoring (except perhaps that one fiber that goes through sibera and has really low latency between europe and china)-- but they sure can stand up some VPNs and get the worlds traffic to come to them.
Plus, if you run a VPN service people will pay you to run their secret data through you. It's a profit center even before you get to the potential revenue streams from abusing your position. Perhaps it becomes so profitable that you'd prefer to protect it and so you minimize your abuse, but the optimal amount of abuse will pretty much never be zero.
So, If you're the head of a clandestine service or serious organized crime group and you haven't launched at least one VPN service you should be immediately fired for grave incompetence.
The best reason to not run one would just be that you've already infiltrated many existing ones through operatives and backdoored hardware.
And also the heat you take running these services is much easier to deal with if you have 'connections' either of the run-by-a-TLA sort or the we-have-blackmail-material-and-can-break-your-fingers sort. And corrupt VPNs have a whole extra potential revenue/benefit source so they can afford to under-price any honest competition.
Given that, we should expect that many VPNs are honeypots. Probably not all of them, but by their very nature it should be hard to impossible to tell which.
There's no reason to have a link with intelligence agencies when you're already run by an intelligence agency...
You must be mistaking NordVPN for Mullvad.
Looking at the scale of NordVPN they either already have a liason with aurhorities inside, or are hacked by authorities.
The (law enforcement) agencies can just go to the few biggest VPN suppliers. Just like they go to FAANG.
The (law enforcement) agencies can just go to the few biggest VPN suppliers. Just like they go to FAANG.
> Looking at the scale of NordVPN they either already have a liason with aurhorities inside, or are hacked by authorities.
Based on what? You just seem to be making a wild unsubstantiated conjecture here.
Based on what? You just seem to be making a wild unsubstantiated conjecture here.
It's obviously an unsubstantiated statement, but given all the concrete information on the MOs of alphabet agencies, it seems like a reasonable bet. If they haven't done one of those things, they probably just haven't gotten around to it yet.
[deleted]
Frankly, they’d have to be criminally incompetent or negligent considering all the things we know for sure they’ve done.
It's a wild take but the US did the wild operation for big techs (Prism)
Room 641A
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
No door handle!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
No door handle!
Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom
Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before
SBC purchased AT&T. The room was referred to in internal AT&T documents as
the SG3 [Study Group 3] Secure Room.
The room measures about 24 by 48 feet (7.3 by 14.6 m) and contains several
racks of equipment [...].
This thread is a bullshitters playground.
Is it that wild? There are a few questions we have to ask
1. Do these agencies have the motivation to do the above? I think the answer here is an obvious yes to everyone
2. Do these agencies have the technical ability to hack the VPNs, the finances to pay them for access, or some other reasonable measure to coerce compliance?
If 1 and 2 are both true, then the OP claim is also certainly true.
Given that 1 is true, I don’t think it’s “wild” to claim that these agencies cannot satisfy 2. In fact I’d say given the historical record, the more wild claim is that the CIA/NSA etc is incapable of satisfying #2.
1. Do these agencies have the motivation to do the above? I think the answer here is an obvious yes to everyone
2. Do these agencies have the technical ability to hack the VPNs, the finances to pay them for access, or some other reasonable measure to coerce compliance?
If 1 and 2 are both true, then the OP claim is also certainly true.
Given that 1 is true, I don’t think it’s “wild” to claim that these agencies cannot satisfy 2. In fact I’d say given the historical record, the more wild claim is that the CIA/NSA etc is incapable of satisfying #2.
It's a crime. Maintaining continual access to every major vpn provider increases the probability of getting caught breaking the law towards one while continually risking the methods required to acquire such access each time your implant is discovered.
If you are using unknown exploits not passed on to relevant software projects each discovery further risks said exploit being discovered then used against us individuals and enterprise.
It is a potentially very high cost for mediocre gain as criminals can turn to more secure methods leaving you with a lot of data on whose hiding piracy from their ISP but little of actual value.
Meanwhile you can direct attack targets any other ways when they are likely to have actual intelligence instead of hoping they log into nord VPN.
In brief speculation is incredibly likely to be based on bad logic and should probably attend more to actual know.
Eg most people aren't important enough to directly target. Uncle Sam probably knows the entire contents of your Gmail but not what you do via nord VPN. At such time as you become an international drug lord your privacy is likely to fall apart when Sam starts serving providers who do business with you.
If you are using unknown exploits not passed on to relevant software projects each discovery further risks said exploit being discovered then used against us individuals and enterprise.
It is a potentially very high cost for mediocre gain as criminals can turn to more secure methods leaving you with a lot of data on whose hiding piracy from their ISP but little of actual value.
Meanwhile you can direct attack targets any other ways when they are likely to have actual intelligence instead of hoping they log into nord VPN.
In brief speculation is incredibly likely to be based on bad logic and should probably attend more to actual know.
Eg most people aren't important enough to directly target. Uncle Sam probably knows the entire contents of your Gmail but not what you do via nord VPN. At such time as you become an international drug lord your privacy is likely to fall apart when Sam starts serving providers who do business with you.
> continual access to every major vpn provider increases the probability of getting caught
Could you point out one example where CIA/NSA faced any real consequences after being caught doing something shady?
Could you point out one example where CIA/NSA faced any real consequences after being caught doing something shady?
Can you please provide examples where they maintained continual access via hacking legal operations instead of serving entities with paperwork?
The Interpol literally took over a darknet market (Dream) using stolen admin credentials and continued to run the site for months to gather intelligence on vendors and buyers. Not the same thing but if LE is willing to operate a major illegal drug trafficking operation then surely hacking a few VPN companies doesn't seem impossible.
Tailored Access Division and Vault7.
And I'm sorry, you aren't entitled to any of that information one way or another it's CLASSIFIED.
Isn't your own government keeping secrets from you grand?
And I'm sorry, you aren't entitled to any of that information one way or another it's CLASSIFIED.
Isn't your own government keeping secrets from you grand?
The Snowden leaks?
What crime is it for the NSA/CIA, who are explicitly tasked by the government with gathering intelligence on foreign agencies, to hack say Mullwad, a Swedish entity? That’s like saying it’s a murder for the police to shoot someone who has hostages. I mean yes it’s the same action, but when it’s been deemed justified by the government, it’s not really a crime in the same way.
A crime in Sweden perhaps. Who will Sweden charge? Do they even have names for individual employees?
It’s also a “crime” to sell false and compromised products to customers yet CryptoAG existed for decades.
> At such time as you become an international drug lord your privacy is likely to fall apart when Sam starts serving providers who do business with you.
Then you’re simply agreeing under point 2, I.e they have they ability to coerce cooperation when desired
A crime in Sweden perhaps. Who will Sweden charge? Do they even have names for individual employees?
It’s also a “crime” to sell false and compromised products to customers yet CryptoAG existed for decades.
> At such time as you become an international drug lord your privacy is likely to fall apart when Sam starts serving providers who do business with you.
Then you’re simply agreeing under point 2, I.e they have they ability to coerce cooperation when desired
Trust me bro.
> I was shopping around for an alternative after mullvad blocked port forwarding
AirVPN let you forward several ports (up to 20, if I remember correctly) and you can pick the port numbers.
AirVPN let you forward several ports (up to 20, if I remember correctly) and you can pick the port numbers.
You might like iVPN.net, been using them for years. A little more money but solid support and mission.
buy a cheap vps server with btc and setup your own vpn
Running your own VPN is the worst option though? There is no shared anonymity and all data is directly linked to one node, you.
You'd have to hope the VPS host is not logging...
BuyVM supposedly ignores DMCA for their Luxembourg VPSs.
Though, that IP you are using is not shared with anyone else and BuyVM doesn't promess not to log.
That IP is directly correlated to you in BuyVM's books.
That is the very worst option.
Though, that IP you are using is not shared with anyone else and BuyVM doesn't promess not to log.
That IP is directly correlated to you in BuyVM's books.
That is the very worst option.
[deleted]
Or you could use a cloud providers free tier, but then you have to give up your credit card info and name for “verification”
tl;dr if you want your network to be private, maybe don’t pay a saas to do it.
Your ISP already tracks ingress and egress.
Your ISP already tracks ingress and egress.
This is really the unfortunate truth. >90% of global ISP's not only collect but also sell netflow metadata commercially. Nanosecond timestamps, packet sizes, source IPs, destination IP's. Doesn't matter what VPN provider you use, whether you're using Tor, how many residential proxies you're routing through via a complex proxychains config... commercial entities can correlate virtually all of it.
Team Cymru is one such buyer of bulk netflow metadata from ISP's (and their upstream providers) around the globe, who do all of the correlation work on their side, and then sell it, under product names like Pure Signal Recon (formerly Augury)... including to law enforcement agencies and the US military...
There are also no laws dictating that ISP's must disclose whether or not they are selling that information, and they have no commercial incentive to choose to honestly disclose that they do.
If your adversary is NSA/FBI/US Army, or any other deep-pocketed nation-state-level adversaries who Team Cymru is willing to sell to, the safest assumption is that there is absolutely nothing you can do to obscure the origin of your traffic with 100% certainty.
Team Cymru is one such buyer of bulk netflow metadata from ISP's (and their upstream providers) around the globe, who do all of the correlation work on their side, and then sell it, under product names like Pure Signal Recon (formerly Augury)... including to law enforcement agencies and the US military...
There are also no laws dictating that ISP's must disclose whether or not they are selling that information, and they have no commercial incentive to choose to honestly disclose that they do.
If your adversary is NSA/FBI/US Army, or any other deep-pocketed nation-state-level adversaries who Team Cymru is willing to sell to, the safest assumption is that there is absolutely nothing you can do to obscure the origin of your traffic with 100% certainty.
Let's keep this simple.
Let's say you are using an ISP to connect to a VPN provider.
That VPN provider does what most of them do and SNATs multiple customers connections to a single exit public IP.
How can they correlate the encrypted wireguard data from my ISP connection to the VPN provider and then from the VPN provider to the final endpoint (say, ProtonMail)?
Let's say you are using an ISP to connect to a VPN provider.
That VPN provider does what most of them do and SNATs multiple customers connections to a single exit public IP.
How can they correlate the encrypted wireguard data from my ISP connection to the VPN provider and then from the VPN provider to the final endpoint (say, ProtonMail)?
There is a known traffic pattern for a GET request to Protonmail - size of the initial request, # of subsequent requests (for subresources, like CSS, JS, images, etc), and size of those requests, as well as size of those responses.
There is a known overhead for encapsulating these requests in an OpenVPN or WireGuard tunnel.
So even without looking at the contents of the traffic at all, the metadata your ISP collects can easily reveal that you sent outbound traffic and received inbound traffic that had a high statistical correlation with the expected traffic flow of a request to Protonmail encapsulated within a Wireguard tunnel, to a known VPN node, and then a (known) number of milliseconds before that VPN's upstream provider also made a request that perfectly matched the expected packet flow of Protonmail. If you have visibility into the traffic netflow of both your ISP and the VPN's upstream provider, consider yourself confidently unmasked.
The initial fingerprinting laid firm groundwork for your adversary to suspect you went to protonmail, and then the network behavior of the first destination machine you connected to simply offered confirmation of that.
In case you're unfamiliar with the concept of website traffic metadata fingerprinting I've discussed above: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-irtf-pearg-website-fin...
There is a known overhead for encapsulating these requests in an OpenVPN or WireGuard tunnel.
So even without looking at the contents of the traffic at all, the metadata your ISP collects can easily reveal that you sent outbound traffic and received inbound traffic that had a high statistical correlation with the expected traffic flow of a request to Protonmail encapsulated within a Wireguard tunnel, to a known VPN node, and then a (known) number of milliseconds before that VPN's upstream provider also made a request that perfectly matched the expected packet flow of Protonmail. If you have visibility into the traffic netflow of both your ISP and the VPN's upstream provider, consider yourself confidently unmasked.
The initial fingerprinting laid firm groundwork for your adversary to suspect you went to protonmail, and then the network behavior of the first destination machine you connected to simply offered confirmation of that.
In case you're unfamiliar with the concept of website traffic metadata fingerprinting I've discussed above: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-irtf-pearg-website-fin...
Hell. Is that amount of global correlation even possible? What if I route through 7 countries? Surely the data of every single ISP on earth cannot be collected in the hands of a single entity?
Btw I2P provides imho decent amount of protection for timing and packet sniffing attacks.
Btw I2P provides imho decent amount of protection for timing and packet sniffing attacks.
You are correct that not every single ISP sells this data, but for reference, back when Team Cymru's 'Pure Signal Recon' product was advertised under the name 'Augury', Team Cymru claimed that data sources included "90% of global ISPs". They currently claim to be ingesting and processing neflow metadata from over 200 billion (with a b) connections per DAY.
So in theory, yes, route through enough ISP's, and you may eventually hit one along the way who isn't selling that data.
That said, to my knowledge, no ISPs are required to disclose whether or not they sell metadata, and as profit-oriented corporations, have no incentive to be honest about that if asked.
So it's something of a gamble to assume you can definitely find a path through n ISPs where at least one of them does not sell netflow metadata.
So in theory, yes, route through enough ISP's, and you may eventually hit one along the way who isn't selling that data.
That said, to my knowledge, no ISPs are required to disclose whether or not they sell metadata, and as profit-oriented corporations, have no incentive to be honest about that if asked.
So it's something of a gamble to assume you can definitely find a path through n ISPs where at least one of them does not sell netflow metadata.
The 'surely cannot' part is where one makes a deadly assumption.
My main adversary is my own ISP. VPNs are perfect for that.
My secondary adversary are companies geoblocking content. VPNs are still perfect for that.
My secondary adversary are companies geoblocking content. VPNs are still perfect for that.
Which VPNs do you find effective for the second purpose? My small experience of using VPNs is that you just end up suffering from the poor reputation of your exit IPs, which rarely stay secret for long. So you end up blocked or at least frequently CAPTCHA'd on sites that wouldn't have blocked your own IP, and I imagine those that are doing geoblocking have a big blacklist of VPN IPs (I know BBC iPlayer does)
I rarely have the need, I use mullvad, and it works for those occasions. But I don’t need to circumvent any serious blocks, most of the time it’s just something being US-only or "not EU", and neither of those sites care much if you circumvent it.
> Further, as Kosovo is an extremely corrupt country, we are able to bribe both executive and judicative as well as getting information about court orders and raids before execution.
What happens if someone else is willing to pay a higher bribe than you are...?
What happens if someone else is willing to pay a higher bribe than you are...?
Competent corrupt officials can do the math, and understand ongoing 1X bribes are far better than poisoning their money tree by stupidly accepting a one-time 10X bribe.
“There's probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum.”
-Discussion of a rather sinister court official in Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation And Empire'
-Discussion of a rather sinister court official in Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation And Empire'
I’ve seen it in the business world, but trust is everything and if you break it once even accidentally good luck. When crime enters the picture you probably won’t ever get more than a single chance, or worse, be in physical danger if you do.
I dunno. The one thing I took away from reading both memoirs of people involved in crime (yes it exists) and reports about their court cases is that there is no honor among chiefs.
And there is very little trust too. They lie and defraud each other constantly. They do kill each other too, but most often because someone knows too much or has something want.
And there is very little trust too. They lie and defraud each other constantly. They do kill each other too, but most often because someone knows too much or has something want.
> understand ongoing 1X bribes are far better than poisoning their money tree by stupidly accepting a one-time 10X bribe.
Relevant concept: Present Value of Future Cashflows (see for example https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/presentvalue.asp).
Relevant concept: Present Value of Future Cashflows (see for example https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/presentvalue.asp).
Sure, but if there's enforcement officials that will take a periodic 1X bribe to protect illegal activity, there's likely someone else in society (possibly, other enforcement officials taking a bribe, or possibly other groups that have simply bribed the right people to protect their own activities) that will take a 10X payment to suppress that activity from some party with conflicting interests, perhaps by means such as putting a gun to the head of the official taking the periodic 1X stream and giving them a choice of betraying the payer or having their office redecorated with the contents of their skull.
Corrupt systems rather notoriously do not tend to feature unity of action or interest throughout what is notionally the government, or even what are nominally single agencies within the government.
Also, a 10X carrot directly to the bribed official receiving the periodic 1X stream can also be combined with a stick.
You don't think the plata o plomo choice only applies to actors not already on someone else’s corrupt (beside the official government’s overt) payroll, do you?
Corrupt systems rather notoriously do not tend to feature unity of action or interest throughout what is notionally the government, or even what are nominally single agencies within the government.
Also, a 10X carrot directly to the bribed official receiving the periodic 1X stream can also be combined with a stick.
You don't think the plata o plomo choice only applies to actors not already on someone else’s corrupt (beside the official government’s overt) payroll, do you?
In countries with systemic corruption, those people collecting periodic 1X bribes share a significant part of them with their superiors, who share it with their superiors etc all the way to the top. There may not be unity of government or any formal organization, but the cliques are very strong, and they do form along institutional lines. This isn't to say that there is no bribe large enough to break the system, but 10x is way too low for most bureaucrats to risk their neck trying to do so.
It's more complicated than that. After all, these bribes aren't exactly public and transparent. A competent corrupt official can always pocket the 10x and pretend that the 1x target didn't pay in time, or that some other official did it, or some other excuse.
In a volatile place covering for illegal thing that can bite you in the ass - you'll take the payout, gain political points by cooperating with some agency and spin yourself as a hero in the case.
‘I’m shocked, shocked! that gambling is going on here!’
until they want to retire
That actually made me laugh loud!
Bribes don't work like a shop where you can come from the street and buy something. You need to have connections first.
Also, just because you are offering a simple cash bribe doesn’t mean the party trying to subvert the person you are bribing is doing that and not, e.g., putting a gun to their head as a stick while also offering a cash bribe as a carrot.
Or just bribing someone else in a position to withdraw the authority that the person you bribed is using to protect you.
Or just bribing someone else in a position to withdraw the authority that the person you bribed is using to protect you.
In fact, bribes can walk up to you without any connection to you (re: corrupt police)
No more ping-pong...
Or if the order comes with strong pressure from the mafia or the government, and it's not ammenable to a bribe-override?
Wouldn't full disclosure make them, in some sense, honest?
Also, you have just condemned entire nations of people, like those who lived under Soviet domination, where bribery became custom, because if you wanted to accomplish anything, you had to bribe the people involved. Just got married and want an apartment for your new family? You could submit a housing application, but it might bubble up to the top of the queue by the time you hit retirement. A bribe given to the woman in the office handling the paperwork can help grease the track. Have a totally curable disease that, without intervention, can kill you? Well, you could have your name added to a long wait list and have your treatment started next year, or you could "gift" your state-pensioned doctor a cognac, some luxury chocolates, and an envelop containing a "tip" to shorten the wait time. Need to travel abroad? Well, guess what. The passport stays with the government for "safe keeping". They might not be in a hurry to let you leave, just yet. However, with a few enticing arrangements and exchanges, you'll be on the next plane headed over the Iron Curtain.
In other words, I'm not convinced bribes are a categorically wrong thing for someone to offer. To receive, on the other hand...
Also, you have just condemned entire nations of people, like those who lived under Soviet domination, where bribery became custom, because if you wanted to accomplish anything, you had to bribe the people involved. Just got married and want an apartment for your new family? You could submit a housing application, but it might bubble up to the top of the queue by the time you hit retirement. A bribe given to the woman in the office handling the paperwork can help grease the track. Have a totally curable disease that, without intervention, can kill you? Well, you could have your name added to a long wait list and have your treatment started next year, or you could "gift" your state-pensioned doctor a cognac, some luxury chocolates, and an envelop containing a "tip" to shorten the wait time. Need to travel abroad? Well, guess what. The passport stays with the government for "safe keeping". They might not be in a hurry to let you leave, just yet. However, with a few enticing arrangements and exchanges, you'll be on the next plane headed over the Iron Curtain.
In other words, I'm not convinced bribes are a categorically wrong thing for someone to offer. To receive, on the other hand...
He condemned accurately.
The soviet system sounds pointlessly overloaded with middle men. Why not abandon the "official system with middle men bribes" and descend all the way into mafia families and protection rackets?
No matter the empathy I have for the suffering. What is the point of offering a bribe, to bully the system, in the same way the receiver intends to break the rules?
Just tell the truth and say the system sucks. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours done en masse, hardens society for everyone and then you have to bribe, like the Soviets did.
The soviet system sounds pointlessly overloaded with middle men. Why not abandon the "official system with middle men bribes" and descend all the way into mafia families and protection rackets?
No matter the empathy I have for the suffering. What is the point of offering a bribe, to bully the system, in the same way the receiver intends to break the rules?
Just tell the truth and say the system sucks. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours done en masse, hardens society for everyone and then you have to bribe, like the Soviets did.
> What is the point of offering a bribe, to bully the system
Imagine your grandma needs urgent surgery and it is customary to give the doctor some money to 'ensure best results'. Will you refuse?
> descend all the way into mafia families and protection rackets?
You mean like some monopolized industries in the US have done?
> then you have to bribe, like the Soviets did.
Why Soviets, Bribing is the default way of society - Imperial Russia has no concept of bribery, if you wanted a government official to do their job, you had to pay them, and they set the price, thats just how the system worked.
Victorian britain was insanely corrupt too. Absence of corruption is unusual.
Imagine your grandma needs urgent surgery and it is customary to give the doctor some money to 'ensure best results'. Will you refuse?
> descend all the way into mafia families and protection rackets?
You mean like some monopolized industries in the US have done?
> then you have to bribe, like the Soviets did.
Why Soviets, Bribing is the default way of society - Imperial Russia has no concept of bribery, if you wanted a government official to do their job, you had to pay them, and they set the price, thats just how the system worked.
Victorian britain was insanely corrupt too. Absence of corruption is unusual.
It is not a binary choice. My grandma can get the care via a bribe and the next day I can go join the local mafia.
Not like a US corporation, the machine of machines, systems of systems. An actual mafia that breaks down the government and replaces official services with a protection racket around people's families and uses physical violence to enforce arbitrary mafia business norms.
The real criminal mafia does not answer to a doctor who takes the wrong bribes and that doctor may go home that evening to find his house/family/prized thing to be in jeopardy. The mafia built on family and religious connections that can't be bought out, and will balance out a non-working government when it fails.
The Soviet system props up the normal structure just enough to leech off it. That is a luxury of Russian culture that doesn't survive elsewhere, for very good reason.
Suffering isn't an excuse for corruption that hurts basic services for the middle/lower class.
Lie, bribe, cheat and steal for all the yacht money and control over steel mills, between upper class toffs, I don't care.
When your corruption stops society from working for the majority, or oppresses the majority, then you have become the problem.
Not like a US corporation, the machine of machines, systems of systems. An actual mafia that breaks down the government and replaces official services with a protection racket around people's families and uses physical violence to enforce arbitrary mafia business norms.
The real criminal mafia does not answer to a doctor who takes the wrong bribes and that doctor may go home that evening to find his house/family/prized thing to be in jeopardy. The mafia built on family and religious connections that can't be bought out, and will balance out a non-working government when it fails.
The Soviet system props up the normal structure just enough to leech off it. That is a luxury of Russian culture that doesn't survive elsewhere, for very good reason.
Suffering isn't an excuse for corruption that hurts basic services for the middle/lower class.
Lie, bribe, cheat and steal for all the yacht money and control over steel mills, between upper class toffs, I don't care.
When your corruption stops society from working for the majority, or oppresses the majority, then you have become the problem.
> The soviet system sounds pointlessly overloaded with middle men
I find this conclusion hilarious (if not untrue) - you can say absolutely the same for the USA system. So many things require a useless middleman that only takes their cut and adds friction - car dealerships, "value added" resellers, health insurance, etc.
I find this conclusion hilarious (if not untrue) - you can say absolutely the same for the USA system. So many things require a useless middleman that only takes their cut and adds friction - car dealerships, "value added" resellers, health insurance, etc.
[deleted]
This isn't a parody, right? I mean, surely no-one would (seriously) say this in public in real life?
Right?
Right?
Andrew Tate said essentially the same. Turns out corrupt police don't like it when someone brags with that fact.
Not that I'd shed any tear for Tate or the other guy though, both deserve all they get and more.
Not that I'd shed any tear for Tate or the other guy though, both deserve all they get and more.
Here's what Tate said on The Fellas podcast:
> I like living in countries where corruption is accessible for everybody.
The emphasis here was on everybody because this followed a rant about how Western societies are corrupt where the rich gets to ignore the laws and he wanted to do the same. He said this in 2022 so whether he really did move in 2017 for this reason is impossible to say.
> I like living in countries where corruption is accessible for everybody.
The emphasis here was on everybody because this followed a rant about how Western societies are corrupt where the rich gets to ignore the laws and he wanted to do the same. He said this in 2022 so whether he really did move in 2017 for this reason is impossible to say.
Tate is also arrested currently, so looks like this kind of "honesty" has a price. And in general I'm pretty sure that bribery even when done abroad would get you in trouble in your own country, so I'm quite surprised by such statements put like that in the open.
dudeinjapan(6)
It's not. I come from that area. He's telling the truth.
His statement being factual and his statement, admitting to breaking laws in Kosovo, being a rational thing to say publicly are different things.
It's perfectly rational if nobody cares about the laws being broken there, and they will have no repurcursion for admitting to it.
There being no immediate repercussions doesn't mean there aren't going to be any long term when you basically give governments a loaded gun aimed at your own head. Eventually someone might decide to use it even if the reason for it has nothing to do with the gun.
This is a person who, by their own statement, had out of context IRC logs used by the government to convict him of a different crime.
This is a person who, by their own statement, had out of context IRC logs used by the government to convict him of a different crime.
Not at all. Admiting it publicly has all kind of repercussions internationaly even if there are none locally.
They cannot be arrested in Croatia or anywhere else for breaking laws in Kosovo.
Bribery is illegal in many countries including specifically the bribing of foreign public officials including in Croatia.
Yes. That is also why we need to keep Kosovo out of the EU until this has been fixed - which I'm pretty sure won't happen any time soon :(.
I've heard similar things about Romania and Bulgaria which are both EU countries.
Romania has high levels of corruption, but when we entered the EU we had high levels of overt corruption.
I'll never forget during the presidential elections of early 2010s (or around that time) (we joined EU in 2007) when a member of the loosing party (which would then become our prime minister), Victor Ponta, stated frankly, in an interview, that they lost because his party stole fewer votes (bribing the poor with meager amounts of household products to vote for them, which is a favorite campaign activity around here).
However to combat this prolific corruption (in part because of EU mandate), around the same time, our winning president instated the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA in Romanian) which is a "taskforce" of judges and lawyers investigating these highly profilic cases.
It became moderately successful (there's always room for improvement). The EU took note, and brought in members of the directorate to instate a similar structure centrally as an EU institution (for cross border corruption cases), and afaik the process has been set in motion to instate the same directorare in Bulgaria (under the guide of a certain prosecution attorney that lead this directorare in Romania, Laura Codruta Kovesi).
I'll never forget during the presidential elections of early 2010s (or around that time) (we joined EU in 2007) when a member of the loosing party (which would then become our prime minister), Victor Ponta, stated frankly, in an interview, that they lost because his party stole fewer votes (bribing the poor with meager amounts of household products to vote for them, which is a favorite campaign activity around here).
However to combat this prolific corruption (in part because of EU mandate), around the same time, our winning president instated the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA in Romanian) which is a "taskforce" of judges and lawyers investigating these highly profilic cases.
It became moderately successful (there's always room for improvement). The EU took note, and brought in members of the directorate to instate a similar structure centrally as an EU institution (for cross border corruption cases), and afaik the process has been set in motion to instate the same directorare in Bulgaria (under the guide of a certain prosecution attorney that lead this directorare in Romania, Laura Codruta Kovesi).
Whenever foreigners bring corruption in Romania, I try to emphasize that while it exists, it is no longer very visible unless you are in fairly high-level business and politics. There was a time when everyone on the bus had to contribute 5€ when crossing the border, so that the customs officials wouldn’t go through everyone’s luggage. A time when you couldn’t register a sole proprietorship without at least offering the clerk some chocolate or whatever as a token bribe. But that all disappeared about 2006 and life in Romania is little different from Western EU states.
*losing
Just FYI.
Just FYI.
Corruption is also common practice within the EU (see: Eva Kaili), most of the upper EU just hides it better while pointing fingers at "unaligned" states, inside and outside of the EU.
If Von der Leyen wasn’t corrupt, I’m sure she wouldn’t have any problem handing over her texts.
If Von der Leyen wasn’t corrupt, I’m sure she wouldn’t have any problem handing over her texts.
> wouldn’t have any problem handing over her texts
This is the same non-reason as is being brought up with cameras filming you 24/7 etc. 'You dont have to worry if you have nothing to hide' ... It's an invasion of privacy, and it is worth fighting against that.
This is the same non-reason as is being brought up with cameras filming you 24/7 etc. 'You dont have to worry if you have nothing to hide' ... It's an invasion of privacy, and it is worth fighting against that.
> It's an invasion of privacy, and it is worth fighting against that
VdL should have a private phone and a work phone, just like everyone else.
If these work messages are from her work phone, she should hand them over. If they are work messages on her private phone, she should also hand them over. She simply cannot claim to have been having non-work conversations with anyone at Pfizer.
VdL should have a private phone and a work phone, just like everyone else.
If these work messages are from her work phone, she should hand them over. If they are work messages on her private phone, she should also hand them over. She simply cannot claim to have been having non-work conversations with anyone at Pfizer.
I have non-work conversations with staff and coworkers at work all the time, and also work related conversations on private channels from time to time. The world is not as black-and-white as you think it is.
This is an absurd argument.
We’re talking about texts between the EU President and Pfizer’s CEO, not some randos.
https://www.politico.eu/article/new-york-times-sue-european-...
We’re talking about texts between the EU President and Pfizer’s CEO, not some randos.
https://www.politico.eu/article/new-york-times-sue-european-...
Being forced to share correspondence related to your job as a public official seems different to exposing your entire life to a camera.
Was she acting as a private individual or as a government official?
Government has ZERO right to privacy; government agents in their capacity have ZERO right to privacy.
If a government agent uses a private account to do government business, then a) they should be fired/ removed and charged for trying to hide that business and b) those accounts should be turned over to the government, redacted of anything not related to the government business, and everything else made public.
A private individual has a right to privacy. Government, including anyone acting as its agent, do not.
Government has ZERO right to privacy; government agents in their capacity have ZERO right to privacy.
If a government agent uses a private account to do government business, then a) they should be fired/ removed and charged for trying to hide that business and b) those accounts should be turned over to the government, redacted of anything not related to the government business, and everything else made public.
A private individual has a right to privacy. Government, including anyone acting as its agent, do not.
> If Von der Leyen wasn’t corrupt, I’m sure she wouldn’t have any problem handing over her texts.
Are you talking about Pfizer related text messages or earlier German MoD/McKinsey text messages?
Are you talking about Pfizer related text messages or earlier German MoD/McKinsey text messages?
> If Von der Leyen wasn’t corrupt, I’m sure she wouldn’t have any problem handing over her texts.
Haven’t found much on this. Frankly there is no need to allege corruption against this particular EU politician when there are better examples like those involved with the Qatar scandal.
Haven’t found much on this. Frankly there is no need to allege corruption against this particular EU politician when there are better examples like those involved with the Qatar scandal.
Plenty of things are "heard" with dubious truthfulness.
Corruption Perceptions Index data has been documenting this for decades:
* 2000: Bulgaria 3.5/10, Romania 2.9/10 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2000
* 2007: Bulgaria 4.1/10, Romania 3.7/10 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2007
* 2013: Bulgaria 41/100, Romania 43/100 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2013
* 2022: Bulgaria 43/100, Romania 46/100, Western Europe and EU average: 66 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022
"2022 Corruption Perceptions Index Reveals Undue Influence And Fragmented Anti-Corruption Efforts Threaten Progress In Western Europe & EU": https://www.transparency.org/en/press/2022-corruption-percep...
* 2000: Bulgaria 3.5/10, Romania 2.9/10 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2000
* 2007: Bulgaria 4.1/10, Romania 3.7/10 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2007
* 2013: Bulgaria 41/100, Romania 43/100 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2013
* 2022: Bulgaria 43/100, Romania 46/100, Western Europe and EU average: 66 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022
"2022 Corruption Perceptions Index Reveals Undue Influence And Fragmented Anti-Corruption Efforts Threaten Progress In Western Europe & EU": https://www.transparency.org/en/press/2022-corruption-percep...
Well we first need to fix the tensions with Serbia, which is impossible.
The Serbian community in Kosovo kind of ignores all laws.
Up until recently they basically had free/stolem electricity and they used it to mine bitcoin for free.
Up until recently they basically had free/stolem electricity and they used it to mine bitcoin for free.
I know the guy. No, it’s not a parody.
It sounds like you have never been to a country where money can buy anything you want, including freedom. Many such countries in the world.
Such countries exist, but as this case and Andrew Tate show, actually putting it in such frank terms may not be a good idea.
Yeah, maybe you can buy yourself out of trouble. But I suspect in many such cases the people involved prefer to be bought quietly.
Make things too uncomfortably public or too embarrassing and the same people might well throw the book at you.
Yeah, maybe you can buy yourself out of trouble. But I suspect in many such cases the people involved prefer to be bought quietly.
Make things too uncomfortably public or too embarrassing and the same people might well throw the book at you.
I don’t know the specifics of his case but it is my understanding that EU isn’t as easily bought as South America or Southeast Asia for example.
The latter has a system that doesn’t “include” foreigners, whereas someplace like Romania is a lot more Westernized and offering a bribe carries a lot more risk.
The latter has a system that doesn’t “include” foreigners, whereas someplace like Romania is a lot more Westernized and offering a bribe carries a lot more risk.
Well, money will only buy you freedom in such places until you annoy someone with deeper pockets than you have sufficiently so that they want you to wind up behind bars.
Corruption is an equal opportunity weapon.
Corruption is an equal opportunity weapon.
Sure, but that’s in extreme cases. For small stuff like papers, permits and such - talking to the right people will get you anywhere you want to go.
I still remember handing over my passport to a guy on a sports bike in Singapore to get an extended stamp for Indonesia, and only a few years later did it occur to me how sketchy the whole situation was.
I still remember handing over my passport to a guy on a sports bike in Singapore to get an extended stamp for Indonesia, and only a few years later did it occur to me how sketchy the whole situation was.
[deleted]
But you don't say these things out loud. Swiss bank ads don't look like this: "Genocidal dictators, we will help you hide your money!"
You are just not part of the right target group, so facebook won't show them to you.
no facebook or phones at all, just handshakes and backrooms in upscale bars
You mean all, it's just the amount that differs.
Run by a cousin of Honest Achmed[1] maybe
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647959
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647959
[deleted]
could be targeted marketing essentially saying "don't worry, it'll be fine"
That is a scary amount of honesty, but for a good cause this time so good on them
Seems this hosting company is a scam. Kosovo might be corrupted but it is the country with the highest approval of U.S. government. The FBI can investigate and arrest you in Kosovo just as easily as they can arrest you in Maine. Probably even easier because in Kosovo you don't have same judicial guarantees as in the U.S.A.
Found his email via reverse ip: [email protected]
https://rdns.im https://prnt.li https://william.co.il https://whois.domaintools.com/basehost.eu
https://rdns.im https://prnt.li https://william.co.il https://whois.domaintools.com/basehost.eu
Someone used the same exit to hack a NATO facility in Poland, which deals with chemical and biological weapons. Disarming, etc.
The US tried to extradite me from Croatia in 2017, with not much more info than national security.
They lost their case as I am married to a local and cannot be extradited outside the EU.
So once again the "think of the children" motive is used to cover for intelligence interests.
The US tried to extradite me from Croatia in 2017, with not much more info than national security.
They lost their case as I am married to a local and cannot be extradited outside the EU.
So once again the "think of the children" motive is used to cover for intelligence interests.
Always, and in all ways
Looks like there's more going on than what the title implies about the Tor exit node:
> What do you do now?
>§I left Austria and now work for a German company in IT, and have a data center in Kosovo… hosting grey area things there. Warez primarily.
> Also, I do want to add that I have more backstory. The CP was not the only reason for the raid.
He goes on to mention someone using the exit node to try to hack a NATO facility.
That said, the "confiscate first, come up with a fitting crime later" approach countries take on a whim are deeply troubling.
It sounds like they have had their suspicions against this man for a while (not without reason, it seems) and saw the child porn report as a chance to pounce on him, but later found out they didn't have as strong a case as they might have wished.
> What do you do now?
>§I left Austria and now work for a German company in IT, and have a data center in Kosovo… hosting grey area things there. Warez primarily.
> Also, I do want to add that I have more backstory. The CP was not the only reason for the raid.
He goes on to mention someone using the exit node to try to hack a NATO facility.
That said, the "confiscate first, come up with a fitting crime later" approach countries take on a whim are deeply troubling.
It sounds like they have had their suspicions against this man for a while (not without reason, it seems) and saw the child porn report as a chance to pounce on him, but later found out they didn't have as strong a case as they might have wished.
It’s often more like “this dude is responsible for dozens of things, three of them are really serious, but this one is a really easy conviction”
Same reason why you saw organized crime figures convicted for tax evasion, that wasn’t really the big concern but it got the job done.
Same reason why you saw organized crime figures convicted for tax evasion, that wasn’t really the big concern but it got the job done.
> That said, the "confiscate first, come up with a fitting crime later" approach countries take on a whim are deeply troubling.
Nah. It's not like it was a legitimate homebrew forum or something and someone backdoored it to hack NATO -- it was a warez organization that might have had CP on it too.
It managed to stay under the radar until someone did something to get the attention of the authorities.
Nah. It's not like it was a legitimate homebrew forum or something and someone backdoored it to hack NATO -- it was a warez organization that might have had CP on it too.
It managed to stay under the radar until someone did something to get the attention of the authorities.
My BIL used to work CP with the DHS, a tech going in heavy with the first wave to secure devices.
I asked him if he had ever run into Tor exits, he said no, but they did sometimes run into people with unsecured wireless that had been used by third parties and once it was clear that was what happened it was pretty much dropped. I'm sure they would have ways to deal with people leaving their WiFi open as a way of camouflaging their activities...
He also said that one thing they're usually do if there are multiple people in the house is sit them all down on the couch and say "We are here because someone has been downloading CP", and often everyone would turn and look at one person.
I asked him if he had ever run into Tor exits, he said no, but they did sometimes run into people with unsecured wireless that had been used by third parties and once it was clear that was what happened it was pretty much dropped. I'm sure they would have ways to deal with people leaving their WiFi open as a way of camouflaging their activities...
He also said that one thing they're usually do if there are multiple people in the house is sit them all down on the couch and say "We are here because someone has been downloading CP", and often everyone would turn and look at one person.
>everyone would turn and look at one person
So the person everyone thinks would do it is pronounced guilty. I don't see any way that could go horribly wrong.
So the person everyone thinks would do it is pronounced guilty. I don't see any way that could go horribly wrong.
That's likely the starting place for the investigation, not the end.
You don’t want to be a suspect though as now you need to hope they will play fair.
adastra22(1)
It at least gives you an idea of where might be fruitful to begin your investigation...
> I asked him if he had ever run into Tor exits, he said no, but they did sometimes run into people with unsecured wireless that had been used by third parties and once it was clear that was what happened it was pretty much dropped.
Could one have open Wifi "accidentally" (on purpose) as a defence mechanism against one's own actions to introduce reasonable doubt?
Bruce Schneier in 2008:
* https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel...
Could one have open Wifi "accidentally" (on purpose) as a defence mechanism against one's own actions to introduce reasonable doubt?
Bruce Schneier in 2008:
* https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel...
Yes, but it is a very weak defense that can be smashed e.g. your device is seen communicating with the BSSID of the closed wifi, or your mac address (open wifi) is seen communicating with surveilled target.
Maybe in 2008 this was plausible, but it was also plausible to disguise one's self and walk to mcdonald's free wifi with a burner wifi card and/or Kali Linux. With the proliferation of surveillance devices everywhere it becomes an uphill battle
Maybe in 2008 this was plausible, but it was also plausible to disguise one's self and walk to mcdonald's free wifi with a burner wifi card and/or Kali Linux. With the proliferation of surveillance devices everywhere it becomes an uphill battle
In college I used this excuse when my apartment buildings self managed wifi cut off my internet for torrenting. I just went into the office and was like “a torrent? Idk what that is…”. But it wasn’t anything more official than a guy in my apartment’s office’s ability to turn my internet back on. I didn’t even have to prove I had an open Wi-Fi network.
I had a similar lockout problem but it was because I hit a honeypot when port scanning the entire university network for fileshares.
> and often everyone would turn and look at one person.
Probably falsely assuming it's the 12 year old son instead of the 35 year old father.
Probably falsely assuming it's the 12 year old son instead of the 35 year old father.
This sounds far more like a roommate situation than a semi-nuclear family. Still applies, albeit less so. Not like looks are real evidence, but it points them the right direction.
> This sounds far more like a roommate situation than a semi-nuclear family.
Think again.
If there's someone in the house who downloads CP, do you think that person's kids don't know who it would be?
Think again.
If there's someone in the house who downloads CP, do you think that person's kids don't know who it would be?
I struggle to imagine the cops bringing a family together in a living room to accuse them collectively of downloading CP. Any halfway competent parent is going to utter the words "I want a lawyer and you do not have permission to talk to my children" way before the cops sit anyone down.
>and often everyone would turn and look at one person
Slowly, like in sitcoms and cartoons?
Slowly, like in sitcoms and cartoons?
How often do they raid a residence and find nothing?
I have no firm data on it, but he did mention some cases where there was CP but it wasn't clear where it was coming from (open wireless situation I mentioned), and it sounded like they didn't pursue it once it was obviously not the resident.
What he said sounded like they didn't go into a place without having evidence of CP already though, things like "This IP address has uploaded CP to these locations at these times" evidence.
What he said sounded like they didn't go into a place without having evidence of CP already though, things like "This IP address has uploaded CP to these locations at these times" evidence.
I stopped running a Tor non-exit node from home a few years back, because a lot of websites and platforms blacklist any IP associated with Tor. I couldn't actually watch anything on Hulu for years (though they were still happy to take my money, which I refused to give them) because of this.
Running a tor node is a thankless thing one can choose to do. Nevertheless I did for years. I don't do it anymore.
Running a tor node is a thankless thing one can choose to do. Nevertheless I did for years. I don't do it anymore.
>Running a tor node is a thankless thing one can choose to do.
One might argue that’s the case with most activities on the internet, maintaining an open source projects for free? Helping others in forums and online discussions? Dedicating time to find good articles to submit to HN!? The only thing you will get is some brownie points online. I believe who does run an exit node usually aren’t motivated by thanks and upvotes, that being said, thanks for your time and efforts running that node!
One might argue that’s the case with most activities on the internet, maintaining an open source projects for free? Helping others in forums and online discussions? Dedicating time to find good articles to submit to HN!? The only thing you will get is some brownie points online. I believe who does run an exit node usually aren’t motivated by thanks and upvotes, that being said, thanks for your time and efforts running that node!
I still do it, and have been for over a decade, and I'm rarely bothered by it. I think I get a few more captchas because of it, and I can't load https://www.investopedia.com, which I would frequently like to, but that's it.
Thank you for operating it as long as you did.
> Running a tor node is a thankless thing one can choose to do. Nevertheless I did for years. I don't do it anymore.
It's hard to determine tor's net-value to society, since it's such a double bladed sword. I'm not sure it's something deserving of thanks.
It's hard to determine tor's net-value to society, since it's such a double bladed sword. I'm not sure it's something deserving of thanks.
I'm a Tor user. It's also hard to determine because so much of the web is read-only or downright inaccessible via Tor.
Most big sites use a chain of reputation like this:
1. To have an account on our site, you need a reputable email. Mailinator doesn't count. 2. To get a reputable email (GMail, Outlook, etc.) you need to sacrifice a phone number to receive texts to prove you aren't a bot. 3. There are no free VoIP services. Or they're blocked.
Reddit usually lets me create accounts without email, but I'm guessing they will cut this off soon.
I'm on a friendly Mastodon instance, but I had to offer a bogus email to register, which is technically dishonesty.
YouTube sometimes works.
I had a Discord account for a while. One of my ERP partners was willing to take the hit and set up a GMail account and Discord account for me (Discord wouldn't even let me in, I had to have him create the account and then give me the password.)
But I didn't log in to Discord for a while, and recently it said "Hey check for a confirmation email". I went to log in to GMail and it said, "Hey this is suspicious, please give us a phone number."
So there's no point re-joining, if I can only talk to people and have a "free" email address for as long as I can cyber-fuck someone into letting me borrow his phone. And I won't buy a burner phone because it's likely to have the same problems, plus all the PITA of real-life opsec.
The gratis web is fading to nothing. Everyone wants something. None of it is truly free. The fediverse instances will run as long as they get donations, but charities are subject to a tragedy of the commons. They will eventually close up registrations if enough humans join for the parasite bots to follow them.
People ask me why I bother. I must admit the payoff is not big.
I bother _on principle_. Anonymity is something that I _should_ have. I don't look at CP or anything. I do this because I like to learn, I like to practice, I like to know. You may as well write it off as religion and ask a Christian why they attend church or a Jain why they don't eat onions. I simply believe it is worth doing.
Most big sites use a chain of reputation like this:
1. To have an account on our site, you need a reputable email. Mailinator doesn't count. 2. To get a reputable email (GMail, Outlook, etc.) you need to sacrifice a phone number to receive texts to prove you aren't a bot. 3. There are no free VoIP services. Or they're blocked.
Reddit usually lets me create accounts without email, but I'm guessing they will cut this off soon.
I'm on a friendly Mastodon instance, but I had to offer a bogus email to register, which is technically dishonesty.
YouTube sometimes works.
I had a Discord account for a while. One of my ERP partners was willing to take the hit and set up a GMail account and Discord account for me (Discord wouldn't even let me in, I had to have him create the account and then give me the password.)
But I didn't log in to Discord for a while, and recently it said "Hey check for a confirmation email". I went to log in to GMail and it said, "Hey this is suspicious, please give us a phone number."
So there's no point re-joining, if I can only talk to people and have a "free" email address for as long as I can cyber-fuck someone into letting me borrow his phone. And I won't buy a burner phone because it's likely to have the same problems, plus all the PITA of real-life opsec.
The gratis web is fading to nothing. Everyone wants something. None of it is truly free. The fediverse instances will run as long as they get donations, but charities are subject to a tragedy of the commons. They will eventually close up registrations if enough humans join for the parasite bots to follow them.
People ask me why I bother. I must admit the payoff is not big.
I bother _on principle_. Anonymity is something that I _should_ have. I don't look at CP or anything. I do this because I like to learn, I like to practice, I like to know. You may as well write it off as religion and ask a Christian why they attend church or a Jain why they don't eat onions. I simply believe it is worth doing.
> The gratis web is fading to nothing. Everyone wants something. None of it is truly free. The fediverse instances will run as long as they get donations, but charities are subject to a tragedy of the commons. They will eventually close up registrations if enough humans join for the parasite bots to follow them.
You blame "everyone wants something" but it's more clear in your last sentence: abuse by unverified users.
Lots of folks will provide services for free (actually free, no data collection etc.) but very few folks have the disposable income to _pay_ for someone to handle abuse.
So folks who provide popular services long-term have to find some way to pay for it. OMG, imagine that.
With the caveat that cryptocurrencies are usually rubbish, cryptocurrencies have allowed folks to anonymously pay for anonymous access to services. This won't work for most mainstream services (in large part because of government opposition), but it's an option. At some point which I hope to live to see, we'll go back to the old days of anonymously paying for anonymous access. (Cash was awesome.)
You blame "everyone wants something" but it's more clear in your last sentence: abuse by unverified users.
Lots of folks will provide services for free (actually free, no data collection etc.) but very few folks have the disposable income to _pay_ for someone to handle abuse.
So folks who provide popular services long-term have to find some way to pay for it. OMG, imagine that.
With the caveat that cryptocurrencies are usually rubbish, cryptocurrencies have allowed folks to anonymously pay for anonymous access to services. This won't work for most mainstream services (in large part because of government opposition), but it's an option. At some point which I hope to live to see, we'll go back to the old days of anonymously paying for anonymous access. (Cash was awesome.)
And to make that a bit more concrete, ProtonMail accepts Bitcoin and will let you create a truly anonymous account if you pay for their premium plan via that method.
Though to be fair it's actually pretty hard to obtain Bitcoin anonymously. Monero would be better. And this doesn't really solve the phone number problem.
Though to be fair it's actually pretty hard to obtain Bitcoin anonymously. Monero would be better. And this doesn't really solve the phone number problem.
You can make as many accounts on protonmail.com as you'd like and I've never had a problem with it being accepted by websites I'm making an account on. If or how long this continues to be the case, I don't know, but for now at least you can stock up on accounts.
This is the point where you need to check your privilege. I used tor when living in a dictatorship to find out things which would destroy the moral fabric of society, such as information about lgbtqia+ issues, what condoms are, pop music and news that the government didn't want to spread.
I'm sorry you had to live through that, and I'm glad you had tools to subvert that oppression. I'm relieved that it sounds like you've escaped from that situation.
It was not my intent to assert any privilege, and it was my intent to acknowledge that scenario. If I may provide some clarification:
Marriam webster[0] defines 'double edged sword' to mean
> something that has or can have both favorable and unfavorable consequences
The use of Tor in the scenario you describe is one of the two blades (edges) I was referring to in my use of 'double bladed sword' -- the altruistic use case for which Tor absolutely should exist
The other side of the blade however, it's also used to facilitate terrible acts of abuse, notably to children (as demonstrated by the article) -- the destructive use case for which Tor absolutely should not exist.
It leaves Tor in a morally ambiguous place to me. It's not inherently bad or good. There are situations where it can be used for great good, and others when it can be used for great evil. Those situations would exist with or without Tor. I don't know if I should be thanking anyone maintaining it any more than I would thank an arms dealer.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/double-edged%20sw...
It was not my intent to assert any privilege, and it was my intent to acknowledge that scenario. If I may provide some clarification:
Marriam webster[0] defines 'double edged sword' to mean
> something that has or can have both favorable and unfavorable consequences
The use of Tor in the scenario you describe is one of the two blades (edges) I was referring to in my use of 'double bladed sword' -- the altruistic use case for which Tor absolutely should exist
The other side of the blade however, it's also used to facilitate terrible acts of abuse, notably to children (as demonstrated by the article) -- the destructive use case for which Tor absolutely should not exist.
It leaves Tor in a morally ambiguous place to me. It's not inherently bad or good. There are situations where it can be used for great good, and others when it can be used for great evil. Those situations would exist with or without Tor. I don't know if I should be thanking anyone maintaining it any more than I would thank an arms dealer.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/double-edged%20sw...
> The other side of the blade however, it's also used to facilitate terrible acts of abuse, notably to children
How do we know you are not hosting CP?
Seems like the only way to really be sure is to make random raids on everyone and confiscate their equipment for a while.
How do we know you are not hosting CP?
Seems like the only way to really be sure is to make random raids on everyone and confiscate their equipment for a while.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Can you rephrase, please?
Would a VPN not have sufficed as well? Tor seems like overkill for what you're describing.
How does one pay a VPN when your country is under sanctions?
Get someone to sell you some euro and mail it to Mullvad.
> It's hard to determine tor's net-value to society, since it's such a double bladed sword. I'm not sure it's something deserving of thanks.
This is a good point. It’s hard to determine any tool’s net value to society. I’m not sure any tool ever made is deserving of thanks.
This is a good point. It’s hard to determine any tool’s net value to society. I’m not sure any tool ever made is deserving of thanks.
> I'm not sure it's something deserving of thanks.
Why?
Why do people give thanks to their soldiers, who go kill people in other countries?
Or to cops, who kill people in their own country?
Why?
Why do people give thanks to their soldiers, who go kill people in other countries?
Or to cops, who kill people in their own country?
It's so silly that some sites block addresses that weren't exit nodes.
Hey, you have no contact method in your profile. can you email me at my contact email in my profile? I have a question from a previous discussion we had.
I tried, after 2 months my VPS provider basically said "either you close it down or we close you down" as they were getting requests to take it down (IIRC DMCA or other bullshit like that)
At various times, I have run a Tor relay node on a spare VPS. I think I stopped in the end because my available bandwidth was pretty below par, and I suspected I wasn't helping the network very much.
The eternal struggle. Information wants to be free, and then people use those freedoms to do the most screwed up things imaginable, and people like this pay the price.
It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out. We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas. Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators.
It’s surprising how much anonymity and the subject at hand are correlated. In my 20s I liked to explore, as I’m sure many of you do too. I once met someone in the Whonix community who wanted to nix google maps entirely; he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally, which I think is going to be prescient one day. It already is in many parts of the world — you don’t have cell service, so you can’t just pull up google maps. Nowadays starlink solves that problem, but back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access. This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps, and ended up dying to exposure when he went to get help. Never leave your car.
I found all of this fascinating. What a project! Make all of google maps accessible right from your phone, with no internet. I briefly fell in love with that community.
Ultimately what drove me away was the literal flood of child porn that was always right next to anything to do with tor, whonix, or anonymity in general. I have a pretty high tolerance for “operating in gray areas,” like this guy. But one of the tragedies of the cyberpunk dream is that the entire scene has been coopted by cp. In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s the most common and pervasive result of anonymity, but it sure is a shame.
It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out. We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas. Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators.
It’s surprising how much anonymity and the subject at hand are correlated. In my 20s I liked to explore, as I’m sure many of you do too. I once met someone in the Whonix community who wanted to nix google maps entirely; he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally, which I think is going to be prescient one day. It already is in many parts of the world — you don’t have cell service, so you can’t just pull up google maps. Nowadays starlink solves that problem, but back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access. This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps, and ended up dying to exposure when he went to get help. Never leave your car.
I found all of this fascinating. What a project! Make all of google maps accessible right from your phone, with no internet. I briefly fell in love with that community.
Ultimately what drove me away was the literal flood of child porn that was always right next to anything to do with tor, whonix, or anonymity in general. I have a pretty high tolerance for “operating in gray areas,” like this guy. But one of the tragedies of the cyberpunk dream is that the entire scene has been coopted by cp. In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s the most common and pervasive result of anonymity, but it sure is a shame.
> Ultimately what drove me away was the literal flood of cp that was always right next to anything to do with tor, whonix, or anonymity in general.
As a teen around 2003 I hosted a freenet-node (freenetproject.org). It generated 1TByte/month which I believe was a lot for the time. I shot it down and never came back, because the only things that ever loaded was cp and Chechnya rape and torture videos. Its not a network for "dissidents"... I gave up on humanity.
As a teen around 2003 I hosted a freenet-node (freenetproject.org). It generated 1TByte/month which I believe was a lot for the time. I shot it down and never came back, because the only things that ever loaded was cp and Chechnya rape and torture videos. Its not a network for "dissidents"... I gave up on humanity.
How do you know what was uploaded, let alone that those were the only things uploaded? If I remember Freenet’s model correctly, files were distributed across the network as encrypted fragments and no one knew what exactly was being shared on his own node.
(I was a curious teenager and followed links I shouldn't have.) It had a ~1998 web feel. So you would mostly discover things by surfing around. Normal content would take ages to load or didn't load at all. (Bad distribution, because no-one had interest in it.) While the other stuff would load faster than AmpLand. (Very good distribution, because lots of demand.)
Plus: There was a eDonkey like file sharing program that worked on top of freenet. (As well as a Usenet clone and a "Instant" Messenger.) You could share files without uploading them first. Like Gnutella it had passive search. (It shows you the files and search terms of other users going through your system.) So you could see what the demand was for. Edit: The demand was not for Hollywod movies.
Plus: There was a eDonkey like file sharing program that worked on top of freenet. (As well as a Usenet clone and a "Instant" Messenger.) You could share files without uploading them first. Like Gnutella it had passive search. (It shows you the files and search terms of other users going through your system.) So you could see what the demand was for. Edit: The demand was not for Hollywod movies.
There is no such thing as running a relay in freenet. Every user is the same as every other. The size and traffic of your node is literally a setting on the gui. All traffic and data are encrypted so you have no idea what's living on your node and what's coming in and out. That's the whole point of freenet.
I don’t think he is claiming he ran a relay and could see the traffic passing through it. Just that he had a good idea what moved about on the network from following random links as he explored it - popular stuff would load fast, non-popular would be slow. He found out what was popular.
Run a DC++ client connected to some major hubs and snoop on the queries that people search for and you will lose all hope for humanity.
People definitely search for awful stuff, but that doesn’t mean that such stuff is the only thing shared on DC++. It is films and music that draws so many people to DC++.
20 years ago, DC++ was the best place to get full anime seasons with fan subs. Nowadays, nearly everything is on Hulu, or crunchyroll, or illegitimate streaming sites.
DC++ is still useful if you want full Blu-ray images of films. Most other public pirate channels are sharing only downsampled or remuxed films.
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I'm just wondering if some of this could be automated scans (possibly by law enforcement?)
Even without the CP. Three decades ago, on the campus network when I was studying for my undergraduate degree, I fired up etherman (or something like it, it's been a loooong time). It helpfully parsed out the HTTP URLs for me, and I clicked on a few out of curiousity.
I turned that sniffer off soon after, and never ever looked again. Even the (likely) legal things people were looking for were hard to unsee.
I turned that sniffer off soon after, and never ever looked again. Even the (likely) legal things people were looking for were hard to unsee.
Humanity is mostly good, it just isn't universally good. Providing services that rely on "universally good" to avoid being dominated by the tiny but horrible minority is always a disaster.
> Humanity is mostly good
I don't believe there is any evidence to back this up whatsoever. People are compelled to be "good" by society and laws, nothing more. Humanity is fundamentally bad, but reined in by a handful of powerful people and organizations.
I don't believe there is any evidence to back this up whatsoever. People are compelled to be "good" by society and laws, nothing more. Humanity is fundamentally bad, but reined in by a handful of powerful people and organizations.
Society is an important part of humanity. And if humans were "fundamentally bad", it would be unlikely, statistically, for there to be a handful of powerful people compelled to rein in those bad impulses, rather than amplify them.
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It's the same thing with the old reddit alternatives. Very few people are actually going to bother purely for the sake of principles, so the alternatives end up flooded with the ones that are forced to alternatives for good reasons.
If the mainstream Internet banned "dissidents" I believe such things would have more uptake by other types of users.
If the mainstream Internet banned "dissidents" I believe such things would have more uptake by other types of users.
The threadiverse (Lemmy/Kbin), which recently became popular due to the Reddit API protests, is pretty healthy.
Of course, there are some servers catering to 'dissidents' (e.g. Lemmygrad, Exploding Heads), but it's easy enough to avoid those communities.
Of course, there are some servers catering to 'dissidents' (e.g. Lemmygrad, Exploding Heads), but it's easy enough to avoid those communities.
There are many, many pedophiles out there. I'm also convinced of a conspiracy theory that a lot of dark web traffic and hosts are created/operated by secret parts of the gov to de-legitimize the need for anonymity. I believe this because it would be too easy with the access to that material and no oversight. Just muddy the waters so nothing in there looks worth protecting.
</tinfoil-hat>
</tinfoil-hat>
You literally don't need a tinfoil conspiracy for that idea.
IBM is moving to passwordless auth on their server access. Preferring biometrics. Their youtube channel tells you directly.
The "mainstream" culture has been pushing that idea for five years now, Philomena Cunk said we shouldn't follow the anonymous guy in 2018, golly gosh.
My iphone plainly face scans me and my shopping malls and sports stadiums do the same.
Frankly the last place left to BE anonymous is Tor and on soap-box websites like this where the admin can decipher my ID but you don't know who I am.
Obiwan has the realistic attitude. "The war's over. We lost."
It's impossible to completely eliminate secrets, but the liberty of the 1990s is deader than a dodo. Anonymity, the unknown citizen, staying off the map is basically reserved for martians now.
IBM is moving to passwordless auth on their server access. Preferring biometrics. Their youtube channel tells you directly.
The "mainstream" culture has been pushing that idea for five years now, Philomena Cunk said we shouldn't follow the anonymous guy in 2018, golly gosh.
My iphone plainly face scans me and my shopping malls and sports stadiums do the same.
Frankly the last place left to BE anonymous is Tor and on soap-box websites like this where the admin can decipher my ID but you don't know who I am.
Obiwan has the realistic attitude. "The war's over. We lost."
It's impossible to completely eliminate secrets, but the liberty of the 1990s is deader than a dodo. Anonymity, the unknown citizen, staying off the map is basically reserved for martians now.
Use nncp-go over sneakernet. Also, nntp can be user over i2pd just fine, lots of people using for the ethical opposite of CP; that's it, hugely ethical reasons, such as Ukrainian and Russian folks politely talking together and being fed up of the war.
Doesn't seem that much tinfoil hat to me. The Snowden leaks taught us that a bit of tinfoil hatting is reasonable. Before we had access to so many cop video footage, the ideas that they were the bad guys and did stuff like actually being the guys who attack and break stuff during protests were considered crazy. Etc, etc.
There are many, many…
It’s a little puzzling to me still why this is. Physical attraction to almost-adults isn’t some big mystery, but most cp is something else entirely.
It’s a little puzzling to me still why this is. Physical attraction to almost-adults isn’t some big mystery, but most cp is something else entirely.
> It’s a little puzzling to me still why this is.
Because there's a power imbalance that predators are all-too-eager to exploit.
Sometimes in the literal definition in terms of raw strength, but just as much in terms of social manipulation and life experience that can take advantage of their often more naive victims. There's also a layer of assumed authority and deference at play.
Because there's a power imbalance that predators are all-too-eager to exploit.
Sometimes in the literal definition in terms of raw strength, but just as much in terms of social manipulation and life experience that can take advantage of their often more naive victims. There's also a layer of assumed authority and deference at play.
It's a chain of abuse. Most paedophiles were abused in childhood.
Pedophilia != child sexual abuse.
Just like being attracted to women doesn't mean you're a rapist.
You can be, though.
Also consumption of any kind of distrubing porn doesn't mean you actually want to do things you see in it in the real life. This is about the same principle like when people are watching action movies (which is an accepted kind of often very disturbing cinematography), most don't want to go around and shoot/stab people.
Some very tiny percentage will, of course.
Just like being attracted to women doesn't mean you're a rapist.
You can be, though.
Also consumption of any kind of distrubing porn doesn't mean you actually want to do things you see in it in the real life. This is about the same principle like when people are watching action movies (which is an accepted kind of often very disturbing cinematography), most don't want to go around and shoot/stab people.
Some very tiny percentage will, of course.
> Also consumption of any kind of distrubing porn doesn't mean you actually want to do things you see in it in the real life.
No, but it does mean you support the abuse necessary to produce it.
No, but it does mean you support the abuse necessary to produce it.
Not all porn is produced by abusing someone. Not even all CP. So your statement can't be generally true.
Anyway, my point was that pedophilia being mostly caused by child abuse doesn't make much sense. Pedophilia is not child abuse by itself, and thus there's no cycle.
Cycle of abuse would just make you abuse someone in the similar way you were abused. (regardless of any attraction to the victim)
Anyway, my point was that pedophilia being mostly caused by child abuse doesn't make much sense. Pedophilia is not child abuse by itself, and thus there's no cycle.
Cycle of abuse would just make you abuse someone in the similar way you were abused. (regardless of any attraction to the victim)
>it does mean you support the abuse necessary to produce it.
No. If I download old files through I2PSnark - this does not mean that CP will be produced in greater quantities.
No. If I download old files through I2PSnark - this does not mean that CP will be produced in greater quantities.
Just about every personality trait with a name has a high degree of genetic heritability. We know this from e.g. studies of identical versus fraternal twins. And people abused as children tend to be closely related to their parents; we know this because we know where babies come from.
So, how much of the “chain of abuse” thing is just genetic confounding? I don’t know, which is vexing. As far as I can tell, very few of the chain-of-abuse theorists even think of genetics, even though it’s the elephant in the room, and many are hard-line blank slate believers. (I don’t have citations at the moment, but last time I looked at the relevant academic literature it was, broadly speaking, an absolute dumpster fire.)
So, how much of the “chain of abuse” thing is just genetic confounding? I don’t know, which is vexing. As far as I can tell, very few of the chain-of-abuse theorists even think of genetics, even though it’s the elephant in the room, and many are hard-line blank slate believers. (I don’t have citations at the moment, but last time I looked at the relevant academic literature it was, broadly speaking, an absolute dumpster fire.)
Eisenstein(5)
>There are many, many pedophiles
If a person watches the CP - this does not mean that he is a pedophile. If a person watches the CP - this does not mean that he is a child abuser.
Sharing CP != child abuse. Viewing CP != child abuse. Storing CP != child abuse.
If a person watches the CP - this does not mean that he is a pedophile. If a person watches the CP - this does not mean that he is a child abuser.
Sharing CP != child abuse. Viewing CP != child abuse. Storing CP != child abuse.
It is abuse no matter how it was obtained or shared, because it is an affront to the basic dignity of that child.
I would go further and argue a lot of adult produced porn is also abusive (often exploiting people in desperate situations) but we have to arbitrarily draw the line somewhere. This is a big reason why I've stopped viewing most live-action porn entirely and enjoy drawn/animated/written erotica instead.
I would go further and argue a lot of adult produced porn is also abusive (often exploiting people in desperate situations) but we have to arbitrarily draw the line somewhere. This is a big reason why I've stopped viewing most live-action porn entirely and enjoy drawn/animated/written erotica instead.
What an.. interesting set of clarifications you felt the need to attempt
I wrote these explanations because many people do not even see the difference between the things mentioned above, although there is definitely a difference. Not noticing the difference leads people to false conclusions.
Gross. You’re abusing the child any time you watch it.
I don't abuse kids whether or not I watch CP. Please provide evidence if you are making serious accusations.
You here means anyone watching it, but interesting to see you get so defensive. The idea that you think "watching CP != abuse" is suspicious to begin with.
I wasn't, but it would be reasonable to accuse you of being a pedophile based on this.
I wasn't, but it would be reasonable to accuse you of being a pedophile based on this.
>accuse you of being a pedophile based on this
Please read the diagnostic criteria: https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int... -- there is no mention of CP.
Please read the diagnostic criteria: https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int... -- there is no mention of CP.
JFYI: Pedophile != Child abuser.
If they have pictures on their PCs they are. It's weird that you're arguing with this.
>If they have pictures on their PCs they are.
If I have porn with men on my computer, it does not mean that I am gay or have raped men. Your reasoning is absurd.
If I have porn with men on my computer, it does not mean that I am gay or have raped men. Your reasoning is absurd.
Uh... it probably means your pretty gay, dude. Which is great, it's who you are!
... so what are you in the other scenario?
... so what are you in the other scenario?
Kindly suggesting you talk to someone.
> It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out.
Isn't it more, "This is why the original cyberpunk dream was always a naive and bad idea"?
Like, it appealed to me too when I was young, but then I learned more about humans and our history and ...
Isn't it more, "This is why the original cyberpunk dream was always a naive and bad idea"?
Like, it appealed to me too when I was young, but then I learned more about humans and our history and ...
Since when was cyberpunk a dream to be pursued? It's the opposite of a naive dream. It's a nightmare full of high tech and people living on scraps, constantly trying to keep up with the tech fallout from big corporations. One of the most iconic places in cyberpunk was literally described as being "like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept the thumb permantently on the fast-forward button."
How is this appealing? It's a warning, not a cosy idea to aspire to!
How is this appealing? It's a warning, not a cosy idea to aspire to!
I think the phrase people are looking for is cypherpunk, idk why the whole thread is referencing cyberpunk which has little to do with the subject matter and ideals being discussed, which are related to the cypherpunk movement.
Yep you're right.
My mistake. Thanks!
I think what he meant by the “cyberpunk dream” is actually the “solution” to the cyberpunk dystopia - i.e. “the net” was supposed to be a refuge from corporate/government monitoring and control.
In the early days of the internet it kind of was. Corporations haven’t waken up to the full commercial potential of the internet. Governments/law enforcement hasn’t quite figured out how this new at-the-time Internet thing worked - “series of tubes” or something.
Then as he noted, there is a significant downside to such a refuge.
In the early days of the internet it kind of was. Corporations haven’t waken up to the full commercial potential of the internet. Governments/law enforcement hasn’t quite figured out how this new at-the-time Internet thing worked - “series of tubes” or something.
Then as he noted, there is a significant downside to such a refuge.
I think this is the difference between cyberpunk as a fiction genre and the views of the people calling themselves cyberpunks back in the day (or reading the Wired articles about them).
really depends on your literature. Star Trek's interpretation of the future is very different from Dune's. Much of cyberpunk tends to be cynical but there are some more utopic interpretations out there as well.
What is a utopian view of cyberpunk fiction? I don't know any.
The "punk" in the genre is the rebellion against or rejection of a corrupt and oppressive system that chews people up and spits them out as either defeated or criminals. If you're reading something else, it's not cyberpunk by definition.
Remember, it's hi-tech and low lives.
The "punk" in the genre is the rebellion against or rejection of a corrupt and oppressive system that chews people up and spits them out as either defeated or criminals. If you're reading something else, it's not cyberpunk by definition.
Remember, it's hi-tech and low lives.
> What is a utopian view of cyberpunk fiction?
Solarpunk, I would guess. "The street finds uses for things" doesn't end up being hardscrabble against dystopia.
Solarpunk, I would guess. "The street finds uses for things" doesn't end up being hardscrabble against dystopia.
Neither Star Trek nor Dune are cyberpunk.
Didn't mean to imply there were. Just general differences in tone in Sci-fi in general.
to paraphrase one of the rpg.net mods:
transhumanism is how technology will reshape what we think it is to be human, how we view life, death, love, family, success, fear, etc. Cyberpunk is how it won't.
transhumanism is how technology will reshape what we think it is to be human, how we view life, death, love, family, success, fear, etc. Cyberpunk is how it won't.
[deleted]
Cyberpunk was not about a dream. It was more of a warning to all those people who thought that technology will bring utopia. “High tech, low life” is the guiding principle of cyberpunk — technology will not solve societal problems all the cool tech brings issues that were not foreseen. With corrupt government and corporations not going anywhere just because the computations and communications got faster.
> Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators.
There have been secretive child predators ever since statutory rape was invented. The reason that you didn't have to "rub elbows" with them is because our governments hadn't begun systematically closing off all avenues for anonymity other than the one that they built and maintain for their own spying. If there's only one way to be anonymous, you get to "rub elbows" with everyone who needs to be anonymous for any reason.
It has nothing to do with child porn or crypto. Neither were responsible for the size of the distributed files kept on each of us to grow in orders of magnitude.
Speaking of "maps at our fingertips," good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases, all freely accessible by the government, or by anybody buying in bulk.
There have been secretive child predators ever since statutory rape was invented. The reason that you didn't have to "rub elbows" with them is because our governments hadn't begun systematically closing off all avenues for anonymity other than the one that they built and maintain for their own spying. If there's only one way to be anonymous, you get to "rub elbows" with everyone who needs to be anonymous for any reason.
It has nothing to do with child porn or crypto. Neither were responsible for the size of the distributed files kept on each of us to grow in orders of magnitude.
Speaking of "maps at our fingertips," good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases, all freely accessible by the government, or by anybody buying in bulk.
> good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases
My handheld non-networked GPS unit with map tiles downloaded in bulk from OpenStreetMaps meets this criteria. Not very obscure.
My handheld non-networked GPS unit with map tiles downloaded in bulk from OpenStreetMaps meets this criteria. Not very obscure.
>There have been secretive child predators ever since statutory rape was invented.
Sure, emphasis on secretive. I'd hope that 'secretive' on the internet would mean more secretive than mistyping a query on a popular site's search engine. Or simply wandering into a linked, public website. But alas.
Sure, emphasis on secretive. I'd hope that 'secretive' on the internet would mean more secretive than mistyping a query on a popular site's search engine. Or simply wandering into a linked, public website. But alas.
>Speaking of "maps at our fingertips," good luck finding one that doesn't result in a record of the lookup and any GPS data submitted with it being inserted into a half-dozen databases, all freely accessible by the government, or by anybody buying in bulk.
Et voila! Maps at your fingertips[0] with no logging/tracking. It's amazing what those ancient (ca. 1995) humans could do. Perhaps they had help from aliens -- as we couldn't possibly do any of that stuff by ourselves. /s
[0] https://wwp.randmcnally.com/product/rand-mcnally-road-atlas
Et voila! Maps at your fingertips[0] with no logging/tracking. It's amazing what those ancient (ca. 1995) humans could do. Perhaps they had help from aliens -- as we couldn't possibly do any of that stuff by ourselves. /s
[0] https://wwp.randmcnally.com/product/rand-mcnally-road-atlas
> you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators.
Statistically there is quite a large number of criminals in my city, and since I visit shops and other parts of the city, I am bound to unknowingly to me been rubbing elbows with those criminals. We are all anonymous to each other, and what can I really know about the person in front of me in the store. Go past a few hundred people and someone will be a person I would not associate myself with, and yet here I am living in the same city as them using the same infrastructure, and in some way enabling the activity by contributing taxes.
Not to say I don't understand the emotional reaction people have. I have relatives in the countryside that refuse to visit the city because of all the criminals that they hear about. It is also fairly common to hear people moving out of the city to the calmer suburbs in order to get out of all the shootings and crime. I also do know first hand that if you go and look for it, finding drug dealers and shady activity is not exactly a big secret. Go to specific streets or part of the city and it's operated in plain sight.
I've always seen the original cyberpunk dream as being analogous to a city, with all its benefits and drawbacks.
Statistically there is quite a large number of criminals in my city, and since I visit shops and other parts of the city, I am bound to unknowingly to me been rubbing elbows with those criminals. We are all anonymous to each other, and what can I really know about the person in front of me in the store. Go past a few hundred people and someone will be a person I would not associate myself with, and yet here I am living in the same city as them using the same infrastructure, and in some way enabling the activity by contributing taxes.
Not to say I don't understand the emotional reaction people have. I have relatives in the countryside that refuse to visit the city because of all the criminals that they hear about. It is also fairly common to hear people moving out of the city to the calmer suburbs in order to get out of all the shootings and crime. I also do know first hand that if you go and look for it, finding drug dealers and shady activity is not exactly a big secret. Go to specific streets or part of the city and it's operated in plain sight.
I've always seen the original cyberpunk dream as being analogous to a city, with all its benefits and drawbacks.
It would be more analogous to having all the pedos in the city use one coffee shop and everyone knows that pedos use that coffee shop and you decide to go there because you prefer their coffee.
It seems a great overestimate to think that 19 out of 20 people who use tor do so to download CP. I am pretty sure that will be false, and more likely something like one in a few hundred. One in a few hundred is the city. 19 out of 20 is the coffee shop.
I should also reiterate that everyone knows what streets and part of the city that criminals visits regularly. People who decide to live or visits those places do make that choice. This lead naturally to city stratification.
I should also reiterate that everyone knows what streets and part of the city that criminals visits regularly. People who decide to live or visits those places do make that choice. This lead naturally to city stratification.
> It’s a damn shame how the original cyberpunk dream played out. We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas. Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators.
Corporate government is pretty much a staple of. all cyberpunk franchises though.
Corporate government is pretty much a staple of. all cyberpunk franchises though.
Yeah Cyberpunk wasn't so much a dream as a dystopian reaction to modern life; instead of exploring space, people do crimes to scrape by. I certainly wouldn't want to live in Snow Crash or Neuromancer...
Maybe open source generative AI can help solve cp. Cater to all these pedophile fetishes, and no need to exploit children? Remember how we phased out ivory for piano keys, and other poaching?
With diamonds, there is still a push to source “the real thing” kept alive by De Beers, and other cartels like that. But for a lot of poaching, we found replacements. I think that’s how plastic got started too btw!
Also PETA has approved fake lab-grown meat, perhaps it can reduce demand for torturing so many animals in factory farms.
PS: Japan has a culture of infantile hentai or something in its animation - which may alleviate a lot of demand for actual cp — how much cp is in Japan? (There seems to be a lot of unusual/unnatural sexual norms in Japan… from Hikkikomori to dating vending machines to total celibacy for a large proportion of the population.) https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/11/japan-child-po...
With diamonds, there is still a push to source “the real thing” kept alive by De Beers, and other cartels like that. But for a lot of poaching, we found replacements. I think that’s how plastic got started too btw!
Also PETA has approved fake lab-grown meat, perhaps it can reduce demand for torturing so many animals in factory farms.
PS: Japan has a culture of infantile hentai or something in its animation - which may alleviate a lot of demand for actual cp — how much cp is in Japan? (There seems to be a lot of unusual/unnatural sexual norms in Japan… from Hikkikomori to dating vending machines to total celibacy for a large proportion of the population.) https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/11/japan-child-po...
> Maybe open source generative AI can help solve cp. Cater to all these pedophile fetishes, and no need to exploit children?
Illegal in Canada (even animated/cartoons):
* https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/man-facing-child-porn-charges-aft...
Edit: fictional material seems to be illegal in quite a lot of countries:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_child_pornography
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_porn...
Illegal in Canada (even animated/cartoons):
* https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/man-facing-child-porn-charges-aft...
Edit: fictional material seems to be illegal in quite a lot of countries:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_child_pornography
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_porn...
CP is disgusting and everything, but I'm kinda weirded out about thought crime. If no harm is being done, not even indirectly to anyone else, why is it a crime?
It's not illegal to write a fanfic that you keep to yourself about all the weird ways that you want to torture and kill someone.
It's not illegal to write a fanfic that you keep to yourself about all the weird ways that you want to torture and kill someone.
Well, if actual harm to people and children is what we want to reduce, then perhaps decriminalizing an innocuous (as in no victims) form of it may actually reduce the harm to actual people.
Just like the cases for decriminalizing prostitution and drugs: https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalizatio...
And btw -- it's not just about thoughtcrime, it's a major double standard, seems to me. In the West it's perfectly normal for Hollywood to put out "Rated R" horror movies that feature gore and torture, ripping off limbs, mass murders, etc. Such as the movie "Hostel". I never understood why that is OK, why the music industry has pushed gangsta rap etc. for decades, but then something like Cuties out of France which actually critiques the hypersexualization of teenage girls that is taking place, causes an uproar, while the industries doing the hypersexualization are now an accepted part of our liberal "freedom of speech".
Just like the cases for decriminalizing prostitution and drugs: https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalizatio...
And btw -- it's not just about thoughtcrime, it's a major double standard, seems to me. In the West it's perfectly normal for Hollywood to put out "Rated R" horror movies that feature gore and torture, ripping off limbs, mass murders, etc. Such as the movie "Hostel". I never understood why that is OK, why the music industry has pushed gangsta rap etc. for decades, but then something like Cuties out of France which actually critiques the hypersexualization of teenage girls that is taking place, causes an uproar, while the industries doing the hypersexualization are now an accepted part of our liberal "freedom of speech".
Legalized drug sales and prostitution among adults have _fewer_ victims but that doesn't mean no victims. Legalization is better but it isn't a panacea.
> Such as the movie "Hostel". I never understood why that is OK, why the music industry has pushed gangsta rap etc. for decades, but then something like Cuties out of France which actually critiques the hypersexualization of teenage girls that is taking place, causes an uproar, while the industries doing the hypersexualization are now an accepted part of our liberal "freedom of speech".
AFAIK, everyone involved in the production of "Hostel" was a legal adult.
The girls who were the main characters in "Cuties" were not legal adults, nor anywhere close. I don't even think they were teenagers. From the clip I saw, it wasn't a _critique_ of hypersexualization so much as LITERAL HYPERSEXUALIZATION. There may have been an ironic plot around it saying "this is bad mmm'kay" but that doesn't excuse using children to engage in sexualized behavior.
There's an important conversation to be had about US culture and violence versus sex and language (South Park parodied this well), but "Cuties" is a horrible example because it used actual children to engage in actual sexual objectification.
> Such as the movie "Hostel". I never understood why that is OK, why the music industry has pushed gangsta rap etc. for decades, but then something like Cuties out of France which actually critiques the hypersexualization of teenage girls that is taking place, causes an uproar, while the industries doing the hypersexualization are now an accepted part of our liberal "freedom of speech".
AFAIK, everyone involved in the production of "Hostel" was a legal adult.
The girls who were the main characters in "Cuties" were not legal adults, nor anywhere close. I don't even think they were teenagers. From the clip I saw, it wasn't a _critique_ of hypersexualization so much as LITERAL HYPERSEXUALIZATION. There may have been an ironic plot around it saying "this is bad mmm'kay" but that doesn't excuse using children to engage in sexualized behavior.
There's an important conversation to be had about US culture and violence versus sex and language (South Park parodied this well), but "Cuties" is a horrible example because it used actual children to engage in actual sexual objectification.
Another similar case on shameless promotion due to fear it's the Spanish media depicting squatters as the worst evil ever, specially in morning TV talk shows targeted to middle aged women (housewifes/mothers with children).
Guess what? between the show sections, (and shows themselves) they are trying to sell home alarms with lots of ads in the morning to the viewers. Bingo.
Guess what? between the show sections, (and shows themselves) they are trying to sell home alarms with lots of ads in the morning to the viewers. Bingo.
That existed in the late 90's with the Spice Girls and preteen/early teen girls doing girl bands mimicking the dances in every school in Europe.
Yet no one gave a shit. This is the new Satanic panic, a scapegoat to avoid focusing ourselves on important shit.
Paranoia sells, and it's the main fuel of the US style Capitalism, getting a full panic state almost monthly in order to be a mindless consumer.
OFC satanic panic was the same crap, in order to keep the children and teens away to non-consumit (read: TV and mainstream toys, music and movies) so the industry didn't collapse in a few years. And, yet, thanks to internet, years later, they did.
Yet no one gave a shit. This is the new Satanic panic, a scapegoat to avoid focusing ourselves on important shit.
Paranoia sells, and it's the main fuel of the US style Capitalism, getting a full panic state almost monthly in order to be a mindless consumer.
OFC satanic panic was the same crap, in order to keep the children and teens away to non-consumit (read: TV and mainstream toys, music and movies) so the industry didn't collapse in a few years. And, yet, thanks to internet, years later, they did.
Cuties controversy was only about some versions of the poster, and no one involved saw the movie. No one who watched the movie thought it was super controversial I think.
https://www.parentstv.org/blog/how-does-a-film-critic-justif...
These guys did:
As for Netflix, how can the company possibly reconcile a “coming-of-age” film, and one that centers entirely on 11-year-old girls, with a TV-MA rating? This is not a random decision – it has become corporate practice.
We have frequently called on Netflix to stop hosting content that sexualizes children, such as Baby, Big Mouth, Sex Education, or that glamorizes rape and sexual assault such as 365 Days.
And Netflix habitually markets adult content to young audiences. Parents Television Council research of Netflix programming designated as “Teen” reveals that nearly half was rated either TV-MA (104 titles, or 40.8%) or R (23 titles, or 9.0%); and every single program that carried a TV-14 moniker included harsh profanities.
While we may not always see eye-to-eye with film critics, the criticism of the critics is telling. Cuties is not the first time Netflix has blatantly promoted programming that sexualizes children, but we’re calling on them for this to be the last.
These guys did:
As for Netflix, how can the company possibly reconcile a “coming-of-age” film, and one that centers entirely on 11-year-old girls, with a TV-MA rating? This is not a random decision – it has become corporate practice.
We have frequently called on Netflix to stop hosting content that sexualizes children, such as Baby, Big Mouth, Sex Education, or that glamorizes rape and sexual assault such as 365 Days.
And Netflix habitually markets adult content to young audiences. Parents Television Council research of Netflix programming designated as “Teen” reveals that nearly half was rated either TV-MA (104 titles, or 40.8%) or R (23 titles, or 9.0%); and every single program that carried a TV-14 moniker included harsh profanities.
While we may not always see eye-to-eye with film critics, the criticism of the critics is telling. Cuties is not the first time Netflix has blatantly promoted programming that sexualizes children, but we’re calling on them for this to be the last.
Did they watch it? I don't see anywhere where they said they actually watched it.
> Cuties controversy was only about some versions of the poster,
False.
The final performance by the young girls was also discussed. You can find it if you want to watch something disgusting, but it was very sexual and OBVIOUSLY inappropriate for children.
That it's common to see children perform such sexual routines at dance competitions doesn't mean it's appropriate.
The idea that this was Only The Poster was a lie created by a media that thinks child exploitation is OK. Look at the media response to the film "Sound of Freedom", where it's "QAnon adjacent" to oppose child sex trafficking.
False.
The final performance by the young girls was also discussed. You can find it if you want to watch something disgusting, but it was very sexual and OBVIOUSLY inappropriate for children.
That it's common to see children perform such sexual routines at dance competitions doesn't mean it's appropriate.
The idea that this was Only The Poster was a lie created by a media that thinks child exploitation is OK. Look at the media response to the film "Sound of Freedom", where it's "QAnon adjacent" to oppose child sex trafficking.
>That it's common to see children perform such sexual routines at dance competitions doesn't mean it's appropriate.
"Sexual" is relative so people will just be talking past each other in regards to that. There's no real discussion to be had there.
>The idea that this was Only The Poster was a lie created by a media that thinks child exploitation is OK
FWIW, I only heard about the poster and nothing about the full release. I'm sure some people still argued in the same way people argue about anything for months/years on end, but there was definitely a lot more controversy about the poster. Be it because it was the first look/awareness of the film, or because the film was simply nothing to write about can be left to people who actually watched the movie. I have no interest to.
"Sexual" is relative so people will just be talking past each other in regards to that. There's no real discussion to be had there.
>The idea that this was Only The Poster was a lie created by a media that thinks child exploitation is OK
FWIW, I only heard about the poster and nothing about the full release. I'm sure some people still argued in the same way people argue about anything for months/years on end, but there was definitely a lot more controversy about the poster. Be it because it was the first look/awareness of the film, or because the film was simply nothing to write about can be left to people who actually watched the movie. I have no interest to.
The issue has become so emotionalized that if you say anything that even remotely looks like supporting pedophilia, people will tell you to go kill yourself.
They'll do that if you criticize the Barbie movie, or fail to.
Barbie has always been strangely entwined in the political atmosphere, funnily enough. You become an iconic kids toy and it's inevitable.
It seems there's nothing worse than a moderate these days. One extreme thinks I must be a Satanist for not believing in the massive conspiracy to harvest adrenochrome from tortured children, while the other extreme thinks I must be a Nazi for not believing in a trans genocide.
It is not without debate:
* https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/djls/vol25/iss1/2/
And as my updated/edited comment mention, Canada is not unique in this regard:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_child_pornography
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_porn...
Going back to Canada, some cases:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Cana...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Sharpe
Perhaps the thinking is that it could create a positive feedback loop that may help the desires grow to the point 'actual' action is taken.
* https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/djls/vol25/iss1/2/
And as my updated/edited comment mention, Canada is not unique in this regard:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_child_pornography
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_porn...
Going back to Canada, some cases:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Cana...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Sharpe
Perhaps the thinking is that it could create a positive feedback loop that may help the desires grow to the point 'actual' action is taken.
I'm sort of confused by these rulings. So people got convicted for possessing loli manga/similar stuff that has no relation to real life at all.
I understand that it can be illegal at the State level, and that its a grey area at the federal level. What I don't get is the disconnect between these rulings and whatever is available on the clearnet.
We're not talking onion sites. Reddit, Twitter, 4chan, pixv, tumblr, Patreon whatever sites that you can just go to that shows up the front page of Google. They all contain similar content and almost none of it is taken down for illegality, at most because someone thought it was too ick and Ad money, or posted in a non-r18 area.
Even fucking 4chan is incredibly strict about ban hammering/deleting anything that is close to CP
Genshin Impact and Blue Archive are not popular because they are good games.
I understand that it can be illegal at the State level, and that its a grey area at the federal level. What I don't get is the disconnect between these rulings and whatever is available on the clearnet.
We're not talking onion sites. Reddit, Twitter, 4chan, pixv, tumblr, Patreon whatever sites that you can just go to that shows up the front page of Google. They all contain similar content and almost none of it is taken down for illegality, at most because someone thought it was too ick and Ad money, or posted in a non-r18 area.
Even fucking 4chan is incredibly strict about ban hammering/deleting anything that is close to CP
Genshin Impact and Blue Archive are not popular because they are good games.
[deleted]
>They all contain similar content and almost none of it is taken down for illegality, at most because someone thought it was too ick and Ad money, or posted in a non-r18 area.
Simple, the internet is huge and some currently contended US law means that (past illegal content) a web host isn't responsible for content users upload. Copyright means that corporations can DMCA certain content off, but otherwise, there's not much to do. Companies don't WANT to have to look through every single post on a site that big, so if they can automate or simply ignore it, they will.
The legality in Canada is questionable, but Canada isn't looking through Reddit with a fine tooth comb (P.S. it technically is against reddit TOS to upload lol manga stuff. But it's hard to enforce on small subreddits). Canada may not even know what Pixiv is, and Patreon is often behind paywalls. It would just take a good (well, bad) mainstream awareness to answer your question, and the answer would turn out to mostly be "because politicians didn't know until CNN/Fox News blasted it".
That much was obvious during the U.S. controversy on Rapelay, a Japanese 3d eroge simulator that was not even sold in the US (nor ever has been), simply mislabeled by Amazon and visible in American's store for a while.
>Genshin Impact and Blue Archive are not popular because they are good games.
well we're getting very off topic but this is still an odd angle. There's no one reason why these games are popular and talking about fan art vs. game quality is arguing a chicken vs. the egg. Let's just agree that fan engagement in this day and age can be a force multiplier in terms of advertising something and spreading the brand. But 10,000 x 0 is still zero. Just ask how F-Zero is doing.
Simple, the internet is huge and some currently contended US law means that (past illegal content) a web host isn't responsible for content users upload. Copyright means that corporations can DMCA certain content off, but otherwise, there's not much to do. Companies don't WANT to have to look through every single post on a site that big, so if they can automate or simply ignore it, they will.
The legality in Canada is questionable, but Canada isn't looking through Reddit with a fine tooth comb (P.S. it technically is against reddit TOS to upload lol manga stuff. But it's hard to enforce on small subreddits). Canada may not even know what Pixiv is, and Patreon is often behind paywalls. It would just take a good (well, bad) mainstream awareness to answer your question, and the answer would turn out to mostly be "because politicians didn't know until CNN/Fox News blasted it".
That much was obvious during the U.S. controversy on Rapelay, a Japanese 3d eroge simulator that was not even sold in the US (nor ever has been), simply mislabeled by Amazon and visible in American's store for a while.
>Genshin Impact and Blue Archive are not popular because they are good games.
well we're getting very off topic but this is still an odd angle. There's no one reason why these games are popular and talking about fan art vs. game quality is arguing a chicken vs. the egg. Let's just agree that fan engagement in this day and age can be a force multiplier in terms of advertising something and spreading the brand. But 10,000 x 0 is still zero. Just ask how F-Zero is doing.
>It's not illegal to write a fanfic that you keep to yourself about all the weird ways that you want to torture and kill someone.
pedantic, but it depends on many factors that can make that goal realistic. You probably wouldn't get flack about how you'd kill Trump or any public figure you're far away from, but some specific individual can be seen as a threat in some countries. Even the US isn't fully lenient on that.
>If no harm is being done, not even indirectly to anyone else, why is it a crime?
politics, mostly. For example, in Japan uncensored genetalia is still illegal, animated or otherwise. Despite some of the most explicit pornography hailing from it. These come from WW2 times where the US imposed a bunch of sanctions, but have long since been irrelevant. So why not just repeal that law?
Well, what politician wants to be the one to fall on that sword and get the buck rolling? It's political suicide to the voter base (mostly older people) even if most people wouldn't be strongly affected by it. That's one among many many other factors, of course.
And that's a relatively uncontroversial aspect of society. Can you imagine trying to go to bat about the above topic?
pedantic, but it depends on many factors that can make that goal realistic. You probably wouldn't get flack about how you'd kill Trump or any public figure you're far away from, but some specific individual can be seen as a threat in some countries. Even the US isn't fully lenient on that.
>If no harm is being done, not even indirectly to anyone else, why is it a crime?
politics, mostly. For example, in Japan uncensored genetalia is still illegal, animated or otherwise. Despite some of the most explicit pornography hailing from it. These come from WW2 times where the US imposed a bunch of sanctions, but have long since been irrelevant. So why not just repeal that law?
Well, what politician wants to be the one to fall on that sword and get the buck rolling? It's political suicide to the voter base (mostly older people) even if most people wouldn't be strongly affected by it. That's one among many many other factors, of course.
And that's a relatively uncontroversial aspect of society. Can you imagine trying to go to bat about the above topic?
Slight correction: it’s now every Americans’ first amendment right to send that fanfic to the subject after Counterman vs Colorado.
>CP is disgusting and everything
Why do you think so? Maybe you just haven't seen a good CP before.
Why do you think so? Maybe you just haven't seen a good CP before.
Even written, where I live. In principle even the author only wrote it for themselves, and no one ever knows. That’s pretty close to thoughtcrime.
> generative AI can help solve cp
On a side note, there was a very good film about this last year called The Artifice Girl.
Think indie, very theatrical with only three settings and three very clear acts, but thought-provoking and with some unstated implications. I would recommend watching it without checking IMDB or any review site first.
On a side note, there was a very good film about this last year called The Artifice Girl.
Think indie, very theatrical with only three settings and three very clear acts, but thought-provoking and with some unstated implications. I would recommend watching it without checking IMDB or any review site first.
Generated CSAM is equally illegal as "real" CSAM in many countries, such as Norway. Here, even fictional descriptions of such material in written form is illegal.
this is possibly because generated CSAM may look like no real human child nor resemble any human child in particular today. give it 5 years and physical distinction from real children and even a specific child is likely to happen. so a photo perfect likeness of your kid ends up in some disgusting video and the creators get off the hook because it's 'not real' by say a narrow color gradiation or kinematic similarity standard undetectable to human eyes? no thanks.
That isn't really much of an issue, some places count material intended to resemble a real child or derived from CSAM (etc a drawing referenced from real CSAM) as still being illegal. That would handily cover the situation you've mentioned.
In those cases, for fictional CSAM to be legal, it has to be completely fictional such that any resemblances can be shown to be completely coincidence.
In those cases, for fictional CSAM to be legal, it has to be completely fictional such that any resemblances can be shown to be completely coincidence.
Even Lolita from Nabokov? Because that book depicted that as joking about the reader and on male society in general, as there was no actual erotism on anything but the narrator's "mind"/protagonist.
Similar on how people got Starship Troopers wrong. Is not about cheering fascism, but to ridicule it.
Similar on how people got Starship Troopers wrong. Is not about cheering fascism, but to ridicule it.
> Similar on how people got Starship Troopers wrong. Is not about cheering fascism, but to ridicule it.
Well - the film also had a disconnect with the book on the topic of fascism. The book was more on the pro-fascism side.
Well - the film also had a disconnect with the book on the topic of fascism. The book was more on the pro-fascism side.
I still can't decide if it was just a bad movie or satire by someone that didn't quite get how satire works.
It was satire by someone who absolutely understands how satire works. Starship Troopers, the film, is brilliant.
The same director did Robocop, and if you don't get the genius satire of that, then I can't help you.
The same director did Robocop, and if you don't get the genius satire of that, then I can't help you.
In fairness, those films can be enjoyed both superficially and as satire.
The film intentionally satirized the book.
The film is a satire of fascists propaganda, and as good satire often it, it is also an good example of fascist propaganda, just like Snow Crash is satire of Cyberpunk while being a good Cyberpunk.
The book isn't exactly fascist though. Verhoeven said he didn't read the book and does not plan to, so he is satirising somewhat superficially.
Heinlein did explore a lot of various political systems in his books, and I think Starship Troopers is focusing most on voter engagement - how people who vote should know something about what they vote on, and that is why only those who served (which includes military but also other "national service" like being a worker colonising planets or postman or whatever) get vote.
Is that fascist? I don't think so. Is it a good political system? I don't think so either but it is a good enough idea for a book.
The book isn't exactly fascist though. Verhoeven said he didn't read the book and does not plan to, so he is satirising somewhat superficially.
Heinlein did explore a lot of various political systems in his books, and I think Starship Troopers is focusing most on voter engagement - how people who vote should know something about what they vote on, and that is why only those who served (which includes military but also other "national service" like being a worker colonising planets or postman or whatever) get vote.
Is that fascist? I don't think so. Is it a good political system? I don't think so either but it is a good enough idea for a book.
In both the book and the film Starship Troopers:
* persons can choose whether or not to do government service
* Rico's parents are quite rich even though neither are citizens
* the Moral Philosophy class tries to _discourage_ individuals from government service
* the instructor for Moral Philosophy explicitly tries to get the students to think for themselves
In the book but not the film:
* the only benefit of government service is the right to vote
* only veterans (i.e. no active service members) can vote
All of these (and more) are contrary to fascism. The book is not fascist. Verhoeven never read the book and didn't satirize fascism -- he satirized a _caricature_ of fascism.
* persons can choose whether or not to do government service
* Rico's parents are quite rich even though neither are citizens
* the Moral Philosophy class tries to _discourage_ individuals from government service
* the instructor for Moral Philosophy explicitly tries to get the students to think for themselves
In the book but not the film:
* the only benefit of government service is the right to vote
* only veterans (i.e. no active service members) can vote
All of these (and more) are contrary to fascism. The book is not fascist. Verhoeven never read the book and didn't satirize fascism -- he satirized a _caricature_ of fascism.
Fascism is ill defined so people call the Terran Federation fascist due to being jingoistic and undemocratic, despite it being quite different from historical fascism as you say.
Also minor detail but in the book there's a few jobs that are reserved for veterans, like IIRC the police.
Also minor detail but in the book there's a few jobs that are reserved for veterans, like IIRC the police.
Lolita is covered by an exception for art. I doubt such a book could be written in Norway today, but you can't really ban historical literature.
>but you can't really ban historical literature.
I know what you mean. But at the same time society bans historical literature constantly.
I know what you mean. But at the same time society bans historical literature constantly.
Have you actually read Starship Troopers? It isn’t exactly ridiculing facism.
I believe he is referring to the more widely known movie.
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>back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access. This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps
That was 2007. I had maps of the entire US loaded on my pocket pc circa 2005.
Edit: that was “Mapopolis” in my case. There were plenty more: https://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/GPS_software_-_Pocket_PC
That was 2007. I had maps of the entire US loaded on my pocket pc circa 2005.
Edit: that was “Mapopolis” in my case. There were plenty more: https://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/GPS_software_-_Pocket_PC
i traveled across europe in car at same time frame with pocket pc (asus mypal) and igo maps loaded on it (still have it in my drawer). those days you can get igo offline maps on android. also sygic.
it was always strange that google maps was accepted as some kind of magic while turn by turn navigation with voice directions was available from mid 2000s
nowdays i always have sygic installed on my phone. came handy when google maps decided to freak out while i was driving through death valley to gas station.
it was always strange that google maps was accepted as some kind of magic while turn by turn navigation with voice directions was available from mid 2000s
nowdays i always have sygic installed on my phone. came handy when google maps decided to freak out while i was driving through death valley to gas station.
> turn by turn navigation with voice directions was available from mid 2000s
Did those turn by turn systems allow you to just drag the map onscreen anywhere to change location to anyplace on earth? To drop pins and send links to anyone in an email? To be updated instantly and for free when the data was refreshed?
Did those turn by turn systems allow you to just drag the map onscreen anywhere to change location to anyplace on earth? To drop pins and send links to anyone in an email? To be updated instantly and for free when the data was refreshed?
>Did those turn by turn systems allow you to just drag the map onscreen anywhere to change location to anyplace on earth?
as long as you had maps installed for this area - yes
>To drop pins and send links to anyone in an email?
yea. multi-point navigation with ability to search along the route/in the area/specific city/etc. all without breaking route. you could also save route iirc. i had 2 weeks road trip pre-planned.
there was some ability to share route/coordinates. don't remember details
> To be updated instantly and for free when the data was refreshed?
back than maps weren't updated that frequently. in general.
on the other side, it gave you ability to go anywhere without having a data connection. google offline maps are still very limited. igo was showing on screen next two maneuvers back than. google still didn't figure it out. or ability to show real 3D landscape and 3D landmarks/buildings. or ability to mark street as blocked so navigation will route around. getting traffic information from radio in case there is no internet.
as long as you had maps installed for this area - yes
>To drop pins and send links to anyone in an email?
yea. multi-point navigation with ability to search along the route/in the area/specific city/etc. all without breaking route. you could also save route iirc. i had 2 weeks road trip pre-planned.
there was some ability to share route/coordinates. don't remember details
> To be updated instantly and for free when the data was refreshed?
back than maps weren't updated that frequently. in general.
on the other side, it gave you ability to go anywhere without having a data connection. google offline maps are still very limited. igo was showing on screen next two maneuvers back than. google still didn't figure it out. or ability to show real 3D landscape and 3D landmarks/buildings. or ability to mark street as blocked so navigation will route around. getting traffic information from radio in case there is no internet.
> I had maps of the entire US loaded on my pocket pc circa 2005.
How much did that cost? How many folks had it? When did it stop getting updates?
Most folks (likely including GP) didn't have easy access to offline electronic maps in their pocket in 2007 and didn't know anyone who had offline electronic maps in their pocket.
Does that make them stupid?
How much did that cost? How many folks had it? When did it stop getting updates?
Most folks (likely including GP) didn't have easy access to offline electronic maps in their pocket in 2007 and didn't know anyone who had offline electronic maps in their pocket.
Does that make them stupid?
2008 I had a totally offline map of all of North America in my car's aftermarket radio (7" touch screen, AM/FM, DVD player, GPS, analog TV, SD slot, all running a version of WindowsCE that was already outdatted). System cost me about $400. Bought it so I could do backroads road trips/exploring by car, as it didn't need (or even have) a way to connect to the 'net to do it. I can still get updated maps for it, but I don't bother.
Handheld gps's with offline maps go back even further. I was using them from '03 to '08. Garmin made a bunch of ones that were no bigger than a early-gen blackberry. Back then it was relatively easy to get pirated updated maps for them.
Handheld gps's with offline maps go back even further. I was using them from '03 to '08. Garmin made a bunch of ones that were no bigger than a early-gen blackberry. Back then it was relatively easy to get pirated updated maps for them.
> How much did that cost?
$100 for the maps, available to anyone with a pocket pc and access to Google.
$100 for the maps, available to anyone with a pocket pc and access to Google.
Do jurisdictions really care about child porn before internet? I always feel like it is just a convenient excuse for them to get away with their bullshit, for a largely non-existent problem.
No, they didn't. They still don't. Not having a victim on the other side of the case (possession of child porn, not production of child porn) gives judges an easy excuse (and no opposition) to sympathizing with the accused and suspending the sentence.
Child porn is just leverage to pry. We used to care as much about sending information about birth control through the mail. And with the modern movement to sexualize children as soon as possible, they might have to use another excuse in 20 years. "Terrorism" will always work, because it doesn't mean anything.
Child porn is just leverage to pry. We used to care as much about sending information about birth control through the mail. And with the modern movement to sexualize children as soon as possible, they might have to use another excuse in 20 years. "Terrorism" will always work, because it doesn't mean anything.
I believe this is the case, as unfortunate as it is.
The loudness of their voices in "protecting the children" when politicians are introducing new communications surveillance measures, with no mention of local, boots-on-the-ground, child protection services funding increases, just screams to me that they care about surveillance a lot and about protecting children not at all.
The loudness of their voices in "protecting the children" when politicians are introducing new communications surveillance measures, with no mention of local, boots-on-the-ground, child protection services funding increases, just screams to me that they care about surveillance a lot and about protecting children not at all.
In that way the government represents the people. For every 9 people you meet screeching about how much they want to hunt a pedo and torture them, there's 1 person talking about actually helping children experiencing abuse (which is not always sexual, to the former group's disappointment)
These tactics have been called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp....
They did, but it only existed on small scales then. The Internet drove the cost of production and distribution down to basically zero, so, as classical economics predicts, the amount of production exploded.
> The Internet drove the cost of production and distribution down to basically zero, so, as classical economics predicts, the amount of production exploded.
No, economics predicts that _use_ will explode if the cost is zero, but that's not a comment on production.
Pocket cameras have reduced the cost to record sexual abuse, but that's dwarfed by the ability to reproduce/ distribute those copies.
I don't think that means sexual abuse is more common. On every other metric we have, it appears sexual abuse is _less_ common.
No, economics predicts that _use_ will explode if the cost is zero, but that's not a comment on production.
Pocket cameras have reduced the cost to record sexual abuse, but that's dwarfed by the ability to reproduce/ distribute those copies.
I don't think that means sexual abuse is more common. On every other metric we have, it appears sexual abuse is _less_ common.
Just regarding your overall concern around maps and cellular service, Google Maps lets you download maps within very custom sized tiles for offline use. I'm partial to using them when hiking, so I can orient myself in areas where the actual trail markers become questionable.
Routing doesn't really work offline, but that's a different/harder problem.
Routing doesn't really work offline, but that's a different/harder problem.
No disrespect, I use offline Google maps almost daily, but there are far far better offline hiking apps out there.
Google will probably work ok for the most popular trails, and I guess you can use it as a supercharged compass. But at least in Europe, if you actually plan a route in any mountains based on Google, you're in for an adventure :)
Google will probably work ok for the most popular trails, and I guess you can use it as a supercharged compass. But at least in Europe, if you actually plan a route in any mountains based on Google, you're in for an adventure :)
What apps would you recommend?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy
Bit focused on eastern Europe, but has a hiking mode with very good coverage of the official routes (not only in eastern Europe ;)). And everything is free, including offline maps. Terrific value for casual trips.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bergfex.to...
This one is not free (there is a free tier though) but seems to have more details in some areas, so the pro tier may be worth it if you hike a lot.
Bit focused on eastern Europe, but has a hiking mode with very good coverage of the official routes (not only in eastern Europe ;)). And everything is free, including offline maps. Terrific value for casual trips.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bergfex.to...
This one is not free (there is a free tier though) but seems to have more details in some areas, so the pro tier may be worth it if you hike a lot.
Tangential to your much larger lament - OpenStreetMap, and specifically OSMAnd which is libre and free on F-droid, works great for offline maps that are downloaded ahead of time. (I think the version on Google Play limits the number of regions you can download unless you make a small donation).
Organic Maps on F-Droid, is a literal godsend in offline raster maps. I used OSMand a lot on my old phone, buy since I downgraded it just could not load the vectors fast enough
Google maps offers this functionality. I've had my local map and maps of any place I regularly go to downloaded for many years.
The problem with Google Maps is that they only let you download rectangular chunks of the map one by one (that aren't large enough to e.g. just download a whole state), and then those chunks must be kept regularly updated or they eventually "expire" without you having any say in the matter.
Google Maps also doesn't support offline contour lines / hillshading (what Google calls "terrain"), which is a big deal for hiking and other outdoor activities. Whereas with OsmAnd, you can literally have e.g. the entire North America in your pocket, with contour lines, offline navigation, and offline Wikipedia articles for every POI.
Google Maps also doesn't support offline contour lines / hillshading (what Google calls "terrain"), which is a big deal for hiking and other outdoor activities. Whereas with OsmAnd, you can literally have e.g. the entire North America in your pocket, with contour lines, offline navigation, and offline Wikipedia articles for every POI.
Google times out the downloaded maps without warning, so you go to use them and find out it won't let you use them.
You definitely get a warning. But also there's an auto-update feature so you can set it an forget it so long as your device connects to the internet once every x months.
Pointing out more options for people to evaluate is great and all. But at least for me, "offline maps" implies not needing the permission of a surveillance company to use it, and without phoning home to that company when the app regains connectivity. And I'd say that's an appropriate definition in the context of the top level comment about privacy.
It will eventually cease to exist.
I went to Grenada in 2014 and used offline maps to drive around the island. In 2015 the tablet suffered an accident and I powered it off to deal with it later. 5 years later I power it back on without internet connectivity. Turns out the maps expired. So much for many years
I went to Grenada in 2014 and used offline maps to drive around the island. In 2015 the tablet suffered an accident and I powered it off to deal with it later. 5 years later I power it back on without internet connectivity. Turns out the maps expired. So much for many years
While I agree this is potentially an issue, most people with most devices won't be away from the internet for years. If you want it to be apocalypse proof for when the internet goes down you should probably get a paper map.
That is the antithesis of many years and why google maps is not sufficient. You know what’s still around many years later? My paper printouts from Mapquest
> he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally
Isn't that, like, a map? lol we've had maps long before the internet
Isn't that, like, a map? lol we've had maps long before the internet
One of the big benefits of digital maps over paper ones is "where am I on the map", and GPS alone doesn't send any data back.
Even then there were lots of apps out there which provided maps offline before Google maps was even an idea.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Streets_%26_Trips
https://winworldpc.com/product/softkey-key-master-maps/10
And then that's also completely ignoring the hundreds of portable GPS devices sold before Google Maps was a thing which had offline road databases.
I can navigate anonymously without cell signal easily. My car has a GPS in the dashboard which, at least for the maps and routing, doesn't go online at all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Streets_%26_Trips
https://winworldpc.com/product/softkey-key-master-maps/10
And then that's also completely ignoring the hundreds of portable GPS devices sold before Google Maps was a thing which had offline road databases.
I can navigate anonymously without cell signal easily. My car has a GPS in the dashboard which, at least for the maps and routing, doesn't go online at all.
> I can navigate anonymously without cell signal easily. My car has a GPS in the dashboard which, at least for the maps and routing, doesn't go online at all.
I agree that this is indeed possible. The problem is with the propaganda that says that you should not agree to such a low standard of only being able to see the map and route your trip based on road connectivity and nothing else. Modern route planning takes into account inherently real-time information such as accidents and other roadblocks, which is only available online.
I agree that this is indeed possible. The problem is with the propaganda that says that you should not agree to such a low standard of only being able to see the map and route your trip based on road connectivity and nothing else. Modern route planning takes into account inherently real-time information such as accidents and other roadblocks, which is only available online.
>I agree that this is indeed possible. The problem is with the propaganda that says that you should not agree to such a low standard of only being able to see the map and route your trip based on road connectivity and nothing else. Modern route planning takes into account inherently real-time information such as accidents and other roadblocks, which is only available online.
I'd note that while real time traffic updates are nice, they are just a convenience, not a necessity.
In fact, GPS (unless you're in a war zone and need to direct munitions or out in the middle of nowhere) is also a convenience and not a necessity. What's that? It is a necessity? Tell that to Ferdinand Magellan -- hell he didn't even have a paper map.
That's not to say GPS/online traffic updates and the like aren't useful. They absolutely are. But they aren't necessary and at least for me, if the choice is to use such tools and be tracked or use another method that doesn't track me, I'll choose the latter every. single. time.
Not because I have anything to hide, but because my business is my business and no one else's.
I'd note that while real time traffic updates are nice, they are just a convenience, not a necessity.
In fact, GPS (unless you're in a war zone and need to direct munitions or out in the middle of nowhere) is also a convenience and not a necessity. What's that? It is a necessity? Tell that to Ferdinand Magellan -- hell he didn't even have a paper map.
That's not to say GPS/online traffic updates and the like aren't useful. They absolutely are. But they aren't necessary and at least for me, if the choice is to use such tools and be tracked or use another method that doesn't track me, I'll choose the latter every. single. time.
Not because I have anything to hide, but because my business is my business and no one else's.
> Modern route planning takes into account inherently real-time information such as accidents and other roadblocks, which is only available online.
in mid 2000s very offline igo could pull traffic information via RDS-TMC and adjust route according to it. navigation systems in modern cars can use traffic information from satellite via sirius-xm
in mid 2000s very offline igo could pull traffic information via RDS-TMC and adjust route according to it. navigation systems in modern cars can use traffic information from satellite via sirius-xm
Yeah, I'm disappointed more cars/GPS units don't have this functionality. It's really not even that complicated of a data stream and it's already right there in most US metro areas waiting to be used.
i think the only time recently that i saw TMC used, it's in my wife's mini countryman. but it worked only in last few months of leasing after they updated firmware or maybe plugged some cable during service
Paper gets heavy real quick and personal microfiche readers never caught on.
I imagine it's really hard to drive a car and use a microfiche reader at the same time.
The Electro Gyrocator essentially worked that way. You placed transparencies over the CRT for the map section you were currently in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator
https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-features/ph-origins-navi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator
https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-features/ph-origins-navi...
At least paper does not run out of battery, though
Have you tried to buy a paper map lately? It's next to impossible, at least here where I am atm.
Where are you that it's "next to impossible"? That really surprises me.
I'm in the UK, and you can walk into any Post Office, WHSmith, bookshop, most newsagents, etc., and pick up maps of the local area or country, usually Ordnance Survey[0] maps.
And (at least when I was in secondary school, about a decade ago) map reading was still taught as a valuable skill, using OS maps.
[0]: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk
I'm in the UK, and you can walk into any Post Office, WHSmith, bookshop, most newsagents, etc., and pick up maps of the local area or country, usually Ordnance Survey[0] maps.
And (at least when I was in secondary school, about a decade ago) map reading was still taught as a valuable skill, using OS maps.
[0]: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk
>We could’ve had a world where companies couldn’t do anything about people using their ideas
doesn't sound like the best idea depending on what industry we are talking about. medicine, yes. Art, no (we're kinda going through that right now actually).
>In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s the most common and pervasive result of anonymity, but it sure is a shame.
This quote constantly rings in my head about topics like this:
>The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
It's the real downside of apathy when you see complaints about those big sites out there and how they screw up. You advertising a new site means the most interested are going to mostly include the worst actors, who eventually put off the best actors. Or at least disproportionately include them.
As a simple example: say Twitter has 10 million users and 1000 nazis (utopic, I know). Now your new no BS alternative attracts 0.1% of users but 10% Nazis. Still far from a majority. But by the way these forums work, your site will be 1% nazis, and those nazis will be some of your loudest actors if left unchecked. 100x more concentrated and it will feel some 1000x more nazi.
doesn't sound like the best idea depending on what industry we are talking about. medicine, yes. Art, no (we're kinda going through that right now actually).
>In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s the most common and pervasive result of anonymity, but it sure is a shame.
This quote constantly rings in my head about topics like this:
>The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
It's the real downside of apathy when you see complaints about those big sites out there and how they screw up. You advertising a new site means the most interested are going to mostly include the worst actors, who eventually put off the best actors. Or at least disproportionately include them.
As a simple example: say Twitter has 10 million users and 1000 nazis (utopic, I know). Now your new no BS alternative attracts 0.1% of users but 10% Nazis. Still far from a majority. But by the way these forums work, your site will be 1% nazis, and those nazis will be some of your loudest actors if left unchecked. 100x more concentrated and it will feel some 1000x more nazi.
I’m fascinated by the Nazi question (what to do with them).
I think we should allow heterodox beliefs in public forums since at least this reduces the effect of echo chambers. The other alternative is to ban certain ideas from the mainstream, but I think this leads to groups like Nazis just moving to dedicated sites where their ideas are reinforced.
Like I’d rather see a Nazi subreddit where those ideas are likely to see more challenges, than some random Nazi site where bad ideas metasticize in the shadows. Maybe the spooks prefer it this way since different sites makes it easier to categorise people.
I think we should allow heterodox beliefs in public forums since at least this reduces the effect of echo chambers. The other alternative is to ban certain ideas from the mainstream, but I think this leads to groups like Nazis just moving to dedicated sites where their ideas are reinforced.
Like I’d rather see a Nazi subreddit where those ideas are likely to see more challenges, than some random Nazi site where bad ideas metasticize in the shadows. Maybe the spooks prefer it this way since different sites makes it easier to categorise people.
Why would Nazis (or flat-earthers or QAnon or any other group likely to receive _substantial_ challenges to their world-view) stay somewhere where they'd be challenged, though? On a Reddit-like platform they'd downvote and/or ban to ensure it's almost entirely an echo-chamber, like every other part of Reddit.
If they somehow weren't able to control that, then I suspect they'd move to another platform organically, because why would they put up with a constant flow of opposing viewpoints that these groups believe, with absolute certainty, to be wrong?
If they somehow weren't able to control that, then I suspect they'd move to another platform organically, because why would they put up with a constant flow of opposing viewpoints that these groups believe, with absolute certainty, to be wrong?
Have you read what Nazis write on the internet?
They would stay there because there's a huge userbase to convert and they probably enjoy being challenged and justifying their horrible views because they want lurkers to read it.
If you ever meet an actual Nazi you should ask them if they want to discuss Jews with you. I'm willing to bet they won't shy away from accepting the invitation even if you were offering it because you wanted to challenge their views.
It takes a very special kind of person to openly be a Nazi and they don't think like your typical Joe.
They would stay there because there's a huge userbase to convert and they probably enjoy being challenged and justifying their horrible views because they want lurkers to read it.
If you ever meet an actual Nazi you should ask them if they want to discuss Jews with you. I'm willing to bet they won't shy away from accepting the invitation even if you were offering it because you wanted to challenge their views.
It takes a very special kind of person to openly be a Nazi and they don't think like your typical Joe.
> back then it wasn’t clear that we’d ever be able to have maps at our fingertips regardless of internet access.
Offline map databases were commom then; it wasn't uncommon for car navigation systems to come with them (expensive to update, though), as well as handheld devices
In fact, while they were not common before the 2000s, first-party navigation systems with offline digital maps for cars have been around at least since the 1980s, as have other forms of consumer offline digital maps. Online maps are newer than offline.
> This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps
The last of many critical errors before the car got stuck might have been avoided by using a map, but they had and used a paper map shortly before, when choosing the alternate route that was, in fact, closed; it wasn't a problem caused by maps not being available (and there is a reason keeping paper road maps, especially of unfamiliar areas, when driving in them was a widespread practice until digital maps with automatic offline downloads tied to GPS became ubiquitous.
Offline map databases were commom then; it wasn't uncommon for car navigation systems to come with them (expensive to update, though), as well as handheld devices
In fact, while they were not common before the 2000s, first-party navigation systems with offline digital maps for cars have been around at least since the 1980s, as have other forms of consumer offline digital maps. Online maps are newer than offline.
> This was back in the era of that poor CNET reporter that got lost with his family in the mountains precisely because of no maps
The last of many critical errors before the car got stuck might have been avoided by using a map, but they had and used a paper map shortly before, when choosing the alternate route that was, in fact, closed; it wasn't a problem caused by maps not being available (and there is a reason keeping paper road maps, especially of unfamiliar areas, when driving in them was a widespread practice until digital maps with automatic offline downloads tied to GPS became ubiquitous.
[deleted]
>downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally
Before smartphones this was common. Standalone gps units had maps locally stored. Some of the ones mounted in car dashboards stored them on an internal DVD. I used to have to drive a lot for work long before they were commonly built in to cars and I had an aftermarket one mounted on my dashboard, a little 2” monochrome display. Storage was tight, and I’d have to hook it up to my computer to swap out map sets if I was traveling further than usual.
Before smartphones this was common. Standalone gps units had maps locally stored. Some of the ones mounted in car dashboards stored them on an internal DVD. I used to have to drive a lot for work long before they were commonly built in to cars and I had an aftermarket one mounted on my dashboard, a little 2” monochrome display. Storage was tight, and I’d have to hook it up to my computer to swap out map sets if I was traveling further than usual.
But google maps provide offline maps, and have done it for years. You just have to save them in advance.
I haven't run across any Cyberpunk fiction that didn't feature exploitation of other people with the aid of technology. That depressing aspect of it is sort of backed in. If it's utopian, it's not cyberpunk, almost by definition.
It was bullshit from the start
Free information is worth what you paud for it.
Authority figures and scientists don't share the expensive info.
Authority figures and scientists don't share the expensive info.
> Instead we get one where you can’t even be anonymous without rubbing elbows with child predators.
Says the person posting under the name "sillysaurusx."
> Whonix community who wanted to nix google maps entirely; he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally, which I think is going to be prescient one day. It already is in many parts of the world — you don’t have cell service
Here's an idea, maybe he should print those maps out, bind them together into a larger map, and then find a really complicated way to fold them up so he can keep them handy when needed.
> In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught.
And yet.. it is still produced in the physical world where none of these constraints actually exist. It's only promulgated and marketed through anonymous means.
Says the person posting under the name "sillysaurusx."
> Whonix community who wanted to nix google maps entirely; he spent a lot of time downloading maps and trying to make a way to view them locally, which I think is going to be prescient one day. It already is in many parts of the world — you don’t have cell service
Here's an idea, maybe he should print those maps out, bind them together into a larger map, and then find a really complicated way to fold them up so he can keep them handy when needed.
> In some sense cp is the ultimate test of anonymity, since you’ll be thrown in prison pretty much instantly if caught.
And yet.. it is still produced in the physical world where none of these constraints actually exist. It's only promulgated and marketed through anonymous means.
>> [...] you can’t even be anonymous [...]
> Says the person posting under the name "sillysaurusx."
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. I recognize that username as someone who has been posting here for a long time. Not to encourage doxxing or making his identity the focus, but he has lots of contact details on his user profile. Tons of people are identifiable on here, even if the usernames are whimsical.
> Says the person posting under the name "sillysaurusx."
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. I recognize that username as someone who has been posting here for a long time. Not to encourage doxxing or making his identity the focus, but he has lots of contact details on his user profile. Tons of people are identifiable on here, even if the usernames are whimsical.
[deleted]
“The law was changed a few weeks later to include private persons and sole traders as protected lsps, not just companies, but they had to convict me.”
> If convicted, this could land me in jail for 6 to 10 years.
The 6 to 10 years is the least of his worries. The guy will be labeled a chomo and probably killed as a result. All for running a Tor exit node. What a time to be alive.
The 6 to 10 years is the least of his worries. The guy will be labeled a chomo and probably killed as a result. All for running a Tor exit node. What a time to be alive.
This case was in Austria, not the US, and was quite some time ago (early 2010s). He was charged under a law criminalizing "support of general distribution", not possession. He was sentenced to probation, and left the country.
I’ve never seen the term chomo before and I’m curious about its origin. Is it “homo” but with ‘c’ for child tacked on the front, or is it Spanish? Or something else, like a portmanteau of child molester?
It stands for child molester. The other term you hear all the time inside is “weird” or “weirdo.” There are others, diaper sniper, skinner (“skin bief”). You generally won’t get killed though. People like to say that but in fed low, where all the cp stuff goes, they’re all protected and they’ll ship you out if you get caught hurting them. And they WILL tell.
In the U.K. they tend to be called nonces
Always weird when you stumble into an encryption conversation
Always weird when you stumble into an encryption conversation
A former coworker started a startup, and very nearly used it in the name until he was informed of how the UK views the word.
How did nonce get that meaning in the uk? I've always known nonce to be a single use number
Seems it's unclear https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nonce#Etymology_2
> 1975. Unknown, derived from British criminal slang. Several origins have been proposed; possibly derived from dialectal nonce, nonse (“stupid, worthless individual”) (but this cannot be shown to predate nonce "child-molester" and is likely a toned-down usage of the same insult), or Nance, nance (“effeminate man, homosexual”), from nancy or nancyboy. The rhyme with ponce has also been noted.
> As prison slang also said to be an acronym for "Not On Normal Communal Exercise" (Stevens 2012), but this is likely a backronym.
> 1975. Unknown, derived from British criminal slang. Several origins have been proposed; possibly derived from dialectal nonce, nonse (“stupid, worthless individual”) (but this cannot be shown to predate nonce "child-molester" and is likely a toned-down usage of the same insult), or Nance, nance (“effeminate man, homosexual”), from nancy or nancyboy. The rhyme with ponce has also been noted.
> As prison slang also said to be an acronym for "Not On Normal Communal Exercise" (Stevens 2012), but this is likely a backronym.
Wow, "backronym". Cool word. Interesting something can be widely accepted among a nation and have little to no surety about etymology
Just wait until you hear about "okay". It's widely used in languages around the world, and there are dozens of competing etymologies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_etymologies_o...
That was an incredible read. thank you for that. "Oll Korrect", Old kinderhook(!) , oke okeh, Ohne Korrectur. Etymology is awesome. I really overestimated how much we know about our own language I guess!
something like:
Not Observing Normal Community Exercise
Not Observing Normal Community Exercise
> The other term you hear all the time inside is “weird” or “weirdo.”
I'll have to request a user name change I guess.
I'll have to request a user name change I guess.
Child porn, probably not getting killed but actual child molesters is pretty common.
Only ever saw a chomo ex-cop get close to being killed because he didn’t check in. Gang members on the other hand, saw quite a few get killed. Two for being in a gay relationship. That’s the US prison system for you. No clue what state is like.
"Moes" for short also.
The way I learned it is that it is a portmanteau of child molester. The extra "o" in the middle is used because "chmo" is hard to pronounce.
"Chimo" would make more sense in that case, so that's probably not the origin of it.
Would you also argue that mofo can't derive from motherfucker because that would be mofu?
Yeah, I can't imagine anyone wanting slang to rhyme.
Maybe English does have a little bit of vowel harmony after all.
It's short for "child molester," and happens to sound a lot like "homo." Very common term in prison.
And innuendo and deniability is just as common a past time.
The UK's Carry On films and other TV programs like the BBC Are you being served tv sitcom were heavily into innuendo, in as much a way as some jokes in Disney Pixar films fly over the head's of kids, but is understood by most adults perfectly well.
Not only is it a way to quantify peoples mental abilities by whether they laugh in a cinema watched by a secret camera and AI or whether documented on social media, or listened into by our phones and then adverts, its also an in plain site way for some people in society to identify people for exploitation and manipulation, just like teenagers are dedicated followers of fashion.
Its quite interesting really, just like the changes in slang language is a stealth form of working out the age of someone typing online, by the use of their vocabulary and interests. In some respects humans are just lemmings and very people actually come up with original content, not that the original content is necessarily any good.
But mainstream trends happen for a reason, in much the same way as you wont really see anything go viral like they used to on the internet in the early 00's.
Peoples reactions whether culturally or legally correct or not are also telling.
Its all psychological and biological mind games, because histidine and carnosine as two amino acids, which could get alot of males into trouble if they are not careful!
I found the recent ambulance strikes in the UK quite telling, they would attend cat 1 or level 1 people who basically had an over active immune system ie allergic reactions, but refused to attend to cat 2 or level 2 people who had an under active immune system which groups the elderly into that group automatically. In other words the recent UK ambulance strikes were a stealth form of eugenics on the elderly, but most of the british population wouldnt have known this.
And that is my point, there is alot more going on that meets the eye, but if Freud was right, what does that make many parents?
The UK's Carry On films and other TV programs like the BBC Are you being served tv sitcom were heavily into innuendo, in as much a way as some jokes in Disney Pixar films fly over the head's of kids, but is understood by most adults perfectly well.
Not only is it a way to quantify peoples mental abilities by whether they laugh in a cinema watched by a secret camera and AI or whether documented on social media, or listened into by our phones and then adverts, its also an in plain site way for some people in society to identify people for exploitation and manipulation, just like teenagers are dedicated followers of fashion.
Its quite interesting really, just like the changes in slang language is a stealth form of working out the age of someone typing online, by the use of their vocabulary and interests. In some respects humans are just lemmings and very people actually come up with original content, not that the original content is necessarily any good.
But mainstream trends happen for a reason, in much the same way as you wont really see anything go viral like they used to on the internet in the early 00's.
Peoples reactions whether culturally or legally correct or not are also telling.
Its all psychological and biological mind games, because histidine and carnosine as two amino acids, which could get alot of males into trouble if they are not careful!
I found the recent ambulance strikes in the UK quite telling, they would attend cat 1 or level 1 people who basically had an over active immune system ie allergic reactions, but refused to attend to cat 2 or level 2 people who had an under active immune system which groups the elderly into that group automatically. In other words the recent UK ambulance strikes were a stealth form of eugenics on the elderly, but most of the british population wouldnt have known this.
And that is my point, there is alot more going on that meets the eye, but if Freud was right, what does that make many parents?
I remember it because SNL had a skit where The Rock invented a "robo chomo"[0]. Given that SNL used it, I thought it was a pretty mainstream term.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0NgUhEs1R4
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0NgUhEs1R4
Yes, the latter
> probably killed as a result
This is a violent fantasy. I'd estimate that 99.9% of child molesters who go to prison walk out alive and relatively uninjured.
This is a violent fantasy. I'd estimate that 99.9% of child molesters who go to prison walk out alive and relatively uninjured.
It wasn’t in the US, and it was for him either 3 months jail or probation for some years, he was also able to leave Europe completely, most likely because they know he had nothing to do with it but per the article there was no plea.
On the other hand, his picture and actual name appear in articles like this one that will show up in a background search.
> I was charged and convicted with the support, not the ownership. There is ownership, sale, distribution for no monetary gain, and support of general distribution. The last is what I got and the lowest of all.
Did they also charge the ISP's involved in transferring those network packets?
Did they also charge the ISP's involved in transferring those network packets?
i think this was more than CP.
"What do you do now?
I left Austria and now work for a German company in IT, and have a data center in Kosovo… hosting grey area things there. Warez primarily.
Also, I do want to add that I have more backstory. The CP was not the only reason for the raid.
What do you mean?
Someone used the same exit to hack a NATO facility in Poland, which deals with chemical and biological weapons. Disarming, etc.
The US tried to extradite me from Croatia in 2017, with not much more info than national security.
They lost their case as I am married to a local and cannot be extradited outside the EU."
"What do you do now?
I left Austria and now work for a German company in IT, and have a data center in Kosovo… hosting grey area things there. Warez primarily.
Also, I do want to add that I have more backstory. The CP was not the only reason for the raid.
What do you mean?
Someone used the same exit to hack a NATO facility in Poland, which deals with chemical and biological weapons. Disarming, etc.
The US tried to extradite me from Croatia in 2017, with not much more info than national security.
They lost their case as I am married to a local and cannot be extradited outside the EU."
I noticed they mentioned “logs” of you talking about hosting CP, can you elaborate?
They took a bunch of IRC logs where I stated what I can and can’t host at a web hosting provider I owned. The logs do exist but are taken out of context.
The "reporting" here is at the level of a 90s scene mag.
They took a bunch of IRC logs where I stated what I can and can’t host at a web hosting provider I owned. The logs do exist but are taken out of context.
The "reporting" here is at the level of a 90s scene mag.
A lot of wink-wink edgyness on both sides. Almost as if there are no mature people sharing their views.
>Someone used the same exit to hack a NATO facility in Poland, which deals with chemical and biological weapons. Disarming, etc.
COVID origin story confirmed! Joking, but that's like something from a movie. I think its really awesome that William was willing to stand for what he believed. TOR is so important for free speech and exit nodes are critical for scaling the system. It just sucks how much his life was disrupted from this.
By the way: there's some very interesting activity happening on Tor at the moment where it seems that overwhelmingly people have decided that they are going to police their own speech to remove CP. In the early days hidden wiki had dedicated pages for that shit. But it's not a thing any more. Furthermore, it seems like hacktivists are actively making sure that the Tor ecosystem stays healthy. Really fascinating because in theory they could just do whatever they liked.
COVID origin story confirmed! Joking, but that's like something from a movie. I think its really awesome that William was willing to stand for what he believed. TOR is so important for free speech and exit nodes are critical for scaling the system. It just sucks how much his life was disrupted from this.
By the way: there's some very interesting activity happening on Tor at the moment where it seems that overwhelmingly people have decided that they are going to police their own speech to remove CP. In the early days hidden wiki had dedicated pages for that shit. But it's not a thing any more. Furthermore, it seems like hacktivists are actively making sure that the Tor ecosystem stays healthy. Really fascinating because in theory they could just do whatever they liked.
Common knowledge from when Tor just started was to limit your exit traffic to countries which cannot extradite you. And definitely block your own country.
>By law they were right as the law only protected registered companies,
So basically to protect yourself running an exit node, register a company, preferably offshore or not within X jurisdiction.
So basically to protect yourself running an exit node, register a company, preferably offshore or not within X jurisdiction.
The more I learn the more I realise that this has been the case for a long time.
Protections for companies are greater, and create more hurdles for law enforcement, than protections for individuals.
Protections for companies are greater, and create more hurdles for law enforcement, than protections for individuals.
Corporations have more human rights than humans do!
The authorities in Styria, south Austria, charged him:
https://web.archive.org/web/20141004142101/http://raided4tor...
https://web.archive.org/web/20141004142101/http://raided4tor...
"I rented a server in Poland and someone uploaded CP to an Austrian image hoster. They reported it to the Austrian police, which contacted the ISP, which gave them my WHMCS login IP and then subpoenaed UPC Austria for my address, then queried the weapons registry."
The FBI method of fabricating criminal charges. Criminals sleep comfortably knowing their governments are more interested in playing whack a mole for political image than effectively doing their job. Notice how in Austria they aren't charging Google, or Facebook, or any other entities where such data passes through every day.
The FBI method of fabricating criminal charges. Criminals sleep comfortably knowing their governments are more interested in playing whack a mole for political image than effectively doing their job. Notice how in Austria they aren't charging Google, or Facebook, or any other entities where such data passes through every day.
Yup, had the same experience, also got raided, but unlike him, I got exonerated :)
No conviction whatsoever. I had obviously nothing like files nor logs nor whatsoever, and like him the raid was not really related to that, but instead a fight against the government against e-voting.
It was certainly quite a ride...
I'd avoid hosting a tor exit node at all costs, considering that they are a lot of bad actors on tor. Even some 3 letter agents can host cp on your tor sites and then accuse you.
> Even some 3 letter agents can host cp on your tor sites and then accuse you.
Well they can probably put illegal material in your apartment and then accuse you.
Well they can probably put illegal material in your apartment and then accuse you.
its also possible to mail it to you under a "controlled delivery" investigation
I'm under the impression that mail doesn't "belong" to you until it is opened.
its not very hard to convince someone to open or sign for registered mail.
this usually last resort with hopes of eliciting self incriminatory statements.
i.e. [i didnt do the CP i was just snooping servers]
this usually last resort with hopes of eliciting self incriminatory statements.
i.e. [i didnt do the CP i was just snooping servers]
>Even some 3 letter agents can host cp on your tor sites and then accuse you.
You can't use exit nodes to run "tor sites", because they only allow outbound connections. You can run hidden services, but they work entirely through relays (ie. not exit nodes). Given that hidden services are end to end encrypted (none of the relays in the middle can see the traffic), and to my knowledge relay operators have generally not been prosecuted, your specific scenario is unlikely to play out.
That said, if you're running a exit node and the FBI wants to frame you, they can still use your relay to conduct some illegal action (eg. uploading CSAM to some clearnet site), and pin it on you.
You can't use exit nodes to run "tor sites", because they only allow outbound connections. You can run hidden services, but they work entirely through relays (ie. not exit nodes). Given that hidden services are end to end encrypted (none of the relays in the middle can see the traffic), and to my knowledge relay operators have generally not been prosecuted, your specific scenario is unlikely to play out.
That said, if you're running a exit node and the FBI wants to frame you, they can still use your relay to conduct some illegal action (eg. uploading CSAM to some clearnet site), and pin it on you.
If you become an ISP (with your AS) then it is less of a concern (in the US) since ISP have some protections. Emerald Onion [0] is an example of doing this. Actually in their faq [1], they state:
"Digital Millennium Copyright Act Safe Harbor
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) offers four safe harbors to protect ISPs from copyright liability for the acts of their users, provided that certain requirements are met (17 U.S.C. § 512). Emerald Onion is a section 512(a) “conduit” provider."
If you want to read the section it is here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 (it is generally about "Limitations on liability relating to material online" not just copyright)
[0] https://emeraldonion.org/
[1] https://emeraldonion.org/faq/
"Digital Millennium Copyright Act Safe Harbor
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) offers four safe harbors to protect ISPs from copyright liability for the acts of their users, provided that certain requirements are met (17 U.S.C. § 512). Emerald Onion is a section 512(a) “conduit” provider."
If you want to read the section it is here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 (it is generally about "Limitations on liability relating to material online" not just copyright)
[0] https://emeraldonion.org/
[1] https://emeraldonion.org/faq/
I‘m still amazed how the security agencies pulled it off, to have the ultimate honeypot, a digitized crime scene masquerading as a market place auto-incriminating endless amounts of people. A Kompromat-Miner.
Speaking of miners, it‘s not like they are at the same risk as tor node operators. Not. At. All…
https://gizmodo.com/child-pornography-that-researchers-found...
Speaking of miners, it‘s not like they are at the same risk as tor node operators. Not. At. All…
https://gizmodo.com/child-pornography-that-researchers-found...
This kind of stuff has happened many times before.
I did a video about "the dark web" a couple years ago where I talked about people on zeronet and freenet getting snagged because of potentially the contents of their cache store. It's made for a non technical audience
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMJlQU9TDQ
I did a video about "the dark web" a couple years ago where I talked about people on zeronet and freenet getting snagged because of potentially the contents of their cache store. It's made for a non technical audience
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMJlQU9TDQ
It's almost like they don't want us to run exit nodes...
This man's plight is exactly the reason I won't.
This man's plight is exactly the reason I won't.
Yep I'm sure setting an example contributed a lot here.
This decision is not going to stop exit nodes (and the worst stuff on tor probably doesn't even use exit nodes but hidden services) but it keeps Austrian IPs off the map making them seem a country in control.
The same way companies go crazy mitigating ratings on bitsight but don't care about fixing real root problems because they're not visible anywhere.
Keeping your front yard clean is a big thing in IT. In our company our corporate network is not detected by bitsight but our guest wifi is. Meaning one bad apple in a handful of guests can give our entire multinational a bad rating.
So what did they do? Make sure bitsight actually shows our real endpoints and makes an accurate result? Doing some rudimentary checks on the guest portal to make sure outdated systems can't connect? Only allowing VPN access on the guest wifi?
Nope they just turned off the guest wifi so that contractors (who still need to do the work we pay them to do) plug in the corp network against policy, or use the coffee shop wifi next door.
Bitsight rating fixed, problem hidden but not actually solved and in fact worsened by people connecting unmanaged gear to the corp network as guest. All the while gloating in the A rating which is completely meaningless.
This decision is not going to stop exit nodes (and the worst stuff on tor probably doesn't even use exit nodes but hidden services) but it keeps Austrian IPs off the map making them seem a country in control.
The same way companies go crazy mitigating ratings on bitsight but don't care about fixing real root problems because they're not visible anywhere.
Keeping your front yard clean is a big thing in IT. In our company our corporate network is not detected by bitsight but our guest wifi is. Meaning one bad apple in a handful of guests can give our entire multinational a bad rating.
So what did they do? Make sure bitsight actually shows our real endpoints and makes an accurate result? Doing some rudimentary checks on the guest portal to make sure outdated systems can't connect? Only allowing VPN access on the guest wifi?
Nope they just turned off the guest wifi so that contractors (who still need to do the work we pay them to do) plug in the corp network against policy, or use the coffee shop wifi next door.
Bitsight rating fixed, problem hidden but not actually solved and in fact worsened by people connecting unmanaged gear to the corp network as guest. All the while gloating in the A rating which is completely meaningless.
Mods, please add "(2012)" to title...
Or insert something like "[in 2012]". It's a new article about a case a decade ago.
IMHO, this happening today would be more alarming, since Tor today is a bit more mainstream.
The first thought that came to mind when I saw the title is that perhaps there's some new push against Tor.
IMHO, this happening today would be more alarming, since Tor today is a bit more mainstream.
The first thought that came to mind when I saw the title is that perhaps there's some new push against Tor.
Back then in Germany they charged the people who reported CP.
Can someone explain the unrevokable legacy IP addresses?
Before the current regional Internet registry system (ARIN, RIPE, LACNIC, AfriNIC, APNIC) began, organizations (and some individuals) were "given" IP addresses by emailing IANA or Jon Postel directly.
Assignments that predate the RIRs are called "legacy" assignments and are, theoretically, not subject to the RIR system because those who received those addresses only agreed to the terms as they existed at the time. Those terms were usually "you asked, here you go."
In practice, legacy assignments are left alone because no one wants to go to the trouble of arguing with big entities about it. (Most of the /8 assignments people gripe about as being wasteful are assigned to entities with lawyers, guns, or both.) People who have a handful of small legacy assignments get the protection of this because it's especially not worth the effort to say "well, if all you have is a /22 legacy, yours is now part of the RIR system, deal with it". Especially since the only recourse would be to allocate it to someone else and wouldn't that be fun.
But no IP address is actually "unrevokable." All you have to do is piss off a handful of the Tier 1s or a slightly larger number of Tier 2s and you'll quickly find your "bulletproof" addresses quite useless.
Assignments that predate the RIRs are called "legacy" assignments and are, theoretically, not subject to the RIR system because those who received those addresses only agreed to the terms as they existed at the time. Those terms were usually "you asked, here you go."
In practice, legacy assignments are left alone because no one wants to go to the trouble of arguing with big entities about it. (Most of the /8 assignments people gripe about as being wasteful are assigned to entities with lawyers, guns, or both.) People who have a handful of small legacy assignments get the protection of this because it's especially not worth the effort to say "well, if all you have is a /22 legacy, yours is now part of the RIR system, deal with it". Especially since the only recourse would be to allocate it to someone else and wouldn't that be fun.
But no IP address is actually "unrevokable." All you have to do is piss off a handful of the Tier 1s or a slightly larger number of Tier 2s and you'll quickly find your "bulletproof" addresses quite useless.
Thanks. The "unrevokable" part sounded fishy, but I get it now.
Ok, so if one is guilty of transmitting or carrying illegal content merely through providing the medium of transmission, wouldn't that mean the ISPs involved, and the owners of the telephone cables, are just as guilty? Wouldn't any postman, and for example the USPS, be guilty if a private individual posted something illegal?
Absolutely, if they applied the laws evenly. Which they don’t. Ever.
Might be worth adding (in 2012/Austria) to the title. Few people understood what Tor was back then.
Related ongoing thread:
Why Host in Kosovo? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837690 - July 2023 (61 comments)
Why Host in Kosovo? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837690 - July 2023 (61 comments)
So he as guns in his bedroom and 3 more guns in his safe along with a machete (all apparently legal). Not in Mollenbeek or northeastern Paris, but near Graz.
Just your typical guy then.
Running TOR exits are a noble thing to do but people like this damage TOR's reputation.
And while there doesn't seem to be proof he intentionally got involved in CP, a smart pedophile probably would set up an exit node just for plausible deniability.
Just your typical guy then.
Running TOR exits are a noble thing to do but people like this damage TOR's reputation.
And while there doesn't seem to be proof he intentionally got involved in CP, a smart pedophile probably would set up an exit node just for plausible deniability.
Anyone actually viewing CP would likely have traces of it on their computer. Just running an exit node isn't going to save you.
I'd imagine someone that savvy is familiar with encrypted VMs etc. or maybe just hiding their computer.
One of the concerning problems with the current judicative system is that most judges have no idea about modern technology because of their age. My father asked me today if I'm also working on "AI"... I told him that artificial intelligence doesn't exist and that it's a hype about software that's really good at imitating intelligence.
Why don’t we put Tor nodes in space?
Seems like a few hundred micro satellites could circumvent sovereignty this way.
Seems like a few hundred micro satellites could circumvent sovereignty this way.
You still need downlinks with this. You could have some base stations run by amateurs, but that paints a target on their backs in a similar way running a Tor node already does.
As with Sealand/HavenCo and international waters/micronations more broadly. Even if no country with guns chooses to take direct action, it takes very little--if they care enough--to cut off supplies and any meaningful communications.
Does anyone remember https://wired.com/2007/01/the-pirate-bay-2/ ?
Yes, until recently I worked for one of the principals of Sealand. Small world.
You need approval to launch satellites. Plus a stupid amount of money.
Only 11-year-old Libertarians think this way. "Circumventing sovereignty" is the surest way to destruction. Anyone who stands outside the protection of a legitimate sovereign power will be immediately destroyed by a real country. If you fly your shit out in space and declare your satellites to be independent of any flag, I am sure that they will all promptly disappear due to mysterious causes. Likewise, if you believe that you will simply move to a remote floating platform where you declare independence, you will soon discover what the U.S. Navy is for.
Far from just 11-year old libertarians - virtually all Americans don't understand (or acknowledge the existence of) our empire. They think Epstein's private island really was private.
They will most likely be owned by a company that still under a jurisdiction on earth.
So what about those that own the cables between the nodes that served the files?
What are the aforementioned "taken out of context" IRC logs? Very curious to see if they were painting the bullseye around the arrow here, or if he actually said he'd host CP.
My company blocks all known Tor IP addresses. We simply don't have the capacity (or patience) to deal with the 99% burpsuite spam and abuse that originates from these servers.
Yeah I've had police ring with a search warrant for the same reason.
Yay. Fun.
Yay. Fun.
Moral of the Story: Run your Exit Node in your bathroom and you should be fine
Is this post from 10 years ago being promoted by Reddit bots and made its way here?
This guy doesn’t sound innocent. It sounds like he just kept his shit offshore.
This is similar to the first Episode of the "Mr. Robot" tv show. wow.
Not really. That person in the show didn't run an exit node but an entire commercial content network. The person in this case has no involvement in creating or hosting content, he's just involved in transporting traffic (any kind) because he believes in anonimity. His only motive is a principle, not money and he certainly doesn't agree with the content.
I loved that scene by the way, where he disregards the changes of emotional state in his target and then just explains he's doing this in person because his shrink wants him to interact more with people.
A really super strong first 10 minutes of a truly excellent show. Well except season 2 IMO, that was too drawn out for me.
I loved that scene by the way, where he disregards the changes of emotional state in his target and then just explains he's doing this in person because his shrink wants him to interact more with people.
A really super strong first 10 minutes of a truly excellent show. Well except season 2 IMO, that was too drawn out for me.
He runs https://basehost.eu
Yes but I don't think he did back when this happened? And still he's only a "bulletproof" hoster as far as I understand.
I was always standoffish of Freenet for this kind of reason.
> In Austria
*not in the US
Bunch of high level politicians were flying to Epstein’s island raping underage girls. Only person convicted is a woman.
Amazing how there is a protected class of wealthy.
Amazing how there is a protected class of wealthy.
I'm so happy to read the glowies were unable to extradite him to the US.
Hard working nice people
Hard working mean people
Local politicians
------------------------
Property criminals
Violent criminals
Government apparatchiks
MAPS
Federal politicians
Hard working nice people
Hard working mean people
Local politicians
------------------------
Property criminals
Violent criminals
Government apparatchiks
MAPS
Federal politicians
No, that is not why he was found guilty.
He was found guilty, because running a Tor exit node is not sufficient defense against potential child porn violations. That's good. Because if not every child porn offender could do just that.
He was found guilty, because running a Tor exit node is not sufficient defense against potential child porn violations. That's good. Because if not every child porn offender could do just that.
That actually sounds like a pretty smart plan for pedos. They'll just need to make sure not to keep any of their trash on their own computers, which means they'd need to remember some pretty long onion addresses, but it would probably work as well.
Luckily most pedos are not smart enough to do more than basic disk encryption.
Luckily most pedos are not smart enough to do more than basic disk encryption.
Quite logical, same in France and likely many countries; if you run a Tor exit node (or any type of open proxy), you get visited by the police if someone does something wrong on your exit node.
Otherwise what could happen is that you run a Tor node and use it as an excuse for any crime you do.
Otherwise what could happen is that you run a Tor node and use it as an excuse for any crime you do.
Couldn't you say the same for every coffee shop that gives random people Wi-Fi access?
A more politically controversial example would be social media/'platforms', IMO. Google and Facebook are allowed to be in possession of CSAM, as long as someone else put it there.
Of course. But "someone sit there for an hour downloading torrents" is not something they'd bother to chase vs "this guy seems to be downloading 854 torrents in last 24 hours"
Your coffee shop could turn over MAC addresses if the police showed up with a warrant - especially all of the 3rd party managed solutions with logging.
Your effective wi-fi MAC address — the one other devices see — isn't fixed in stone, and in fact modern OSes build in support for automatically + continuously randomizing it: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/how-to-use-rando...
Not just support it, but some platforms randomize by default
https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/wifi-mac-random...
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/security/secb9cb3140c/...
https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/wifi-mac-random...
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/security/secb9cb3140c/...
Yes. This drove me a little insane since I keep track of my devices at home via DHCP lease.
Same, I've had to disable it on devices of my family.
I like that it's the default though. Privacy first!
I like that it's the default though. Privacy first!
When you actually connect to the wifi network the mac addresses stay consistent and stable on macOS / iOS at least over multiple sessions. If they didn't do that, then a bunch of stuff would probably break.
Technically, yes, but realistically most random mom-and-pop places just have a random $50 router somewhere in the corner.
Would it be fair/sane/reasonable to convict such business owners if one of their customers commits a cybercrime?
Would it be fair/sane/reasonable to convict such business owners if one of their customers commits a cybercrime?
What person doing illegal stuff doesn't randomize their MAC address?
There’s this silly HN conceit of these super sophisticated adversaries when the reality is most people don’t know the first thing about technology or network topology and wouldn’t know why they should obfuscate their MAC in the first place. It wouldn’t catch the 1% of sophisticated black hats but that describes a small fraction of actual people doing stuff online.
MAC addresses are useless to track, you can change it, randomize it (I think even Microsoft windows has that feature built in too), or simply just throw away that wireless adapter used. It would be useful if for example these MAC addresses are tied to your identity, say when you buy a laptop/phone, you have to go in the process of adding these MAC addresses to be linked to you of some sort.
The MAC address anyone can change?
If I was looking up illegal numbers, I would not want to do so in a coffee shop where someone might see me doing so.
In Germany this was an actual issue until recent years - you were strictly liable for what transited your network.
As mentioned in the article, laws protect companies.
Running an exit node is not any different than being any other ISP. You are providing another hop between servers.
Swatting 2.0 will be people installing tor exit nodes
I'm trying to imagine a plausible reason to (a) run a Tor exit node, but also (b) not actually use Tor for online nefariousness, and I'm coming up blank. I don't think running a Tor node as an excuse is a real scenario. (edit: emphasis)
Edit2: Jeez guys. I support Tor. I'm saying anyone who runs an exit node is also going to use Tor for anything that might get them in trouble, not do those thing in the clear and "use Tor as an excuse" as suggested above. That's a silly scenario and a poor justification for criminalizing Tor exit nodes.
Edit2: Jeez guys. I support Tor. I'm saying anyone who runs an exit node is also going to use Tor for anything that might get them in trouble, not do those thing in the clear and "use Tor as an excuse" as suggested above. That's a silly scenario and a poor justification for criminalizing Tor exit nodes.
That's not how Tor works, you don't need to run a tor exit to use it.
If you were actually doing something nefarious and using tor for anonymity, running an exit from the same ip doesn't sound extremely smart.
If you were actually doing something nefarious and using tor for anonymity, running an exit from the same ip doesn't sound extremely smart.
You're misunderstanding the comment you're replying to. They're not saying you need an exit node to do bad stuff over Tor, they're saying that anybody with the technical ability and knowledge to run a tor exit mode would also choose to use Tor for any bad stuff, and that therefore it seems unlikely anyone who runs a tor exit node would also do bad stuff directly traceable to their own IP.
You're right, it took me a while but I see it now. The phrasing is confusing
Exactly, thank you.
Based on your wording, it sounds like you're conflating the two things together... running an exit node and using tor are orthogonal to one another both in value provided to the user as well as effort involved.
Plausible reasons for:
(a) you greatly value privacy and the privacy of others such that you are willing to altruistically provide an exit node as a service; your country is a police state and you are sympathetic to those affected while also willing to accept the risk
(b) you greatly value your privacy and do not trust your ISP; you cannot access content sanctioned in your country; you are an internet engineer and need to test services which depend on privacy as a core feature
Plausible reasons for:
(a) you greatly value privacy and the privacy of others such that you are willing to altruistically provide an exit node as a service; your country is a police state and you are sympathetic to those affected while also willing to accept the risk
(b) you greatly value your privacy and do not trust your ISP; you cannot access content sanctioned in your country; you are an internet engineer and need to test services which depend on privacy as a core feature
Also, I assume it wasn't intentional, but consider against arguing from the position of "I can't think of anything". You are betraying yourself by implying that you know all there is to know...which no one does.
Maybe if I'd said "I can't imagine X therefore Y must be true," but what I said was "I can't imagine X so I think Y" which doesn't imply I know everything at all. Quite the opposite imho. It implies I could change my opinion on Y if you showed me an example of X.
In any case, apparently that plus my use of the word "not" were ill-advised, since almost everyone here misread my comment to mean the opposite of what I actually meant. One person did read it as intended, and got another person to see it that way.
In any case, apparently that plus my use of the word "not" were ill-advised, since almost everyone here misread my comment to mean the opposite of what I actually meant. One person did read it as intended, and got another person to see it that way.
As someone else helpfully clarified for me, my point is that anyone with the technical skill to run a Tor exit node is also going to use Tor to hide any illegal activities they do online.
Yes because every one is living in a free country with no invasion of privacy rights and ISP to MITM every thing about you, US including btw with patriot Act.. and before you say “yeah but I am not doing anything illegal!?”, yet, laws change all the time, not to mention you don’t have to do anything illegal, you just don’t like spooks/ISP/etc. looking into your business, after all, it should be the case as a free citizen.
See my edit above and my previous replies to your sibling comments.
Any privacy advocate would do (a). There's lots of reasons to do (b) if you don't trust the government of the country you're in, which seems quite reasonable in a lot of countries around the world.
Of course, but who would do (a) without also using Tor for anything that could get them in trouble?
In some countries "online nefariousness" include things like trying to access gay communities, or looking information about abortion.
I strongly support Tor. I'm saying that anyone who runs an exit node is also going to use Tor for anything that might get them in trouble. Hence, it's nonsense to say that Tor exit nodes should be illegal on the grounds that they can be "used as an excuse," as the comment above suggested.
If running Tor protected you from any responsibility of traffic coming from you then it would be a real scenario. But there is an expectation that you should be at least somewhat responsible of traffic you generate. That is why running Tor exit node is often linked with meeting law enforcement officials.
> Further, as Kosovo is an extremely corrupt country, we are able to bribe both executive and judicative as well as getting information about court orders and raids before execution, enabling us to move servers out of the affected location, protecting our clients in any situation. Our excellent Serbian connections enable us to also move servers cross-border and play "ping pong" between both countries, essentially keeping content online forever.
[1] https://basehost.eu/