Playpen is the world's most famous dark-pornography pornography site created in August 2014. When closed in February 2015, the site has over 215,000 users and hosts 23,000 sexually explicit images and videos children as young as a toddler.
The shutdown operation, called Operation Pacifier, involves the FBI hijacking the site and continues serving content for two weeks. During this time the FBI uses a malware-based "Investigative Technique" to hack the web browser of users accessing the site, thereby revealing their identity. The operation led to the capture of 900 site users.
While the FBI claims to have knowledge of the existence of the website since its inception, it can not track the location of the server or the site owner. The reason they struggle is the fact that Playpen is organized as a Hidden service via Tor. Only site owner accidents reveal his IP address finally allowing law enforcement to keep track of both pages and personnel.
The investigation led to the following sentence in May 2017: Steven Chase, 57 years from Florida who created the website: 30 years in prison. Two other defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 20 years each before in 2017 for their involvement in Playpen.
The investigation was criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation because, after taking control of the website, the FBI went on for nearly two weeks to operate the website and thus distribute child pornography, the exact same crime the bureau wants to stop. The defendant's lawyer in this case stated that the FBI not only operates the website, but increases it so that the number of visitors increases sharply when it is under their control. There are, however, other voices, such as Steven Wilson, Head of the European Crime Center, who defend the actions taken because they will represent a modern response to modern problems.
In 2017, the indictment was dropped against one site member, after the court demanded that the details of the hacking tool be released. The FBI would rather keep the NIT (network investigation techniques) malware as a secret for future investigations.
Various challenges arose about possible FBI misuse of the early search warrant, which led to the possible dismissal of much of the evidence gathered against a defendant.
Video Playpen (website)
References
Maps Playpen (website)
External links
- Electronic Frontier Foundation - Frequently Asked Questions about the Playpen case
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments