If you thought the FBI’s admin efforts for two separate child porn websites (in two investigations spaced a couple of years apart) were questionable, you have to wonder about the morality (or legality) of the US government becoming one of the world’s largest distributor of child pornography. And the number of sites the FBI was running during this investigation is staggering.Īccording to the new documents, the NIT was used against users of 23 separate websites. In reality, the deployment occurred the moment a user landed on any site utilizing Freedom Hosting - not just the child porn sites the FBI had taken control of. He NIT… will be deployed on the TARGET ACCOUNTS while the TARGET ACCOUNTS operate in the District of Maryland, to investigate any user who logs into any of the TARGET ACCOUNTS by entering a username and password. Contrary to its post-release statements about the scope of the “narrowly-tailored” warrant not being exceeded, the actual contents show the deployment of the NIT to unmask Tor users is much more aligned with Soghoian’s “grenade” description.Īs Cox points out, the TorMail affidavit says the NIT would only be delivered to logged-in, specifically-targeted TorMail users. The 99-page affidavit is lightly-redacted but contains some completely uncensored and surprising admissions from the agency.

“That is, while the warrant authorized hacking with a scalpel, the FBI delivered their malware to TorMail users with a grenade,” Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in an email. But now, after the warrants and their applications have finally been unsealed, experts say the agency illegally went further, and hacked perfectly legitimate users of the privacy-focused service. In 2013, the FBI received permission to hack over 300 specific users of dark web email service TorMail. Thanks to the ACLU’s push to unseal documents related to the FBI’s targeting of TorMail users and Freedom Hosting, the warrant affidavits supporting its NIT deployment have been released by the agency.

Tor porn collections