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<\/a><\/span><\/p>\nThe case goes back to 2015 when the FBI operated a child pornography website for two weeks. Yes, you read that right. From February 20 to March 4, 2015, the FBI ran a website with more than 23,000 actual pictures and videos of children being sexually abused, including more than 9,000 of which could be downloaded by visitors to the site. According to court records, some of those children were almost too young to be in kindergarten.<\/p>\n
It began when the FBI discovered the location of the server for the so-called Playpen website, which was accessible only via the Tor network. The FBI raided the location, arrested the operator, and made the decision to leave the website up and running and allow visitors to the site to continue downloading images and videos. The FBI\u2019s reasoning (if it can rightly be called that) was that federal agents had the ability to inject malware into the server that would work its way back to the users\u2019 computers, defeating Tor\u2019s anonymity all along the way. The FBI tracked the site\u2019s visitors and later made more than 135 arrests including \u201ca pediatrician, a math teacher, a professor, a public school administrator, a preschool teacher, a former bank executive and a federal drug enforcement agent,\u201d according to a report from deepdotweb.com. Somehow, in the darkened mind of the FBI, the arrests justified spending two weeks peddling child pornography. And this is at least the third time<\/a> the FBI has done this type of thing.<\/p>\n But then, this is the same FBI that helped the NSA give us Fast and Furious<\/a>.<\/p>\n If the desire is to arrest and prosecute those who frequent child pornography sites, one might reasonably expect the agency to press on \u2014 even in the face of legal challenges \u2014 to get those convictions, right? Well, that all depends.<\/p>\n When the lawyer representing Jay Michaud, a school administrator from Vancouver, Washington, challenged the government\u2019s case against his client, demanding to see the source code for the hack the FBI alleges led agents to his client, the government dropped the case. According to a report<\/a> by ZDNet from March 6:<\/p>\n The FBI used a “network investigative technique”\u00a0\u2014 a hacking tool that in any other hands than the feds would be considered malware<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 to deanonymize the users of the Tor browser, a widely used app for easy access to the dark web, during its 2015 investigation into the website.<\/p>\n Little is known about the hacking tool, but it was known to be able to gather real-world information on Playpen visitors, such as IP addresses\u00a0\u2014 details of which should have been protected by Tor.<\/p>\n But the government refused to reveal the full source code of the exploit in court, and so the judge tossed out the evidence<\/a>, rendering a significant set-back to the government’s case.<\/p>\n The government then dropped its case but is “asking the case to be reopened once the exploit is no longer classified.\u201d Let that sink in. The government used a tool it refuses to divulge, but wanted the \u201cfruit of the secret tree\u201d to be admissible as evidence. When that failed, the government that knowingly \u2014 willingly<\/em> \u2014 hosted a website rife with the types of pictures and videos that make up the darkest nightmares any decent person could imagine, simply called a Mulligan<\/a> and walked away \u2014 hoping to come back later and try again.<\/p>\n And Motherboard is reporting<\/a> that in a recent court filing, Colin Fieman, a federal public defender in Washington, wanted to admit some of the WikiLeaks disclosures from Vault 7<\/a> as evidence in the case against his client who was charged in the Playpen case. Fieman wanted to show that \u2014\u00a0because of the hacking tools the CIA developed (and lost control of) \u2014\u00a0it would be impossible for even a computer forensic expert to show whether someone using the CIA\u2019s cyberweapons planted the child pornography on his client\u2019s computer.<\/p>\n The documents and files Fieman wanted to introduce are those that are \u2014 thanks to WikiLeaks \u2014 widely available on the Internet. As District Judge Robert Bryan wrote in his court filing, those documents and files may show that the government possesses “the ability to hack into a computer without leaving any trace.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, in an article about those cyberweapons, this writer recently observed<\/a>:<\/p>\n Since the hackers would then have remote access control over any such device, all files and folders would be available to the hacker. Worse yet, having control of the device would also allow the hacker to either remove or add files and folders. If the hacker wanted to bring an adversary down, it would be a simple matter to create a hidden folder containing illegal files \u2014 including child pornography \u2014 on the victim\u2019s device to be \u201cdiscovered\u201d at a later date by investigators serving a warrant. Such a sting operation would look \u2014 for all the world \u2014 like a legitimate law-enforcement activity. Even if it did not end in a prosecution and prison, the victim could be branded for life. After all, this is almost exactly what happened to former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. In her case, the hidden files that were secretly placed on her computer were classified government documents for which Atkisson could have been charged under the Espionage Act for possessing.<\/p>\n As a direct result of the government creating tools capable of that, the new reality is that anyone accused of possessing any type of illegal computer file \u2014 even child pornography \u2014 has a much greater benefit of the doubt now than ever before. In fact, in the absence of a confession, this writer would \u2014 if serving on a jury \u2014 vote not guilty in such a case.<\/p>\n As it stands though, the government \u2014 again \u2014 gets to have it both ways. In the case in Washington, the government lawyers were able to keep the Vault 7 materials from being admitted as exhibits. Their argument? The files are \u201cclassified.\u201d Never mind that they are publicly available to anyone with Internet access. Never mind that they show exactly what Fieman asserts they show. They are \u201cclassified\u201d and cannot be admitted.<\/p>\n