The FBI seized the largest child pornography site in the world and distributed porn for 13 days

For almost two weeks last year, the FBI supported the work of the largest child pornography site in the world. Thousands of visitors downloaded photos and videos of child porn from a government server in a suburb of Washington.

The operation, the details of which are kept secret - this is the third known case when the FBI catches pedophiles on bait, writes USA Today. It may be recalled that as early as 2008, FBI agents published on Russian websites, where child pornography fans from all over the world gather together, fake hyperlinks. Links led to a specially made site hosted on the FBI server. Detailed logs were kept there and IP addresses of all visitors were registered, which automatically became criminals after that. Then the houses of these people were subjected to an unexpected search (usually you can find enough evidence on the computer maniacs).

In last year's operation, the FBI acted differently. The users were really shipping real child pornography, photos and videos, but at the same time their computers were infected with malware. Thanks to this operation, arrests were made in Denmark, Turkey, Colombia, Greece and other countries, that is, the FBI hacked computers all over the world.

From the Europol presentation it follows that the operation helped to initiate 3229 criminal cases, in Denmark alone - 34 cases.
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Judicial documents of the Ministry of Justice indicate that the FBI supported the Playpen porn site on the hidden Tor network from February 20 to March 4, 2015. At that time there were more than 215,000 registered users and links to more than 23,000 photos and videos with child pornography, including 9,000 files that were placed directly on the FBI server. As stated in court documents, some photos from the FBI server depict children "barely grown up to kindergarten."



During the operation, the site was visited by over 100,000 registered users. According to the Ministry of Justice, the FBI was able to calculate the "real" addresses of 1,300 of them, and criminal cases were filed against 137 citizens.

The methods used by the FBI in Pacifier operation differ from the previous tactics of combating child pornography. Previously, agents instructed that it was impossible to publish such content in the public domain, since victims of violence suffer from every download of each photo.

The FBI said they were aware of the risk, but they had no other way to identify so many pedophiles.

Some lawyers do not agree with such methods. So, the lawyer of one of those arrested in the case, high school teacher Jay Michaud said: "What the government did in this case is how to sell heroin at every corner in the area in the hope of catching drug addicts."

Representatives of the FBI said in court that the agents themselves did not publish child pornography on the site. At the same time, they acknowledged that they did not prevent users from downloading existing content and downloading new photos.

“At some point, an FBI investigation becomes indistinguishable from a crime, and we have to ask whether this is normal,” comments Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California, who studies undercover operations. Who assesses the ratio of benefits and costs in such matters? Who decides that the distribution of porn is the best way to identify these people?

In previous years, the FBI twice carried out operations with the seizure of servers with child pornography: in 2012, she moved to three sites with child porn, and in 2013, she captured and supported the work of hosting Freedom Hosting on the hidden Tor network.