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Huge Child Porn Ring Busted As Authorities Cite Ability To Crack Bitcoin Privacy (gizmodo.com) 99
Charges in the U.S. against the site’s operator Jong Woo Son were only unveiled today, but the 23-year-old Korean national was arrested in March of 2018 and is already behind bars in South Korea. The operation was a joint investigation by numerous law enforcement agencies around the globe. Between June 2015 and March 2018, Welcome to Video received Bitcoin transactions totaling over $370,000 in U.S currency. Undercover agents in Washington D.C. monitored the site, filled with images of child rape, and were able to deanonymize the Bitcoin transactions, something that average users often believe is impossible. The investigation uncovered at least two former federal law enforcement officials allegedly involved in the child porn site, a 35-year-old U.S. Border Patrol Agent from Texas, and a former HSI special agent, also from Texas.
And it didn’t make me gay, though I heard that it was supposed to, and he may have gotten in trouble with whatever cult he belongs to for failing at that.
Oh yea, and one more thing I should add; the rapes aren’t even close to the worst of what he’s up to. Consider that, if you dare.
Well someone cared enough to ask. Blame them, not me.
Nope, but your friend is probably in a lot of danger if anything like what happened to them happened to me. And keeping silent won’t save them, either. You should advise your friend to talk about it openly, even if nobody cares or seems to believe it.
- You sound like you are speaking from experience…
- Could you elaborate on the etc part? Any other relevant people of wealth and power that we should know about?
Saved up for this one, huh astroturfers?
- Could you not say the same thing about cash?
Have you ever tried to place $10,000 into your savings account?
They will want to know where they money came from, and there are federal forms to complete… Just lying on the forms is enough to send you to federal ass-raping prison
- If your paying from a bank account then you are not using “cash”.
Most people use plastic.
- I have no idea where you heard that, but even if it were true there is not a $10,000 limit; it would just be a flag for review by the IRS. You are conflating criminal enterprise with legitimate means. A person who earned his money, saved it, and retired then decided to withdraw it all in a lump sum could do so without fear of reprisal.
- Alas, depositing money into a savings account is typically not required of criminal transactions so that has no impact one way or the other on anything.
Maybe you have a comprehension problem, here is a clearer explanation
- We understood what you were saying. The point is that you are a clueless idiot.
enough to send you to federal ass-raping prison
Most federal inmates are incarcerated for non-violent crimes. Federal prisons are well-funded, and are nicer than state facilities. If you have a choice in prisons, you should definitely pick federal.
Yes, I should have worded it correctly to summon the spirit of Office Space: Federal pound me in the ass prison [urbandictionary.com]
enough to send you to federal ass-raping prison
Most federal inmates are incarcerated for non-violent crimes. Federal prisons are well-funded, and are nicer than state facilities. If you have a choice in prisons, you should definitely pick federal.
“the ass rapings are much gentler and more refined”
“Could you not say the same thing about cash?”
“Have you ever tried to place $10,000 into your savings account?”
So he mentioned cash, and then you talked about NOT cash (savings / checking account). It is not hard to get around the $10,000 issue. If you deposit $9,999.99 every day for a year you can deposit quite a bit every year and there is also no reason you have to have only one savings account, even at the same bank. But again, that is besides the point, since the subject was cash, not NOT cash.
What you’re suggesting is itself a crime, called structuring, which entails structuring the financial transactions so as to avoid the reporting requirements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… [wikipedia.org]
- Try to keep up. We are talking about people already committing a crime trying to avoid getting caught. They don’t really care that the process I described is a crime, because they are commiting a crime no matter how they deposit the money. DOH!
Have you ever tried to place $10,000 into your savings account?
They will want to know where they money came from, and there are federal forms to complete… Just lying on the forms is enough to send you to federal ass-raping prison
Any transaction over $9,999 sets a flag. Used to work in the banking industry. It’s designed to prevent money laundering and “terrorism”.
This of course spawned what is known as “smurfing” Having random people make several small transactions to avoid this. This is where most Nigerian Prince situations come in to play.
I know they have to report it, but I don’t recall ever having to fill out any forms. I’ve never deposited that much cash though. It’s always been in some other form like a check or something.
Not that I get to do that very often, but it’s somewhat satisfying when I can.
This whole idea of “ass-raping prison” is disturbing to me, especially in light of the 8th Amendment
You merely mentioned it, but many people seem to take pleasure in the idea that someone is going to be sexually violated if sent to prison. I
How do you pay with cash online? I tried sending a scan of the green but people didn’t want to take it.
- Yes that is the problem of cash. Since it is physical then you need to transfer it physically. However cash is anonymous the same way crypto is. Crypto just makes the transfer easier since it is digital. If the government wanted to eliminate all anonymous transactions they would have to do it physically and digitally.
Re:Cryptocurrency == crime (Score:5, Interesting)
by geoskd ( 321194 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @07:00PM (#59316482)However cash is anonymous the same way crypto is
Except that its not. With a cash transaction, there is no record of the transaction unless either of the two parties deliberately make a record. With crypto, every transaction that is done on a wallet is identified to that wallet, so if you have any means of identifying an individual to a wallet for any one transaction, you can identify *all* of their other transactions as well. This means that crooks only have to slip up once, and all of their illegal crypto activity is exposed.
In fact, a crook doesn’t even have to slip up, they can be outed, just by doing business with someone who is then forced to explain all of their transactions to save their own ass. Johny says he paid billy 5 bucks bitcoin on the 5th of March, so that means that the wallet that received 5 bucks on the 5th of march from Johnys wallet belongs to billy, and now we know what all of Billys other transactions are that need to be chased down. Bye-bye Billy.
Bitcoin is exactly the opposite of anonymous, and those that continue to use crypto to try to hide their illegal activities will survive only as long as they are small-time enough to not be worth the trouble to chase down.
Yeah… I’m not sure why people thought that a cryptocurrency designed with a fucking public distributed ledger with every transaction recorded from it’s Creation would be untraceable. Morons.
With crypto, every transaction that is done on a wallet is identified to that wallet, so if you have any means of identifying an individual to a wallet for any one transaction, you can identify *all* of their other transactions as well.
To avoid this problem, you can literally create a new wallet for each transaction. The ‘wallet’ space is big enough.
- by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
However cash is anonymous the same way crypto is.
Not as anonymous as it used to be. Each bill has a serial number. Computers are good at keeping track of serial numbers. And if they REALLY want to, well, a bit of radioactive isotope marks bills nicely for when they want to catch you red-handed and you’ll never know unless you have a Geiger counter on you..
- You go to Albertson’s, you use that cash to buy a generic “gift card” that is pre-loaded with a value, and you’re done. Register the card with a random free e-mail account.
I think that you will find those gift cards only work within the country they are purchased in
- Online, they work everywhere. They may not match for all the security checks (postal code, CVV, etc) but they work fine online. Lots of overseas processors will accept any card from anywhere – and if you’re buying “questionable” goods, I’m certain the seller would use as loose a credit card processor as possible.
Maybe if you want to buy Starbucks or Amazon products with your ‘laundered cash’
- If only there was something like a Visa TravelMoney or MasterCard Travel Card [giftcards.com] available for use pretty much anywhere… And the ability to use the card overseas depends upon the processor used. Some processors specialize in overseas processing [helcim.com] and accept pretty much everything.
And the purchase of that gift card is recorded on camera at the point of purchase, and the video can be correlated with the card number pretty easily.
- Because NO ONE wears baseball caps or sunglasses when they buy stuff at a store….
- Mitnick being caught had absolutely nothing to do with buying a prepaid credit card. Security tapes are for when a crime is known to have occurred recently. You watch too much TV if you think stores are saving months of security camera footage for every register and you think there is a chance they will find footage of a card purchase from months previous.
How do you pay with cash online? I tried sending a scan of the green but people didn’t want to take it.
Reminds me of an old urban legend…
Guy gets a “photo” speeding ticket in the mail, says “we took this pic of you doing 87 pmh” “Send $276 in fines to avoid a court hearing”
Guy sends them a “picture” of $276.
Cops respond by sending him a picture of handcuffs.
- If only you were King of the World, huh?
Re:Cryptocurrency == crime (Score:5, Insightful)
by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @06:39PM (#59316410)This is trash logic and smacks of the trash logic that says if you have nothing to hide then you should have no problem with government having unfettered access to your privacy.
People are racist, biased, political hacks with human emotions that have bad days and personal vendettas that change and drive their agendas. Saying shit like this is just like saying racist cops should be more than free to dig into every minorities past so they can dredge up every last possible criminal thing they “might” have done so they can stack the wrap sheet to harass and oppress them!
Privacy is a major corner stone to liberty itself, and its sacrifice is the same as giving up your liberty because with privacy gone, you are no longer free to do things that other people find “unbecoming”.
FYI, ‘liberty’ != doing whatever you want to do
total straw-man arguement moron. No one is making the claim that liberty means doing whatever you want.
You really are too stupid to think for yourself aren’t you?
>>Privacy is a major corner stone to liberty itself
Sure, just think of all those patriots that fought for liberty over the past centuries and how they hid their identities…
you are actually kinda comical
Like I said… you are not capable of thinking for yourself.
Since when is thinking for myself letting some dumbass like you tell me what to think?
- by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *No but one of the essential principles of liberty is trusting that people will do the right thing. The less you trust people, the more liberty you take away, until eventually you need to ask permission or get a permit for anything. I personally don’t think the ratio of decent people to assholes has changed all that much over time – the Pareto principle probably applies here too. But the more laws you make, the more criminals you make.
> any currency can be a tool for criminals to move money around.
FTFY.
Good thing there was zero money laundering before Bitcoin!
Bitcoin is a tool and like ANY tool it can used or abused. You can power your lights with electricity or you can electrocute someone. Electricity isn’t the problem.
We don’t ban cars just because we have ~40,000 automobile deaths. We teach people how to use the tool responsibly (or we hope.)
> mainly
Fiat is the type of currency used for crime. Every year governments run their printing presses to fund the war machine, like your friends at the CIA, killing millions of innocents abroad and domestically, as well as transferring the society’s wealth to oligarchs while impoverishing families. Bitcoin activity can’t hold a candle to fiat’s level of murderousness.
Only the separation of markets and state can save our society at this point.
“Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
This should get interesting
fyi, “Never underestimate the effectiveness of a brute force attack”
All agreed?
- Fucking GREAT news. Clear that if you throw enough processing power at just about any problem you will see results. Now we need a raffle to pull the trigger on each of these fucks and remove them from the face of the planet! The money can go towards helping the kids that can be identified!
Bitcoin hype (Score:5, Insightful)
by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @06:33PM (#59316392) JournalEarly on when bitcoin was still a new concept, it was hyped for two things – microtransactions and anonymity. Ironic because it is terrible for both of those things (I don’t believe those were the intended strengths when it was designed, but that was part of the hype around it).
Early on when bitcoin was still a new concept, it was hyped for two things – microtransactions and anonymity. Ironic because it is terrible for both of those things (I don’t believe those were the intended strengths when it was designed, but that was part of the hype around it).
Early on those that played with bitcoin as to learn the inner workings would talk about their realizations that it could be used anonymously if you went about trying.
But anonymity isn’t forced on anything or automagical, and it certainly won’t be possible when you sign your name to everything you do.
As frequently happens, once those that have no idea how technology works and don’t want to know how it works come along, in this case to try and get rich, their willful ignorance makes anything they say dubious
Bitcoin is NOT anonymous (Score:5, Informative)
by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @06:34PM (#59316394) JournalIf I link your address to one transaction, then I immediately know ALL your transactions. It’s inherently PUBLIC in everything, by design.It’s inherently PUBLIC in everything, by design.
Yep.
Bitcoin isn’t about privacy.
Bitcoin is about not being subject to unlimited arbitrary inflation.
- To avoid that problem, you can actually create a separate ‘wallet’ for each transaction.
‘Unmasked’? ‘Anonymous?’ There’s nothing to crack (Score:5, Insightful)
by Sarusa ( 104047 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @06:37PM (#59316404)That first article (and other writeups I’ve seen) have a common misconception about Bitcoin. Every single thing you do in Bitcoin is signed, in public, forever, with ‘HI, I DID THIS’. Of course the it’s not your name, it’s your wallet ID, which serves as your unique ID. People think this means it’s anonymous, but it’s not, it’s an alias that anyone who has the blockchain (everyone) can use to track every thing you do with that wallet.
And like search engine anonymity is a joke given enough data, so is Bitcoin ‘anonymity’ unless you never make any transactions. If someone with access to all Bitcoin transactions (i.e., everyone) correlates this with IP addresses (ISPs and governments, even with Tor if they’re determined enough), access patterns (again), and financial transactions (governments and anyone who pays to have access to these, like Facebook) they can tie a lot of wallets to specific people, as they did here.
On the other hand, looks like we found something that Bitcoin is undeniably good at, which is getting scumbags to incriminate themselves with an indelible permanent record.
That first article (and other writeups I’ve seen) have a common misconception about Bitcoin.
If only I had mod points. (Haven’t had any in months, for some reason.) There’s two posts above you talking about “brute force” and “processing power” where none was required. Nor was expensive and difficult access pattern correlations required. Just a little bit of investigation, and some subpoenas to a Bitcoin exchange or two. No individual is mining enough Bitcoin to pay for so much as a pizza anymore. These people undoubtedly bought Bitcoin with fiat, establishing a paper trail. There’s nothing a
The point is that people who cannot defend themselves (children) are being harmed in order to provide those ‘dirty pictures’
I do not know what your ethical basis is, but that is not considered civil in most of the world
- by PPH ( 736903 )
not considered civil in most of the world
This.
Fap over pics of Lisa Ann. Leave the kids alone.
The point is that people who cannot defend themselves (children) are being harmed
Not necessarily. Child porn can be made with CGI or adult actors impersonating minors.
The justification for these laws is that viewing images is a “gateway” to assaulting children. The scientific evidence is ambiguous, but leans more to the opposite effect, that the images are a substitute and reduce sexual violence against children.
And neither computer generated pornography or adults acting as children are considered to be child pornography (by US case law), which is quite literally pornography involving children so kind of a null argument there Bill
And neither computer generated pornography or adults acting as children are considered to be child pornography (by US case law)
Wrong. It is true that under some state laws, including California, animations are not illegal. But they are illegal under federal law.
U.S Code Title 18 1446A [cornell.edu]:
Under the Protect Act, it is illegal to create, possess, or distribute, “a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture or painting”, that “depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct and is ‘obscene’ or ‘depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in…sexual intercourse…and lacks
Thank you for that clarification on federal law.
Closer to the point, the cases cited in the complaint are not CGI, drawings, or other representations but video files of children.
The link to the indictment in the intro has all the details, and prisons are made to house the people who created them.
Interestingly enough, The Protect Act has an odd caveat: The law does not explicitly state that images of fictional beings who appear to be under 18 engaged in sexual acts that are not deemed to be obscene are rendered illegal in and of their own condition (illustration of sex of fictional minors). [wikipedia.org], which would lead to a lot of litigation, so YMMV if they started trying to use it ‘frivolously’
- Oh No! You’re going to be banned for this!
- by rtb61 ( 674572 )
Whilst in part what you say is true, I would say “Prove It”, not as a responce but as an answer. Who pays to investigate and prove that it is fake, how much should be spent investigating it to make sure, once discovered it has to be investigated and proven fake. Just like suicides have to be proven to be suicides to prevent murder by suicide or even this one will confuse many but confessions must be proven by evidence (confession on it’s own wildly insufficient, what if some one shortly to die is paid to co
The point is that people who cannot defend themselves (children) are being harmed in order to provide those ‘dirty pictures’
I do not know what your ethical basis is, but that is not considered civil in most of the world
True story.
Back in the early ’90s a very large group of us from all over worked to make recommendations about what to do regarding pornography. Not surprising now is that we could not agree on exactly what porn is. Also, we could not achieve consensus about age of consent. That varies by country.
We all did agree, however, that child porn was just too much.
Even then, we learned that in some countries the possession of porn was not illegal while the production of it was.
We adjourned without any clear recommen
I’m sure the other inmates in G.P. will simply just roll their eyes after paperwork-checking them.
- For anyone who has any doubt at all of the need for the book to be thrown at the individuals using this site, read the damn indictment. I defy your blood not to boil.
Aside from anything else, some of the acts in the videos described in the indictment are likely to have caused serious physical injury, not to mention extreme psychological distress.
I dislike resorting to the term, but if this stuff isn’t evil, I don’t know what is.
- This is literally the one time when “won’t somebody think of the children” is not an overreaction. The fact that you don’t understand why this is not the same as looking at pictures of naked woman is pathetic. People who get aroused by pictures of woman tend to have sex with woman if possible. Guess who these people tend to have sex with. DOH!
BitCoin miners will be joining coal miners on the dole queue.
Forget P.C., throw these scum into general population.
When they get paperwork checked by the other inmates, they are
as good as dead.Huge Child Porn Ring (Score:2, Funny)
by Anonymous CowardWhat kind of sicko likes porn of huge children?
Don’t worry, they’ll be tracked down too.
- by fermion ( 181285 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @07:59PM (#59316624) Homepage Journal200,000 videos and less than $400,000. The concern here is that people are ready to destroy a child for peanuts. Not that more money would make it bette, but at least greed is something we can understand. We can understand that someone might kidnap a child for a ransom, even though we know that such people are evil, but to rape a child to sell for a couple dollars? It does not make it less right or wrong, just more evil.
And it is not surprising that some of the people caught appeared to be Homeland Security. There is no filter for these people. Homeland security have booths set up at the redneck events in Texas, hoping to find amoral rednecks who are willing to put hispanic kids into concentration camps.
The value of a child is highly situational. To the kidnappers stealing children at the border, they’re worth over $700/day.
Don’t tell William Barr and his cronies about this. They still need plausible deniability in order to continue on their “going dark” rants, and this does not seem very “going darl” to me at all!
- These morons think they’re so slick and invincible going to the dark web and yet they use bitcoins?! Do they know Cryptonite is just bitcoins but with anonymous transactions? All the transactions are encrypted and thus not public information. Why the hell weren’t they using those? At least we can continue to rely on the ongoing pattern that pedos are actually absolute morons.
- This should not have been so unexpected.
Recall the work of the NSA As around 2013 with XKeyScore, OAKSTAR and MONKEYROCKET.
“The NSA Worked To “track Down” Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal” (March 21 2018)
https://theintercept.com/2018/… [theintercept.com]
Now police globally have the same budgets for tracking tech. Nations tax collectors do too
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