Widely reported is the FBI’s hacking and takeover of the child pornography website Playpen. USA Today article here.
Playpen was available only via Tor, a networking program designed to operate websites off the main web and hide user information.
What is highly interesting about what the FBI did is that it became a leading distributor of child pornography for about two weeks. After it took over the website, it kept it online so that users would log in and the FBI could identify those that were downloading images. It is a violation of federal law to receive, possess, produce, or distribute child pornography. Most states have similar laws. Downloading to a computer, even if only saved temporarily on the cache, is enough to satisfy the receipt prohibition and depending on the type of computer may also satisfy the possession prohibition.
Having not defended one of these cases (yet), I imagine that there may be more to this than the standard IP address link that commonly is used in child pornography download cases. In those cases, law enforcement tracks the IP address to a subscriber account, for example a Comcast subscriber, and then executes a search warrant on the subscriber’s residence. The difficulty with this type of investigation is nailing down the user of the computer/device. The investigations also normally require a lot of resources to analyze all of the computers/devices in a residence.
Patrick Korody is a former military, state, and federal prosecutor who has prosecuted and defended child pornography crimes for more than a decade. Call 904.383.7261 for a free, confidential consultation.