The
Daily Beast reported on newly unsealed documents that show the FBI
blindly hacked into computers in Russia, China and Iran during a
wide-ranging investigation that led to the bust of a global child
pornography operation and the liberation of sexual abuse victims.
As
the Daily Beast explains:
During
a hacking operation in which U.S. authorities broke into thousands of
computers around the world to investigate child pornography, the FBI
hacked a number of targets in Russia, China, and Iran, The Daily
Beast has learned. The news signals the bold future of policing on
the so-called dark web, where investigators are increasingly
deploying malware without first knowing which country their suspect
is located in. Legal experts and commentators say the approach of
blindly kicking down digital doors in countries not allied with the
U.S. could lead to geopolitical fallout.
The
case centers around the FBI’s 2015 Operation Pacifier investigation
into a website called Playpen. Playpen was a site on the dark web
where pedophiles could share child pornography. So, when a foreign
law-enforcement agency found Playpen’s administrators were running
the site from the US, the FBI seized Playpen’s server. Instead of
shutting the site down straight away, however, the FBI moved it to a
government facility and kept Playpen operational for 13 days.
During
this time, the Bureau deployed what it describes as a network
investigative technique – a computer exploit and a piece of malware
— to break into Playpen users’ computers and grab identifying
information; most importantly, their IP address.
Armed
with this, the FBI could subpoena internet service providers to
reveal who had accessed Playpen. It’s a digital equivalent of an
FBI squad picking the lock of a private residence, collecting
evidence, and taking it back to headquarters.
In
all, the FBI hacked over 8,000 computers in 120 countries, including
across South America, Europe, and in the U.S. too. The operation led
to hundreds of arrests, as well as the identification and rescue of
hundreds of victims of child abuse, according to the FBI’s own
figures. However, something the FBI has kept quiet and has not
previously been reported, is the Bureau also hacked computers in
countries that have a particularly volatile relationship with the
U.S, especially around issues of malicious hacking, “including
Russia, Iran, and China,” according to a recently filed court
record.
The
FBI justifies these types of intrusions as necessary when foreign law
enforcement is slow to cooperate or not receptive to the intelligence
presented.
“Some
foreign countries are very slow to act on the information that they
receive because it has to go through official diplomatic channels,”
FBI Special Agent Daniel Alfin said during testimony in a related
case, without specifying the countries.
However,
it’s unlikely Germany or the UK – let alone Russia or Iran –
would readily excuse evidence of cyber intrusions by the US, should
they discover it.
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