Paedophiles on the net

[shirepro]

Some years ago I managed a project looking at disrupting the use of the internet by paedophiles. It ocurred to me at the time, that rather than chase the site users, why not simply hack their sites (often hosted in areas of Africa and South Amercica where the govt.'s could be bought or were ineffectual) and close them down that way, or insert viruses for users to pick up? All those talented kids hacking the sites of RBS and the Pentagon could be gainfullly employed in their back bedrooms and heralded as heros rather than chased at public expense.

The professionals thought it all rather unsavory and as most of them were Govt or police never could agree. I wondered if they were just being polite to some fool with no technical knowledge or wheher it could be done. I guess it is illegal? But compared to what these people distribute and do to produce their materials it can surely be justified? I can't see the site developers complaining to the police.

As I recall these sites are cleverly protected, appearing sometimes only for a few hours to take money and download images before moving their host and routing via other countries to avoid tracking.

Over to you techies.

[rude-boy]

Not a techie but it sounds like a great idea to me. I suspect that it is illegal in a few areas but on the otherhand it's not a million miles away from searching a property where you suspect that there is a criminal offence taking place.

Not too sure on the virus front, but one would assume that if a tracking programme was used all that would be needed would be similar to that required to 'bug' a telephone line.

That way they could compile enough evidence to convict the nonces without any question as to their guilt and sort the nonces from the bloke who took a wrong turn one evening when looking for 'redhot and randy' or whatever!

[FunkyNige]

Hacking of the paedophile sites is quite common from what I can gather, it's not organised by a central organisation though.

[john75]

FunkyNige said:

Hacking of the paedophile sites is quite common from what I can gather, it's not organised by a central organisation though.

They was an organisation called Hackers against Kiddie Porn

www.forbes.com/1998/04/17/feat.html

I am not adverse to this type of action but it may pose problems for the Law Enforcement Agancies who could have been working for month tracing and tracking such a site only to find that the site has been hacked the owners of the site have realised folks are onto them and legged it.

[off_again]

Technically speaking it would be easy, if time consuming, to hack paedo sites. But, the problem is that you cant really break laws to uphold them. It seems a relatively daft idea since we are talking about people who smash peoples lives.

But, resorting to breaking laws (international or local) doesnt solve anything. Its the cornerstone of the justice system and to break this would allow for it to be abused (even more than it is at the moment!). Plus, it makes it even harder to obtain some form of a conviction. We need to have the deterent effect of prison, and that means locking them up when we can......

Disrupting the distribution does nothing except driving it elsewhere - to areas of fewer and fewer controls. Even if you cant stop it, you can monitor it and react when necessary. Forcing it to go abroad to places like Africa is a dangerous game.....

Not really a technical answer, but anything is practical technically.....

[sadako]

It is already being done. Apparently "hacktivists" like nothing more than taking over their IRC channels and shutting them down. The problem is I doubt most paedos are as organised as the media makes out so there often isnt a structure you can attack