A motion filed Monday by defense lawyers accuses the Federal Bureau of Investigation of, at one point, being the largest distributor of child pornography on the “darknet.”
The FBI has admitted to taking over the child pornography site Playpen in the spring of 205 in an attempt to arrest users. Playpen was located on Tor which is commonly referred to as the darknet. Tor allows for users to remain largely untraceable.
After taking over Playpen, the FBI injected malware into the site in an attempt to find out the real computer addresses of users. “Operation Pacifier” led to 186 prosecutions. The defense attorneys of three individuals charged from the operation filed a motion to dismiss the indictment based on the federal government’s actions.
“As part of the unfortunately named ‘Operation Pacifier,’ the Government actively aided and abetted more than 100,000 users in posting, viewing, and sharing illegal pictures and videos. The FBI itself distributed as many as 1,000,000 pictures and videos of child abuse, causing harms greater than that of any distribution defendant who has ever been prosecuted in this district,” defense attorneys Colin Fieman, Robert Goldsmith, and Mohammad Hamoudi wrote. – READ MORE
