The consequences of downloading child porn (and other illegal online activities)

[Syphilis]

Ever wondered what happens when the police record your IP address doing something naughty online, and turn up at your doorstep?

Not just child porn, I just thought it would make a catchy title. I'm not a lawyer, so this may be slightly off, but you'll get the general idea. This post IS NOT about innocuous everyday things like downloading music and movies from bittorrent.

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Say you're sharing nude photos of 9 year olds, or bragging about all the illegal stuff you've done on an internet forum, or something more serious.

Your IP address will be tied to that activity. Your ISP keeps records of IP addresses, the sites that IP visits, and who the IP address belongs to. If you have a dynamic IP, the ISP will have a record of what IP address you had at what specific time.

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Anyway, one day you are awaken by a knock on your door at 4AM. It's the police, and they have a search warrant, and seize all of your computer equipment.

They tracked your IP address to illegal activity. That gave them enough circumstantial evidence to get a search warrant, but in most countries, not enough for prosecution.

Direct evidence = irrefutible, proven evidence of guilt.
Circumstantial evidence = evidence which implies guilt, but does not prove it.

Or, in a little more detail: "Direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion (in criminal law, an assertion of guilt or of innocence) directly, i.e., without an intervening inference. Circumstantial evidence, by contrast, directly supports the truth of evidence, from which the truth of the assertion may be inferred."

If your hard drive is not encrypted, the police find what they're after (e.g. nude photos of 5 year olds), you get charged with whatever the police are after you for (in this example, possession of child pornography), and you get locked up.

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But say your drive is encrypted. Things get a little more complex. If your country does not have a law requiring you to give up your encryption keys, you are free to go.

However, in many cases, a judge can order you to provide the decryption keys if there is enough circumstantial evidence. In some countries, the prosecutors don't even need evidence, just "reasonable suspension".

If you refuse, you are charged with obstruction of justice.

If you comply and they find the illegal material they are looking for, you are charged with that specific crime.

If you comply and they find nothing, you should be free to go.

If you refuse and they crack/brute force the encryption and find illegal material, you are charged with that specific crime AND obstruction of justice.

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Moral of the story? Use full disk encryption with a strong password, and use proxies/Tor.

A quick though on proxies: If you use a single layered proxy server (you > proxy > target server), the ISP working with the victim would be able to see your IP address connecting to the proxy server, and then the IP address of the proxy server committing the illegal activity at the exact same time. That would count as circumstantial evidence, although weaker than if it were your naked IP address. Using an onion router (e.g. Tor) should help prevent that.

[Captain Politik]

I really wonder would the FBI really go after a 18 yr old for pedobaiting?

I mean even if they have ALL the evidence they need why on earth would they waste resources on scamming pedos lmao

But great guide

[Stock Market Anomalies]

protip: no one cares unless you upload cp.

[Wooden Pints]

I hate to say this but 99.9% of people that download illegal shit aren't going to get caught.

The people uploading/producing have it alot riskier though.

[Syphilis]

I really wonder would the FBI really go after a 18 yr old for pedobaiting?

I mean even if they have ALL the evidence they need why on earth would they waste resources on scamming pedos lmao

But great guide
Just an example. But it has happened to people before (local police going after people for things you would not expect.)


protip: no one cares unless you upload cp.
You can be charged for mere possesion. But yes, the feds tend to go after the big fish.

And just to clarify again, this thread IS NOT about extremely minor everyday things like bittorrent.

[nm43388]

The one thing i dont like about Tor is that it really slows down my connection...any ideas on how to fix that?

[Bender]

Honestly I think the FBI is more concerned with unloaders. But above that the real underground networks that trade photos, and acually abuse the children.

Question. Lets say they go threw your computer (No looking for CP, for something unrelated) And find nudes of a girl that looks questionably young, buy could be 18. What happens?

[SLIM]

The one thing i dont like about Tor is that it really slows down my connection...any ideas on how to fix that?

Choose faster nodes, only thing with that is you'll have to keep changing them regularly like you would normal proxies, if you want to truly keep clean. See my archived Tor thread. It's basically working like a proxy chain if you use my method. Most of the time tor chooses the best nodes however, but I like to choose my own and change them regularly.

I'll just mention the words freenet and usenet in here also ;)

Run freenet on a virtual machine. The possibilities with freenet are ENDLESS.

[v0x]

Your ISP can't do anything if the illegal traffic was encrypted. Use multiple SSH tunnels. And they don't log every single connection anyway, use a couple proxies and you're fine for most hacking/cp downloading. Use a wifi and proxies when committing an actual criminal activity, like carding, fraud, or hacking large institutions (along with doing the work on a VM which you then delete with multiple rounds, changing the MAC address, etc.). Seriously, even after the FBI busts underground forums or gets logs, they don't even know if the IP's are valid, because they might all be proxies. None might be proxies. They don't know. Several LEO and security people have stated that identification of criminals is so hard these days because people use multiple proxies. With one proxy, it's hard to get caught. With many, it's extremely hard. With a wifi and proxies, it's virtually impossible. They're only going to investigate you if you're doing something huge anyway. For any data that you want to keep permanently, but encrypt it and hide it extremely well, using a TrueCrypt false container, or changing it to look like system files and burying it in several folders (i.e. leave it somewhere deep in system32). I've known some people to even code and install a rootkit on their own machines to hide encrypted files. If you're really worries, encrypt it, put it on an external hard drive, and put that somewhere they'd never find it (outside of your room and main living area, ideally. like in the wall of the garage).