Freedom Hosting attack - why?

[domob]

I've been thinking recently a little about the attack with compromised sites on Freedom Hosting (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/), and can't really make sense out of it.  Of course, the attack seemed to be successful in uncovering the identities of some of the people who tried to access sites on Freedom Hosting (and got a "Down for Maintainance" page instead according to the reports).

But what exactly does this use the FBI?  All they have is a proof someone tried to access a particular .onion site - but didn't succeed in accessing any illegal material because they took it down already.  Is this already a criminal offence for which they can hope to jail those people, even though there's no proof that they actually accessed such material (like child porn) in the past?  At least as far as I know the laws in my country, that would be difficult to argue in court (apart from the fact that I'm not sure how evidence gained by such an attack would be valued).  If they on the other hand just wanted to identify "suspects" in order to investigate further and search their computers, I think that everyone of those people should have heard about the attack already and just wiped their computers.

What am I missing here?

[/dev/null]

They tried to get ip but got caught.

[FreedomCoin]

I think its a guilty by association thing they were going for.

[Foxpup]

Accessing these sites after they were taken down is not illegal, but it is probable cause to get a warrant to seize your computer and arrest you for any illegal material you might have already saved to your hard drive, assuming you were dumb enough to not use encryption.

[Spendulus]

Accessing these sites after they were taken down is not illegal, but it is probable cause to get a warrant to seize your computer and arrest you for any illegal material you might have already saved to your hard drive, assuming you were dumb enough to not use encryption.

Then again, honeypot sites attract the bees, don't they?

Here is my question.  If you or I wrote the same little code that launched through javascript to all computers accessing a website, such code constructed to report back to us the surfing behavior of ALL VISITORS TO THAT WEBSITE , we would have done something illegal.

Did the FBI do something illegal here?  If yes, why and in what circumstances would that hold?  If no, why?

For example, would they be justified in tracking all users to the "AQ BMB MAEKIN SIT"?

How about a virus to track all users to "Reddit"?

Remember, we are discussing tracking through a downloaded virus.  And this is done in an attempt to negate the design goals of the Tor browser.

Going a step further.  Would it have been legal for the NSA to target US citizens with this virus?  What about local police?  How about the Dept. of Agriculture?  The IRS?

And so the cancer metastasizes....

[domob]

Accessing these sites after they were taken down is not illegal, but it is probable cause to get a warrant to seize your computer and arrest you for any illegal material you might have already saved to your hard drive, assuming you were dumb enough to not use encryption.

Yes.  But it must have been clear to them that the code would be discovered soon - and now everyone who cares at least a little about security should have read about it and wiped their computers.  Or do you think they speculate on lots of people not even realising the problem and removing incriminating stuff?

[tacoman71]

I heard that the founder started to accept bitcoin payments and the FBI traced those to a bank account, which naturally, had a name attached.

[Mike Christ]

I heard that the founder started to accept bitcoin payments and the FBI traced those to a bank account, which naturally, had a name attached.

I guess no one told him that Bitcoin was only pseudonymous?