Bitcoin and kiddie porn

[Carlton Banks]

This is one of the negative effects for bitcoin because it is abused for disgusting transactions and very pornographic, and that is one of the reasons the government prohibits it because it is misused for negative things and crime as a transaction tool.

maybe the government and the law enforcement agencies should do a better job of bringing their colleagues to justice?


there are countless stories now from 20th century about people in politics, the police, showbusiness or intelligence being involved in sexual abuse of children, some of the most egregious examples were going on right under their noses.

Jeffrey Epstein is the most blatant example recently. This guy was a billionaire hedge fund associate, hung out with Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton and dozens more powerful world figures. He got an 18 month sentence in 2008 for having sex with a 13 year old girl, and spent most of it on "office leave" flying his private jet to his private island in the Caribbean (where he regularly trafficked teenage girls to sexually abuse, and where alot of these celebrities, corporation owners and former world leaders seemed to enjoy visiting )

Out of that 18 month "sentence", Epstein served 13 months. For good behavior . He slept in prison, then went straight out after breakfast to the airport where his private plane was housed, on "business". He donated several million dollars to the low category prison he slept at too, but they took a little time and gave it back. Presumably they thought that whatever corrupt deal he was trying to get from them wasn't worth a few million dollars.


The "justice" system and the "prison" system let that happen. The newspapers knew, but because it embarrassed very powerful people, they kept their mouths shut till summer 2019 (almost 10 years too late), then did a quick expose at the time of the year (summer) while most people quit reading the news because there's no serious stories (politics, finance and sport are out of season all summer long)


Not 1 Bitcoin involved, and the US justice system did everything they could to cover it up and help the people involved look as good as possible. And the newspapers made one of the most corrupt scandals ever look like it was important for 5 minutes, when they knew about the whole thing for 10 years. The Trump-haters are the biggest hypocrites here; Trump was significantly involved with this guy in the 2000's, and it's hard to believe that someone as well connected as Trump (especially as Trump's daughter was a teenager at the time) did not know he was a sex trafficker of teenagers. And yet the Trump bashing media said ZERO about it, when all the facts were available to them the whole time, and very likely because of Bill Clinton and other Democrat siding people's involvement too (one of Epstein's co-conspirators was a guest at Clinton's daughters wedding, after Epstein was finished with prison, and while still a part of Epstein's staff )



So don't give me this "government good, Bitcoin bad" crap, they give zero fucks when it's their friends that are the pedophiles

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[Theb]

Honestly this is one of the most neutral news I have seen related to the crypto industry more specifically towards Bitcoin. I've read the whole article hoping for some silent jabs against Bitcoin being the main tool for this crime to happen but I was surprised there was none found in the whole article. This is what I am hoping for news media sites are not insinuating on anything against cryptocurrency and they are more focused against the crime involved and not Bitcoin entirely. Back then you will see a lot of new sites go in the opposite direction where it made Bitcoin like the main ingredient for this crimes to happen that is why we got a bad impression from the start.

[enhu]

wait wait  
You are angry because that site is closed?
I hope I've misunderstood your post
There is no mercy for pedophilia!

Not exactly how I get it but I think meant that when cryptocurrency provides privacy, those bad actors are going to be taking advantage of its features.

Well BTC isn't exactly an anon coin, it can be traced and can actually help authorities when these criminals misunderstood btc to be untraceable. Anyway The news didn't blame BTC  or any crypto for being part of their operation.

[Ryker1]

Well, it is a good thing to know that even law enforcement now has been knowledgeable about tracing crypto transactions in order to caught those illegal activities. It will stop that kind of business and also protect children from being abusement. Well, probably the criminals did not have much idea on bitcoin transactions, that's the reason why the authorities were busted them and shutting down their sites. I'm just happy to know this kind of news, sounds like it will trigger to adopt other countries in bitcoin since some illegal activities will be caught.

[pixie85]

What's negative about this news can someone explain?

Child porn was there in the 70s and 80s and the number of pedophiles who are found and brought to justice is increasing thanks to the Internet and people helping to track them down.
When there was no Bitcoin it did not stop them from trading porn for dollars and they are still doing it.
They were caught.
Thanks to this more people will hear about Bitcoin
Those idiots could've chosen a really anonymous cryptocurrency and not Bitcoin.

[lionheart78]

wait wait 
You are angry because that site is closed?
I hope I've misunderstood your post
There is no mercy for pedophilia!

Yes, you did misunderstand it.  I was implying that if you give people ways to pay anonymously and they will use it for bad things.  And there is no way of tracing the people doing bad things.  

Indeed that is the reason most people wanted privacy so that they can do their desires without other knowing it.  This is the sad truth about having freedom/privacy, those who have nefarious intent exploit this kind of freedom in order to do their illegal stuff, and this kind of stuff is also holding back Bitcoin for so long since government can never condone such act.

[deadsilent]

It's been there before Bitcoin was created. They've been there on the darkweb for decades. Bitcoin just made these criminals more free and made their life easier because of its features. Actually Bitcoin is just one of the most used by criminals these days. There are several alternative cryptocurrencies out there are being used for illegal doings.

[Ferris419]

Bitcoin is not related to kiddie porn, it's bad people who use Bitcoin in bad places. This is not bitcoin's fault. Even those bad people use all the digital money in bad activities when Bitcoin is anonymous, but they can cheat on other digital money by using a fake identity or fake IP! Is it Bitcoin or other money's fault? No way. Is Kiddie porn a new thing in the world? No, it's not. It was available even before Bitcoin creation! You can't blame Bitcoin or other privacy coins rather try to blame those shady people.

[nienzer]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/police-arrest-hundreds-over-international-child-sexual-abuse-website

You give people privacy, they use it.

Once upon a time the Slipknot group wrote a song 'people = sh*t' Unfortunately, Bitcoin is used on the black market, including for kiddie porn. It's disgusting, I want these people to be punished and be jailed to prison

[Artemis3]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/police-arrest-hundreds-over-international-child-sexual-abuse-website

You give people privacy, they use it.

Well, obviously they didn't. Bitcoin isn't terribly anonymous, especially if people don't use a different address on each transaction. In these types of operations often the weak link lies in the laziness of the people involved. In any investigation, they have to find out which address belongs to whom, and then start solving the puzzle.

Linking the alleged operation to Bitcoin is stupid, Bitcoin has nothing to do with it, its a coin like any other, and if people think they can evade justice with it, they have to think twice. Yes its "possible", just like its possible with fiat, but that doesn't mean its going to "protect" you if you don't have a clue.

There are many details that we will never know. Did the site changed the address for payments on each payment? I doubt it. Did the users? unlikely. Can the agents infiltrate and start gathering incriminating data? probably. And none of it has anything to do with Bitcoin. If anything it may be that Koreans like Bitcoin but that's about it.

The media, as usual, wants to correlate Bitcoin with evil, always. Since the very beginning, back when Satoshi still posted, with the Wikileaks donations.

[Oceat]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/police-arrest-hundreds-over-international-child-sexual-abuse-website

You give people privacy, they use it.

Child pornography is very common in the dark web plus the common payment they've been using to access the site is mainly the Bitcoin. This news is nothing new it is widely happening around the world some of these children were from different countries and is also a victim of human/child trafficking.

I'm glad that the authorities find the responsible people of making these injustice and unlawful crime.

[squatter]

Get on Tor, buy some bitcoin at an anonymous exchange, put it through a couple of mixers and hey presto.  It certainly makes life easier for the bad guys.  Freedom and privacy are a double edged sword.  Yes you can do great things with them but you can also do bad things as well.  Are we as a community OK with that?

Here's a more important question to ask: What could we do about it?

The answer is nothing. You can't stop people from spending and receiving money. You can't stop people from using anonymous payment methods, including cash if nothing else. You can't regulate every monetary transaction in existence, nor should you want to.

Child porn was being monetized long before Bitcoin existed. The internet and a broader digitization of money -- credit cards, VCCs, e-money services, online banks, and yes Bitcoin -- allowed this grisly industry to flourish.

There's no way you could directly blame anything on Bitcoin, though. If these people couldn't use Bitcoin, they would just use something else.

[Carlton Banks]

Honestly this is one of the most neutral news I have seen related to the crypto industry more specifically towards Bitcoin. I've read the whole article hoping for some silent jabs against Bitcoin being the main tool for this crime to happen but I was surprised there was none found in the whole article.

this is the sort of subtle editorial-based slant that corporate media like The Guardian use.


they could have covered any number of positive stories about Bitcoin, especially in their technology section. But instead, they choose articles with a negative connotation, then report on it in a dry and dispassionate way. Readers are left to draw their own conclusion, but when they've heard another 20 crime based Bitcoin stories already in the last 5 years, they will come to the conclusion that The Guardian's financial firm clients (who buy advertising in The Guardian) want: Bitcoin bad

no different when Bitcoin XT was covered in The Guardian, they used editorial bias to slant readers towards the corporate culture's preferences. They interviewed the attackers (who went on to work for Goldman Sachs invested firm Circle) and devoted a whole article to a dev-team takeover that the users (the normal everyday people The Guardian pretend to represent) did not want. And for the accomplished developers with decades of industry experience and contributions to open source software used all across the internet? They got no article, despite the fact that Bitcoin's users followed them. Guardian quietly kept it's mouth shut, that was their repetent response, disgusting behavior.


"The Guardian"? They only do one kind of guarding: their corporate buddies, whether they're attacking open source software projects (Bitcoin is not the only example), or whether they're deciding that Trump and Clinton (and Bill Gates, Katie Couric, Woody Allen etc etc) being connected to billionaire pedophile human-trafickers is too tabloid

[ReiMomo]

That's so sad to hear that bitcoin is now been mentioned to child sexual abuse. In this case bitcoins, popularity might get lost due to this news that will give bitcoin a bad image that it is being used in illegal transactions and it's against the law. It is very important to take good care of its image in order for bitcoin to get more investors.

But glad to know there are some authorities who were able to trace transactions in the blockchain and they will caught the bad guy who abuses those innocent children. We can't deny the fact that Bitcoin transactions are usually common on the dark web.

[Kyraishi]

“Through the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions, IRS-CI special agents were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, identify the administrator of the website and ultimately track down the website server’s physical location in South Korea.”

How does that work then?

How? We don't know exactly, but everyone know that :
1. Blockchain (which stores all Bitcoin transaction) can be seen seen by anyone
2. There are various blockchain analysis service such as Chainalysis
3. Tor isn't perfect and few government (such as FBI) could deanonymize Tor users. Example : https://security.stackexchange.com/q/119146

Carlton Banks has a decent point though - BTC is fairly easy to use for new customers, compared to XMR (where you can't see the transactions, need several things to send one, etc).

BTC might not be the safest or the most anonymous crypto-currency for criminals to use, but it offers benifits over fiat currency and there isn't need for the criminals to use Monero.

The Guardian is a shitty publisher that manipulates articles to support whatever cause they support, and this time they set their eye on BTC.

[Artemis3]

Carlton Banks has a decent point though - BTC is fairly easy to use for new customers, compared to XMR (where you can't see the transactions, need several things to send one, etc).

BTC might not be the safest or the most anonymous crypto-currency for criminals to use, but it offers benifits over fiat currency and there isn't need for the criminals to use Monero.

The Guardian is a shitty publisher that manipulates articles to support whatever cause they support, and this time they set their eye on BTC.

The hilarious part about Monero, is that you don't get the anonymous features unless you use a console only wallet with the specific options, ie. far far from user friendliness. But that's ok, people should know better. If the criminals ever get smart enough there, authorities would have to fall back to more classic approaches, such as infiltrating the thing, or often, making the thing themselves.

Ever heard that joke about the Communist party in the USA being all FBI? Same thing.

[lobat999]

Honestly this is one of the most neutral news I have seen related to the crypto industry more specifically towards Bitcoin. I've read the whole article hoping for some silent jabs against Bitcoin being the main tool for this crime to happen but I was surprised there was none found in the whole article.

this is the sort of subtle editorial-based slant that corporate media like The Guardian use.


they could have covered any number of positive stories about Bitcoin, especially in their technology section. But instead, they choose articles with a negative connotation, then report on it in a dry and dispassionate way. Readers are left to draw their own conclusion, but when they've heard another 20 crime based Bitcoin stories already in the last 5 years, they will come to the conclusion that The Guardian's financial firm clients (who buy advertising in The Guardian) want: Bitcoin bad ...

This is what I'm trying to say, that media outlets failed to emphasize the key role of Bitcoin in identifying those perpetrators yet none has ever surfaced discussing its importance!

Could it be there is a grand conspiracy to discredit Bitcoin and portray it as the ultimate villain and the cause of all evil? Or either they are just sensationalizing news that has Bitcoin involvement to sold their stories? Or this may be a product of subjective reporting which are often biased against Bitcoin! Imho.

[Carlton Banks]

This is what I'm trying to say, that media outlets failed to emphasize the key role of Bitcoin in identifying those perpetrators yet none has ever surfaced discussing its importance!

well, they did report that transaction from exchanges were used to trace the money? I see what you mean, they could've made that an explicit positive aspect, but that's little different to if paypal or the banking   system was used. Arguably, they could have focused on people that were not caught, but maybe the FBI didn't release the full details. Not sure.

[lobat999]

This is what I'm trying to say, that media outlets failed to emphasize the key role of Bitcoin in identifying those perpetrators yet none has ever surfaced discussing its importance!

well, they did report that transaction from exchanges were used to trace the money? I see what you mean, they could've made that an explicit positive aspect, but that's little different to if paypal or the banking   system was used. Arguably, they could have focused on people that were not caught, but maybe the FBI didn't release the full details. Not sure.

Well,  I think we'll just hope some content writers from the crypto-community would make a positive note about it and write some positive stuff about Bitcoin, at least to balance the public's perception about it.

I was thinking of a good title like this - "How Bitcoin help caught hundreds of pedophiles and disabled a child sexual abuse website!" or maybe you could suggest something more catchy? 

[Carlton Banks]

I was thinking of a good title like this - "How Bitcoin help caught hundreds of pedophiles and disabled a child sexual abuse website!" or maybe you could suggest something more catchy?  

in the end, tech just keeps making it easier for these people to do this stuff, despite it also making it easier to catch the dumber ones


what we really need is kids like this:

(this is the nutty kid from the 80's movie Mad Max 2 with the razer-edged boomerang )




and I'm almost not joking

Kids don't get taught to stand up for themselves, instead it's "go tell teacher if anyone does something bad", which is a fat lot of good once it's too late (or if the teacher is the pedophile )

these pedos need to actually fear that the kid will bite their fucking face off