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Tor (network)
Government Deanonymization Operations
Several multinational government law enforcement operations have been conducted in the past decade to deanonymize Tor onion services and their users. In 2012 Operation Torpedo and 2015 Operation Pacifier the U.S. government worked with international partners (many in the VGT) to use DDOS attacks and/or Network Investigative Techniques (NITs) to deanonymize the hidden websites and the anonymous users. In 2019 the U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA) worked in a joint operation with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Brazilian Federal Police in Operation Lobos 1 to use some form of non NIT method to deanonymize the Tor users over the course of 3 months (see UK TEI warrants 91-TEI-0147-2019 and 91-TEI-0146-2019[1]). Brazilian court documents report 106[2] search warrants authorized in Brazil, and the U.S. government reports 100's[3] of leads generated in the U.S. 12 other countries were part of the Virtual Global Taskforce also participated in some way. Publications by a person aliased as Nusenu whom describes the Kax17[4] attack on Tor aligns well with this and similar government sponsored Tor user deanonymization attacks and Rob Jansen's of the Naval research laboratory's traffic analysis technique[5][6].
Operation Trojan Shield work
April 2024 Status of the 17
Of important note, there has not been any evidence provided in the past 3 years to the public forming a nexus between the single email address searched in 2021, and the 17 persons arrested by the FBI. Their innocence or guilt cannot not even be inferred by the public. As foreign nationals they are more vulnerable to civil rights violations such as due process. As of April 2024, most of the 17 people have been arrested and in detention or jailed while awaiting trial. With the longest period of time being jailed for 3 years for the first arrested defendant without yet being convicted. The defendant's attorney's have not filed any motions to challenge the legality of the operation, nor have any of the cases progressed to the point of appeals. No person has pled guilty to any of the charges.
U.S. legality
In the U.S. there is case law (Illinois v. Gates (1983)) that prevents U.S. law enforcement from utilizing information obtained from foreign law enforcement agencies without a U.S. search warrant if the U.S. law enforcement participated in the operation or the operation "shocked the conscience" amongst other reasons. It remains to be seen whether or not the courts, or the appeals courts grant that probable cause existed to search the 17 indicted persons from the U.S. and that their civil rights were not violated.
Further, the FBI's affidavit in application of search warrant only alleged that there were 15 ANOM devices that were geofenced from the FBI seizing the content, however, as of 2023, there were 17 person's indicted by the FBI. No information has been provided as to where the extra two person's came from, or whether these 17 people overlap with the 15 people that were geo-fenced. The nexus between the ANOM messages, and the 17 indicted persons has not been revealed to the public as of April 2024.
- ^ "National Crime Agency Intelligence Report" (PDF). Courtlistener.com. United States: National Crime Agency, United States. 16 September 2019. p. 6. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
The Data was lawfully obtained under the investigatory powers act,... ...Under these warrants and the lawful collection of this data, at no time was any computer or device interfered with in the united states... ...the UK did not access, search or seize any data from any computer in the United States
- ^ "PF arrests 25 people and rescues three minors in operation against child pornography in 20 states and in the Federal District". 3 December 2021. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
- ^ Kooharian, Stephanie M (12 December 2022). "Affidavit in Support of Complaint and Arrest Warrant" (PDF). Courtlistener.com. Bridgeport, Connecticut: Free Law Project. p. 7. Retrieved 20 February 2024.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
kax17 1was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Jansen, Rob; Juarez, Marc; Galvez, Rafael; Elahi, Tariq; Diaz, Claudia (2018). "Inside Job: Applying Traffic Analysis to Measure Tor from Within". Proceedings 2018 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium. doi:10.14722/ndss.2018.23261.
- ^ Jansen, Rob; Juarez, Marc; Galvez, Rafael; Elahi, Tariq; Diaz, Claudia (2018). "Inside Job: Applying Traffic Analysis to Measure Tor from Within". Retrieved 17 October 2023.