FBI agents in Marques probe found sick websites

[proverbialwisdom]

Source: Irish Independent

Investigation led officers to world's three biggest paedophile networks

By Jim Cusack
11 August 2013

THE world's three biggest secret paedophile websites, with potentially millions of users, were identified by the FBI as part of its investigation into Irishman Eric Eoin Marques.

Three sites called Lolita City, The Love Zone and Pedo Empire and containing huge numbers of images, including brutal rapes of children, were identified by the American law enforcement agency during its investigations.

The sickening websites cannot be accessed over the ordinary internet. Users download and use encryption software before paying for access.

US authorities are seeking to extradite Mr Marques, 28, to Maryland to face charges of distributing, conspiring to distribute and advertising child pornography as part of a major global investigation.

<>

Read more: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/fbi-agents-in-marques-probe-found-sick-websites-29489403.html

[proverbialwisdom]

1. More.

http://www.dailydot.com/news/eric-eoin-marques-child-porn-ireland-extradite-fbi/

U.S. seeks to extradite "largest facilitator of child porn on the planet"
By Kevin Morris on August 03, 2013

The FBI is urging the Irish government to extradite a man one agent believes to be the "largest facilitator of child porn on the planet."

Eric Eoin Marques, 28, is currently sitting in an Irish jail awaiting the conclusion of his extradition trial. FBI agents have accused him of peddling in graphic images "depicting the rape and torture of pre-pubescent children," according to the Irish Independent. If convicted in a U.S. court of all four charges against him, Marques could face up to 30 years in jail.

<>

LINK: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/fbi-bids-to-extradite-largest-childporn-dealer-on-planet-29469402.html
404 - page not found

http://www.independent.ie/search/?fromSection=404&search=Eric+Eoin+Marques

August 11 (above): http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/fbi-agents-in-marques-probe-found-sick-websites-29489403.html
August 10: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/rabbitte-meets-internet-chiefs-in-bid-to-halt-childporn-access-29488171.html
August 10: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts-hand-over-half-of-suspects-sought-in-us-29488177.html
August 9: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/dearbhail-mcdonald-this-unremarkable-young-man-is-not-any-ordinary-suspect-29485517.html
August 9: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/my-son-is-innocent-says-father-of-man-wanted-by-fbi-over-child-porn-29485483.html

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/why-does-the-fbi-want-to-extradite-eric-eoin-marques-29485479.html
Why does the FBI want to extradite Eric Eoin Marques?
09 AUGUST 2013

The charges relate to images on over a hundred "anonymous websites" described as being extremely violent, graphic and depicting the rape and torture of pre-pubescent children.

The FBI believes the websites it has targeted operate on a single computer server to a single anonymous hosting service.

That hosting service has been accessed and administered to via a single IP address – the numerical label assigned to each computer or device that uses the internet – in the United States.

The US claims Eric Eoin Marques is the sole administrator of the anonymous hosting service.
Irish Independent

August 5: http://gawker.com/dark-net-busted-wide-open-after-child-porn-arrest-1030239391
August 9: http://gawker.com/the-attack-on-the-dark-net-took-down-a-lot-more-than-ch-1081274609

[itsrobert]

2. they missed Freerepublic

n/t

[teenagebambam]

3. "Marques could face up to 30 years in jail"

WTF? Doesn't that seem a little light?

[Tumbulu]

5. It does to me, but then rape convictions get practically nothing

and look at this guy out on parole, who broke the terms of his parole who recently killed this fabulous woman in Berkeley.

The "justice" system thinks that men have the right to injure women and children. It is clear in the sentences.

And that young woman in Florida who just days after giving birth shoots warning shots at her ex who has come to beat her up? She gets the same sentence as this guy posting tortured children?

I recall hearing something like "there is no Justice, there is just us" back in the early 80's...that stays in my head.

[Comrade Grumpy]

8. "Rape convictions get practically nothing." Not according to a Google news search.

I just did one on "rape sentenced."

There were sentences of 11 years, 35 years, 40 years, and life.

Admittedly, there is variation in sentencing, but many, many convicted rapists get slammed very hard.

[Tumbulu]

34. Look, I was stalked by a convicted rapist

out on parole (he had served 5 yrs because the woman he attacked was only left paralyzed, not killed) and they could not charge him with a crime unless he did something more than breaking and entry. I kid you not.

I had an employee whose husband regularly beat her, they would not even keep him in jail overnight, not take his weapons from him. She was a fabulous worker, he could not keep a job.

Maybe in some places rapists get long sentences, but that has not been what I have observed over the years in California's rural areas where it does not seem to be taken seriously.

Men who attack women cannot be reformed, it seems to me it is sad but true.

[Niceguy1]

27. they weren't warning

Shots. Even her children testified against her.

[Tumbulu]

35. Too bad she didn't kill him, then she would have been OK

for standing her ground. Any man who attacks a woman should be killed, not warned, is that your position? Fine with me, we would save a lot of money at the jails.

[Niceguy1]

37. according to testimony

She was the agressor. ..... not the victim. She is in the right spot.

[Tumbulu]

38. so she get 30 years for firing shots at a man who had beaten

her repeatedly and he had gotten no time whatsoever? Why wasn't he in jail for 30 years for his aggression? He had a long history of assaulting women, which is the usual with these types.

Sorry, I think her sentence is still excessive, and typically men get very little time for aggression towards women in comparison.

[proverbialwisdom]

6. Related.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/dearbhail-mcdonald-this-unremarkable-young-man-is-not-any-ordinary-suspect-29485517.html

<>

The US authorities have 10 days to file a formal extradition request, but could face a much longer wait once that request is formalised by Justice Minister Alan Shatter.

This is because Marques, if convicted, faces up to 30 years in a US prison. This compares with a maximum of 14 years under Irish law.

Under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998, the possession, distribution, import or export or sale of child pornography is illegal and carries a maximum 14-year term.

Using a child or allowing a child to be used for the production of child pornography is also punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment.

In the past, Irish courts have been reluctant to extradite suspects to the US where the comparative sentences are deemed excessive.

Irish Independent

[branford]

15. 30 years is too lenient, if convicted, for this piece of social refuse.

Anyone who is guilty of actively participating in the victimization of so many children should never again know life as a free man.

Ireland is still facing issues concerning the Catholic Church and protecting pedophile priests. I would think that they would want someone like him gone ASAP, particularly since he is an American citizen and the request is in accordance with our extradition treaty. Protecting this filth, no less at the risk of harming relations with the USA, seems absurd.

Additionally, although I cannot in good faith ever condone prison violence, if he was ever accidentally left in the general population of the prisons in either Ireland or America, well . . .

[Helen Borg]

10. I was thiking the same.

Millions of users = millions of counts...

[Katashi_itto]

12. Yup, it will be like the guy who held the four women as sex slaves for 10 years 915 counts at least

I think there were other charges too but he got life +1000 years I think

[Mojorabbit]

19. Should be life without parole.nt

[unreadierLizard]

4. I never would think

in a million years a website called "Pedo Empire" would be full of child porn!

/sarcasm

[cstanleytech]

7. Why should Ireland extradite him?

If he is in Ireland doesnt he fall within their jurisdiction and not that of the US which means if anyone is to prosecute him it should be the Irish government?
After all this isnt Team America: World Police is it?

[MADem]

9. Well, he's distributing in the US, and he's a US citizen.

As the article indicates.

If convicted, Mr Marques, who was born in New York and moved to Ireland with his family at the age of five, will face up to 30 years behind bars.

I think he'd have a better chance -- not much, but a better chance--of surviving his sentence in USA.

[cstanleytech]

21. I'm not sure I buy the "distributing in the US" aspect unless he

was sending the stuff to people inside the US personally and knew the people were inside the US otherwise if he was inside Ireland it still seems like a crime Ireland should prosecute him for even if though was born in the US but

[MADem]

32. He had customers in the USA. He provided them a service. He took money for that

service. Over and over again.

It's still up to Ireland to agree to the extradition request. They might not want to deal with "the American" and have to keep him from being brutally murdered in prison for upwards of a decade and a half.

[starroute]

11. Anonymous was after these guys long before the FBI stepped in

Anonymous is concerned to maintain the crucial anonymity of Darknet and not have it destroyed in the name of rooting out kiddie porn. They began Operation Darknet almost two years ago, and by last year were taunting the FBI to "get off your lazy asses" and take action.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/anonymous-takes-down-darknet-child-porn-site-on-tor-network/

Oct 23 2011,

Pedophiles connecting to a concealed child pornography site got an unwelcome surprise last week, courtesy of the hacktivist group Anonymous. Lolita City, a child pornography site run on over a concealed “darknet,” has been taken down by Anonymous members, and account details of 1,589 users from the site’s database were posted as evidence.

The takedown is part of Anonymous’ Operation Darknet, an anti-child-pornography effort aimed at thwarting child pornographers operating on on the Tor network. Anonymous’ attack was focused on a hosting service called Freedom Hosting, which the group claims was the largest host of child pornography on Tor’s anonymized network. “By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites,” Anonymous claimed in its statement. “Among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date, containing more than 100GB of child pornography.” . . .

Because of its anonymity, Tor is widely used by individuals and groups seeking to communicate without being surveilled by authorities, employers, or eavesdroppers watching packets on public WiFi networks, as well as those wishing to visit websites anonymously without having their IP address recorded. According to the Tor Project’s own metrics, the service has recently been averaging over 400,000 users per day.

The Tor network was heavily used in Egypt earlier this year by dissidents to get around the Mubarak regime’s Internet shut-down, and is used by bloggers in Syria to communicate with the outside world. The network is also used by some who want to publish other sorts of material and conceal themselves from prying eyes, including pirated movie and software torrent publishers (which has made some Tor server providers the target of DMCA takedown notices). It's also attracted child pornographers and the pedophiles who are their customers.


http://www.examiner.com/article/anonymous-identifies-darknet-pedophiles-lolita-city-exposed

May 21, 2012

In a Pastebin release dated May 19, hacktivists claiming affiliation with Anonymous announced they had gained access to the user list of Lolita City, and had been gathering the personal information belonging to those uploading images to the known pedophile website. . . .

On a related Pastehtml post the same Anonymous hacktivists claim the information identifying the various darknet pedophiles is mostly from Lolita City users, noting that the information is fresh, and not “stolen.” The following is an excerpt from that post:

We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Pedophiles/rapists expect us.
#OpPedoHunt
#OpDarknetV2
chris hansen is coming for you
Although we hate the FBI, they could easily pull info from these peoples accounts which will lead to their arrest. FBI, get off your lazy asses and arrest these pedos.

[TalkingDog]

13. Thank you. This needs to be reposted when people start talking about the "need"

to censor the web.

[Downwinder]

14. Whose fiber and copper transported the data?

Any charges filed there?

[proverbialwisdom]

17. Check it out.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/alleged-tor-hidden-service-operator-busted-for-child-porn-distribution/?comments=1

Alleged Tor hidden service operator busted for child porn distribution
Freedom Hostings's alleged founder held in Ireland, facing extradition to US.

COMMENTS:

page 1
Chuckstar Ars Praefectuset Subscriptor 7 days ago

kbhola wrote:

ok so the question is: can he actually be convicted of hosting this?
If he falls under the umbrella of service provider, which the article makes it seem he does, then he can no more be charged for hosting child porn than Marissa Mayers can if someone was running a secret child porn tumblr.

The article does not make it seem he is a service provider. I don't know where you're getting that. The article makes it clear that he sets up gateways specifically to these sites (i.e. .onion links). That's not protected under any statute I'm aware of.

EDIT: ... allegedly ...


page 2
Shava NeradSmack-Fu Master, in training 7 days ago Reader Fav

kbhola wrote:

ok so the question is: can he actually be convicted of hosting this?
If he falls under the umbrella of service provider, which the article makes it seem he does, then he can no more be charged for hosting child porn than Marissa Mayers can if someone was running a secret child porn tumblr.

"Safe Harbor" says if he were ignorant of the content he has no liability. However, it's very common for such people to send email back and forth chatting with customers about their content, at which point they are dumbasses and totally pierce the veil of their immunity. No skin off my nose, in a case like this. My experience as founding executive director of Tor was that the democracy organizers, the journalists, the human rights workers and so on were much more likely to be methodical and RTFM.

MORE

[Judi Lynn]

16. He has that chinless look so fashionable with Republicans:

[center]

[/center]

[Helen Borg]

18. He looks out of it...

Well, busted...

[brett_jv]

20. Damn, are there seriously "millions" of consumers of images of child rape and torture?

I mean, I guess given there's 6 billion on the world, I could see that kinda number if it were just 'regular' sexual images ... considering that we know pretty well that pedophilia begets pedophiles i.e. many who's sexual lives begin very young often in turn end up attracted sexually to the very young when they grow up (and I've always found that observation quite confusing, but ... it is what it is).

But images of child torture and rape? I mean, it's always 'rape' in one sense when we're talking prepubescents, but I'm assuming they're talking about images that purposefully connote a 'forced' scenario ... Yet there's MILLIONS of users?

Seriously, WTF, man? Sometimes I really don't know about humanity anymore ...

[Chakaconcarne]

22. would this have been discovered. ..

Without nsa policy? Just saying.. I'm glad they're closing in on these bastards.

[cthulu2016]

23. thanks for the chuckle

[Fumesucker]

24. Probably

Here's an article from 2011.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/anonymous-takes-down-darknet-child-porn-site-on-tor-network/

Pedophiles connecting to a concealed child pornography site got an unwelcome surprise last week, courtesy of the hacktivist group Anonymous. Lolita City, a child pornography site run on over a concealed “darknet,” has been taken down by Anonymous members, and account details of 1,589 users from the site’s database were posted as evidence.

The takedown is part of Anonymous’ Operation Darknet, an anti-child-pornography effort aimed at thwarting child pornographers operating on on the Tor network. Anonymous’ attack was focused on a hosting service called Freedom Hosting, which the group claims was the largest host of child pornography on Tor’s anonymized network. “By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites,” Anonymous claimed in its statement. “Among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date, containing more than 100GB of child pornography.”

[brett_jv]

26. Now THAT ... is how you do it!

Love it!

[TroglodyteScholar]

29. Pow!

FBI had to get a clue from amateurs. But Anonymous failed in their secondary (primary?) mission of protecting the TOR network. Bummer for those who are security conscious but not criminal in their activities.

And yes, govt overreach will certainly get some if not all of the credit for this.

[brett_jv]

25. I can't personally get behind the idea of using the NSA technology in that way ...

Supposedly this technology is only meant to be used against terrorists.

I mean, I find this whole kiddie porn thing as egregious as the next guy, but the problem is ... where to draw the line? No doubt the phone records of local pot dealers have a VERY recognizable pattern if one were to develop algorithms to seek them out ...

I just think that if we just throw up our hands and go 'okay, government, go ahead and catch *all* the bad guys by snooping into everyone's internet and phone usage' ... it's going to be an incredibly bad thing in the long run.

Plus, I'm betting these people can be caught using regular police work. If there's literally 'millions' of users, it can't possibly be hard to infiltrate their sick little network.

[proverbialwisdom]

28. Try "Command F: NSA" on any of the links posted above. No mention of NSA in any articles I've read.

..only in a solitary comment here and there. Do you have a source?

[Ash_F]

31. Yes.

The NSA didn't help at all.

..but don't let the facts get you down.

[Ash_F]

30. 'Pedo Empire'? wow.

Nice to see law enforcement do something useful.

[dawn frenzy adams]

33. Law enforcement dragging its feet?

I find it hard to believe that law enforcement won't declare war on these deviants. Why don't they go after them with the same determination and fervor they use when targeting terrorists. Could it be that it involves too many prominent people? I daresay start with the an invasion of the Vatican.

[Skittles]

36. why do so many men want to f*** kids?

seriously, why?

[freshwest]

39. Special Crime and Special Victim Units have been doing this for many decades. The reason years ago

laws were passed against simply possessing child porn. which along with snuff porn predates the internet by many years, is the victims often do not survive to testify or are so traumatized they can't.

Cases I've known of those who gang rape children in their care and videotape it, complete with the sound of their screams of pain and begging them to stop, and all you might imagine, for the fun of their friends, were only caught by child porn laws. And the police obviously played their part, since no one around them was going to do a damn thing to stop it.

LEOs are not authorized to act until the crime is done and found out. Innocent before proven guilty isn't just in court trials, since we are all assumed to do the right thing behind closed doors, but then we have these citizens. The case on the American now in Ireland likely came off a police blotter first.

AFAIK, the sentence for the stolen minds and lives of those vulnerable victims was never more than 30 years, when they should have been sent to prison for life. With those laws, which were better than nothing, for at least for 30 years their victims and others would be safe.

The problem for police and prosecutors is that the victims were not able to testify. The perpetrators all stuck together and lied like all the fine upstanding gentlemen they were, but there was video. Which proved them liars, but still, the victims were unable to testify to rape, beatings, starvation and being held like prisoners for profit. So they were not charged with rape, as their faces were not on the videos. They could only be charged with possessing and distributing child porn. Think in terms of how the FBI brought down Al Capone with taxes. His victims were unable to testify from fear or death and one might see why these backdoor ways to go after them were invented.

Without police officers wallowing through filth, they would have never been punished. All of this predates the Anonymous brand by many years, who didn't go and arrest them. I find loose criticism of the FBI and LEOs unfair. These are real people who this shit is happening to, and it's about action and not about scoring in the media winning poltiical points.

JMHO.

[proverbialwisdom]

40. Update.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2521789/Child-porn-dealer-cited-worlds-biggest-walk-free-Ireland-drops-charges.html

'World's biggest child porn dealer' who says 100 years in U.S. jail is 'too harsh' may walk free after Ireland drops charges

* Irish authorities have revealed Eric Eoin Marques will not be prosecuted
* The 28-year-old is facing possible extradition to the U.S. by the FBI
* But it is unclear whether Ireland will hand him over to the U.S.
* Marques is wanted on four charges of distributing child pornography

By LEON WATSON

More: http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/dpp-not-prosecute-largest-facilitator-2911380

[franko smith]

41. Why do they want to fuck kids?

Because they are psychologically depraved sick fucks who should all be classed as dangerously insane and a clear and present danger to all children anywhere they live or go, and should be dealt with accordingly.

Where can I get this F B I list?