Ĭhallenges were raised about the FBI's possibly severe misuse of the initial search warrant, leading to the likely dismissal of much of the gathered evidence against one defendant.
The lawyer of a defendant in the case stated that the FBI not only operated the website, but improved it so its number of visitors rose sharply while it was under their control. exactly the same crime the bureau sought to stop. The investigation was criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation because, after having taken control of the website, the FBI continued for nearly two weeks to operate the website and thus distribute child pornography, i.e. The FBI preferred to keep the NIT ( network investigative technique) malware a secret for future investigations. In 2017, charges were dropped against one member of the site, after the court demanded that details of the hacking tool be released. Īll people that used this site had their Google and Microsoft accounts deleted. His two co-defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 20 years each earlier in 2017 for their involvement in Playpen. Chase, a 57-year-old from Florida who created the website, to 30 years in prison in May 2017. The investigation led to the sentencing of Steven W. Only a mishap of the site owner revealing his IP address finally allowed the law enforcement to track down both page and personnel. The reason for their struggle was the fact that Playpen was hosted as a hidden service via Tor. While the FBI claimed to have knowledge about the existence of the website right from its beginning, it was unable to track down the servers locations or the site owner. The operation led to the arrest of 956 site users and five prison sentences.
During this time the FBI used a malware-based " Network Investigative Technique" to hack into the web browsers of users accessing the site, thereby revealing their identities.
The shutdown operation, called Operation Pacifier, involved the FBI hijacking the site and continuing to serve content for two weeks (from Februuntil March 4, 2015).
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