The US government has dropped two child pornography cases against a man rather than reveal material available on WikiLeaks, which is still classified, in court.
David Tippens was suspected of downloading child pornography material from a site known as Playpen that was functional on the dark web. The cases dropped related to receipt and transportation of such material. A third case, for possession, will be prosecuted.
Early last month, the government dropped a child pornography case against a man known as Jay Michaud rather than reveal the technological means they had used to locate him.
All the 200-odd Playpen-related cases being prosecuted across the US were filed after the FBI gained control of the website in 2015 and ran it for a while, according to a report on Ars Technica.
{loadposition sam08}During the 13 days that the FBI controlled it, its agents used what they describe as a "network investigative technique" to find out the real IP addresses of the people using the site.
Websites on the dark web are accessed using the Tor browser which masks a user's IP address and guarantee anonymity. Security experts have described the NIT used by the FBI as malware.
In the case of Tippens, the government dropped the two cases when it became apparent that his lawyers would present material from WikiLeaks which is still classified by the Department of Justice. This material, in the judge's words, would show how the government could "hack into a computer without leaving any trace that it had been hacked or that an exploit had been placed on it".
Last year, iTWire reported that the Queensland Police Service's Taskforce Argos had hacked into the computers of Americans who were part of a child pornography ring on the dark Web, in order to find their IP addresses.
Argos is a specialist branch which investigates online child exploitation and abuse. The site in question was known as The Love Zone.
The QPS told iTWire at the time that Argos would not make any comment on the matter.