The U.S. law enforcement agencies like the FBI are using modified BitTorrent clients to catch child pornography offenders. FBI loads the known child porn torrent links in these special clients and catches the people who share child porn using their IPs and trackers. In the recent past, many men have faced lengthy prison terms for distribution and possession of such content.
itTorrent protocol is one of the most commonly used methods of sharing files and documents on the web. It’s not hidden that a big chunk of the BitTorrent traffic also pertains to the copyright infringers. You’ll be surprised to know that such networks and tools are also used to share child pornography.
In the recent years, the United States Department of Justice has prosecuted many cases with the help of BitTorrent clients, reports TorrentFreak.
Now, the FBI has switched to BitTorrent. In an affidavit signed by Homeland Security, it’s written that BitTorrent network can be searched to locate the people sharing “previously identified child exploitation material in the same way a user searches this network.”
The affidavit describes BitTorrent as a popular network that users connect to, but the torrent sites themselves don’t store any material themselves.
The law enforcement agencies like the FBI use torrent search engines to find torrents that link to child porn. Then, the FBI loads the files in modified BitTorrent clients and catches the offender using IP addresses and associated trackers.
The FBI uses a special client that allows the download of a complete file from a single source. This way the FBI knows that the offender has a full copy.
The use of BitTorrent was preceded by the applications like Limewire, which allowed the FBI to located the infringers.
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