https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article248947179.html"
FBI agents killed were Daniel Alfin, Laura Schwartzenberger | Miami Herald
Who were the FBI agents killed in Florida? Both had history of pursuing child-porn cases
By Aaron Leibowitz,
David Ovalle, and
Jay Weaver
February 02, 2021 01:27 PM,
The two FBI agents fatally shot while serving a warrant Tuesday morning in Sunrise were Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger, both of whom had a distinguished history of investigating child pornography and sexual exploitation cases in South Florida.
FBI Director Christopher Wray identified the two in a statement on Tuesday.
“Every day, FBI special agents put themselves in harm’s way to keep the American people safe. Special Agent Alfin and Special Agent Schwartzenberger exemplified heroism today in defense of their country. The FBI will always honor their ultimate sacrifice and will be forever grateful for their bravery,” Wray said in the statement.
Alfin, 36, was born in New York and began his career with the FBI in Albany in 2009, FBI Miami Special Agent in Charge George Piro said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. Alfin joined the Miami field office in 2017 and worked crimes against children cases for six years, Piro said. He is survived by his wife and one child.
Schwartzenberger, 43, was born in Pueblo, Colorado, and became an FBI special agent in 2005 in Albuquerque, N.M. She moved to Miami in 2010 and spent seven years investigating crimes against children, Piro said. She had a husband and two children.
“Dan and Laura left home this morning to carry out the mission they signed up for and loved to do: to keep the American people safe,” Piro said. “They were valuable members of the FBI and will forever be heroes.”
Alfin had worked on multiple high-profile cases, according to court records and media coverage.
Special Agent Dan Alfin.jpg
Special Agent Dan Alfin was 36 years old. He was born in New York and joined the FBI in 2009 with his initial assignment to the FBI’s Albany, New York, office. He has been assigned to FBI Miami since 2017 and has worked crimes against children violations for over six years. He is survived by his wife and one child.
Last March, he helped bring a case against former Miami mayoral aide Rene Pedrosa for allegedly groping a teen boy at City Hall and exchanging lewd photos. Alfin authored the affidavit filed in support of federal charges against Pedrosa of production of child pornography, receipt of child pornography, and coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity.
According to his affidavit in the Pedrosa case, Alfin had testified in federal court more than 20 times in more than 10 federal districts, and was assigned to the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force in Miami.
Alfin was also involved in a large-scale FBI hacking campaign known as Operation Pacifier, designed to investigate crimes on the dark web and seize child pornography from a website called Playpen. Alfin testified in federal court that FBI and Department of Justice executives had approved a plan for the FBI to briefly operate the Playpen site after they seized it in an effort to identify users.
Playpen founder Steven W. Chase of Naples was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2017.
“It’s the same with any criminal violation: As they get smarter, we adapt, we find them,” Alfin said at the time in a story about the case published on the FBI website. “It’s a cat-and-mouse game, except it’s not a game. Kids are being abused, and it’s our job to stop that.”
Schwartzenberger wrote in a criminal affidavit last year that she was assigned to the Miami outpost of the agency’s Innocent Images National Initiative, which investigates the online sexual exploitation of children.
“I have conducted and assisted in several child exploitation investigations and have executed search warrants that have led to seizures of child pornography,” she said in the affidavit, which supported charges related to child porn and enticement of a minor by a North Miami Beach man.
Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger .jpg
Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger was 43 years old. She was born in Pueblo, Colorado, and joined the FBI in 2005. Her initial assignment was with the FBI’s Albuquerque, New Mexico, office. She was reassigned to FBI Miami in 2010 and has worked crimes against children cases for over seven years. She is survived by her husband and two children.
In 2018, Schwartzenberger spoke to a local TV station in West Palm Beach to warn of a “sextortion” scam involving con artists who would falsely claim they hacked into people’s webcams and then demand money to prevent the release of compromising photos.
“It is very traumatizing for the victim,” Schwartzenberger told CBS12 News. “Their reputation is on the line.”
Schwartzenberger was the lead agent in a sextortion case that led to a 50-year prison sentence for a Hialeah man who posed as a teenage female to induce about 300 boys to send him sexually explicit photos and videos of themselves.
At least twice in recent years, Schwartzenberger visited Rockway Middle School in Westchester to speak to students about online safety and cybercrimes, according to posts on social media.
“Great to have FBI Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger join us to present to our 6th Grade Legal Studies & Forensic Science students about online safety and cyber crimes!” the school posted on Twitter last February.
Great to have FBI Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger join us to present to our 6th Grade Legal Studies & Forensic Science students about online safety and cyber crimes! @MDCPSCentral @FBIMiamiFL @FBI @miamimagnets pic.twitter.com/sJ906w1Wdc
— Rockway MS (@rmsfalcons) February 13, 2020
Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger giving a lesson on cyber safety in Law Studies! @MDCPS @MDCPSCentral @MDCPSSocStudies @miamimagnets pic.twitter.com/pRPEhT27F2
— Rockway MS (@rmsfalcons) October 20, 2016
The school, in a statement, thanked Schwartzenberger for teaching students in the law studies program.
“With her presentations, students would gain an awareness of online safety, cyberbullying and experience the evidence response process of an FBI agent,” the statement said. “She would always answer all the students questions directly with care, but with firmness, to always remind them of the real world.”
The statement also said: “She would always say, ‘I feel that coming here and talking to you guys about the hard stuff means that I won’t see you guys on my end.’ ”
On Tuesday morning, Alfin and Schwartzenberger were killed and three other FBI agents were wounded while serving a warrant at a home in Sunrise. After barricading himself in the home for several hours, the suspected gunman is believed to have shot and killed himself, a law enforcement source told the Herald.
Sunrise police said the man, who was suspected of child pornography possession, had holed up in his home at the Water Terrace apartment complex. The child pornography case was being investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by federal prosecutors in Fort Lauderdale.
Wray, in an email to FBI personnel, said “days like this are among the darkest days we face in the FBI.”
“We’re all heartbroken — particularly our colleagues in Miami who are reeling from this unthinkable loss. All of us across the FBI, in offices and divisions who worked with the special agents, and colleagues who have never had the chance to meet them, are all trying to also come to terms with this tragic loss. And yet, our grief cannot compare to that of the families of these two special agents.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playpen_(website)"
Playpen (website)
Playpen was a notorious darknet child pornography website created in August 2014.[1][2] When it was shut down in February 2015, the site had over 215,000 users and hosted 23,000 sexually explicit images and videos of children as young as toddlers.[1][3]
The shutdown operation, called Operation Pacifier, involved the FBI hijacking the site and continuing to serve content for two weeks. 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 operation led to the arrest of 900 site users and three prison sentences.
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 reason for their struggle was the fact that Playpen was hosted as a Hidden service via Tor. Only a mishap of the site owner revealing his IP address finally allowed the law enforcement to track down both page and personnel.[1]
The investigation led to the following sentences in May 2017: Steven Chase, a 57-year-old from Florida who created the website: 30 years in prison. His two co-defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 20 years each earlier in 2017 for their involvement in Playpen.[2]
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. exactly the same crime the bureau sought to stop.[4] 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.[5] Nevertheless, there are other voices, like Steven Wilson, Head of the European Cybercrime Centre, who defend the actions taken as they would represent a modern response to a modern problem.[1]
In 2017, charges were dropped against one member of the site, after the court demanded that details of the hacking tool be released. The FBI preferred to keep the NIT (network investigative technique) malware a secret for future investigations.[6][7][8]
Challenges 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.[9][10] On August 28, 2019, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the warrant was invalid but that the evidence obtained was not required to be excluded due to the good-faith exception doctrine.
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http://www.furfur.me/furfur/changes/changes/216879-playpen"
Как агенты ФБР 13 дней управляли крупнейшим сайтом даркнета с детской порнографией
Текст: Степан Нилов
3 марта 2016 в 17:42371304
На прошлой неделе стало известно, как американским исследователям удалось пробить брешь в безопасности TOR. Информацию в итоге получило ФБР, что в итоге повлекло за собой горы уголовных дел на посетителей даркнета. При этом подробности об активности правоохранительных органов в подпольной сети продолжают появляться.
Итак, в феврале 2015-го ФБР провело в даркнете другую, примечательную как минимум по двум причинам операцию: во-первых, её целью был крупнейший сайт детской порнографии, а во-вторых, силовики 13 дней фактически занимались её распространением.
Кроме того, в операции американским силовикам помогли неназванные иностранные спецслужбы, которые управляли ещё одним сайтом с детской порнографией, причём как минимум четыре месяца.
Мы приводим основные тезисы из материала издания Motherboard, которое подробно описало облаву силовиков на любителей детской порнографии в подпольной сети.
Что произошло?
Итак, целью расследования ФБР были пользователи Playpen — сайта в дарквебе, который сами силовики описали как «самый крупный, согласно имеющимся данным, сайт с детской порнографией во всём мире».
Для того чтобы найти этих юзеров в реальном мире, правоохранители взломали Playpen, таким образом заполучив возможность управлять самим сайтом. То есть с 20 февраля по 4 марта 2015 года ФБР имели полный контроль над Playpen, выполняя функции администрации ресурса.
Однако для того, чтобы распознать двоих главных управляющих Playpen, американским силовикам понадобилась помощь вышеупомянутого иностранного агентства, которое занялось захватом другого порнографического сайта (в документах фигурирует как «сайт № 2»). Успешно взломав его, коллеги ФБР также начали управлять сайтом. Это продлилось минимум четыре месяца, однако никаких точных подтверждений того, что оккупация сайта на данный момент закончилось, не существует.
Итак, в ноябре 2014 года, «действуя независимо и руководствуясь местными законами», во время кибератаки иностранные силовики смогли идентифицировать одного из пользователей, отправив ему ссылку на видео.
«Когда подозреваемый открыл файл, начался стриминг видео, содержащего детскую порнографию, а агентство получило и записало его IP-адрес», — говорится в документах ФБР, которые недавно выложили на Reddit (на данный момент удалены). Дело в том, что ссылка в конечном итоге вела на сайт, расположенный вне анонимной сети, что и рассекретило IP-адрес ничего не подозревающего модератора.
Получив эту информацию, в июле 2015 года ФБР смогло найти и арестовать жителя Кентукки Дэвида Линна Браунинга, модератора «сайта № 2», а по совместительству модератора Playpen. На данный момент, помимо Браунинга, арестованы ещё два администратора портала — Стивен Чейз и Майкл Флюкиджер. Чейза арестовали 20 февраля 2015 года, в первый же день администрирования Playpen силами ФБР. В марте 2015 года задержали Флюкиджера — его нашли в чате любителей детской порнографии, в админскую панель которого удачно залогинился агент ФБР. Стоит ли говорить, что всем им предъявили целый букет обвинений, так или иначе связанных с детской порнографией. Браунинг и Флюкиджер уже признали свою вину, Чейз судится до сих пор.
Такой перехват — это вообще законно?
Фактически во время управления Playpen ФБР в течение 13 дней занималось дистрибуцией детской порнографии, причём со своих серверов, однако судья отклонил жалобы защиты с интересной формулировкой: «Речь идёт о действиях правоохранительных органов, которые были вызваны решением преступников злоупотребить технологиями».
Что будет дальше?
В этом инциденте любопытнее всего именно то, что силовики решили взять под контроль сайт с нелегальным контентом, собирая информацию о его посетителях — это можно сравнить с продажей наркотиков под прикрытием, только уже в киберпространстве. Как и в недавней истории о деанонимизации пользователей анонимной сети TOR, сотрудники ФБР снова заполучили информацию от третьих источников, добившись с её помощью посадок пользователей дарквеба.
То есть таких случаев становится больше, а правоохранительные органы продолжают намекать, что в TOR не стоит рассчитывать на полную безопасность. Эту позицию неоднократно поддерживала и американская судебная система, представитель которой даже заявил, что все IP, в том числе и в подпольной сети, — это полностью публичная информация.
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