Adam Steinbaugh's

(This post is part of a series of investigative pieces attempting to identify the owners of “revenge porn” websites.)

WhozaCunt.com: The Revenge Porn Site Down Under

WhozaCunt.com is a revenge porn site “dedicated to helping you get even with bitches and assholes and give them what’s coming to them! [...] Make them famous – they deserve it!”  Having posted the nude photos of men and women against their will, the site subjects its victims to a bizarre ‘takedown’ ritual.  The site’s takedown policy requires victims themselves (and not a lawyer or family member) to provide a copy of their photo ID, another photo of the victim to prove they’re making the request, ”proof” of the date the images were taken, and a “counter declaration,” without elaborating what the victim is supposed to declare.

When victims complained, the site would post their full emails, along with their photo IDs, and state opaquely that they had failed to comply with the takedown process.

Some victims of the site assert, credibly, that they were under the age of 18 in the photos featured on Whozacunt.com.  For example, one victim circled some, but not all, of the nude photos in her profile, to indicate which ones were taken while she was underage.  Whozacunt refused to remove the profile or any of the photos and instead re-posted the circled photos.

When challenged, the site takes an aggressive stance to increase the humiliation of its victims.  One woman and her parents complained to the Illinois Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division, alleging that Whozacunt.com was refusing to remove nude photos of somebody else (and posted under the victim’s name).  The day after Whozacunt.com received a letter from the Consumer Protection Division, a new site arose using a domain consisting of the young woman’s full name, along with her nude photos.

Who could be this cruel?  A guy who cares more about cruelty to pigeons than cruelty to people.

Read more «Who Runs Revenge Porn Site Whozacunt.com?»” class=”more-link”>Read more «Who Runs Revenge Porn Site Whozacunt.com?»

Over the past year or so, I’ve been writing a series of investigative pieces documenting who I believed was operating so-called “revenge porn” sites.  It’s probably time that I explain why.((I mean, aside from the fact that it’s funny to reveal that a guy who was a professional pigeon racer now runs a revenge porn site.  Seriously, professional pigeon racer.  That post goes up tomorrow.))

With few exceptions, the people operating these websites go to differing lengths to obscure who is running the site.  There’s a reason for that.  Their friends, family, significant others, and professional associates probably wouldn’t be as supportive if they knew about their hobby of humiliation for profit.  So, too, would victims, lawyers, occasionally law enforcement, and the John Q. Public like to know who runs these sites, and why they run them: is it because they’re embarrassed, because they fear lawsuits, or because they’re engaging in outright extortion?

And I would like to know, too.  While there’s a debate to be had about the First Amendment implications of revenge porn, one thing is certain: more speech criticizing these sites, their practices, and their owners is protected.  Exposing and criticizing owners pressures them to end their practice, deters others from starting sites, and guides law enforcement, lawyers, and victims in locating the owners.

Thus far, I’ve written about IsAnybodyDown’s Craig Brittain, Texxxan’s Hunter Taylor, YouGotPosted’s Kevin Bollaert, and WinByState’s Casey Meyering.  One of these sites shut down voluntarily, two others after being sued, and two of these owners are facing extortion charges. While I would like to claim credit for taking these sites down,((There is always someone with a skill and too much time on their hands. I happen to be one of those people.)) much heavier lifting has been done by the victims who raised awareness and pressure on law enforcement to act, the law enforcement officers who did act, and the lawyers who navigated new legal territory.  Perhaps I’ve had no impact at all.

Nonetheless, I believe that public pressure — more speech — works.  One site, AnonIB.com, shuttered last week after its ownership was purportedly revealed and, in its stead, issued a statement:

Apology to the girls who were posted on site against their will and especially those that had to donate to have their pictures removed. Its a warning to those that abuse others online. There are forces that work to track and expose them, and those forces WILL win in the end. There are plenty of girls and boys, women and men, who willingly want to be naked on the internet so post their pictures instead.

By my count, three dedicated revenge porn sites remain.  I know who owns each of these sites and, often, the people who support them.  They should and — if their sites remain online — will be criticized.

Tomorrow, another name gets added to the list.

The New York Times has a piece out this morning involving China’s Great Firewall, China’s instrument of controlling the online content available to its citizens, that, if true, would be hysterical.  The article begins:

In one of the more bizarre twists in recent Internet memory, much of the Internet traffic in China was redirected to a small, 1,700-square-foot house in Cheyenne, Wyo., on Tuesday. [...]

[Domain name servers associated with China's Internet], which act as a switchboard for Internet traffic behind China’s Great Firewall, routed traffic from some of China’s most popular sites, including Baidu and Sina, to a block of Internet addresses registered to Sophidea Incorporated, a mysterious company housed on a residential street in Cheyenne, Wyo.

The Times provides a picture of the quaint cottage where a substantial portion of the world’s internet traffic was apparently misdirected, and describes past reports into this mysterious collection of mailboxes and corporate registrations.

And, of course, the Times‘ report took off, repeated by Slate, the Washington Post, Gizmodo, the Daily Dot, so on and so forth.  It’s a funny story that lets us mock the incompetence of China’s censorship techs.

But the Times’ report conflates a physical mailing address with an internet network address.  An IP address (or block of IPs, rather) is registered to a corporation.  The registration (which can be found by searching a WHOIS database, such as ARIN) reports the registrant’s mailing address, not the physical location of the computer associated with the IP(s).  While Sophidea, Inc. might register a block of IP addresses, the associated servers may be anywhere in the world, far from Sophidea’s corporate headquarters or, as here, mysterious post office box.

Sophidea, Inc., also provided the Wyoming Secretary of State with a mailing address elsewhere in Cheyenne, this one a small office building also used for designations of corporate agents.  (A designated agent is a person or corporation which will accept legal paperwork on behalf of a corporation, so that the true owners don’t have to establish an office or, for the benefits of privacy, reveal who runs the business.).

But reporting that China accidentally sent its internet traffic to a small office building (which also didn’t happen, to be clear) doesn’t provide the same amount of bemusement as imagining that China’s internet traffic was sent to a house.

So where did China’s internet traffic really go? It’s impossible to know without knowing which specific IP addresses were the recipients of the traffic.  However, taking the IP addresses from the range of IPs registered to Sophidea, Inc. (e.g., 65.49.2.0), and running a visual traceroute suggests that the final destination was somewhere in Asia, as the trace times out in Malaysia.  Of course, my skills in this arena are rudimentary at best, and I invite more informed minds to offer their own analyses.

But I’m confident that the traffic never got anywhere near Wyoming.

Update, Jan. 23, 2014: Two quick updates:

1) The Atlantic and Colorado Independent have joined in countering the Times story.  The Independent reached out to the upstream provider for (or, rather, apparent host of) Sophidea’s servers.  An anonymous employee with Hurricane Electric confirmed that Sophidea’s servers are not in Wyoming (or, for that matter, Asia, contradicting my own post-hoc research), but are, rather, in California.  Barring any unreported configurations of Sophidea’s servers, that forecloses the possibility that China’s data was redirected to Wyoming.  (The Independent‘s report also correctly notes that the Times, The Atlantic and I missed the fact that the address of Sophidea’s IP registration had changed and was not simply in addition to the quaint little house in Cheyenne.)

2) The Times‘ original story was briefly ‘corrected’ to note that:

“An earlier version of this post misstated where Chinese Internet traffic was redirected. It was redirected to a building in Cheyenne, Wyo., not a house.”

Of course, that correction was also erroneous: the data was not sent to Wyoming at all, much less a specific house or office building.

The original post has now been replaced with a lengthier story that ran on the front page of the Times this morning.  The new iteration is better, focusing on the mysterious circumstances of the enormous hiccup in China’s internet traffic and the (understandably) private Sophidea.

The new post provides this blithe correction to yesterday’s misleading report:

An earlier version of this post misstated where Chinese Internet traffic was redirected. The physical location of the servers receiving the traffic is not clear.

So, a correction to a correction.  Of course, yesterday’s report elided this critical fact. China’s Internet was not redirected to a house in Wyoming, to an office in Wyoming, or to Wyoming at all.  Yet, Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth is sticking to her guns, contradicting the Independent‘s source (a Hurricane Electric employee who stated that the servers were in California) with this gem:

@ShelbKL @alexismadrigal @adamsteinbaugh unfortunately this is incorrect. The IP address was an anonymous proxy.

— Nicole Perlroth (@nicoleperlroth) January 23, 2014

Nonsense.  A proxy server shields the identity of the sender of traffic (e.g., a computer in China), but generally doesn’t shield the identity of the recipient of the data.  Moreover, if the location of the IP address couldn’t be known (because proxy!), why did the Times report that the data was going to Wyoming?

Update II (Jan. 23, 2014): The Washington Post has a more precise report, which provides the actual IP: 65.49.2.178.  Running a traceroute on this IP confirms that the server is in California (and operated by Dynamic Internet Technology in a Hurricane Electric datacenter), corroborating the Independent‘s source.

Ares Rights, An Unproductive Exercise In Censorship By DMCA

In June, I wrote about Ares Rights, a Spanish firm being used by Ecuador’s government to censor dissidents by way of meritless copyright claims. Their technique is as unproductive as it is reckless: Ares Rights issues a DMCA takedown notice — utilizing an American law — targeting material that is clearly a fair use of insubstantial content created by (or related to) state-sponsored media outlets.  The offending material is briefly taken offline and then made public again once the targeted dissident (and the host of the material) catches on.  It’s hard to divine what goal Ares Rights (and Ecuador) think this abuse serves, leaving only the conclusion that the practice serves only to harass dissidents.

Ares Rights’ DMCA notices have targeted (among other things) Rosie Gray’s reporting on Ecuador’s spy program for Buzzfeed, a documentary critical of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, and photoshops accusing the father of Ecuador’s vice president of rape.¹ What limited success Ares Rights has achieved has been erased, and then some, as two of Ecuador’s newspapers (El Comercio and El Universo) have since criticized the practice.

The Bigger They Are, The Dumber It Is To Hit Them: Ares Meets Chevron

Now, Ares Rights is reportedly targeting Chevron ((Yes, the multinational oil conglomerate worth twice as much as the GDP of most South American nations, including Ecuador.)) over videos critical of an Ecuadorian judge’s 2011 ruling that Chevron was liable for $9 billion in damages resulting from rainforest pollution. Chevron has contested that ruling in a New York lawsuit, claiming (among other things) that the American plaintiff’s attorney who pursued the case blackmailed the Ecuadorian judge.

In the court of public opinion, Chevron has pursued a comparably aggressive approach, launching “The Amazon Post“, a blog documenting in some detail the American case and coverage of it. The corporation also provided videos on its YouTube account, “TexacoEcuador“.

According to a post on its “Amazon Post” blog, Chevron notes that readers “may have noticed that our videos on The Amazon Post are currently down” (well, no: the videos generally don’t have too many views, which makes the takedown even more dumbfounding, because now they will get more views). Chevron says that their videos were removed from YouTube at the behest of a complaint from Ares Rights in “late November.”

The notice on the dispatched YouTube videos indicates that they were removed “due to a copyright claim by Filmin”, likely referring to Spanish movie website filmin.es, a corporation Ares Rights apparently has unknown involvement with. What content, exactly, filmin.es owns that was used in Chevron’s videos is unclear, and it’s possible — perhaps likely — that filmin.es doesn’t own any content at issue, and is simply being used as a vehicle to censor a critic of Ecuador.

If Ecuador Can Censor Chevron, It Can Censor You

Some may balk at the notion that we should be worried about Chevron’s YouTube videos, and may insist — perhaps rightly — that videos produced by Chevron to bolster its public relations should be taken with a hefty grain of salt. These aren’t relevant considerations. We value the ability to speak, not whether the speaker deserves to be heard or believed, irrespective of whether the speaker is a corporate behemoth or a lone pamphleteer heralding the imminent fracking doomsday. A government abusing the law — whether its own law or that of another country — to intimidate critics of any sort is a danger to critics of every sort.

Chevron, for its part, has something many critics of Ecuador don’t: the resources to make Ares Rights pay for its censorious transgressions by pursuing a §512(f) claim for their abusive tactics.  Hopefully it will exercise them: it may not be a risk Chevron faces in the future, but it would sure draw more attention to the videos Ares Rights sought to memory-hole.

I’ve reached out to Chevron and filmin.es for comment.² I’ll update this post should I receive any further information.

1. That’s not to cherry-pick a few questionable DMCA notices from the known Ares Rights claims: I can’t find even a single reasonably legitimate copyright claims pursued by Ares Rights on behalf of Ecuador or another South American state. ↩

2. And sweet, sweet crude oil, which is probably a safer investment than BitCoins. ↩