© tormail.orgThis picture shows a computer screen displaying the home page of tormail.org
The United States government seized the contents of every message stored on the servers of a supposedly secure email provider, new documents reveal, and is using that information in other criminal cases.
Kevin Poulsen, a former hacker-turned-tech reporter, wrote for
Wired.com on Monday that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation cloned the data being held by a service called Tormail as the result of a separate probe started last year.
The FBI made waves throughout the internet security community back in August when it was discovered that US prosecutors asked police in Ireland to arrest Eric Eoin Marques, a 28-year-old man who administered a hosting provider that offered customers web space on the so-called dark web - a section of the internet that is only accessible through the Tor anonymizer browser and contains an unknown number of hidden portals, including many with content that's illegal under US law.
When Marques was arrested last year, US authorities gained control of his company, Freedom Hosting, and the data belonging to customers who had created websites on the dark web. One of those clients was Tormail, a hidden service that
boasted of allowing "
anyone to send and receive email anonymously" and claimed to never "
co-operate with anyone attempting to identify or censor" its users. Only now, though, has it been revealed that the FBI cloned the entirety of that company's info after shutting down its service provider, Freedom Hosting, and customers who relied on it for web space.
Comment: Japan's main trading partner and the principle destination for its exports is China and Japan seems driven to overpower them - fueled by the U.S.? U.S. goading Japan into confrontation with China - Will Japan take the bait?