It's seems to be harder and harder to keep the balance of justice balanced against the desire to keep some spying tools secret. Now, the DOJ drops a case against a suspect in on of the biggest child porn cases ever, just so they won't have to disclose the hacking tool they used to bypass Tor anonymity.
The Playpen was one of the largest child porn sites in the internet underground, but the FBI eventually got a hold of it and run it for a few weeks, hoping to catch its visitors. The problem is that those visitors used the Tor network to access that site, which should - theoretically - keep anyone from identifying them. However, the FBI did in fact identify them... and now they're not willing to let the world know how.
One could argue if it's more valuable to keep such a resource, which could help identify lots other suspects in future cases, and let go a few child porn suspects. But... what's the criteria here? What will it take for the FBI to say: "well, now this is a big case, worth blowing our Tor-busting-hacking system out into the public"? Wouldn't a big child porn ring be one such case that would be worth it?
Anyway, I think any father would be appalled by the idea of the so-called "Justice" system even be considering letting go of a child porn suspect, just so they could keep their secret weapons a secret...
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