FBI fake kiddie porn bust

[rock_nog]

Okay, it seems that apparently the FBI is now in the business of making fake kiddie porn sites, posting links, and then raiding the homes of anyone who clicks on those links.

http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9899151-38.html

Now we've discussed the subject of thoughtcrime before, but I think this is just over the top. I mean, I'll admit the whole business with people like Chris Hansen is a bit sketchy, but at least there's no question that these people are specifically out to have sex with children. Yes, I know that doesn't necessarily make it right, I'm just saying, there are two sides to it.

This is something completely new and different. I mean, how can you even prove the intent was to download kiddie porn? I mean, what if you accidentally click the link? Fingers slip and such. I've certainly had my fair share of if accidental clicks. What if you go to the site trying to find out information so that you can report it to the FBI?

Or worse - what if some creep decides to make it the next Rickroll - "Hey guys, check it out, it's a link to the new Duke Nukem Forever Trailer" *BOOM* FBI's busting your door in.

Yes, people who download kiddie porn are criminals, and they deserve to rot in jail. But we can't give up "Innocent until proven guilty" just to catch them.

[The_Amaster]

Hell yeah, I make acidental clicks all the time. If I search, and the page is half loaded and I see what I want, often times I'll click it only to have the rest of the page load, offset downwards and fine myself at a different site.

Clear baiting. I dunno how this is even allowed. Oh wait, were still under he Bush administration.

[Revfan9]

This makes a perfect new rick roll to use. Thanks FBI!

[Breaker]

edit: wow, they are really arresting people just for the attempt to download it. it sounds like the guy they caught is getting off though. not before posting his name all over national news though. gg.

[Shazza Dani]

Yes, people who download kiddie porn are criminals, and they deserve to rot in jail. But we can't give up "Innocent until proven guilty" just to catch them.

I wouldn't say they deserve to go to jail. The people who MADE it, of course. But it shouldn't be a crime to download something.

[Freedom]

If they are going to bust someone, it needs to be the people that upload it, not download it.

I did a search once for Beavers, you know... the little furry tree chomping kind, what I got was the furry clam eating kind.
You never know where you're going to end up clicking on a link.

[rock_nog]

The general idea is that you bust the downloaders in order to track down the uploaders. Also, there's the notion that downloaders are guilty of creating a market for kiddie porn in the first place.

[Aegix Drakan]

:o That's so not cool.

The sentiment is good, but it's not gonna work. People hav eaccidental clicks all the time, and if even CLICKING a link will bust you, then a lot of innocent people will be wrongfully accused.

Seriously. One time, I googled an image of a PC for a design project (year 1), and I clicked what appeared to be a good computer. ...well, when the image loaded, I was momentarily confused...and then it hit me what I was looking at. 3 MIDDLE AGED GUYS GOING AT IT...ORAL. :odd: Needless to say I yelped "holy shit", clicked the little red X in the top right corner as fast as I could, and then massaged my poor virgin eyes.

...So if google (with safe search ON) isn't safe...then EVERYBODY is in trouble.

...oh and about that guy who got his name blasted all over the news...>_> di dthey put it on national news that it was a FALSE accusation? If not...then his life will be screwed over. ...and so will the lives of EVERY INNOCENT PERSON they point their fingers at.

...This is like communism. Good sentiments behind it...but in the real world, it's gonna cause much more harm then good.

[Breaker]

I don't know about you perverts, but I've never accidently clicked on child porn. and it appears none of you read the entire article. the guy in question started destroying all of his harddrives when he saw the FBI outside. innocent? i dont think so. and they found child pornography on his PC. he's spouting off the same thing that most of you are. "I must have accidently clicked it". this is exactly how a lot of child molesters get away with it. it's not like the FBI listed the link with "clicking this link will get you raided by the cops". nobody knew and the link is long gone now. it was originally posted by an FBI agent on a known forum frequented by child molesters. if anyone was on it and clicked that link, they're pretty fucking guilty and belong in prison. child porn is not something to be taken lightly.

anybody downloading these pictures are just as guilty as the person abusing and molesting these children.

[rock_nog]

I never said the man in question was innocent. I'm saying it's entirely too easy to abuse that sort of thing. I mean, yeah, in this case, it's fairly clearcut that it wasn't an accident. But what if it was? What if some deviant found the link and posted it on other message boards, not labeling it as kiddie porn? Yeah, this link no longer works, but you can't tell me they're never gonna do this again.

It's not the case that's the problem, it's the method, which could all too easily be turned on unsuspecting, innocent people. I'm not saying the FBI would purposely mislead anyone, but I don't see how you're missing the fact that anyone could take the link, dress it up, and send it around the Internet while hiding its true nature.

[Breaker]

You can spout off a million different "what if" scenarios and spin this however you want, but the bottom line is that it wasn't advertised as a top secret FBI raid link. Nobody knew. That was the point. Sure, the possibility of somebody coming across it and posting it elsewhere exists, but it's unlikely. Most of those raided were infact perverted child pornographing fucks. Those innocent have the chance to prove it in court, which is what judges, juries, and lawyers are for. Nobody was immediately hanged just for clicking a link.

And I have to reiterate.. I've never "accidently" come across child pornography, and I hold anybody that claims to have suspect. You have to be searching for shit like that to come across it.

[Freedom]

I didn't read the link, I responded to the first post.

IF it was entrapment, then I disagree with it, entrapment makes some people do something they might not otherwise ever do.
When something is uploaded to the net, it's setting on some server somewhere, rather than try and bust everyone that ends up there looking at it, they should bust the one that put it there, and they KNOW who put it there, and it should be removed immediately.
There have been porn pics posted HERE, should everyone who looked get busted or should the one that put it there?
I've seen them, but didn't click on that thread looking for them, does that make me guilty.
Maybe the guy in the article is guilty and deserves to be busted, I can't really say, because I've found that most of what I see in news reports isn't factual anyway, so who do you believe?

[Beldaran]

And I have to reiterate.. I've never "accidently" come across child pornography, and I hold anybody that claims to have suspect. You have to be searching for shit like that to come across it.

I just want to emphasize this. In my time on the internet, I've clicked on some fucked up web pages and explored some dark and disturbing places, and I've still never even seen child pornography, not even once.

It's incredibly unlikely that someone would accidentally click on a child porn link.

[Lilith]

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[DarkDragon]

I agree that the chance of accidentally stumbling upon child pornography is extremely slim - but that doesn't mean that busting people for content cached by their browser makes any sense. Everything on the internet by its very nature is untrusted content.
Would it make sense to arrest me for child pornography sent unsolicited to my physical mailbox? No. Would it make sense to arrest me for child pornography sent to my email account by spammers? No. Would it make sense to arrest me for child pornography cached by my browser from a popup on an (otherwise legal) porn site? No. Would it make sense to arrest me for child pornography pre-cached by my browser plugin while visiting a (very sketchy, but perfectly legal) forum about child pornography? No.
Would it make sense to arrest me for purposefully clicking on child pornography? Perhaps yes, but it's *completely impossible* to separate this case from the others where I, acting as a reasonable law-abiding citizen, had no intention of acquiring illegal material. If you arrest everyone with illegal cache content, sure, the majority were probably criminal perverts, but you've also completely trashed the right to be "innocent until proven guilty," as established by hundreds of years of jurisprudence.

[Zelda_Warrior]

I think this topic of entrapment has come up before in the forums here

While it does weed out some of the guilties, it still isnt the best way. The problem with illegal porn is that it's hard to track on the internet, yet they seem to want to take control of it already and use it to catch people with, even though they can hardly keep a thumb on it already? If youre going to use entrapment techniques at all, at least leave it off of the internet. There's just way too many ways things get around.

[Nicholas Steel]

What if you go to the site trying to find out information so that you can report it to the FBI?
then you wouldnt have any issue's with them coming over to look at your house/pc, right?

Yes DD, there are many plugins and stuff that preload all the links on the page your visiting, so it is pretty easy to unknowingly get unwanted stuff on your computer these days.

[rock_nog]

How would I prove my innocence? Oh sure, innocent until proven guilty, but as has been pointed out, there are a million and one "excuse stories." What would make mine any more credible?

And Breaker, I already said, I'm more concerned about the technique than I am about the case. In this one instance, an FBI agent posted the link in a message board known to be visited by kiddie porn "enthusiasts," and made it very clear that the link was actually to kiddie porn. And I'm not suggesting that the FBI would attempt to deceive people. But third parties might. This is the Internet - you know there are plenty of sickos out there who would get a thrill out of tricking people into visiting an FBI kiddie porn trap.

As the article itself states - the FBI has no way of being able to separate people who clicked on the "official" link posted by the FBI agent from people who got "pedorolled."

[Mitsukara]

That would just make the best replacement for Rickrolling (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0) ever, now wouldn't it? Thanks Justly Presumptuous And Righteous Government!

[Shyvus]

I have to wonder about the children who are now adults and are trying to find where they are online. Would they get just as busted as the people they are exploited for?

[Mitsukara]

This makes me wonder; what happens if a kid tries to look up child pornography?

[Breaker]

This makes me wonder; what happens if a kid tries to look up child pornography?

Minors can be charged with distributing or viewing child pornography just as an adult would, even if it's distributing pictures of themselves. Still illegal. And rock_nog, I'm still not understanding how you think that would play out. Nobody knows which child porn links are FBI traps, so how would anyone know to "rickroll" it? The one used in the link in the OP is now closed. The whole point is for them to be indistinguishable from real child porn, they're not advertised as FBI kiddie porn traps..

[Feasul]

Ok, first off, the rick'rolling thing would never result in any legal action taken against you. They might search your computer, but once they found out the accident there'd be nothing they could do. According to the article, if the FBI had posted the link suggesting that it led to something legal, then that'd be a clear case of entrapment. I don't see how that'd be much different if someone else had posted the link.
Second, they actually didn't find (what I at least would consider) child pornography on his computer. Not because of the content, because yes, naked minors is child pornography, but come on. It was two grainy thumbnails that could plausibly have automatically been saved to his computer from a website even if he never clicked on the images. That does not prove that he ever "attempted to download child pornography."

[Mr. 207]

The thing that people arguing against this don't seem to understand is:

1) As Breaker pointed out, the FBI isn't advertising their fake sites as fake sites, so nobody is going to know it to rickroll it on someone.

2) Even if they did, in addition to tracking who clicks a link, they can track where the link came from. Therefore even if someone does trick you into going there, the FBI can go back and see where you came from and that you got fooled.

3) The FBI is posting this on forums where child pornographers go. Odds are, some innocent person isn't going to be on one of these forums to "accidentally" click the link and be busted. Its not like the FBI is coming on Armageddon Games forums and posting these links to see who clicks.

[Nicholas Steel]

How would I prove my innocence? Oh sure, innocent until proven guilty, but as has been pointed out, there are a million and one "excuse stories." What would make mine any more credible?

And Breaker, I already said, I'm more concerned about the technique than I am about the case. In this one instance, an FBI agent posted the link in a message board known to be visited by kiddie porn "enthusiasts," and made it very clear that the link was actually to kiddie porn. And I'm not suggesting that the FBI would attempt to deceive people. But third parties might. This is the Internet - you know there are plenty of sickos out there who would get a thrill out of tricking people into visiting an FBI kiddie porn trap.

As the article itself states - the FBI has no way of being able to separate people who clicked on the "official" link posted by the FBI agent from people who got "pedorolled."
if you did not download or look at the site multiple times, then they would be hard pressed to charge you with anything. a cookie file is not a image and anyways, it is easy to erase your cache.