I can’t see how this is defensible in the slightest.
Comey: “Hi, Mr. Rabbit, we’d like your assistance in helping catch child porn distributors.”
Black Rabbit: “Sure, great, what do you need?”
Comey: “We’re going to need to distribute pictures of your daughter being raped as part of a sting operation…”
Black Rabbit: “Ummm, that would be a no. Fuck off.”
The agents should be in jail. Other than whatever preservation of evidence is necessary to identify victims and prosecute perpetrators, none of that shit should ever see the light of day. What about the perverts they didn’t catch, who are now free to turn around and distribute to the material to a whole new audience of their own?
I disagree. The agents seized an existing website,with existing images. They chose to use the opportunity to catch site users who were otherwise invisible via Tor. The perverts they did not catch would also not be caught under your apparent alternate plan. And additionally, the perverts they DID catch would not be caught under your apparent alternate plan.
In fact, I don’t see any arrests at all being made under your apparent alternate plan except those concurrent with the seizure of the server - oh, and of course the arrests of the FBI agents. So I must be missing your actual cunning alternate plan.
What is it, again, this alternate plan of yours? Apart from jailing the very FBI agents who are arresting actual perverts?
Gather what evidence they can to catch the operators / distributors (probably not that hard since the server has already been pwned) and then shut the site down.
The whole rationale behind criminalizing the possession and distribution of child pornography (beyond the production / commission of child rape) is that the distribution of the images enables the continuing victimization of the child victims. The FBI enabled that continuing victimization, unless they can absolutely guarantee that a) they arrested absolutely everyone who viewed the images via the site they operated, and b) absolutely no one that viewed the images distributed them to anyone else.
I sincerely doubt that they can guarantee either. If the agents are so absolutely sure of the moral righteousness of their actions, then they should have no problem serving a few years in jail for their sacrifice.
I doubt the agents would have done what they did if the action exposed them to criminal liability, and I already cited the statute which shielded them.
I wasn’t aware that victimized children have an icon on their cell phone that lights up every time some pedophile somewhere faps to one of their videos. Ignorance fought.
Seriously, come on. My college roommates took some embarrassing photos of me way back when, which are probably still in someone’s possession somewhere. I never think of them, and if they still pass them around and laugh I would never know it. It’s not like child pr0n is something you stumble across these days, you have to go out of your way to find it. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to start to look.
Yeah, okay. Just like DEA agents should be arrested as soon as they “possess” those drugs from a major bust, or CHP officers should be ticketed for exceeding the speed limit when they chase down a speeder. I’ve seen firemen brazenly run red lights while on a call, maybe they should be jailed for reckless driving, too. Again, pull the other one.
This is a non-sequiter. It’s not my civic duty to create more child porn; this issue involves existing material that the FBI had no role whatsoever in creating.
If it’s not real child porn what would be the point? It’s not criminal to posses fake child porn. Real child porn is criminal because it requires harming real children.
If the FBI were to use fake porn to lure pedophiles they may find themselves trying to prosecute people for thought crimes. What evidence would they have of actual crimes?
The FBI wasn’t putting up new images, they seized a site that was allowing it to happen and monitored the site to gather evidence.
I think the judge was fair in criticizing them and such activity should be looked at very critically but they were doing their job. If they cross the line into creating their own sites I think that would be a much different situation. Allowing a crime to happen in order to gather more evidence is a act law enforcement needs to be able to do.
some one above said they could use fake kid porn someone asked how do you make fake kid porn …I just illustrated how lollicon monthly gets away with it … (and yes that was a real e-mag and except fot the “all models are 18 and over” in small print on ever corner youd be hard pressed to know the difference
But I just remembered a few years ago there was a case of where some 70 year old farmer in Kansas was bi curious about well younger boys and ended up on a fbi list and for the next 2 years letter bombed his mail box and e-mail with ads for books pics and websites that were “fiflthy beyond belief” and he said he just took a few to hopefully get rid of them when they busted him
and the supreme court told the fbi they overstepped their bounds by "harassing " him in to commiting a crime
Yes, that’s correct. But it has no real relevance to the present case, which involves people affirmatively reaching out to the web server, not responding to government urging to do so.