The real problem with the FBI's "Innocent Images" program is that too much of the FBI's resources are devoted to it. As of about 5 years ago, the FBI's "cyber security" operation was about 50% "national security" (much of which is trolling for wannabe terrorists), 40% child pornography (much of which is trolling for people who want child porn), and 10% online fraud. The first two are easy; FBI people can sit in their offices in Baltimore and do much of that. It brings up their numbers. Solving online crimes is really hard, involving tracking through multiple countries, and is likely to be unsuccessful.
This is why law enforcement shouldn't be allowed to set their own priorities. The institutional goals and the goals of the taxpayers who pay them don't match.
Does the FBI read HN? I don't think they realize how much they're missing out from not reading this feedback and actually giving it a few seconds worth of contemplation =/.
There's been substantial criticism of the FBI's terrorist entrapment efforts. Too often, they find out about someone mouthing off about "Death to America", and gear up a sting operation to encourage them to commit some act for which they can be convicted.[1] Most of them are wannabes, not real threats. The FBI director once said of the group convicted of planning to below up the Willits Tower in Chicago that their plans were "aspirational, not operational". In the case of the “Newburgh Four,” a judge said the government “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles,” and had, in the process, made a terrorist out of a man “whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope.”
It's not entirely the FBI's fault. They're under heavy political pressure to stop every terrorist plot. Every time some nut actually does something, they get criticized for missing them.
They know most of what they're doing is bullshit. They don't care. Just hand a guy a cell phone and tell him to dial a number to blow up a building. He dials it, nothing happens, FBI arrests him, sends him to jail for life. Repeat dozens of times and claim you've stopped dozens of terrorist attacks. This is the FBI today.
Someone posted on 4chan claiming to be FBI, provided no proof, and only made predictions (some turned out wrong) and vague insights. Almost certainly not actually FBI, or at least certainly not anyone high up at FBI.
The US Secret Service actively investigates online fraud. They have operations around the country investigating things like credit card fraud and identity theft. The most well known was Operation Firewall, although that happened back in 2004. They still run these operations, although it seems to be smaller scale since we haven't heard of such large busts in a while.
The rule should be that law enforcement cannot commit a crime in order to catch a criminal. For instance, they cannot be part of a bank robbery, or murder someone.
This reminds somewhat of the "gun walker" case where the ATF let illegal guns flood the market in order to track the buyers, which resulted in the death of a border patrol agent and countless others along the border.
That's an unrealistic approach CIs and undercover agents are needed to break apart crime syndicates because otherwise you'll end up arresting the "street level" peddlers and nothing more.
Now as far as entrapment goes there are legal definitions for it under most cases law enforcement isn't allowed to change the outcome of an event.
For example it is ok for an undercover officer to sell you drugs in a sting operation but it is not ok to come to you and convince you to do drugs and then sell them to you.
For the most part wether the fbi was operating this server or not the people who visit the server came there out of their own free will in an attempt to acquire child pornography.
If the fbi did not operate the server they would still have acquired it just from a different source.
The ATF sting was a pretty shitty operation with dubious legal backing but it's not an case for not running intelligence gathering or sting operation, it's just evidence that they should be planned and executed better and that certain restrictions should apply especially in cases where public safety might be put at risk.
Legal Protections against entrapment are very minimal and not what people think.
FBI routinely creates, plots, then recruits people for made up terrorism plots, then arrests them
The DEA, in partnership with the ATF, recently ran a operation where they recruited people to rob fake stash houses, then arrested the people that were coerced into the plot
Entrapment is often used in prostitution stings as well.
None of these instances are tossed by the courts, entrapment is very much alive and well in the legal system
>>>>For the most part wether the fbi was operating this server or not the people who visit the server came there out of their own free will in an attempt to acquire child pornography.
While true, there are some very significant problems with this. For decades now the basis of the law against viewing child pornography is that each time the image is viewed the child is victimized. Thus by running the server for even 1 second the FBI was, according to the law, victimizing children in order to catch criminals.
If you then claim is no children were actually harmed by the FBI's action then one has to start looking at the very foundation of the Child Porn laws.
Personally I think the ethical and moral position (and should be the obvious one) is that the FBI should not, under any circumstances, be distributing child porn. Period.
I think the concept of some one watching child porn that was produced in the 80's and converted from VHS to DVD is harming a child today is a bit odd one.
Don't get me wrong going after the producers of new material is very important just as it is important to go after the human traffickers that facilitate the production.
I suspect that this is not due to there being anything morally wrong with what they are doing but that instead of going after the perpetrators, which might be very difficult, we target the economy which pushes them to commit the crimes in the first place. Although it might be imperfect, from what I understand sometimes this is the best way to get results.
In a way it's similar to prostitution, where there might be nothing morally wrong with selling or buying sex, but it (potentially?) promotes human trafficking. I doubt that'd the only reason it's illegal though, at least in the US.
I think it's similar to ivory resale. It's illegal to sell ivory, and other endangered species products, even though the particular animal may have been killed before a ban. Because the market itself attracts new product.
It's hard to take these kinds of rationalizations seriously. Simply, most people in our society find this sort of pornography revolting, and the law, which reflects public outrage, has banned it. We didn't reach that outrage from evidential reasoning. Moral revulsion is an irreducible position, and it's not subject to dispute. Likewise, we've never had a rigorous experiment to test whether murder should be illegal or not. That isn't how laws get made.
The problem with the public outrage however is that is makes any rational discussion almost impossible
When the topic of child porn comes up, emotion takes over and logic goes away.
One of the largest problems with child porn is the actual definition of child porn. To most people when they hear of child porn, they think of a Person under the age of puberty being forced to engage in a sex act with an adult person.
However 2 17 year olds having sex and video taping it is also child porn, they can (and have been) charged with producing, and distributing said child porn
Many many many teens were arrested and convicted before states starting passing exceptions to the law, and many states today it is still illegal for a 17year old person to send a nude photo of themselves to another 17year old person, haven forbid a 17 year and 364 day old person send picture to a 17 year and 366 day year old person....
Yes, a lot of "child porn" charges are deeply stupid. When we talk about child porn rings and websites, we are not talking about those. We are talking about the "raping 8-year-olds" kind.
That's really not important though is it. If you're being prosecuted (at least in the UK) for such crimes then the age of the children and the level of the pornography is assessed and taken in to account in your sentencing. If the only image you'd acquired was a nip-slip of a teenager -- or you had a selfie with a same-age partner -- then the sentence would be entirely different to having thousands of images of pre-teen rape. Whilst USA law is often ridiculous it doesn't seem to be that lame that such differentiations aren't being made.
Where are you trying to go with this rhetorical question?
Did you? No? Then you don't have any more information than I do.
Nobody visits a darknet site called "The Playpen" to trade pics of consenting 17-year-olds. For all you or I know, the site never existed in the first place and the FBI set up the entire thing as a cover to silence dissidents. But that would be a problem with government corruption, not with the definition of child porn.
I think that's unduly reductive. He seems instead to be saying that if you were abused in the 80s, you should just get over the thought of people watching footage of it today for kicks.
Which is an interesting viewpoint, to be sure. I wonder whether he'd say the same to an adult victim of rape whose abuse was videoed and passed around for other people to get off on. That's a pretty close parallel, but it never seems to turn up in discussions like these, and I wonder why that is.
It seems to me that distributing such videos would have far more in common with defamation than with the original abuse. Merely having or watching them... is probably bad and wrong but not something that ought to actually be legally punishable.
Those women are personally identified so they can suffer real world embarrassment from people they know. Children in child porn are probably far more anonymous and untraceable as adults just from their images.
I think the idea of being imprisoned for viewing a picture on a website is pretty draconian. We would never stand for it if we weren't so obsessed with vilifying sexual deviants.
The argument that consumers fuel the market for producers to abuse children surely fails when there's no payment being made. Perhaps the crime should be limited to paying for it, a bit like why we don't allow payment for organ donation.
> The argument that consumers fuel the market for producers to abuse children surely fails when there's no payment being made.
Does it? In warez rings, new releases are the surest route to high reputation and broad access to content. I don't see an a priori reason why the same might not be true for other sorts of illicit content, including this.
Jennifer Lawrence declared that everyone who looked at the leaked nudes of her was committing sexual assault against her (or words to that effect). The idea being that by knowingly viewing "private" content without consent is invasive.
I'm not sure you can legislate it, but I found her position far more satisfying than "oh no I should never have taken the pics in the first place what a mistake to think I wouldn't be hacked".
Most people would consider it a moral wrong I'd warrant. It's like not a crime only by virtue of being a relatively new thing, and other mitigations like it being difficult to police (is there a point in making crimes you don't police and can't prosecute under).
Revenge porn will to me always be a copyright issue, and being one, it's up to those women (and men) to sue when they find someone violating their copyright.
It might normalize child pornography in someone's mind. They could keep watching it long enough to the point where it just seems like another genre, albeit the only genre that works for them. They could start manufacturing their own, to join other rings and trade.
I know it's all maybe's and could-be's, but they're maybe's and could-be's that ruin children's lives.
Most of the academic research I am familiar with suggests fairly strongly that the legalization of pornography and child pornography is correlated with a reduced rate of rape and child molestation.
That's been the argument against porn in general, and against strip clubs and against prostitution. Without good science behind it, it's just more made-up political rationalizing. You could equally argue the opposite that having access to porn satisfies people so they don't need to use real children. Without science, we can't know.
I recently saw an interview with a conservative Indian figure about porn where one man said "I'm not harming anyone by watching porn in my room" and the conservative man responded with "You might become corrupted and turn into a sex maniac". It sounded like hilariously backward thinking, but that's still how many people think of child porn.
Your argument is corrupt. It doesn't take science to recognize morality. Each and every child in a porn video is someone's son or daughter. Each and every child has value. Society chooses to make and enforce laws which dissuade deviant behavior. Erode the moral foundation of a society is to watch it crumble.
Absolutely. You are right. No science needed to identify morality. Therefore lot's of western countries are inherently immoral. Letting gay people openly kiss each other? Some states even let gay people marry. What an abomination to thy Lords rulings.
Not to speak of black people being allowed to vote. To marry without consent of their owners.
Sorry - but do you really need more examples, that arguing with an universal morale is just one big smelly pile of bullshit?
Morale and societal norms change and shift over time. We develop and there is no basic morality, just societal contracts. And that is good. We do not need an entity enforcing or dictating our morals. We need rationality to identify the right rules to live as a society and then a system to enforce these rules in the best possible way (not that we do have that in place anywhere in the world). But given your comment/idea and our current systems I rather live in our current systems. I just do not want to be ruled by some morality dictators.
Morality is personal. What you believe to be immoral is not what another person would believe to be immoral.
When government attempt to legislate morality is when atrocities and abuse occur.
To millions of people in various religions, being gay is immoral, a woman showing her face or hair, is immoral
Adult pornography is considered immoral by a large part of the population.
Instead of making a case for morality, one should use science and logic to make the case for victimization.
Each person has the self evident right to their own body, aka self ownership. We accept this has as the fundamental foundation of Human Rights.
Society through science has shown that children are mentally not equipped to make a choice to have sex as such society has prohibited adults from manipulating children into having sex. We also recognize that any time one person forces another with violence to engage in sex is a violation of their person hood. We have grouped these 2 crimes into the category of rape and created punishments for these crimes
No morality involved.
Using science should also come into play when evaluating the punishment and criminality of viewing or possessing child pornography.
It could also work in the other direction preventing people from acting out. If you look at one path you can probably find people that became more violent from playing grand theft auto. But, looking at the other path more (or less) people may become less violent from playing GTA.
There are sites out there with pictures and videos of people being tortured and killed freely available for download. Also animal crush videos is a thing. Very disturbing stuff - I accidentally clicked on one link on 4chan. I don't want to elaborate on what it was, but I closed it immediately, almost vomited, and I am very careful about clicking random internet links from now on. Surely this stuff is not any better than child porn and there are people who enjoy looking at this material so why don't we ever go after the people sharing this stuff?
This is just where society originates from, instincts allowing for the forming of social contracts.
For example if you exchanged resources with another party (your wife) for drugs and hugs, both sides would want for this contract to last.
So you need a third party, which can be forced by both sides to enforce the contract.
Enter the pedophiles and gays. Your wife is going to make certain you hate them and she can switch of that hate, via sanctioning there existence (e.g. church/political inclination). That instinct-switch is as important to her, as beauty is to you.
Now, ten years into a cellphone society, where even thought offenders soon will be blatant obvious by constant NN observation all that remains are the instincts.
The function is gone, but the gears of this bio-machinery still churn on.
I miss those days, where i still felt burning hatred for some Gears and was involved in affairs of the species in general. Life was so much easier if one just glued arguments to what one feels.
I looked into this whole messy affair, because one of those bastards tried to get on my younger brother when i was young. And for such there should be punishment, even a lifetime in prison.
But though crimes, like a deprecated bio-machine, masturbating to a Victorian child-labour-sweatshop , to prosecute those is foolish.
Does this comment read like written by a (not very well programmed) NLP script - or is it only me not understanding a single bit about what the (alleged) author tries to convey?
Parent is arguing that sexual assault of children is evil, but viewing CP is OK. There's also something about enforcement of heterosexual monogamy through scapegoating. And a general misogynistic undertone. Yes?
I always wonder if these kind of comments (they seem common amongst conspiracy theory debaters and on-line political extremists) are ever understood by any of their peers, or if it is just the author.
It bewilders me that this comment makes perfect sense in someone's mind.
To add to this: using an entrapment defense happens way more on TV than in reality.
For starters, to even use the entrapment defense in most jurisdictions requires the judge's permission, which is rarely granted. Second, the burden is on the defendant to show that they would never have engaged in the illegal behavior at all without the police.
E.g., if the police physically threaten or blackmail you into selling drugs, you might have a case. If they simply pester you on the phone a bunch, probably not.
In this case, the FBI didn't force anyone to visit the child porn site, so it's not entrapment. What's up for debate is whether the harm of disseminating the material outweighs the benefits of catching more users.
It sounds to me like these sorts of events are ways to hit metric targets within the bureaucracy.
Why aren't they doing a divide and conquer type approach that would kill these underground communities? Advertise big bounties for snitches and undermine whatever holds them together.
Or do you disagree that the legal foundation for making the act of viewing/possession (not making or distributing) Child Porn is based in the idea that simply having the child porn is re-victimizing the child depicted
Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U.S. 103, 111
"the sentencing judge, who
stated “it is a clear reality . . . that every time one of
these web sites is opened and every time
one of these images is viewed, additional harm is visited upon the victim. "
That seems combative. Were I to say it, I'd try to source it.
But I would be interested to hear a knowledgeable opinion on whether the "viewing is new harm to the victim" argument is often employed against producers and distributors, rather than consumers. The argument that distribution makes a market for producers to satisfy would seem much stronger here.
>>>The court quoted academic research, which concluded that “Because the child's actions are reduced to a recording, the pornography may haunt him in future years, long after the original misdeed took place.”
---
United States v. Blinkensop, 606 F.3d
1110, 1117 (9th Cir. 2010) (affirming the sentencing judge, who stated)
>>> “it is a clear reality . . . that every time one of these web sites is opened and every time one of these images is viewed, additional harm is visited upon the victim.
-----
FBI and DOJ routinely state the same in Sentencing, victim impact, and other official court and prosecution documents and activities
The idea that simply viewing child porn victimizes the child, is infact the legal foundation for its prohibition
"For the most part wether the fbi was operating this server or not the people who visit the server came there out of their own free will in an attempt to acquire child pornography."
That was one of the core questions here - why logins went up 350% under the control of the FBI. Was there any advertising, inducements?
And "part of the role of of maintaining a non-suspicious facade was uploading new material for members".
I believe that was answered, the FBI simply ran it on better and faster hardware, with better uptime.
I do not believe the FBI continued to operate it as is on the criminals hardware, I believe they took possession of the "server" then likely imaged it and spun up a new instance of the site on the FBI own servers, these servers likely had much better specs, and a much better connection to the internet.
Sit 100 people down in front of a button that will detonate a nuclear weapon in a major city on the other side of the world (where no one they know lives). Tell them to decide whether to push the button or not.
If you understand human psychology, I hope you understand how there is an excellent chance at least one person would push the button. Possibly 5 would. Possibly more. Simply because the opportunity is presented to them on a silver platter.
Does that mean those people are actively seeking out how to detonate a nuclear weapon? No, of course not. Should we actively seek out people with such "inclinations" and deal with them preemptively?
If you say we should, what happens when your particular mental tic is deemed a danger to society? Who deems what is a danger? Are you so sure you are entirely safe? So were many people in societies of ages past, under Mao, Stalin, Hitler, etc.
Your counterfactual is inapplicable. We're not talking about people who just stumbled over an opportunity one day. We're talking about people who went looking, and many of whom employed strong opsec in so doing. That doesn't happen by accident.
Its quite easy to stumble upon dodgy search results without trying. Watersports for example often comes up with search results that are nothing to do with what I am looking for. Paddles.net used to be a spanking fetish site (I was looking for a kayak magazine when I discovered that).
An ex-collegue said he attended a talk where they explained that images are often hidden under layers in a word document. You may be unaware that you have illegal on your machine.
Again, we're not talking about something that happened by accident, or about sexual interests which are somewhat abstruse but entirely lawful to pursue. I'm not sure what you imagine it adds to the discussion to raise points that aren't germane to the matter at hand. But perhaps they are and I merely fail to see how. Perhaps you'll elucidate the connection.
> If the fbi did not operate the server they would still have acquired it.
I'm a little dubious of this brand of logic. The one that goes if X was not supplied they would just get it from the <potentially slightly harder to find &/or riskier> place.
Perhaps, but surely the point is to reduce the incentive by making it harder/riskier - as making it impossible is generally not a viable option?
That's an unrealistic approach CIs and undercover agents are needed to break apart crime syndicates because otherwise you'll end up arresting the "street level" peddlers and nothing more.
Too bad. Police work isn't supposed to be easy. If it is, that means you're living in a police state.
I love this casual implicit assumption that the existence of large-scale crime syndicates with nothing in practice to fear from the law is in no way noxious to society. Tell me more.
Some might say that your description could basically be used as the dictionary entry for "police." It's been suggested that they're the best-armed gang on the streets, if not the best-disciplined.
They're certainly beyond the reach of the law, at least by the standards the rest of us are held to.
Overall, I think the police catch a lot of heat and resentment for the actions of their political bosses. Like corporations and unions, a community usually gets the police force it deserves. Unfortunately, that's no consolation to the individual citizens who cross paths with them.
A good start on repairing relations with the police would involve holding them to higher standards of behavior than the rest of us are expected to exhibit, instead of lower ones. I think most good cops would agree with that basic sentiment, since they're the ones who behave as if it were already the case.
Ultimately, though, when the government decides to launch an impossible war on drugs, terror, pornography, or some other abstract noun, the police will have to do the inevitable dirty work, and they will have to take much of the blame for the consequences. The real problem here isn't the FBI agents running the servers, but the administrative and legislative bosses they answer to.
I dunno. It sounds like on the one hand, you're blaming police officers and departments for problems which have origin in corruption at a pay grade well above theirs, and on the other, you're defining (or would define, perhaps) any attempt by police forces to influence, rather than merely execute, policy, as stigmatic of a police state. Seems like a bit of a Catch-22 to me.
It is a Catch-22, definitely. At some point you get into the whole "Nuremberg defense" thing.
There is little practical difference between the Black Marias described by Solzhenitsyn and what happened to Freddie Gray in the back of a van in Baltimore. But how can we fix that sort of thing at an institutional level, when supervisors, prosecutors, judges, and juries insist on going easy on the actual perpetrators? That's the sort of question I'm compelled to ask when the FBI comes around, hat in hand, to ask for even more surveillance and enforcement powers.
> There is little practical difference between the Black Marias described by Solzhenitsyn and what happened to Freddie Gray in the back of a van in Baltimore.
You horrify me, sir. You truly do.
We agree, I think - I hope - that our current system of rule staggers under an enormous burden of corruption, which if not addressed will continue to expand until it bears us all under. And we agree, I think - I hope - that this is something which would better be prevented than otherwise.
But to equate what happened to one man, himself and his fate far from usual in myriad ways, with what happened as a matter of official policy under a regime that murdered thirty millions of its subjects simply because they were inconvenient? Where is the sense, or the value, in this? You have succeeded in horrifying someone who has otherwise considerable sympathy for the point you sought to make, although not so much the lack of nuance with which you did so. What effect do you imagine yourself likely to have on someone who does not start out with such sympathy?
What effect do you imagine yourself likely to have on someone who does not start out with such sympathy?
I can only recount the emergence of my own point of view. It's 1990-something, and I'm killing a Saturday afternoon in a used-book store in Austin, somewhere near the UT campus. Wow, lots of dust on this one. I'll bet nobody's touched it for 20 years. I've heard of this Solzhenitsyn guy, wonder what it's about? Didn't he win a Nobel? I guess for $1 it's worth a shot.
And then, a few months later when I got around to reading it: Wow, I used to think that the Russians were like the Nazis or something, a bunch of inhuman demons, maybe a barbarian race that evolved from a worse sort of ape than the rest of us. But they aren't. They really aren't. They're just like us. They are us. And the stuff in this book didn't really happen because of differences in politics or religion or economics or communism versus capitalism or whatever. It happened because the Russian people allowed their political system to dominate their judicial system. The courts were their last line of defense, and when they fell, the rest was inevitable.
The best time to stop the Black Marias would have been before the first one rolled out. The next best time was just after the first one rolled out. Either way, it didn't happen, and now I see the same thing happening here in the US that led to the events described in the Gulag Archipelago: the political subversion of justice.
It seems to start with the elevation of the cult of law enforcement as a privileged class, or at least that's something that tends to happen in the early stages of metastasis (to use Solzhenitsyn's metaphor.) In Russia, the rationale was the struggle against counterrevolutionary forces and the bourgeoisie. In the US, it's the War on Terror, Drugs, and Kiddie Porn. I don't see much difference.
So, yeah, horror is an appropriate expression when you think you can see a map like this starting to unfold.
I fear we've badly misgathered one another, and I regret to say I don't really see any purpose my further involvement might serve.
I will say this: perhaps the most striking feature I observe in your analysis is that everything in it is very simple. I wish I had more often observed reality to be so.
Somalia is a failed state run by divisional chieftains and warlords with military weaponry. In other words, it's all police.
That aside, how surreal is it to argue in favor of the application of equal justice for all under the rule of law, only to have "herp, derp, why don't you move to Somalia?" thrown in your face as a counterargument?
I suggested it because it's equally fallacious of you to equate police with "warlords with military weaponry". You can use all the fancy nostalgic buzzwords you want, but ultimately if the law has no bite, nobody will honor it. That bite is called enforcement and it's done by police. Get over it.
> I suggested it because it's equally fallacious of you to equate police with "warlords with military weaponry".
I agree. Do you think perhaps it might be of some value to argue this point in a way that's not trivial to dismiss for valid reasons? I think perhaps it might be of some value. Feel free to continue to caricature yourself for the benefit of unsympathetic interlocutors if it pleases you to do so, but please also consider the possibility that you might argue more effectively by doing otherwise.
Exactly. It's not a one size-fits-all deal here. We're talking about a honeypot that is only accessed by people knowingly harming the welfare of others - as opposed to harming themselves (which is why I think drug honeypots are terrible, particularly for small quantity, personal use purchases).
Entrapment, at least in my mind, just doesn't enter the equation when you're operating in an environment which is difficult to access, siloed from the public, and known to be populated exclusively by dangerous criminals.
I agree. Interesting related fact about the UK. The police are "crown servants", and as The Crown is not ordinarily bound by statute the law to does not apply to them in the course of the execution of their duties. This allows them to break the speed limit, carry firearms that are otherwise prohibited, handle drugs, etc. I don't know if this would stretch as far as the police operating a paedo CDN, maybe someone here does? It would certainly cause a lot of public outrage.
That sounds suspiciously like one of those legal "facts" that are complete hogwash, like "people can be hung for treason in the UK", or "It's legal to kill a Scotsman with a longbow at a church".
At least in New Zealand, which is constitutionally similar to the UK, police are governed by specific laws that allow what would be otherwise considered illegal behavior (e.g. carrying firearms, use of physical force, speeding). If a police officer was to, say, rape someone, it would still be completely illegal.
N.B. "An Act does not bind the Crown unless it does so expressly or by necessary implication."
and
They [the Crown] are: the Sovereign personally; her servants or agents; and persons who are not Crown servants or agents but who, for certain limited purposes, are considered to be “in consimili casu”.
See the second extract, the meaning of the "Crown" is accepted include its "servants or agents", which would include the police, the government, the armed forces, etc.
Crown servant is defined in the Official Secrets Act for the purposes of that act, but nonetheless useful for our edification, N.B. section (e):
In this Act "Crown servant" means -
(a) a Minister of the Crown;
[(aa) a member of the Scottish Executive or a junior Scottish Minister;]
[(ab) the First Minister for Wales, a Welsh Minister appointed under section 48 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, the Counsel General to the Welsh Assembly Government or a Deputy Welsh Minister;]
(b) . . .
(c) any person employed in the civil service of the Crown, including Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service, the civil service of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Court Service;
(d) any member of the naval, military or air forces of the Crown, including any person employed by an association established for the purposes of [Part XI of the Reserve Forces Act 1996];
(e) any constable and any other person employed or appointed in or for the purposes of any police force [(including the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland Reserve)][or of the Serious Organised Crime Agency];
(f) any person who is a member or employee of a prescribed body or a body of a prescribed class and either is prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph or belongs to a prescribed class of members or employees of any such body;
(g) any person who is the holder of a prescribed office or who is an employee of such a holder and either is prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph or belongs to a prescribed class of such employees.
I'm pretty sure it is hogwash, believed only by conspiracy theorists similar to the sovereign citizen nonsense in the US (which is why you can't find any normal source of information on the topic). Here's a recent example of a UK police officer charged with assault for his actions while on duty, which would be impossible if this Crown agents theory was real - http://news.met.police.uk/news/serving-officer-charged-with-...
It doesn't say anything about the officer being on duty at the time. Besides it would only cover crown servants in the course of the execution of their duty. For example, an armed officer randomly selecting a tourist at the end of Downing Street and putting a few rounds of 9mm into their skull will certainly not be getting away with it.
edit: you may also be interested in knowing where police get the legal right to break the speed limit, which is also obviously not from their non-existent immunity to the law:
> The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 exempt emergency vehicles from:
- observing speed limits
- observing keep left/right signs
- complying with traffic lights (including pedestrian controlled crossings).
But police must "break the law" on a very regular basis. Often those actions that are common are specifically exempt (ie breaking the speed limit to catch a speeder). And sometimes people are killed because the cops broke the law (many have been killed by speeding police cars). So it is too simple to state that they should obey exactly the same rules as everyone else.
> So it is too simple to state that they should obey exactly the same rules as everyone else.
I don't think so. They should be held to a higher standard than everyone else, or at least an equal one, but not a lesser one.
I'm not particularly concerned that doing so would make it more difficult for them to catch criminals - people who are otherwise innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. It should be difficult (but not impossible) for law enforcement to do its job. That's the sign of a society in which civil liberties still have some meaning.
In this particular case, we have the FBI running a child pornography ring to catch child pornographers. Arrest every member of the FBI who was involved, send them to prison and put them on the sex-offenders' list for the rest of their lives. Treat them the way they would treat everyone else.
Maybe then they'll learn to actually respect the laws they enforce, and the judicial process would wind up being more fair out of the need for self-preservation.
High speed chases are a bigger threat to public safety than speeders, so simply not pursuing most speeders and escalating situations would probably save more lives in the long run. They have license plate trackers, cameras, etc - they don't have to chase people down and personally hand them a ticket.
But if they did have to, then the police should be charged for speeding as well, since a speeding police car presents the same potential danger as a civilian one.
>They have license plate trackers, cameras, etc - they don't have to chase people down and personally hand them a ticket.
This is a pretty odd defense. How would you answer OP's question when worded this way - "So how exactly would they catch speeders then if they absolutely must not break the speed limit in 1955?"
>So how exactly would they catch speeders then if they absolutely must not break the speed limit in 1955?"
I'm not arguing that they absolutely can't break the speed limit - only that when they do, they should pay for it. The police should have no greater privilege to break the law than anyone else.
And yes, sometimes that might mean letting speeders off the hook. I don't have a problem with that. It's better to have the police be hamstrung by the law than to allow them to exercise arbitrary power, as long as they're hamstrung in the same way as every other citizen.
1. Have one police car hidden at point A watching for speeders.
2. Have a second 0.5 miles down the road within radio distance. If first car spots a speeder, radio to second car the description of the vehicle and attempt to pull the car over without speeding, or record license plate # in case of speed away, or stop traffic if not on a busy road until the target vehicle is pulled over.
Change the law to make it legal for police to exceed the speed limit, in clearly specified circumstances.
Which, by the way, is the way it already works.
"Police have to break the law to do their jobs" is not a defense, because the law can be changed.
If the police want to run a child porn ring to catch pedophiles, let them try to get the law changed to allow that. Having the police decide which laws they are and aren't allowed to break is not a recipe for a free and just society.
I do not support the idea of giving police all kinds of exemptions from the law.
The police should have no more power than a normal person, they are simply hired and trained to do what normal people do not have the desire to do.
This goes back to the foundation of American style governance, For the people by the people. The police are people, as such they are not the masters of anyone, nor are the people subordinate to them.
There's nothing wrong or unprecedented about creating exceptions for particular circumstances - people acting in a specific capacity or otherwise.
For example, ambulances and firefighters are certainly also allowed to speed, when they're carrying out their duties - we've added exceptions to our laws for those circumstances, and done so as part of the normal democratic process. More mundanely, a park ranger is going to be allowed to do things like not pay the same parking fees that everyone else is allowed to, or cull animals out of season when the general population isn't allowed to hunt.
This is fine! In a democratic society, we make the laws, and within certain bounds we can make whatever we want legal or illegal. We can also debate about whether or not certain groups that represent us should have certain powers, and it's also perfectly fine to have different points of view about what exact powers they should have. But fundamentally, all that's really going on here is we're deciding to delegate certain powers and responsibilities to a particular branch of government, which of course works on our behalf.
The problem here isn't that the police have these exceptions carved out for them, the problem is that - at least arguably, there's room for debate here - the democratic process and rule of law has broken down in this instance, and the police aren't following the law at all.
Now there's always considerable shades of gray in situations like this - arguably more so in common law countries, where there's layers and layers of interpretation on top of everything, and a good deal of vagueness in quite a lot of the law. It's been generally accepted for a long time that the police have a certain amount of latitude to break various laws in ways that are not remotely spelled out in the course of investigating crimes; many would argue (with some justification) that this covers what the FBI is doing here. There's nothing inherently wrong with this argument, as long as there really are checks and balances - that is, if the interpretation of what laws police are allowed to break isn't arbitrary, but is the result of some kind of consensus where the judicial system and the legislative system (the democratic process) has set bounds as it sees fit. I personally would be in favor of generally stricter limits, less vagueness and greater scrutiny of precisely what laws the police are allowed to break and when - but still, there's nothing _inherently_ wrong with the situation we're in now, at least to the degree that police conduct does follow the rule of law and it isn't "police getting away with things just because they're police".
And on the more general subject of police and the rule of law - I don't find this particular instance with the FBI particularly problematic; I would prefer stricter limits here but I don't think this is an instance where the rule of law has broken down. I do think that the situation with entrapment in general _is_ a genuine problem - for example, the FBI has been manufacturing terrorist plots and cajoling/bribing people to help out in some small way that never would have if they didn't need the money, just because they're Muslim (which the FBI has been doing repeatedly). That, I think, is a clear example of an instance where the judicial system has clearly failed. Or even worse, the many police departments that routinely murder black people with hardly ever any real repercussions.
But again - the problem isn't with the police having exceptions to the law, the problem is with a breakdown of the rule of law.
>>>>For example, ambulances and firefighters are certainly also allowed to speed, when they're carrying out their duties - we've added exceptions to our laws for those circumstances, and done so as part of the normal democratic process. More mundanely, a park ranger is going to be allowed to do things like not pay the same parking fees that everyone else is allowed to, or cull animals out of season when the general population isn't allowed to hunt.
and see I do not agree with these exemptions, or rather I believe it should be acceptable for a normal person to also speed when there is an emergency that would require it. So the Police and Fire are not exempted from the law, it is simply acceptable for all persons to speed when X is happening, and in most instances X would only apply to police and fire.
The same is true for park rangers, If there is need to cull animals is should be open to all persons to cull them when the need arises. This is generally true today, as most places will hold a lottery or some other activity to give the public limited access to an area to cull the needed number of animals.
>>This is fine! In a democratic society,
It is not fine. I will set aside the fact that I am not a strong supporter of democracy, democracy is mob rule, and simply end with a Quote from an essay that I feel should be the Basis for law.
-----
The Law by Frédéric Bastiat
"What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all."
----
If you believe in individual freedom at all, then it should be held that the collective force (government) can have no more power than that of an individual, and the government does not have the legitimate authority to grant powers and privileges to one individual (police, fire etc) that are not granted to all individuals.
> If you believe in individual freedom at all, then it should be held that the collective force (government) can have no more power than that of an individual, and the government does not have the legitimate authority to grant powers and privileges to one individual (police, fire etc) that are not granted to all individuals.
That does not follow.
What you're basically saying is that you're an anarchist. That's a perfectly legitimate position to take - hell, I'm all in favor of anarchism as a personal philosophy - but it's not a terribly practical method of organizing and running a large society, and if you don't believe in the social contract you're not going to have much common ground with most people.
> They should be held to a higher standard than everyone else, or at least an equal one, but not a lesser one.
This isn't logically possible, if they had to obey the same rules, they wouldn't have any police powers:
- use of force to subdue someone (would otherwise be assault)
- handling of evidence that is otherwise prohibited (drugs, munitions, etc.)
- physically detaining people, which would be considered kidnapping by anyone else
The police have an elevated authority by definition. Certainly there should be (and are) constraints on this authority, it isn't unlimited, but it is too simplistic to simply say they have to obey the same rules as everyone else.
A private citizen most certainly can detain and subdue person violating the law. Atleast in the US.
Now if you do this and the person is not in fact violating the law it will be you being arrested however if I catch someone breaking into my home at 3am I most certainly can use physical force to detain him/her.
Of course, but this is an example of a citizen using special police powers because they are acting in the role of a police officer. In that role, the citizen or the actual police officer is enabled to do things that are not otherwise permitted -- they are following different rules.
So must we write massive exemptions for police officers into wire fraud laws so that they can 'tell lies' online? Do we need a law excepting them from pretending to be a child during pedophile stings? And another law for giving a false name to a police officer, for when they are doing internal investigations? Cop are given some room for a reason. Adding a bright-line exception to every criminal law is not practical. It is left to the courts to set the rules.
Furthermore, if a member of law enforcement violates your liberty through imprisonment or personal injury -- and you are found not guilty through the judicial process -- then that police officer should be tried for false imprisonment and battery.
Simply because someone wears the costume of the state does not mean they should be above the law that governs everyone else. The monopoly on force granted to law enforcement has created a toxic set of incentives. We are seeing ramifications of those incentives in the news every week.
Why does it have to be a pursuit? Can the police speed through a city to arrive on scene of a crime? Say, for example, a domestic dispute turned into a violent assault?
Can they break down a door on reasonable suspicion when they arrive? Can they enter the contained private property without permission? Can they shoot one person to save the others life?
So pedophiles obviously don't choose to be pedophiles. I'm certain it is a biological vagary. There should be a better way to treat people that are a certain way because of biology and not choice.
The other issue is I'm not sure if FBI did the right thing here. For whatever brief period this was state sponsored and sanctioned pedophile ring.
It's really not clear why and how one does become a pedophile, that said the FBI was going after the producers and dealers of child pornography not the consumers.
For the most part the consumers are being left out of major prosecutions, one can also make an argument that blocking all sources of CP might increase sexual assault cases involving children if the users cannot get their relief that way.
The idea has been thrown around for a while, but of course, there's no way to get a definite truth on the matter.
Here's one article[1] claiming a possible link between availability of porn and abuse. But I'm sure there must be at least one other study arguing the opposite.
This attitude is why it's so hard to have a sensible conversation about child porn. Change the subject to torture, murder, genocide or any number of far worse things and people won't get so emotionally wound up. There's something about child porn that bring out the jungle in people beyond proportion. There's nothing wrong with throwing ideas around in a discussion. Nobody here is going to go rape a child just because they talked about the definition of rape.
The sad-irony here is, the very same wound up individuals don't give anything emotion-wise if a childs rights are violated on a non-sexual basis.
Sweatshops to glue those phones, shoes and shirts together? Not a problem.
Beating them for religious reasons.
Not a problem.
Starving them for social ideologies.
Thats okay, they are responsible for themselves.
As seen in WW2 and later crimes. Genocide on families (including children), okay, as long as you don't have to witness it and can make a profit from it.
Its really only sexual crimes that get monsters to rage at monsters.
It must be some primal instinct, that is completely detached from the crime and the victim itself. Its really all about the pure existence of the criminal.
In our current environment, this is mostly a pedantic distinction because almost all child porn is produced in an otherwise abusive environment.
Also, the definition of child porn is far broader than what would be required to meet the definition of rape, which requires penetration. [0]
The definition of child porn is also sufficiently broad to include any pornographic image that depicts an identifiable minor in a sexual act, whether or not said minor was actually ingaged in said act, or involved in the production in any way.
The FBI also has a stash of already created child porn. Any harm resulting from the creation of said porn has already been done, and is therefore not a reason to not use it in order to reduce future harm.
[0] Technically, many jurisdictions do not have any form of "statatury rape", but instead use other crimes like sexual abuse.
> The FBI also has a stash of already created child porn. Any harm resulting from the creation of said porn has already been done, and is therefore not a reason to not use it in order to reduce future harm.
I'd like to play the Devil's Advocate here.
Isn't that application of intent and affect the same as a convicted viewer could use to explain why they didn't hurt anyone? They weren't the person behind the camera, nor the person who had sexual relations with the child, so what harm is their consumption of the content?
The government also has a substantial quantity of already produced narcaotics, opiates, psychadellics, and other Schedule 1 drugs that they've confiscated from suppliers and users. Are they free to sell a portion of those drugs in order to find people they can target for future prosecution? I'm not talking about stings where no actual product is exchanged, but months of supplying communities with illegal drugs.
We're not talking about a 25 year old filming his 17 year old girlfriend giving him head here. This is the kind of stuff where the people involved cannot consent. Your spellchecker is broken.
>We're not talking about a 25 year old filming his 17 year old girlfriend giving him head here.
Yes we are. What you describe is child pornography. Depending on jurisdiction, the girlfriend cannot consent. Even in jurisdictions where she can consent, it is still child porn. Even in situations where the 17 year old is acting alone, it is child porn. Even in situations where the 17 year old draws a picture of herself masturbating, it is child porn.
I guest you are correct, my comment should read:
s/rape/depiction in a sexual manner/g
Either way, my point is that we should be careful of the language we use, and recognize that child pornography is far broader than circumstances that would generally be considered "rape" are. My phrasing was sub-optimal due to my other problem with the conflation of statutory rape and normal rape.
The idea the some people "cannot consent" is disproven by the fact that some countries allow underage people to have consensual sex with each other but not with overage people. Somehow they can consent sometimes but not other times. Where I'm from, it's common for kids to be having sex at 13. They "can't consent" but somehow do it anyway without breaking the law.
And? the FBI did not create it, it redistribute it much of it I would assume is pretty darn old, wouldn't surprise me if things that originally were recorded on VHS is still around being sold and traded.
I think that the entire argument flew over your head, the FBI isn't going after consumer it is going after the producers you know the ones in your case who are actually doing or arranging the raping.
>I'm certain it is a biological vagary. There should be a better way to treat people that are a certain way because of biology and not choice
But that brings up the entire question of how much anyone truly has a conscious choice in any of their actions. A lot of evidence is pointing to 'free will' being an illusion our conscious minds uphold to make us feel like we are in control.[0]
In the end I doubt very much there is a specific set of genes that causes one to be a pedophile, just as there isn't a set of genes that makes someone a murderer or thief. There's perhaps at best some genes that may pre-dispose a person towards pedophilia (though I doubt it), but clearly a persons environment is going to be the biggest determiner. It's well known that most child abusers were abused themselves.
So until we start looking on all criminals as people that need to be treated and cured of their condition, it doesn't make sense to treat pedophiles that way.
Studies in bonobos point to there being a very strong genetic component in fact. Bonobos and chimps being our closest relatives I think the biological evidence is more compelling than you think.
I've lost the reference but it was a study of sexual behavior in bonobos and their "non-discriminatory" attitude and practices. Bonobos of course being famous for their sexual proclivities and chimps being famous for their violent proclivities.
If you google relevant keywords I'm sure it will turn up.
Ok... but were certain bonobos more likely to be non-discriminatory than other bonobos based on genetics?
Yea there's tons of studies talking about bonobos sexuality. I did a google search and nothing about a specific set of genes causing a certain sexual behavior in a segment of the bonobo population.
What you are talking about sounds like general behavior in an entire population. And if that's the case then why aren't all humans pedophiles?
Edit: As a counterpoint this is the first thing I found when searching for 'bonobo' 'gene' 'sexuality'
A child pornography ring. I have yet to hear any evidence of FBI participation in physical abuse, new physical abuse. They seem to have allowed preexisting material to be re-shared. If anything new was uploaded during this time we would have heard about child abuse arrests. A "pedophile ring" has a very different connotation. Both are bad, but one is a very different type of evil.
As opposed to the illustration of the article, one needs to note that child pornography includes a photo, a drawing or a 3D CGI representing anyone below 18 years old. Given the recipient rarely has the ID card on file, it's hard to prove it to the judge, even if the porn model was 22. Not even talking about age fabrication, which turns unsuspecting viewers into felons.
I wonder how well the distinction is applied, or far this can be pushed by the FBI to take down a someone.
On the other hand, needless to say that actual child porn is disgusting.
The law [0] seems to provided an affirmative defense if "the alleged child pornography was not produced using any actual minor or minors."
This defense does not apply if (emphasis added) "such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct."
My reading of this is that it is legal to have a pornagraphic drawing of a child character . It only become illegal when the drawing is of an actual minor.
It also questions Tor Project's effectiveness at educating its users. Especially users engaged in high-risk activity. Once PlayPen had been compromised, this FBI operation relied entirely on exploiting a Firefox vulnerability to drop malware that phoned home, bypassing Tor. Putting tor daemon and userland in separate VMs would have prevented user compromise. Even firewall rules might have prevented it. Why doesn't Tor Project focus more on user safety?
Edit: We hear about this because defendants in criminal cases are questioning FBI practices. And because criminal cases in the US are public, unless there are national security issues. But we probably don't hear about similar efforts elsewhere against political dissidents etc.
I don't really understand the objection to this. Continuing to operate the site for a short period in order to catch more pedophiles seems fine to me. They weren't abusing children themselves, and shutting down the site wouldn't have prevented the continuing abuse of children by its users.
All shutting it down immediately would have done is prevented them from sharing the photos with each other, which seems like an extraordinarily small price to pay to catch even a single additional child molester, let alone a whole community of them.
If the actual owners were observed by the FBI operating the site for two weeks, and served N specific images, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm? Yes?
If the original owners sold to new owners, and the FBI observed the new owners serving the same N specific images for two weeks, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm. Yes?
If the FBI muscled in and took over the site, serving those exact same N images for two weeks, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm? Yes?
Yes, but that is a tradeoff that has been made in nearly every non-trivial investigation of organized crime in the history of investigation or crime. You can always get the people at the bottom first, but you let them roam free committing crimes for a time so that you can take down the entire entity.
The tradeoff ought to be evaluated on a case by case basis, of course. Because you are trading some small harm for the theoretical reduction in some greater harm. However, I think it's pretty clear that stopping actual child abuse is much more important than preventing the dissemination of child pornography.
1. Based on DOJ and Court rulings what the FBI did here was actual child abuse. The FBI abused children in the course of their investigation. The Official DOJ and US Supreme Court position is that any distribution, or viewing of child porn images is in fact child abuse. As such the FBI running the server is in fact child abuse.
2. Who were these mythical "kingpins" you believe the FBI was seeking, in every case publicly known about prosecution resulting from this operation is about simple possession of child pornography, Not production. From my understanding of the cases not a single child porn producer has been prosecuted, and I believe the FBI has stated most of the images are very old and previously known to the FBI or other agencies. That made that statement to attempt to curb some of the outrage. Given that however it contradics your reasoning for them to continue operating the server as they had already caught the largest "kingpin" the server owner. It would seem they worked backwards in this operations, they caught the top guy first then used the server to sweep up the "street level" or bottom level persons.
Well, to be honest, i'm not so sure that they should be. Why should you be prosecuted for looking at child pornography? Because you and I find it morally abhorrent? You may be able to argue that it creates a demand for the product, which leads to more abuse, but that argument is tenuous and ought to be born out by something other than conjecture before it's etched into law.
That being said, I suppose it's irrelevant what we think the law ought to be, the law does define the consumption of child pornography and therefore the facilitation of that consumption to be a crime, and by extension to be causing some kind of harm. However, all investigative agencies via undercover and covert informant based work engage in this sort of behavior, that either supports indirectly or prolongs unnecessarily some level of criminal behavior in order to infiltrate and stop a greater criminal syndicate from operating. This is not even remotely unprecedented, and, in my view is a fundamentally sound principle to follow. If you can prevent substantially greater harm (actual child abuse) by temporarily facilitating a very small harm (consumption of images of child abuse), you should do so.
I agree with your points about the legality of the material and share the thought that more research should be done.
What doesn't sit well with me is the government directly running or supporting illegal behavior. If they had infiltrated the server and backdoored it(say by offering tech support) while the owner ran it I would not have any problem. When they took over the server by not shutting it down they became the top of the criminal syndicate not just someone providing support.
I have similar problems with when they arrest a group of 'terrorists' by actively recruiting people, putting together a plot, providing the (fake) explosives and finally using tactics akin to brainwashing and abuse the get the 'terrorists' to carry out the plot so they can be arrested.
The entire reason they have leeway is so they can get the head of the organization, not so they can be the head.
Addendum: I want to thank you for being able to discuss this without being emotional and resorting to personal attacks. It is rare to get this nice of a discourse on such a subject.
> Continuing to operate the site for a short period in order to catch more pedophiles seems fine to me.
Was that what happened, though? We saw that there were more logins, but were those unique logins? Did those additional 39,000 logins result in a significantly higher number of arrestees? Or were all 186 people who were prosecuted part of the initial 11,000?
Do we, as people not involved in the investigation, even get to find this out?
Does it matter? I mean, why else would they operate this site but because they think they might get more information? Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried.
If I spend my grandmother's retirement fund on lottery tickets, maybe I'll win her a lot more money, maybe I won't -- should I try?
Of course the likelihood of effectiveness matters. As does the potential harm you're risking. What the article is arguing is that keeping the site up allowed for a much greater distribution of the photos -- to potentially many, many more individuals who continue to elude prosecution, and may continue to spread those photos themselves.
At the time the FBI took over the site, there were 11,000 weekly user logins. During the additional time they ran it, it grew to 50,000 weekly user logins. Out of a potential 50,000 individuals, the FBI is able to prosecute only 186. pavel_lishin is asking a fair question when he wonders if allowing a potential 39,000 additional individuals to download those photos and potentially distribute them elsewhere actually resulted in any additional prosecutions, and if so, is that number worth it compared to the (potentially massive) amount of additional distribution the FBI enabled?
You're missing the point, I think. IMO, it is unequivocal that in theory continuing to operate the site for some time could lead to substantially more arrests. Whether or not the FBI succeeded in doing so is an operational matter. If they failed to exploit this opportunity properly, that doesn't invalidate the concept.
Now, you could criticize their operational use of this power, but that is entirely distinct from criticizing, in general, the use of this sort of tactic. Which, I think, on its face, is clear can be an effective one.
It introduces an interesting question on tactics. Stopping child porn is good, reducing gun trafficking is good. It's not clear how that is done currently.
In place of continuing to host the content to catch predators, could the government covertly transition sites they run from hosting to linking to other sites? Making their site "more robust to takedown"?
Encouraging users to instead link to other sites? The resulting contributions can then be used to go after and prosecute, and even shut down (some of) the submitted sites?
I don't know if it's possible to do that transition well, at some point the site is just a host of links (like HN or Reddit). At some point they'd become the largest aggregator of child porn, at which point they can go after the most popular or prolific producers.
This of course is also along the lines of locate and punish, and doesn't explore helping the people who make, distribute, or consume. Addressing the demand for the content I don't like the idea of a strike system however catching and treating people and moving to prosecuting the people who reoffend after treatment is harder to do, I don't even know how monitoring to detect offenders after catching them once.
It also re-introduces the question of goals, which is to often overlooked in any discussion that involves the word "child". Specifically, most people I talk to eventually agree that a bigger goal is to stop the production of child porn, more so than it is to stop the distribution of child porn. Even if the FBI was not activly catching consumers with this approach, flooding the market with already existing child porn (which the FBI should have access to), would help starve out producers, and reduce total production.
When the FBI prosecutes the consumers of their honeypot, it has the added benefit of shrinking the total market (both directly, and by spreading the perception that consuming child porn is not safe because of the chance that it is a honeypot).
While I agree with the priorities, one problem with this is that you would be using potentially degrading involuntary pictures of other people. Maybe it would be possible to find sufficient victims who would agree to have their pictures used for the cause? I don't know.
I agree that distributing images of people without their consent is wrong. I hadn't considered identifying and distributing material from people willing to help stop child porn. I can't imagine what that approval process would need to be or how to ensure the process would be carried out. It does avoid starving the market which could lead to an ideas in production. With a goal of ending production of child porn, not consumption, a very different approach may be taken.
I'm not advocating no punishment for consumers, however only focusing police/FBI resources on producers (as that doesn't appear to be the approach today) and pushing the expenses of care/treatment for consumers elsewhere (the healthcare system?) Could lead to a more significant reduction in both consumption and production.
I mean, wasn't the government supposed to learn you can't do this sort of shit, I dunno, countless government scandals involving essentially the same thing? If your involvement in an illegal industry is such that the market is composed primarily of you, you're probably doing something immoral. The ends do not justify the means, especially when you're given a privileged position of power. In my opinion, those FBI agents involved in this operation should be tried on criminal charges. The fact that no one spoke up has very concerning implications about the ethical culture at the FBI.
Now lets assume this sort of technology is already in place, but you just will never know, the sort of quantum observation, that just leads to remarkable good police work - because lucky guesses..
Which is one of the reasons why abuse cases happen in third world countrys nowadays. This is something that should be deployed worldwide.
Oh, compiler is done building - better worlds, all of them.
As a meta-point, I wonder why people who (apparently) see themselves as bitcoin/privacy advocates think it's a good idea (from an efficiency-towards-that-goal perspective) to defend child molesters, or attack people trying to catch child molesters. Maybe they're just not very capable of making the distinction between their personal convictions (about the boogey-man government) and how to realistically achieve certain goals on privacy advocacy, but talking about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...
Given that this comes from a highly questionable source (bitcoin.com, run by Roger Ver, a guy convicted for sending explosives in the mail, a bitcoin investor, and libertarian who revoked his U.S citizenship so he wouldn't have to pay taxes, and is highly biased against the government), this should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
If this were even slightly true, there would be reputable news sites all over this story by now.
> In February 2015, the FBI seized control of the site and operated it for two weeks so that the agency could distribute malware to users with the intention of identifying suspects.
> The Department of Justice (DOJ) denies that charge, writing in case documents, “The Government Played No Role in Creating the Crime for Which Chase is Being Prosecuted or Otherwise Encouraged His Criminal Conduct. Chase created the Playpen website, not the government.”
> The FBI has also denied claims that during their operation of Playpen, agents improved the site’s performance, helping it run faster.
> “Chase claims absent actual factual support that the government enhanced or improved the website’s functionality,” the DOJ said.
> Even if the FBI did upgrade Playpen’s performance, criminal defense attorney Norman Pattis says, it would have little impact on the case.
> “I don’t think there would be much implication at all,” Pattis said. “I think the defense is misapplying entrapment.”
> “Speeding up access doesn’t create the desire to do it,” he added. “The fact that people come to the market looking for it already doesn’t make it entrapment.”
> The DOJ justified the FBI’s actions in continuing to operate Playpen after arresting Chase. They wrote that shutting down Playpen immediately “might have answered the immediate issue of child pornography trafficking on Playpen, it would have done nothing to address the larger problem.”
>> “Speeding up access doesn’t create the desire to do it,” he added. “The fact that people come to the market looking for it already doesn’t make it entrapment.”
This is a pretty interesting argument for the government to make, given its existing legal theory that the children depicted in child pornography suffer redressible harm whenever such an image is viewed. By that theory, improving the site, resulting in many additional views, means the government is actively causing harm to the viewed children, which it shouldn't be doing.
Sure, but none of those sources say anything like:
> Given the nature of the site, this included uploading large volumes of new child pornography.
or
> During the investigation, logins increased by more than 350 percent to 50,000 per week. The defense attorneys’ motion seeks to discover exactly how the FBI boosted its traffic so much.
The gizmodo.com article does: "while it was under Government control [increased] from an average of 11,000 weekly visitors to approximately 50,000 per week"
So, a site was made by a pedophile, they got that guy, and then kept the site online so they could make further arrests of people who viewed the site.
That's a massively different picture than what you get by reading the article, and the headline 'FBI's deep web child porn ring'. It wasn't FBI's child porn ring, it was this guy's child porn ring.
> ...and then kept the site online so they could make further arrests of people who viewed the site.
> That's a massively different picture...
No, it isn't. The USG treats every instance of child pornography as a separate occurrence of a crime against the child. That is the way they've structured it so that they can convict as many people as possible, not just the individuals responsible for production. In this case the USG, by their own standard, committed an untold number of crimes against these children by keeping the site up and acting as a distributor. There is no difference between this and them setting up a honey pot full of CP.
So you didn't read any of the stories linked in the comment you replied to? First one, top of the page:
"...including more than 9,000 files that users could download directly from the FBI. Some of the images described in court filings involved children barely old enough for kindergarten."
That's what the site had before the FBI took charge of it and replaced the CP with malware. Where's the evidence that they distributed CP and not just cp.jpg.exe?
In the court filings described by the previously linked stories, one of which I quoted in the comment you just responded to. What do you think they were charging people with, intent to download cp.jpg? Are you having such a hard time believing that the USG would distribute CP that you are mentally blocking all the evidence available to you? Because I have bad news for you, they've done much worse than that.
but after the creator is in jail, it's 100% the fbi that host and promotes the site.
there are law against entrapment. but when fbi agents get on a chat room anonymously and send someone a link "want to see this illegal content?" now the person who could have zero interest in the matter will just want to check it out to see if it's true, for whatever reason, which could very well be to report to the authorities if it is true. but now, since the person was entrapped, the fbi can just deny the anonymous entrapment and prosecute the person for arriving on the site by their own means and drive.
You have to be more active than just stumbling across it. If you stumble onto CP accidentally and either report it to the police (only) or delete it and show no one, you're fine. Read the USC if you're curious about the details, but no, you can't get busted just because you ran into it.
Entrapment only comes into play if you convince someone to commit a crime they weren't already predisposed to commit. So if you give them a link that says "here's CP" and they download half the site and add it to their collection, it's hard to argue that the cops made you collect CP. In general, if all the police did is provide you a chance to commit a crime and you did so, you were busted, not entrapped.
> when fbi agents get on a chat room anonymously and send someone a link "want to see this illegal content?" now the person who could have zero interest in the matter will just want to check it out to see if it's true, for whatever reason
Yeah, sure. I see a link saying 'child porn click here' and I click that link just out of curiosity. Sure.
> which could very well be to report to the authorities if it is true
You can report it to the authorities without needing to click the link (as any sensible person would do).
so everyone who is a little dumb should be in jail? nice.
remember that there was a famous uk singer that was entrapped just like that since 4 years or so ago. can't remember the name though... he had a foundation to fight child abuse. he spent years reporting links he found to no effect, so he started to collect hard evidence and was busted for possession of that material. he had a hard time fighting the charges, and he might very well be really guilty after all, what I'm telling if just the news as I've read at the time.
This is why law enforcement shouldn't be allowed to set their own priorities. The institutional goals and the goals of the taxpayers who pay them don't match.