<story><title>FBI’s Deep Web Child Porn Ring Questions Role of Gov’t in Society</title><url>https://news.bitcoin.com/fbi-child-porn-role-govt/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>syshum</author><text>Legal Protections against entrapment are very minimal and not what people think.&lt;p&gt;FBI routinely creates, plots, then recruits people for made up  terrorism plots, then arrests them&lt;p&gt;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&lt;p&gt;Entrapment is often used in prostitution stings as well.&lt;p&gt;None of these instances are tossed by the courts, entrapment is very much alive and well in the legal system&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;If you then claim is no children were actually harmed by the FBI&amp;#x27;s action then one has to start looking at the very foundation of the Child Porn laws.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;p&gt;Sources for above can be found in this comment 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12432737&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12432737&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>dogma1138</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s an unrealistic approach CIs and undercover agents are needed to break apart crime syndicates because otherwise you&amp;#x27;ll end up arresting the &amp;quot;street level&amp;quot; peddlers and nothing more.&lt;p&gt;Now as far as entrapment goes there are legal definitions for it under most cases law enforcement isn&amp;#x27;t allowed to change the outcome of an event.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;If the fbi did not operate the server they would still have acquired it just from a different source.&lt;p&gt;The ATF sting was a pretty shitty operation with dubious legal backing but it&amp;#x27;s not an case for not running intelligence gathering or sting operation, it&amp;#x27;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.</text></item><item><author>joshuaheard</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;This reminds somewhat of the &amp;quot;gun walker&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;ATF_gunwalking_scandal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;ATF_gunwalking_scandal&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dogma1138</author><text>I think the concept of some one watching child porn that was produced in the 80&amp;#x27;s and converted from VHS to DVD is harming a child today is a bit odd one.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>FBI’s Deep Web Child Porn Ring Questions Role of Gov’t in Society</title><url>https://news.bitcoin.com/fbi-child-porn-role-govt/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>syshum</author><text>Legal Protections against entrapment are very minimal and not what people think.&lt;p&gt;FBI routinely creates, plots, then recruits people for made up  terrorism plots, then arrests them&lt;p&gt;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&lt;p&gt;Entrapment is often used in prostitution stings as well.&lt;p&gt;None of these instances are tossed by the courts, entrapment is very much alive and well in the legal system&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;If you then claim is no children were actually harmed by the FBI&amp;#x27;s action then one has to start looking at the very foundation of the Child Porn laws.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;p&gt;Sources for above can be found in this comment 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12432737&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12432737&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>dogma1138</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s an unrealistic approach CIs and undercover agents are needed to break apart crime syndicates because otherwise you&amp;#x27;ll end up arresting the &amp;quot;street level&amp;quot; peddlers and nothing more.&lt;p&gt;Now as far as entrapment goes there are legal definitions for it under most cases law enforcement isn&amp;#x27;t allowed to change the outcome of an event.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;If the fbi did not operate the server they would still have acquired it just from a different source.&lt;p&gt;The ATF sting was a pretty shitty operation with dubious legal backing but it&amp;#x27;s not an case for not running intelligence gathering or sting operation, it&amp;#x27;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.</text></item><item><author>joshuaheard</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;This reminds somewhat of the &amp;quot;gun walker&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;ATF_gunwalking_scandal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;ATF_gunwalking_scandal&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Spooky23</author><text>It sounds to me like these sorts of events are ways to hit metric targets within the bureaucracy.&lt;p&gt;Why aren&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>