OK, I’m not so sure about this one. Don’t get me wrong, I want to catch as many child predators as possible, but this tactic rubs me the wrong way. Distributing images of children being raped is a real problem since there is a good chance that those images are going to be duplicated or further distributed.
Imagine if the DEA sold drugs on the street for a week to record who was the buyers. Better yet, imagine if the ATF let guns be purchased illegally and cross the border…wait a minute…damn.
So very typical of the FBI lately. They have to create the circumstances around which the crime can be committed. It’s not too dissimilar from their terrorism investigations like with the Hutarree Militia where they were incapable of committing any crimes until the FBi agent gave them the money and told them where to buy weapons…even giving them a ride to do it…
Damn near every thing they are doing is enticing or entrapping.
It appears that they raided a web porn distributor, commandeered the server, and kept it running for a week to gather intel on patrons.
Imagine if the DEA took over a crack house and started giving out crack to collect information on users. Maybe not a perfect analogy, but I don’t like the idea of drugs or child porn being distributed by the government after it is seized.
From what I read, the context seems to be that they left the server up and watched those who were accessing it. It does not at all sound like the FBI engaged in the distribution of child pornography.
Maybe a better analogy would be DEA letting drug sales continue to see who buys it before shutting it down. This is also different from what happened here, but I do think it is a closer analogy.
Are you saying they would have done it without a doubt- had outside forces NOT decided to nudge them along and put them on the easy path to do so?
Sometimes people change ideals and/or have a change of heart Pat.
Why is it our Govt nudges them along and provides such an easy path, instead of watching them and waiting?
What the FEDS do (IE- intices these individuals to commit these crimes) is not much different than what terrorist organizations are doing- giving hee info, means/training to pull this tuff off and fometning their anger to push them in the direction of extremism & violence.
The way the Feds are hadning out cash, getting these angry people riled up further and pushing people along to commit crimes is criminal IMO.
I look at it like stings where an investigator poses as a hitman and answers an add from a husband or a wife to kill there husband and then arrests them. The consequences for not taking these people off the street is too great.
Pat
Some of you people need to grow the hell up. Raiding a place that was distributing child porn and then allowing those to access the site and perform downloads is not in entrapment. The FBI did not email them or say hey come down load free child porn they went looking for it and they got nailed. Does nobody have fucking common sense anymore?
My concern has nothing to do with entrapment. Instead, my interest has more to do with letting those images of exploited kids get repeatedly downloaded and presumably distributed after the raid. I can only imagine my outrage if my child was abused at daycare and the authorities allowed the images to remain in the public domain to further an investigation.
The DOJ has gotten out of hand. I understand what you are saying but I think it would have been better to shut it down and collect the data on the server and not keep it running.
To me this looks a lot like the same method that the DOJ used for Fast & Furious except there has been an arrest with this case.
This is my thoughts on the matter as well. Kind of like happening upon a victim being gang raped and sitting back to see who else joins in so you can arrest them after the fact.