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Legal Protections against entrapment are very minimal and not what people think. FBI routinely creates, plots, then recruits people for made up terrorism plot
by syshum 10y ago
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.
Edit:
Sources for above can be found in this comment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12432737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12432737
- dogma1138 10y agoI 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.
- XorNot 10y agoThose children are still alive today. They grow up, become adults, recover from their experiences. They'd be between 30-40 now.
- tbrownaw 10y agoAnd whether the associated videos are or aren't watched has no effect on that. Watching them causes no additional harm.
- Nursie 10y agoThat's callous and fairly nonsensical. We don't say to women who are targeted for 'revenge porn' that they should just live with it.
- nv-vn 10y agoYes, but we also don't consider it a crime to view said revenge porn.
- Ntrails 10y agoJennifer 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".
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago"we", what's your scope there. 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).
- Hondor 10y agoThose 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.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoIt 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.
- Retric 10y agoIt 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. As such it's the net effect that's important.
- Taek 10y agoMost 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. http://m.phys.org/news/2010-11-legalizing-child-pornography-linked-sex.html http://m.phys.org/news/2010-11-legalizing-child-pornography-... https://www.springer.com/about+springer/media/springer+select?SGWID=0-11001-6-1042321-0 https://www.springer.com/about+springer/media/springer+selec...
- Hondor 10y agoThat'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.
- nylsaar 10y ago
- OneTimePatrick 10y agoIts not about the children. Never was. 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.
- sdoering 10y agoDoes 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?
- Freak_NL 10y agoI 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.
- mirimir 10y agoParent 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?
- rifung 10y agoI 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.
- j_jochem 10y agoIt's illegal in the US because it goes against protestant religious morals.
- a3n 10y agoI 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.
- Spooky23 10y agoIt 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.
- msandford 10y ago"we get paid to fix bugs, so we're not too careful not to program ourselves out of a job!"
- AstralStorm 10y agoCan always add new features or move on to next app. Cue DEA adding Kratom to Schedule I list so they can pad numbers.
- KingMob 10y agoTo 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.
- hiou 10y agoThe above comment is pretty much a work of fiction fyi.
- throwanem 10y agoThat 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.
- syshum 10y agoNew York v. Ferber >>>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 It is clear and well established fact
- syshum 10y agoWhich part do you believe is fiction? DEA/ATF Fake Stash houses? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160809/14081135202/judge-says-stash-house-sting-operations-allow-prosecutors-to-be-judge-jury-executioner.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160809/14081135202/judge... FBI creating their own Terror plots https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/21/us-terrorism-prosecutions-often-illusion https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/21/us-terrorism-prosecution... 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. "
- hueving 10y agoHow did the DEA coerce people to rob a house?
- syshum 10y agohttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160809/14081135202/judge-says-stash-house-sting-operations-allow-prosecutors-to-be-judge-jury-executioner.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160809/14081135202/judge...
- distances 10y agoWow. This is absolutely sickening. Police should not have the power to create fake crimes and lure people into them. This is horrific abuse towards the victims, and gross waste of policing resources that could be used to solve real crimes instead.