6 ms·

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be cha

by tyfon 10y ago

"As a way to ensnare users, the FBI even took control of Playpen and ran it for 13 days before shutting it down." Shouldn't the agents running this site be charged with child pornography distribution? Or are they above the law? This would be a full blown investigation against the police in this country (Norway), but here entrapment is illegal too.

chrischen 10y ago
You could argue that the FBI's use case does not harm, perpeutatue, or endorse the exploitation of children any further. It would be a different story if the FBI also commissioned new content to run the site.
- kiproping 10y ago
  It's really surprising the faux moral outrage. Children will continue to be exploited because of technicalities.
- Lawtonfogle 10y ago
  Since distribution and even possesion are crimes because they hurt children this argument does not hold up.
- aw3c2 10y ago
  You could argue that "mere" possession of such material does not either, yet that is not how the law is interpreted.
  - vlehto 10y ago
    Could there be some kind of "allowed CP database"? I'm asking because I might donate my old childhood photos to such database. I really would not mind if someone jacked of to that stuff. If that could help to prevent some pedophile acting out their urges, it would be really great. Is this too weird idea for HN?
  - chrischen 10y ago
    But possession drives demand. The FBI's case wouldn't drive demand from the producers.
tallanvor 10y ago
Unfortunately we've seen that law enforcement in the US is able to get away with doing some rather despicable things in the name of fighting crime. Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. After all, how can we defend our own morals and ethics if we're willing to ignore them for "reasons"?
- afarrell 10y ago
  > Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. I think you want to look at systemic effects and the potential for bulger-style corruption. Distribution of child porn does not do direct harm. It does harm by being a system that supports child abuse and we have collectively decided that child abuse is harmful enough to the fabric of our society that it is worth dismantling the systems that support it. So here, the ends justify a certain scoped set of means, but also impose a duty of competence in deploying those means and a duty to stay within their scope. Note that We don't currently have any penalties for crossing the bounds of that scope.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    > Distribution of child porn does not do direct harm. // IMO it does, both to the user and the subjects of the pornography. It's most likely the lesser harm compared to the original creation; though I'm not sure you could certainly say that in absolutely all situations.
- bfuller 10y ago
  Isn't that the whole reason it's a drug "war"?
- bfuller 10y ago
  Isn't that the whole reason it's a drug "war"?
- L-four 10y ago
  As the saying goes "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster."
ErikHuisman 10y ago
You could still be running the site and not facilitate and distribute child pornography. For example always throw a server error AFTER a user entered its credentials. This way you can still track users.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  The problem then is that you've not recorded the user committing a crime (or committing a lesser crime, eg soliciting), only them preparing to commit one. They could have tried a con like "we lost the site, gaussed it to avoid detection, please re-upload" and collared people for distributing. Not sure how well that would go though.
sickbeard 10y ago
In what world would it make sense to do this?
gravypod 10y ago
I wonder how that would work as a defense for the people hosting it: "No your honor I wasn't distributing child porn by hosting this site. I was trying to operate honey pot for the officers to find."
pc86 10y ago
1) Law enforcement agents are allowed to participate in illegal activity in order to catch criminals. Otherwise it'd be pretty damn easy to root out undercover cops. 2) Honeypots are not entrapment, which has a very specific legal definition. The person needs to be "normally law-abiding" and can't be otherwise already disposed to commit the crime in question. Not only that, but in most states (not sure about Federal law which would be what applies here) the defendant needs to actually resist the illegal act and be further coerced by an agent of the government. So taking over a pre-existing site centered around illegal activity and simply seeing who uses it is about as far away from entrapment as you can get.
- voxic11 10y ago
  They didn't just take it over though. They made major improvements which caused the traffic to increase 8x during the time they operated it.
  - joshstrange 10y ago
    Do you have a source on this? I haven't read this about the case previously.
    - sathackr 10y ago
      https://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawyer-dark-web-child-porn-site-ran-better-when-it-was-taken-over-by-the-fbi https://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawyer-dark-web-child-porn... "As a result, the number of visitors to Playpen while it was under Government control [increased] from an average of 11,000 weekly visitors to approximately 50,000 per week. During those two weeks, the website’s membership grew by over 30%, the number of unique weekly visitors to the site more than quadrupled, and approximately 200 videos, 9,000 images, and 13,000 links to child pornography were posted on the site,”
      - joshstrange 10y ago
        Thank you for the link, based on the original comment I thought they added new feature/wrote new code (which is not outside the realm of possibility) but this would point to just better hardware and a better internet connection.
runholm 10y ago
Police in Norway is absolutely allowed to break the law to be able to catch the real culprits and not just the visible parts of criminal networks. Here [1] is a case from April where the police imported 12 kg of cocaine as part of a deal with a man trying to smuggle the cocaine. The result was that they got the whole cell of Albanian smugglers and not just their german scapegoat. [1] http://www.dagbladet.no/2016/04/28/nyheter/innenriks/kokain/narkotika/beslag/44026926/ http://www.dagbladet.no/2016/04/28/nyheter/innenriks/kokain/...
- bitwize 10y ago
  I think you can build a better case for police buying, or offering to sell, drugs in order to catch criminals than this. Cocaine that isn't actually insufflated doesn't harm anyone. The FBI distributed images of child abuse which are illegal to own or distribute because, so the theory goes, the child is further abused every time someone new sees it. Therefore the FBI was complicit in further abuse of those children. Whether or not LEOs are allowed to commit crimes as part of an investigation, that crosses a serious ethical line. We wouldn't tolerate cops posing as hitmen and committing actual murder to keep the ruse up. Why should we tolerate this?
cloudjacker 10y ago
Don't forget, prospective users had to upload new cp to become a member. In case that influences your conclusions

by tyfon 10y ago

chrischen 10y ago

You could argue that the FBI's use case does not harm, perpeutatue, or endorse the exploitation of children any further. It would be a different story if the FBI also commissioned new content to run the site.

kiproping 10y ago
It's really surprising the faux moral outrage. Children will continue to be exploited because of technicalities.
Lawtonfogle 10y ago
Since distribution and even possesion are crimes because they hurt children this argument does not hold up.
aw3c2 10y ago
You could argue that "mere" possession of such material does not either, yet that is not how the law is interpreted.
- vlehto 10y ago
  Could there be some kind of "allowed CP database"? I'm asking because I might donate my old childhood photos to such database. I really would not mind if someone jacked of to that stuff. If that could help to prevent some pedophile acting out their urges, it would be really great. Is this too weird idea for HN?
- chrischen 10y ago
  But possession drives demand. The FBI's case wouldn't drive demand from the producers.

tallanvor 10y ago

Unfortunately we've seen that law enforcement in the US is able to get away with doing some rather despicable things in the name of fighting crime. Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. After all, how can we defend our own morals and ethics if we're willing to ignore them for "reasons"?

afarrell 10y ago
> Personally, I don't believe it's moral or ethical for law enforcement to commit crimes in order to catch criminals. I think you want to look at systemic effects and the potential for bulger-style corruption. Distribution of child porn does not do direct harm. It does harm by being a system that supports child abuse and we have collectively decided that child abuse is harmful enough to the fabric of our society that it is worth dismantling the systems that support it. So here, the ends justify a certain scoped set of means, but also impose a duty of competence in deploying those means and a duty to stay within their scope. Note that We don't currently have any penalties for crossing the bounds of that scope.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  > Distribution of child porn does not do direct harm. // IMO it does, both to the user and the subjects of the pornography. It's most likely the lesser harm compared to the original creation; though I'm not sure you could certainly say that in absolutely all situations.
bfuller 10y ago
Isn't that the whole reason it's a drug "war"?
bfuller 10y ago
Isn't that the whole reason it's a drug "war"?
L-four 10y ago
As the saying goes "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster."

ErikHuisman 10y ago

You could still be running the site and not facilitate and distribute child pornography. For example always throw a server error AFTER a user entered its credentials. This way you can still track users.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
The problem then is that you've not recorded the user committing a crime (or committing a lesser crime, eg soliciting), only them preparing to commit one. They could have tried a con like "we lost the site, gaussed it to avoid detection, please re-upload" and collared people for distributing. Not sure how well that would go though.

sickbeard 10y ago

In what world would it make sense to do this?

gravypod 10y ago

I wonder how that would work as a defense for the people hosting it: "No your honor I wasn't distributing child porn by hosting this site. I was trying to operate honey pot for the officers to find."

pc86 10y ago

1) Law enforcement agents are allowed to participate in illegal activity in order to catch criminals. Otherwise it'd be pretty damn easy to root out undercover cops. 2) Honeypots are not entrapment, which has a very specific legal definition. The person needs to be "normally law-abiding" and can't be otherwise already disposed to commit the crime in question. Not only that, but in most states (not sure about Federal law which would be what applies here) the defendant needs to actually resist the illegal act and be further coerced by an agent of the government. So taking over a pre-existing site centered around illegal activity and simply seeing who uses it is about as far away from entrapment as you can get.

voxic11 10y ago
They didn't just take it over though. They made major improvements which caused the traffic to increase 8x during the time they operated it.
- joshstrange 10y ago
  Do you have a source on this? I haven't read this about the case previously.
  - sathackr 10y ago
    https://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawyer-dark-web-child-porn-site-ran-better-when-it-was-taken-over-by-the-fbi https://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawyer-dark-web-child-porn... "As a result, the number of visitors to Playpen while it was under Government control [increased] from an average of 11,000 weekly visitors to approximately 50,000 per week. During those two weeks, the website’s membership grew by over 30%, the number of unique weekly visitors to the site more than quadrupled, and approximately 200 videos, 9,000 images, and 13,000 links to child pornography were posted on the site,”
    - joshstrange 10y ago
      Thank you for the link, based on the original comment I thought they added new feature/wrote new code (which is not outside the realm of possibility) but this would point to just better hardware and a better internet connection.

runholm 10y ago

Police in Norway is absolutely allowed to break the law to be able to catch the real culprits and not just the visible parts of criminal networks. Here [1] is a case from April where the police imported 12 kg of cocaine as part of a deal with a man trying to smuggle the cocaine. The result was that they got the whole cell of Albanian smugglers and not just their german scapegoat. [1] http://www.dagbladet.no/2016/04/28/nyheter/innenriks/kokain/narkotika/beslag/44026926/ http://www.dagbladet.no/2016/04/28/nyheter/innenriks/kokain/...

bitwize 10y ago
I think you can build a better case for police buying, or offering to sell, drugs in order to catch criminals than this. Cocaine that isn't actually insufflated doesn't harm anyone. The FBI distributed images of child abuse which are illegal to own or distribute because, so the theory goes, the child is further abused every time someone new sees it. Therefore the FBI was complicit in further abuse of those children. Whether or not LEOs are allowed to commit crimes as part of an investigation, that crosses a serious ethical line. We wouldn't tolerate cops posing as hitmen and committing actual murder to keep the ruse up. Why should we tolerate this?

cloudjacker 10y ago

Don't forget, prospective users had to upload new cp to become a member. In case that influences your conclusions