FBI Posts Fake Hyperlinks To Trap Downloaders of Illegal Porn

mytrip brings us a story from news.com about an FBI operation in which agents posted hyperlinks which advertised child pornography, recorded the IP addresses of people who clicked the links, and then tracked them down and raided their homes. The article contains a fairly detailed description of how the operation progressed, and it raises questions about the legality and reliability of getting people to click "unlawful" hyperlinks. Quoting: "With the logs revealing those allegedly incriminating IP addresses in hand, the FBI sent administrative subpoenas to the relevant Internet service provider to learn the identity of the person whose name was on the account--and then obtained search warrants for dawn raids. The search warrants authorized FBI agents to seize and remove any "computer-related" equipment, utility bills, telephone bills, any "addressed correspondence" sent through the U.S. mail, video gear, camera equipment, checkbooks, bank statements, and credit card statements. While it might seem that merely clicking on a link wouldn't be enough to justify a search warrant, courts have ruled otherwise. On March 6, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Nevada agreed with a magistrate judge that the hyperlink-sting operation constituted sufficient probable cause to justify giving the FBI its search warrant."

Comments

I would have read the article before replying

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

But I was afraid to click the link!

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[lorenlal]

I clicked it... As soon as I did, my phone rang... I'm scared.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Wiseman1024]

4chan party van anyone?

Post JB, get people v& for taking the bait. An interesting scheme. Now the FBI is almost as bad as that which it fights. I would almost care, if I didn't think pedos deserve it.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Brian Gordon]

You should be scared- you can have all your thousands of dollars of computer equipment and hard drives seized indefinitely just because you clicked on a link. I'm wayyyyyyyyy more terrified of the FBI than of terrorists, and I'm no criminal.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Brian Gordon]

JB is not CP. Seeing as how half of 4channers are 15, jailbait-clickers are just interested in girls their age. Anyway, the FBI should be trying to take down the monsters who hurt these children instead of spending millions on prosecuting people who just copy files around the internet.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, 17 year olds are liek TOTALLY children.

Idiot

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to give a shout-out to all of the people on the "Stealing wireless has no victims" thread earlier today.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[NeverVotedBush]

I wonder how many people don't realize the trouble they can get into if someone is piggybacking on their internet connection and doing illegal things.

You would hope that innocent people would eventually be found innocent after their computer(s) had been ransacked, copied, examined, etc., but there is also the chance that the logs alone would be deemed sufficient.

People need to understand what kind of liability they open themselves up to by not securing their wireless. Or they need to know that they had better keep excellent logs themselves in order to prove their own innocence, but then that can be turned against them as well if they don't monitor and police for illegal activity.

The best and easiest way to protect yourself is to lock it up.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[jollyreaper]

If you have a child under the age of 18 click the link for you (or while you are away), is that still illegal? I would assume so. The Feds managed to charge teenage girls with child porn offenses -- seems taking boobie flashes of underage teen girls is a crime whether you're a teen girl or not. So, take a picture of yourself in the mirror and you're a minor, you just porn-pwnd yourself.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[HappySmileMan]

JB is generally girls around 15-17 years old, whereas CP is younger than that, maybe they're both the same thing in the eyes of a court, but jailbait usually doesn't involve any exploitation of minors, since many girls that age are just attention whores anyway and would willing make those pictures, and many of the people who look at them would be the same age as the girls(/boys?) involved.

Of course the FBI links according to TFA were supposedly of 4 year olds, so debating the morality of jailbait has no place in this thread.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[MightyYar]

I would not like to see conviction based on a link-click, but as the basis for a search warrant, I'm not sure that's inappropriate. Maybe, but they convicted him on two charges: clicking the illegal hyperlink and possession of child pornography.

The "illegal hyperlink" was not in fact illegal - it was a harmless trap full of junk content. They didn't convict him because they found illegal browsing history on his computer - they convicted him because he clicked on their fake file.

The "child pornography" was a single thumbs.db file. You know, the low-res file with all the thumbnail pictures that XP makes for you automatically? At any time in the past, he could have accidentally downloaded pictures (from say a P2P program), deleted them without even viewing them. I find it hard to believe that he could be so good at covering his tracks, but he'd keep a single thumbs.db file around by accident.

At the very least, the first count should be overturned. I'm going to have to look at my pictures pretty closely and delete stuff - I know that I've accidentally downloaded some pretty fucked up stuff from usenet and P2P.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[armada]

So in order to totall screw someone all you have to do is get on their box, phisically or by cracking and download some kiddy porn. Then drop a dime on them (just in case you did not click on the honey pot) and voila! Instant conviction. Yes. some men have been convicted of child port violations with zero evidence above the files in their cache.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[cheater512]

If I found out about the url and I had a bot net then I'd do it deliberately.

Heads would roll when they figured out that all the clicks they got were fake and they had siezed thousands of innocent people's stuff.
The courts would also think twice about approving stuff like this.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Kreigaffe]

Mod this guy up -- this is EXACTLY what needs to be done.

Somebody needs to man up and crapflood the fuck out of the FBI. This is completely unacceptable practice.

Sure, they mislabel the link to deceive people to click on it who only want to see CP... raise your hand if you have or have ever seen someone click on a goatse or tubgirl or lemonparty after being TOLD not to click on it.

This sort of shit is RIPE for abuse, and WILL be abused, and until it is OVERabused will CONTINUE to be abused. It's just like any other bug in any other MMO, really. :P

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[RobertM1968]

Makes me scared of having "Link Prefetch" enabled in Firefox...

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[DMUTPeregrine]

And all the people with link prefetching (like myself) turned on just "clicked" that link from the point of view of the FBI.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[i_b_don]

You know... i hate this mentality. I *like* people who leave their wireless routers open. I think they're friendly and good-neighborly and i think this attitude screws that all to hell. IANAL, but to the best of my legal knowledge you have almost no liability over someone else using your wireless *despite* what the RIAA says. Remember, they sue you becuase your IP address is being used, but if they don't find any corroborating evidence on your computer that you've violated copyright then they have nothing.

The more you *bow* to the government and let them change your behavior even when what you're doing is not illegal, the more power you give them. I don't know how we let things get to this state in our country when it comes to wireless access.

I *want* people to leave their wireless access open, and I *don't* want people to feel that even though they're not doing something illegal they have to change their behavior because the police or other government folks are trying to push us into line.

Why is it that YOU guys, you /.'ers don't seem to feel the same way???

d

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[dwater]

i am in china and so out of the juristiction of the fbi, so i was able to rtfa without much fear of retribution.

So,fyi, the tfa says that the fbi link was advertising images of a 4 year old, and so it would seem that it falls squarely under the definition of cp.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[SL Baur]

Kind of sad in a way. We used to do this sort of thing for fun.

I used to have a web page with a link that read "click on this to see the picture of a hot naked 10 year old female", which of course led to a digital photo of the female family dog.

Sigh. Gone are the days.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Anonymous Coward]

Link prefetching does not randomly load any link it finds, the links need to be tagged accordingly, or nothing will happen. See the Mozilla link prefetching FAQ for more info. Unless the FBI people were complete idiots or wanted to massively inflate the number of child porn suspects (considering the german case of over twelve thousand child porn "suspects" to drum up popular support for new, "urgently needed" surveillance laws, the latter is not too unlikely), they probably didn't make use of this feature. It could however be abused to send the FBI to you,

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Paul Jakma]

If you read the article, you'll see they quote the court records which show that the search warrant was issued solely on the basis of the man's IP address appearing in the logs of the FBIs HTTP server, doing a GET of the links. As per the article, the FBI did /not/ record the referrer, so there is absolutely no indication the links were followed from the forum. They then found a thumb nail image of naked children on his hard drive..

It seems like this action will predominantly catch people who were specifically looking for child pornography and so searches will therefore find other material. However it is very disturbing that a HTTP GET can result in all your computers, much of your electronic gadgets and all your correspondence being impounded indefinitely. It sounds like it's way too easy for, inevitably, at least few innocent people to be massively inconvienced (potentially maliciously by 3rd parties).

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Verteiron]

Bear in mind that if you get raided, you will lose all of your computer equipment and everything that can connect to the internet. This includes your Wii, XBox, PS3, as well as digital cameras, PDAs, cell phones, and of course your desktops and laptops. In other words, all the stuff that "we /.'ers" live our lives with. And even if you're not found guilty, your name will be in the paper in connection with the words "child pornography", because the news media (particularly local media) eats this stuff up with a spoon. Regardless of the verdict, people will know your name as the "guy who got raided for child porn". Good luck finding work again. Also, regardless of verdict, many people who have their stuff confiscated never get their equipment back. Most likely your shiny new laptop will end up in the police chief's son's bedroom.

That's quite a risk to take, just to run an open wireless network. If you want to take it, that's fine, but THIS /.er sure isn't going to. You don't have to bow to the government, but it can still make you bend over and grab your ankles.

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[operagost]

i am in china and so out of the juristiction of the fbi, so i was able to rtfa without much fear of retribution.

Caution: irony overload!

Re:I would have read the article before replying

[Hatta]

Unless the FBI people were complete idiots

So almost certainly.

Stating the obvious problem

[michaelmalak]

So now if you develop a search engine, you get your computer confiscated?

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[syzler]

What if your browser uses link prefetching? Will they then have enough justification to take my computers and smart phone away which would leave me without the ability to work?

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[Zibri]

Crawlers is "clicking" the links, and is indeed a part of developing a search engine.

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[Brian Gordon]

They can tell if it's prefetched, if you're using a recent firefox. Firefox sends the http header

X-moz: prefetch

for prefetch requests. You can disable prefetching altogether by going to about:config and toggling

network.prefetch-next

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[erikina]

And lets hope that server never sees the light of day again, not only is helping people find child porn, it's in possesion. Think of the children.

On a serious note. Am I the only one that scared by these prospects? I don't mind the whole "think of the children", as I'm not a bad/evil/pedophile .. but put in the position, I might have clicked the link. Not because I'm into that stuff, but a combination of curisoity, bordem and just wondering if that stuff exists might have driven me to click it. And according to TFA the mere act of clicking the link constitues "violating federal law, which criminalizes "attempts" to download child pornography with up to 10 years in prison.".

I probably should have posted this anonymously, but I'm sick of the idea that possesion of some pictures is one of the worst crimes in the world. Sure child abuse is terrible (And I'd have no hesitation against the death penality in severe cases). But having a picture of it? C'mon.

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[Brian Gordon]

You should disable prefetching; a little-known fact is that cookies are exchanged when links are prefetched.. if you're on unsecured wifi (like my internet during the months I'm at school) all someone has to do is present you with a link to amazon or to wikipedia or to slashdot, and you don't even have to click it for the auto-login cookie to be exchanged. Those of you with credit card info saved on amazon, beware. ~~~~

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[Ron_Fitzgerald]

Take this scenario....

You are a 15 year old boy who has a 15 year old girlfriend.

You have sex and take pictures of each other naked.

You break up soon after but keep the photos.

Flash forward...you are now 30 years old wacking off to those photos. Are you a pedophile?

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[zblack_eagle]

Well, considering this a year ago http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/10/1752233 you don't even have to be an adult to be considered a pedophile on the internet

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[Ironsides]

By definition and law, no. Pedophilia is for prepubescent children. Post pubescent, as you mention, would be ephebophilia. Normally the break point is considered 13/14.

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[Ironsides]

All sex with underage children regardless of age is considered pedophilia.

It's one of those things where people started using the word without actually knowing what it means. Legally, it is not considered pedophilia. That's why statutory rape is on the books and is a different crime. I've had to take child protection courses for my work with the Boy Scouts. That's one of the definitions mentioned. Partly because they are two different categories of offenders and you need to look for different signs for each one.

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[tverbeek]

The law in most jurisdictions makes no distinction between photos of postpubescent minors and photos of prepubescent minors. Yes, there's a big difference between ephebophilia and true pedophilia (both from a psychological perspective and in terms of what kind of threat the person might pose), but that doesn't mean the law recognizes any difference. Under US law, "child pornography" includes images of 5-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and 17-year-olds.

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[danpat]

You may be a troll, in which case, I'm an idiot for responding, but in the vain hope that you're merely stupid, think of this: who exactly would you ask permission from in order to let your crawler run wild? The act of sending a request to a website *is* a request to retrieve their content, and if they send it back, it's implicit that they allow you to see it. The only limit on how far across the net you can crawl is how much bandwidth you can afford to expend. In the context of a CS class, someone was probably trying to discourage an entire class from writing dozens of web crawlers that would hit internal websites dozens of times a day that may overload their internal network and servers. In the real world, you pay for most of the bandwidth you use, so overuse isn't such a problem.

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[eh2o]

That is why purchase transactions and personal data from amazon are served from a secure server. The secure server uses an independent cookie with the secure flag set, which cannot be transmitted except over https. Hijacking the unsecured session cookie won't get you much more than recommendations tailored to someone else's account. This is a standard design for a high-volume service that can't afford to have every page SSL encrypted.

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[HappySmileMan]

Actually the charges of destroying hard drive and thumb drive were dropped, he just visited that link and had two grainy thumbnails in "thumbs.db" somewhere, they could've gotten there from temp files or anything, I think two low resolution thumbnails in a system file that builds up thumbnails of every picture you've had, including temporary files is a bit harsh.

People I know have come across CP while looking for regular porn, they closed the page, didn't download anything and didn't go back, but those thumbnails would still be on their computer for a while most likely, are they criminals?

Re:Stating the obvious problem

[Chandon Seldon]

are they criminals?

Yes. They are. That's what the word "criminal" means: someone who has committed a crime. And there are laws on the books making trivial possession of underage sexual pictures a crime.

I think the question you were looking for is this: Should they be criminals?

How long until...

[Baron_Yam]

Compromised web sites contain stealthed links to these honeypots?

Re:How long until...

[Oktober Sunset]

It's gonn be the next goatse, if you thought making people look at a stretched out asshole was funny, think how much funnier getting thier houses raided by the FBI will be!

Re:How long until...

[Adradis]

Nimp.org link. Do not touch.

Re:How long until...

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I fail to see the difference; Do they not both involve stretching out of assholes?

Re:How long until...

[Anubis350]

from bash.org:

its me Where can i mk trilogy doiwnload???
  http://www.firstgov.gov/fgsearch/index.jsp?dom0=www.fbi.gov&mw0=warez+sodomy+porn+microsoft+illegal+MORTAL+KOMBAT+TRILOGY+DOWNLOAD+FREE&rn=218&in0=domain&parsed=true&Submit=Go&domain=fbi.gov
  Just go here.
  garret its true or false
  It's true.
  I'm getting it at 400KB/s!
  garret its not true
  You clicked the link?
  yes garret and.....
  You do realize you just searched fbi.gov for warez, porn, sodomy, illegal, microsoft, and mortal kombat right?
  fuck ya all
* Quits: Guest17888 (MKIRCN-003@212.182.122.Kg9=) (QUIT: User exited)

also, from the classic bloodninja
eminemBNJA: Oh I like that Baby. I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
BritneySpears14: I swear if you do it one more time I'm gonna report your ISP and say you were sending me kiddie porn you f*ck up.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
eminemBNJA: damn I gotta write down your names or something

Priorities

[TXISDude]

With BotNets, Identity Theft and other serious on-line crime, I am so glad that the FBI has the resources to protect us from porn . . . Having had my Identity stolen (the old fashion way - postal theft) and haven gotten no response form any LE - local answer - not in our jurisdiction, FBI answer - not enough $$ involved. Thinking of that - how much $$ are they investigating in this sting operation? Cyber crime will not be a priority until either 1) we get an administration with a different set of priorities (I don't see hope on the horizon there) 2) someone important gets really gouged by Identity theft or a botnet 3) a magic unicorn arrives and makes everything nice

Re:Priorities

[tekiegreg]

With the "not enough money" part involved, I always wondered what it would take to steal ID's, but only put about $5,000 in debt on each ID, just enough to stay under the radar per ID stolen. With enough ID's stolen here and there, that gets to be real money...a dollar here and a dollar there adds up to a bit over time. The FBI really should look at the smaller cases and I'd bet they'd find some big fish...

Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I see some link advertising child porn, and I click it to see if it's fake or something which actually needs to be reported to authorities, now I'm potentially opening myself up to having my computer confiscated and my life turned upside down?

Guess I'd better let the kids fend for themselves then!

Rest Assured

[explosivejared]

Spoofing as a link to a slashdot article would be about the least successful campaign of this type the FBI could conduct. Of all the billions and trillions of links out there, the link to an article on slashdot is going to get the fewest.

Entrapment?

[prockcore]

Ok, I'm not one to throw around the term willy nilly, but this seems like it fits the very definition of entrapment.

Re:Entrapment?

[Compholio]

that was my first reaction, but don't forget that entrapment is when you make or somehow get a person do to something that they would normally not do.

While IANAL, I have read that "tempting" someone to do something counts as entrapment. I think posting such a link would count; however, finding an existing link and monitoring it would not.

Re:Entrapment?

[explosivejared]

"Claims of entrapment have been made in similar cases, but usually do not get very far," said Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at George Washington University's law school. "The individuals who chose to log into the FBI sites appear to have had no pressure put upon them by the government...It is doubtful that the individuals could claim the government made them do something they weren't predisposed to doing or that the government overreached."

Not that that is my personal opinion, but the article points out that lawyers have said that this almost certainly is not entrapment. Apparently, the fbi is safe behind the argument that you clicked the link under your own will without unreasonable pressure from the government.

Re:Entrapment?

[pikine]

I think they don't use the fact you clicked on the hyperlink to incriminate you, but it's a probable cause for a warrant because you're likely to possess other child porn. It would be interesting, what would they do if they don't find any possession of child porn? Take off their hat and apologize for the inconvenience?

Re:Entrapment?

[cthugha]

No. Entrapment is where the State gets you to do something illegal and then charges you for doing that thing. The goal here AIUI was just to get evidence so that search warrants could be obtained to investigate other possible offences.

Now, that's not to say there are issues here, particularly about:

• using deception to get people to effectively admit that they're likely to do something bad and whether that infringes the right to silence or right against self-incrimination (in some jurisdictions it might);
• whether the onus required to get a search warrant was actually satisfied (just because you click one link doesn't necessarily mean that it's likely you've clicked similar links in the past),

but I don't think it's entrapment.

Re:Entrapment?

[QuantumG]

apologize? The FBI? You're kidding right?

There is absolutely NO repercussions to a judge who authorizes a search warrant on shoddy evidence. Law enforcement can literally *lie* to get the warrant and, even if you can prove they were lying, there isn't a venue to file your complaint. Even if they cause damage to your property, you can't sue... they had a valid warrant. About the only people you *can* file your complaint with is the FBI.. who will action it, around the 4th of never.

Re:Entrapment?

[crankyspice]

While IANAL, I have read that "tempting" someone to do something counts as entrapment.

No.

For the defense of entrapment is not simply that the particular act was committed at the instance of government officials. That is often the case where the proper action of these officials leads to the revelation of criminal enterprises. The predisposition and criminal design of the defendant are relevant. SORRELLS v. UNITED STATES, 287 U.S. 435, 451 (1932)

An example, off the top of my head - if I'm an undercover cop and I walk up to you on a shady street corner and ask if you're holding, and you sell me drugs, and I arrest you, if the evidence is sufficient to establish that you're a drug dealer independent of my initiating a drug sale transaction (e.g., you have other individually packaged quantities of drugs, I have corroborating witness testimony that has you dealing drugs, etc -- yes, this is character evidence, but an entrapment defense puts character in play and I can present it), guess what, even if you wouldn't have sold me drugs but for my request, it's not entrapment.

Oh, and no, asking "are you a cop," and my answer in the negative, doesn't constitute entrapment.

Google's I'm feeling lucky

[Psychotic_Wrath]

I'm feeling lucky with google can be kinda scary to use now

Abuse?

[_bug_]

If someone started masking these kinds of links as legit links and sent them out in e-mails and such you could wind up with a lot of innocent people being raided by the FBI. And then how do you prove you didn't mean to click on the link?

What about hidden frames that open these kinds of links?

What about use of javascript, flash, java, or other embedded technology to make http requests in the background?

It just seems way too easy to get innocent people caught up in this sort of trap.

Re:Abuse?

[Stanislav_J]

If someone started masking these kinds of links as legit links and sent them out in e-mails and such you could wind up with a lot of innocent people being raided by the FBI. And then how do you prove you didn't mean to click on the link?

What about hidden frames that open these kinds of links?

What about use of javascript, flash, java, or other embedded technology to make http requests in the background?

It just seems way too easy to get innocent people caught up in this sort of trap.

Does anyone still even give a shit about the innocent as long as some bad guys are caught? In the wars on drugs, terrorism, kiddie porn, and all other hot buzz quests, I was under the impression that innocent people caught up in their dragnets have been viewed as "acceptable collateral damage" for quite some time now.

Re:Abuse?

[SpacePunk]

It's better for an innocent man to rot in prison than to let a criminal go free.

If current law enforcement principles were applied to the Vietnam war, the My Lai massacre would have been deemed a successfull operation.

Entrapment?

[phantomcircuit]

This seems like entrapment to me, they are effectively soliciting child pornography. They are not allowed to solicit in prostitution stings, the john must make the solicitation.

I'm sure they get around this by claiming you must click the link, an affirmative action on your part, but wouldn't that be the same as putting up a sign advertising prostitution? (which is illegal too I might add)

Entrapment.

[Bo'Bob'O]

Ok, I know there are some lawyers out there on Slashdot, so I have to ask, isn't this WAY over the line of entrapment? Or is it because they "only" raid your home that this is legal?

So basically, all that would have to happen is someone post this link on an unrelated message board I frequent disguised as a link of interest, then I get my house raided, my computers confiscated likely with no return, dragged into court preceding and there is nothing I can do about it?

Re:Entrapment.

[jellomizer]

IANAL But I would but wouldn't entrapment be more like they made a page trying to convince you that Child Porn was Legal, Moral, and/or Not a big deal, then give you a link. In general pressuring you do the activity. Just putting a link and say it is for Child Porn, isn't entrapment because the person is actively looking for child porn, and clicks the link knowing what they are getting. Not someone who wouldn't do so except after the convincing.

If I was feeling a little more evil...

[WarJolt]

This gives me an idea for an april fools joke. Now all I'll have to do is sneak over to my buddies house and browse the web and wait for the FBI to show up.

What about "accidental" clicks???

[Doug52392]

So the people that accidentally click on these ads (like the page moves down a little and they end up clicking on the pr0n ad) will get arrested to? This is looking even worse than the RIAA's legal fiasco... What's next, putting fake torrents of movies, TV shows, and music up on the Internet, and arresting anyone who downloads these torrents????

This doesn't bode well for the intrawebs

[QCompson]

While this particular investigation may not raise many eyebrows, this could be a very bad precedent for future investigations. Once courts and juries routinely accept that clicking on links believed to be child porn=being a child pornographer=molesting children, anything goes. Literally anyone could be tricked into being directed to such a link. You'd have blanket permission for the Feds to get a search warrant for anyone they want, and no one would dare question it, for even questioning child pornography laws instantly draws suspicion.

A search warrant based on clicking links is very troubling. Before obtaining the warrant there was no evidence whatsoever that the suspect had ever even viewed child pornography, and of course the link the Feds provided didn't actually link to any.

The war on child pornography is expanding every year. More police are hired to investigate it, more funds are allocated for it, and penalties are made ever-harsher. In Arizona it's up to 10 years for each picture someone possesses. Other states consider burning pictures to a CD to be "manufacturing". People are being sentenced to 10, 20, even 200 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/6399471.stm) years in prison for possessing pictures.

At some point you have to wonder whether the damage this zealousness causes (throwing college students in jail for decades for possessing some pictures) is worth the benefits. The argument that child porn possessors are creating a market for the material grows ever more tenuous, as fewer investigations seem to be centered around people who pay or provide other compensation for child pornography, but rather are focused on downloaders and traders. Unfortunately, it seems there will be no rational discussion about these investigation techniques or the laws themselves anytime soon, since it seems that there is an army of millions who froth at the mouth anytime they hear the words "child pornography" and cannot or will not draw distinctions between viewing pictures and videos and actually committing sexual abuse.

Re:I could conduct stings for the fbi

[QCompson]

I'll get a folder and write "CHILD PORN. HOT TOT ACTION" on it then I'll walk around trying to hand it to people while saying "This is child porn." Anyone that takes it from me will be instantly arrested and charged. I bet I could trap plenty of random people. Except that if you weren't actually employed by the FBI, you could be arrested yourself. The "pandering" provision of the PROTECT Act makes it illegal to claim you have child pornography, even if you don't.

Plan to get rid of annoying neighbor:

[SeaFox]

1) Disconnect from my network.

2) Connect to his unsecured wireless router.

3) Visit FBI sting site (and also maybe do some Google searches for child porn topics to build a browsing history with the ISP they'll find worth checking out).

4) Sit back and wait.

The problem is

[Sycraft-fu]

People get really stupid when it comes to crimes involving children. They stop using their brains and get extremely emotional. Thus, law enforcement can get away with things they couldn't otherwise. When it comes to sex and children, all logic is out the door. The best example, which unfortunately I can't find a link to right now, is two minors, boyfriend and girlfriend, (they were in the 16-17 range) sent each other naked pictures of themselves via the Internet. This got found out and they were charged with possession, production and distribution of child pornography and sentenced to prison. This was then upheld on appeal. Yes, that's right, kids sentenced to jail and will be labeled as sex offenders for life for taking naked pictures of their own bodies.

Thus even if this is entrapment, it won't matter, because of the crime it involves. Logic and due process just get pushed aside for emotion and a witch hunt mentality.

Jacobson v. United States

[Daltorak]

For some interesting historical context, read the Wikipedia article on Jacobson v. United States. This goes back to the 1980s when the USPS tried to lure people into purchasing child porn through mailings, in some cases many times over the course of years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._United_States

Doesn't meet Constitutional tests

[Jane Q. Public]

There are LOTS of problems here, but in particular (no pun intended), this does not meet the "particularity" test. Courts have also repeatedly held that an IP address does not "particularly describe" a person OR a place, or even a thing. In order to be Constitutional, warrants have to "particularly describe" the person or thing to be seized.

I could have any number of computers on my Comcast connection. I could have open wi-fi and be serving Internet to my neighbors... it would show up as my IP.

This whole thing is a crock of shit.

Re:Doesn't meet Constitutional tests

[ScrewMaster]

On the other hand, law enforcement under the current Administration hasn't been any too careful about Constitutionality. The thing is, regardless of whether these activities are in fact legal, once you've been subjected to a raid you've already suffered a punitive action, and will suffer further humiliation and expense defending yourself in court. And depending upon how that works out, you might find yourself in prison anyway, as some of that "acceptable collateral damage" the Feds talk about.

There have been a number of Federal judges nailed on child pornography charges over the years: I sincerely hope that one of their number gets bitten by this nonsense. I especially hope that he's actually not guilty ... maybe the rest will understand how abusive this is, given the inability of the technology to uniquely identify anyone.

Re:Can you say POLICE STATE

[zappepcs]

How about we strive for some open and transparent government. No lobbyists money. Open voting that is monitored by Internet live, not just on TV, and not without feedback. How about we allow ALL legislators the chance to read every proposed law, and receive feedback from their constituents before the votes? How about we allow recall votes on every 8th Tuesday via Internet? How about we put the voting power over new legislation in the hands of the people?

Yeah, you'll tell me that groupthink is not working, just look at digg or reddit or slashdot and I'll reply back that the overall opinion from those sites *tends* to reflect the average opinion. Limit that to voter registration number IDs and it works. It gives our legislators an instant idea of how the voters want the vote to go.

Let each legislator call a 48 hour hiatus on any bill movement if there are blips in the Internet voting. Lets set this up and monitor it via the open source methods so that there is always a whistleblower or 5000 to point out flaws. How about we make this the 21st century government of the people, for the people, BY the people?

Yes, there are problems with that, but doing nothing and leaving the status quo only encourages the ravages to justice that we have been witness to. Change now. I don't just mean presidential party change, I mean change for all of it. The system does NOT fairly represent the populace opinion. That is NOT what the founders wanted. The current system was created to attempt to do that with 18th century technology. We have advanced since then. Lets put some advances in the legislative and governing processes.

No, I do not advocate bio-ID or anything like that. It's simple, show your papers, get your number, vote. Yes, F/OSS can come up with a voting systme that works AND is able to be monitored. It's not that hard.

Take the interworkings of government out of the hands of those that would work behind closed doors and ALL will change. Suddenly, you'll have time to put aside the beer to go vote online for a bill that means something to you when it is all transparent and in your face. When it is as easy as logging on at home there will be a LOT of people interested, they will feel empowered. Form letters saying thanks for your input are ridiculously stupid in response to an email... never mind that they are tantamount to being blown off.

Re:Can you say POLICE STATE

[zappepcs]

You know what, I can agree to a point. I surf porn, who doesn't? right? every so often I'm taken to sites that look like child porn without my consent to do so. The link is misleading. I panic and close the window. I'm not guilty of supporting child pornographers or promoting child sexual abuse. It just happens. The government could well spend their time finding those things and shutting them down rather than abuse ME for clicking on a link that was not advertising correctly.

While your argument for how child porn is supported seems to hold water, I have doubts. Your definition would include those that would draw pictures, never involve a human child, and never assault a child. Your net is too wide. You are too far into thought police territory to be credible. I do understand your concern, and the difficulty in curbing the spread of what you feel is wrong.

I do NOT support child abuse, sexual or otherwise... and likewise, I DO NOT support thought police. To simply look at something out of curiosity is not to be an abuser. Scientists have valid reasons to investigate what is available on the Internet. Those with a curiosity about human sexuality have a valid reason to look or seek information.

Your intent and scope mean to imprison all that might be curious as well as those that are hard core abusers through a simple act of thought or interest. God forbid they make C++ programming illegal, how many would be punished wrongly?

Sure, you say well no one should even be interested in child pornography, right? But I did not click on a link that said "Hey STUPID, this is child pornography that will get you jailed"... it was much more NOT illegal in description. As a casual surfer how the FUCK am I supposed to know the difference between 18 and 16? Even as careful as I am, I still occasionally end up on some site with VERY young looking kids? WTF? That is not what I wanted. That is NOT what I clicked on.

I'm left feeling that I do not know if I should surf the net anymore if they are going to bust into my home and shoot people because I may have clicked on a link that maliciously redirected me to that FBI link?

In fact, I'm thinking we should have anonymous set up thousands of links to those FBI links so that they can't actually prosecute anyone. WTF dude? You assume that everyone that might end up at that link MUST be some pervert. That just so wrong I don't even know how to insult you.

skiing down the slippery slope

[lexsird]

Big brother seems to have fewer blocks from running over our rights these days. I have watched this country hand over it's basic civil rights since 9/11 in the name of patriotism, law and order and nationalism. Read some history, this is how the Nazi's rose to power, using dogma so akin to what we hear these days. Some people say the terrorists won, I disagree. Someone more sinister and evil than them won, they were just the vehicle for it, the excuse.

You do NOT take power away from a government once it has it without a great struggle. In our fear, we have with blind trust handed over our freedoms, leaving common sense behind us. This is just one dangerous step down a wide path to destruction by allowing such flimsy standards for law enforcement. Sure, the reasons they use may on the surface and the moment seem justified, but it sets a dangerous president that will erode our rights even further. Ask yourself, how far will they go to probe us to find our resistance? When will we if ever cry out for a stop to this madness? At what point will we say "enough is enough"?

History shows us how the people of Germany failed to stop the Nazis. The Nazis were few in number, one would think the German people could have rose up and crushed them. But they were fearful, law abiding and followed the dogma. They thought they were doing the right thing. A monster was loosed on the world because of their inaction. How much of a monster will we Americans unleash on the world if we fail to control our nation? If you don't think it can happen here, don't be foolish. The German people didn't think it could happen to them. They didn't all wake up and decide to be world villains, wringing their hands and laughing madly with each other over plans of world domination. How are we different than them? What strange magic protects us from evil men? Our Constitution? It is but a document, words on paper that can't stop an ant from crawling over it. It has to live in our hearts and minds and we have to be vigilant to defend what we believe in. Only then do those words have any power.

What can you do? For now you can vote. You should do it and be responsible to cast that vote to support your ideals, not the flavor of the year dogma. We should all be thankful that we can vote. When the day comes that we can't, we will wish so hard we could because the struggle back to the vote will be long and hard and most likely brutal.

Attacks on our freedoms cannot be suffered and ignored; tolerance in this case is a form of defeat.

The Reign of Terror has begun.

[inTheLoo]

You are right to fear the FBI. Now they have a one click way to harass, smear and jail the political and economic opposition they have spent the last few years identifying. Detention centers have been built and police have been practicing mass arrests. Arbitrary arrest and torture of opposition, this is how democracy dies. The FBI program is so obviously flawed that it can only be useful for crushing opposition.

I'd be packing my bags if I thought there was a place to run. The only option is to crank up resistance and vote these evil bastards out of office. It's time to dismantle the police state.

Re:The Reign of Terror has begun.

[jamstar7]

I'd be packing my bags if I thought there was a place to run. The only option is to crank up resistance and vote these evil bastards out of office. It's time to dismantle the police state.

Great idea, but 'voting these evil bastards out' only gets rid of the bosses. Problem is, every government bureau is a hotbed of bureaucrats who aren't elected and be voted out. Add to it the concept of the administrative subpoena:

What is an administrative subpoena?

An administrative subpoena is essentially a piece of paper signed by an FBI agent that requires any recipient to disclose any documents (or any other tangible things). The proposed administrative subpoena would also compel a person to give testimony, essentially forcing anyone to talk to the FBI. Administrative subpoenas are issued with no prior judicial, prosecutorial or grand jury approval. Under the current proposals, failure to comply with an administrative subpoena could result in civil and criminal penalties, and the subpoenas would be executed in complete secrecy. In fact, under one of the proposals, anyone who disclosed the existence of an administrative subpoena could be subject to up to five years in prison.

Technically, a person getting an administrative subpoena could ask for judicial review. But, in the case of subpoenas for documents, why would they? Most - if not all - administrative subpoenas for records would be issued to third-party businesses to get information about their customers. The business has immunity for complying with the subpoena and little incentive to spend its money challenging a subpoena for records that pertain to someone else. And since the business is prohibited from notifying its customer of the existence of the subpoena, the customer can never exercise his right to challenge the subpoena.

So, now our JEdgar can pull out a handy form, fill in the blanks, and hand it off to whomever and aquire any information he desires, without the benefit of a search warrant. In the case of this 'kiddie porn' site, I'd think, since kiddie porn is such a hot button issue, that getting a real live honest-to-God search warrant and subpoena wouldn't even be a minorleague speedbump. The question in my mind is, why settle for something of dubvious legal value when you can get something that stands up in court, unless of course, you're on dubvious legal ground to start with...

Mod parent up, +1 accurate (rare with entrapment)

[ceejayoz]

People seem to think entrapment means "police pretend to let you commit crime".

Entrapment is only when the police encourage, cajole, and pressure you into committing a crime that you wouldn't otherwise have considered committing.

Every time I see a story on a sting like this people trot out the "entrapment!" argument. If things like this were entrapment, every sting operation, every undercover operation, etc. would all be invalidated. Clearly, the cops are permitted to put a fake hooker on a street corner and wait to be approached.

RickRoll 2.0?

[Ender77]

With what people do with RickRoll, I am scared what they will do with this.

Re:I could conduct stings for the fbi

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Instead, walk round with a folder saying "NOT CHILD PORN", and arrest all the people who don't try to take the file. Wow! The power of logic!

This article is perfect without pictures.

[symbolset]

It really is worse than that. Any site you go to can link any content from any other site, and not show it to you -- just load it transparently in the background. You will have downloaded the material without your knowledge and it will be in your cache when they break your door down.

The article plainly states that they do not even bother to record the referring URL or page, which means they don't care if you were prank porn'd. Considering some freaks are out there getting SWAT called on people it's realistic to expect that this will be a toy of choice for disgruntled former life partners and competetive coworkers with an evil bent. You'll be guilty of committing a crime completely without your knowledge. You won't just lose your equipment -- you will go to PMITA prison and spend the rest of your life on the registry. Same with if you have an HTML email with the content embedded but otherwise looking harmless. Since there are hundreds of thousands of compromised sites out there, and millions of spam bots the internet bad guys could get almost all of us on this list pretty quickly. Also some browser plugins automatically download all of the pages linked from your current page in the background to speed up browsing.

What this means is that this Internet is now useless with pictures. Or embedded content of any kind.

I'm all for catching and punishing the freaks that seek out this content and most especially the ones that publish it. But to leave enforcement this wide open to abuse is just wrong.

It's time to browse with Lynx again. Who would have thought that would come up again for people who weren't blind?

Just about the only alternative that works is browsing via secure remote desktop from offshore hosting.

Re:This article is perfect without pictures.

[Reziac]

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -- Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (A.D. c.56-c.115)

"The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be." -- Lao-tzu, The Tao Te Ching (believed written in China, 6th century BC).

Nothing changes, eh? :(

Our local library has copies of some of the early California Codebooks. The Code from around 1890 is a single volume of about 500 pages, just over an inch thick. The current CA Code takes about 6 FEET of shelf space! We're probably only marginally better off (from a legal standpoint) than we were under the 1890s Code, yet we're vastly more criminalized.

The risk of "If I want to write you up, I can and WILL find *some* violation, no matter how trivial" is why if the police or ANY gov't official comes to the door, you should never, ever let them in if they don't have a warrant.

"pedos deserve it"?

[alizard]

Let's say the FBI decides for reasons having to do with what they think your politics are to get you busted. (e.g. mistaking you for somebody else) You see a page of what interests you and you click on it. The FBI screenshot shows a bunch of naked juveniles.

Do YOU deserve it?

Re:"pedos deserve it"?

[megaditto]

I am not sure about your point number 3. Anyone remembers that case where a teacher got sentenced to 20 years in jail for a spyware porn popup during class?

"Think of the children" seems to short-circuit logical reasoning and common sence of most people out there (or at least those of us that have kids).

Re:"pedos deserve it"?

[hairyfeet]

Don't forget McMartin. How many years did they rot in jail before they were finally released.CP is one of those crimes that you are guilty until proven innocent,and even then people will think you just got off on a technicality. And RTFA,they already got one guy for 15 years,and all they had was the clicked link-no pix,no vids,that's it. This is a truly scary time to be an American,folks.The red scare of the 50's was tame compared to Gitmo and Cp witch hunts.But that is just my 02c,YMMV.

Re:"pedos deserve it"?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

At the moment, i can say all the nasty things i want about the current regime and be fine.

Despite what all the paranoid loonies say about him, Bush hasn't made the USA into a police state. Nowhere near. Not saying I agree with him, there's certainly a case to answere about the Iraq war and all the money he's been making from his pals in the oil indu BRB, someone at the door.

Lazy law enforcement with the lazy soviet tactic

[dbIII]

It still disturbs me that the crime of the abuse of children has been cheapened to clicking on a link that says it goes to a picture. Less busy work and handwaving pretending to catch real criminals instead of the thought criminals they are getting and more actual law enforcement would be nice. This sort of thing is just a lazy way to increase jail numbers and all it will ever acheive is catch people that are behaving suspiciously and should certainly never result in criminal charges unless something else is found.

Many states of the USA have serious problems with the process of charging and convicting rapists even when DNA and medical evidence is available and the same people that would normally be working on this are trying to create some sort of thought criminal instead. When it comes down to it there is nothing at all here that actually has anything to do with child abuse - it's about asking somebody to look at something suspicious and seeing if they click on a link.

Re:I could conduct stings for the fbi

[Reziac]

"The "pandering" provision of the PROTECT Act makes it illegal to claim you have child pornography, even if you don't."

Um... isn't this exactly what the FBI is doing??

Laws are out of date

[ghettoimp]

20 years ago, these laws probably made sense. When pornography was distributed as videos or magazines controlled by companies with their names on the box, the responsibility for age-verification and record-keeping could be easily assigned to the publisher. If they could find "young-looking" 18-year olds and there was a market for that, then power to them -- the magazine consumer still had a reasonable expectation that they weren't breaking any laws by their purchase. There wasn't much of an alternative market to worry about.

But today, most people have no idea where their porn comes from. If images.google.com is good enough to get you off (or supplements whatever sites you actually pay for) then your porn is coming in from an incredibly diverse collection of sources which you can't even name. This list potentially includes particularly untrustworthy sources such as scammers from other countries who will do anything for clicks and misguided high-schoolers posting explicit photos of themselves. You don't control the pictures you see. You just ask for "young ass" and you get whatever comes up.

Unfortunately, age-verification is far more difficult for consumers than producers. First off, a producer can ask to see a driver's license while she's still wearing her clothes. The consumer has much less to go on. Could you reliably sort a mixed stack of photos where half the girls are 17 and the other half are 18? Admittedly there are some clear cut cases -- it shouldn't be hard to identify pictures of children as opposed to teenagers. But even then, it's already too late! You already have a copy of the picture on your computer. And you can now be charged with a serious crime, the mere allegation of which is enough to ruin your career in many professions.

And for what? Where was the harm? What makes this a crime?

Even suppose you actively sought out pictures like these, saved all the ones you found, and wanked off to them every night. Who have you harmed? As far as I can tell, nobody.

not even

[commodoresloat]

According to this article the links were fake. So all you need is a link that says child porn here and people who click the link will go directly to jail. Or, at least, get their homes raided. Even if the link really didn't feature photos of exploitation of children. Nah, no way this rule could be abused.

Re:Stating the REALLY obvious problem

[RDW]

Indeed. We're all ignoring the real issue here - does generating a search warrant in response to clicking a link violate the Amazon One Click Order patent..?

This happened to me...Sort of

[holmedog]

When I was 17-20 my brother and I owned a house together. We would host daily lan parties, weekend beerfests, and other general mischief.

On any given weekend we would have 10+ people in our house, on our internet. On occasion they would use our computers as well. We had four, so friends could come over and lan.

Well, all said and done, apparently someone accessed an IRC server/channel that was distributing CP. The department of Emmigration and Internal Customs busted in 3 months later while my wife (gf then) and I were asleep. Pistols in the face, flashlights, the whole nine yards. They confinscated all of my computer equipment, my cat5s, my cds, my wife's home videos, my camera, and my hub. Yep, they even took my hub.

It took us almost 11 months and tons of paperwork to get our stuff back, even after proving there was no way in hell we were home w hen the supposed infraction occured. No charges were ever pressed, but it cost me $7,000 in lawyer fees (I wasn't fucking around and hired a lawyer as soon as they started asking questions).

So yeah, this kind of stuff really scares me.

Re:This happened to me...Sort of

[nschubach]

It's just like software/music piracy and drugs. Going after the people that might happen upon the material instead of going after the cause or the distributor. It far less expensive to scare people into believing they will be raided by instances like yours than it is to track down and research where it's coming from. Simply by posting that, you perpetuate the fear and support their cause. I'm not saying that you posting your history was wrong, but I'm using it to back my opinion on the whole matter.