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FBI "Took Over World's Biggest Child Porn Website" (telegraph.co.uk)

Posted by timothy on from the moral-dilemma dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Telegraph: The FBI took over the world biggest child pornography website in a sting operation intended to catch viewers of sexual images of children sometimes 'barely old enough for kindergarten', it has been revealed. The controversial operation ran for nearly two weeks last year, when the bureau took control of the Playpen website in an effort to weed out users who would normally be hidden because they accessed such sites through encrypted addresses. Agents have defended the dubious of ethics of a government agency running a child porn site by insisting there was no other way to catch offenders.

6 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. One obvious question. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The ones who actually abuse the children. Are they doing anything about catching them?

  2. This is crazy... by Ecuador · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I could understand it when it was a crime to cause harm to underage kids, like assaulting them or taking pictures of them. I can also understand how it would be bad to sell pictures of kids even if you haven't produced them yourself, there should not be a market for that.
    It starts to go downhill when it is a crime to download or just view (which is pretty much the same thing) an underage pic on your computer (and let's not go into ludicrous things like underage cartoon characters who are also considered verbotten!). Then they tell you the same thing is not a crime if you do it in order to catch other people doing it. So, is it a crime or isn't it? I don't know of another crime that it is OK to "perform" if you're "the good guy"...

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:This is crazy... by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The officers that distributed child pornography committed felonies. The government is not allowed to commit felonies in the pursuit of criminals. In fact with this knowledge in hand any attempt to prosecute anyone involved is under threat of having the evidence suppressed because of the felony.

      This would be akin to officers selling drugs on the street and allowing everyone to drive off after purchasing in the hope that maybe they could catch a couple of them several weeks later. This would not be legal and the officers would be prosecuted for distribution of a controlled substance and sent to prison. All the FBI agents involved should be prosecuted for distribution of child pornography.

  3. I wonder how the abuse victims feel. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been abused in my youth. I don't think any photos were taken, but if they were, the idea that the government I elected is distributing them is far more abhorrent to me than the idea that a bunch of creeps is gawping at them. The latter are people who need serious therapy but who pose no threat sweating behind a monitor, while the former are the very model of power imbalance against a helpless child.

    If I witness news footage showing someone dying (e.g. war, terrorist attack, police shoot-out, whatever) then I'm not re-murdering them. But there are ethical questions involved in distributing such videos: am I being respectful to the memory of the deceased or survivors? am I glorifying the murder? am I exploiting the murder? am I providing sufficient warning? and so on. Shitlords on the Internet will spam such videos insensitively as "gore", and they remain shitlords, but that's all. Governments, however, are acting on my behalf. They should not just do what is legal, but avoid doing what is not ethical.

    In particular, a government's duty is to publicise third parties only when the public interest in the content of the publication outweighs the harm to the third parties. If there is no benefit in the public consuming the content, but instead the content is being used for some further aim, the publication is not occurring in the public interest. Rather, the subjects of the content are being exploited non-consensually.

    So, the police might distribute CCTV of a hooligan attack which shows the parts of the victims (probably face blurred out), even if the victims cannot all be identified. This would help make the public aware of an attacker, and give them the opportunity to report sightings to the police: obvious public interest in the content of the publication. But to use the video not to find the perpetrator but, instead, to identify other people who want to watch it - telling the victims that they need to have their attack watched over and over to stop those who want to watch them being attacked - is patently absurd.

  4. Re:ew by ArylAkamov · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't forget that there are many young, underage kids that are now sex offenders in the glorious United States.

    "Throughout the United States, children as young as nine years old who are adjudicated delinquent may be subject to sex offender registration laws"

    http://bostonreview.net/blog/y...

    http://www.sacurrent.com/sanan...

    http://www.justicepolicy.org/n...

    I can recall several years ago a story about two young girls, not even in middle school becoming registered sex offenders for sending pictures of themselves to each other. Under current laws, they were "producing child pornography".

    Sure, there are a lot of sick fucks out there, but the current method is completely broken.

  5. Re: I am sure by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I have to choose between siding with child molesters or siding with a police state, I'm on the side of child molesters. Simple self interest.

    Child molesters have no interest to bother me. The same cannot be said about a police state.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.