FBI Sets up Fake Child Porn Links That if Clicked Trigger Armed Raids on Users

See, I am conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I want to see child pornographers caught and prosecuted. However, this is a shady sort of way to investigate. But I would imagine you have to dig really, really deep to get to the kiddie porn sites.

I mean, I surf porn on occasion and I don't type in MILF and get 'little girls' so I find the 'accident' argument difficult (but not impossible) to swallow.

I mean, sure, I suppose you could click on a couple of wrong sites and end up where you did not want to be, but I doubt it.

I just don't get the whole child porn thing anyway. What is going on in these folks heads?

reply to post by gorillajack

I mean, I surf porn on occasion and I don't type in MILF and get 'little girls' so I find the 'accident' argument difficult (but not impossible) to swallow.

But don't forget about the high-school kid looking for someone around their own age.

Originally posted by chromatico
reply to post by apc

 

Dude, I read the article. One practically had to be begging for the most vile kiddie porn to spring the trap.

Are you saying that begging for the "most vile kiddie porn" makes it alright for jack-booted thugs to bust down the door and put you in jail?

Criminalizing intent is one of the major stepping stones for totalitarianism, you have to be naive to think it's going to end with this.

Originally posted by OzWeatherman

And seriously....if you think there is nothing wrong about adults getting off on children in a sexual manner....than you got something in your head that is seriously screwed up

I think we can all agree that adults who are sexually attracted to children have something wrong with them...and yes, getting off to children does seem askew. However, thoughts cannot be wrong!! They cannot directly harm anyone and most importantly, they cannot violate someones rights(unlike the FBI).

Bye the way, talking to a child who has been abused wouldn't change my mind about the criminalizing of thoughts, especialy since child molesters are going to molest children regardless...We don't all run on pure emotion Oz.

Originally posted by Master_Wii


Vosburgh's lawyer said, "I thought it was scary that they could do this. This whole idea that the FBI can put a honeypot out there to attract people is kind of sad. It seems to me that they've brought a lot of cases without having to stoop to this."


Sounds like that show Bait Car,where police rig up a car and track people who steal it, only this is way better!!

You could argue that someone who might not otherwise steal a car would succumb to the temptation of a hot ride with the keys in the ignition; you can't argue that if somebody clicks on a kiddie porn link, that's exactly what they're looking for.


www.news.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Finally I agree with what they are doing! YES! FINALLY they are doing something GOOD to get rid of the SCUM who prey on children!
MORE POWER TO THEM!
YES!

Originally posted by CallMeBlu

Originally posted by chromatico
reply to post by apc

 

Dude, I read the article. One practically had to be begging for the most vile kiddie porn to spring the trap.

Are you saying that begging for the "most vile kiddie porn" makes it alright for jack-booted thugs to bust down the door and put you in jail?

Criminalizing intent is one of the major stepping stones for totalitarianism, you have to be naive to think it's going to end with this.

YES! That is what i am saying!
You want kiddy porn? Then you should be castrated and lobotomized in the interest of child safety.
NOTHING and I mean NOTHING entitles ANYONE to watch children who have been made to produce a porn movie for your satisfaction.

Acid dripped on genitals is too kind for anyone who watches child porn or who is a pedaphile.

reply to post by spaceweaver


I'm beggining to wonder which I hate more, child molesters, or fascist-loving noobs who post their propaganda before they even bother to read the thread.

EDIT to add: I agree that child-molesters should be castrated, but that is not the issue here. Also, pedophiles are not necessarily child-molesters and vise-versa.



[edit on 3/30/0808 by jackinthebox]

Originally posted by jackinthebox
reply to post by spaceweaver

 

I'm beggining to wonder which I hate more, child molesters, or fascist-loving noobs who post their propaganda before they even bother to read the thread.

Tell me one good reason to abuse children? Just one?

reply to post by spaceweaver


Nobody here tolerates people who abuse children, that is not the issue.

Originally posted by spaceweaver

Originally posted by CallMeBlu
Are you saying that begging for the "most vile kiddie porn" makes it alright for jack-booted thugs to bust down the door and put you in jail?

Criminalizing intent is one of the major stepping stones for totalitarianism, you have to be naive to think it's going to end with this.

YES! That is what i am saying!

:shk:

...Do you even realize that you just agreed with someone who was arguing against this system, or were you simply not aware of how to isolate chromatico's portion?

Nevermind, I think I'm just going to "toss in my hat" on this one. We've now got 23+ pages here, and it's starting to feel a heck of a lot like this. -> :bnghd:

It's becoming blatantly clear that anyone who still agrees with this method is either:

A) Not "net savvy", and still doesn't comprehend how weak/abusable this system really is.

Or...

B) Posting out of sheer ignorance, and is just too lazy to read the thread.

If it's a matter of A, then they may never "get it" until the F.B.I. breaks down their own door, and I can't think of any other way to rephrase what's already been said a hundred different ways.

If it's a matter of B, then only that individual can address their own laziness.

I commend Jack, Lucid, and all of the others who've helped to make it so that anyone should be able to find at least one post that makes it "click" for for them (if that person chooses to actually read the thread). I wish you all the best of luck if you decide to continue the struggle.

[edit on 3/30/08 by redmage]

redmage, you dont seem to understand. I do feel it is fine that jack booted law enforcement officers break down the doors of those who watch kiddie porn. Then I hope they put them in a place where they can never view this sort of thing ever again.

Ask yourself , what is kiddie porn?
Who makes it and how do they get kids to perform in it?
Do you think children act in it because they want to, or are they drugged and abused first?

So is it alright to watch a video of children being abused? Because that is what kiddie porn is.

SO PLEASE KNOW THAT WHATEVER the police or fbi do to stop this being watched I agree with.

I think it is the most disgusting thing imaginable.

Originally posted by spaceweaver
redmage, you dont seem to understand.

Unfortunately, I understood completely; however, I don't think that you'll understand until the F.B.I. breaks down your door, and before you say "But I don't watch kiddie porn", let me reply with "that's my point".

The real question is... have you actually read the thread? :shk:

Originally posted by spaceweaver

SO PLEASE KNOW THAT WHATEVER the police or fbi do to stop this being watched I agree with.

Maybe if the police would put you away there will be no more kids like us being abused, as we all know your thoughts. j/k of course - but that's how stupid your posts are thus far. Right now your abusing us, by not bothering to read first before posting.

Go back and read this thread - or don't bother if you can't comprehend the arguments here, nobody here's defending k_ porn peddlers.

Wake up, understand what others have written & try to comprehend the arguments without your knee jerk thoughtless babbling.

Originally posted by spaceweaver
redmage, you dont seem to understand.

No, spacedweaver you don't seem to understand. redmage does.

Work on your reading comprehension spacedweaver then maybe you will see more clearly, that we aren't the enemy here and your rantings have nothing to do with the argument.


[edit on 30-3-2008 by verylowfrequency]

reply to post by spaceweaver



Ok assuming you are not simply someone taking the position you are simply to cause a disruption i will go through it quickly again.

Virtually no one here is saying that we should let paedophiles who view child pornography and actually abuse children get away with it. What we are saying is this system is very open to abuse.

1. Someone could use a piece of software, often known as a trojan, to control your computer and view these links.

2. If you have an unsecured wireless internet connection then they could log ina nd use your connection to acess this website.

3. Someone could make a link that seems to go somewhere like a gambling website, an online bank, a site about kitten etc and actually it goes to the FBI's website. That actually happened on this very thread and some people clicked the link. These people are perfectly innocent, they thought they were clicking a link to do with the FBI's investigation and yet it went to that website. If these peopels doors get kicked down will you say that's ok?

4. Someone could use your computer without your knowledge, say you ahve people round for a party and someone doesn't like you, well there you go.

5. Someone with any programming knowledge could easily create a small piece of code that could easily direct you to the website.

6. Inexperienced internet users may find themselves clicking links they do not want to visit, it happens believe me.

Go back and read the thread, these points ahve been covred ad nauseam, we all wish to catch these people, but we must use sound reason and not emotion when addressing how to catch them.

Step back, take a breath, calm your mood and think it through.

Some people do not know how the Internet works.

One when i travel and want to send emails i just drive my motor home around a town till i find a unsecured wireless connection.

many times it is a computer store like circuit city.

as for the FBI sting what they are doing is going on a underground pedo chat room.
yes they have underground chat rooms.

they find pedos in the chat rooms that want to trade photos.
what they get is the photos the pedo trades plus the pedo goes to the FBI honey trap to download the trap photos
this let the FBI track the pedos ip plus lets the FBI break in to the pedos computer if he does not have a very good firewall.

this keep anyone from accidentally finding the honey trap with out the password
they have the photos the pedo sent. and him logging on to there site with a password that the FBI gave him in the chat room.

this leaves the pedo with no way to explain what he was doing on the cp site.
most just plead guilty. a few blow there brains out before trial.

the FBI is not the only one doing this. the military does this on there bases.

i got this info from a computer guy that works for NCIS.

there are chat rooms out there that you can not find with a search engine like google or yahoo.
the pedo have them
hackers have them
even the Nigerian 419 scammers have them.

NCIS has keyword traps on the internet lines on military bases that tell them if someone is using terms that pedo would use. along with other words that would cause the military to believe classified information was going out.

there are anti CP groups like www.antichildporn.org/ around the US that actively hunt for kiddy porn sites and have them blocked.
this caused the CP sites to set up the underground chat rooms and sites to pass the ip addresses for the porn sites.

most US search engines have blocks for keyword to keep anyone from finding CP sites.
they also have blocks for hacker chat sites
and other sites they do not want you to find.

i do not worry about anyone finding any thing illegal on my computer.
i have no kiddy porn
but i have some recipes for chemicals that make noise.
and do other things radical.

i have one set of files that i keep on a 2 gig flash drive.
and encrypted with truecrypt this is the way to hide anything on a computer.
www.truecrypt.org/

and its free.

reply to post by augoldminer


I am fully aware of all of this as i work in the computer industry, the security sector. Sadly though this is not what the FBI was doing with this site. If it exists online it can be found, some of the lesser search engines still index sites like this without filtering them. Their crawlers aren't like the google ones, i know i use them sometimes when i am searching for "hacker sites" as you put it. Part of my job is keeping up to date with what the "black hats" are doing.

I already mentioned the underground chat rooms a while back, along with private torrents that no one can find without being given the IP associated with them (note ISP's can find them if they look at traffic but filtering that is very hard).

Oh a side note, truecrypt you seem to think is nice a secure? Maybe you should look up the recent german cryptography attack using 2 synched graphics card GPU's. It was able to break industry standard encyption in less than a few days. I also wouldn't put it past these people to put a sting inthe tail of that program. I know that sounds slightly paranoid but governments just don't like private citizens having a truly strong encryption and may have paid such companies to make it accesible to them.

The FBI should stick with what they usually do, infiltrating the rings directly, gaining their trust and then rounding them all up in one nice bunch. What they are doing here is causing some innocent people to be caught and catching the end users, they are not however catching the people that make the sick porn in the beginning!

Catch the makers as well as the viewers, do that by any means possible that doesn't risk arresting innocent people all the time. I can also see a way a paedophile could use this to get their case thrown out of court. Lets for the sake of argument say that these sites are only being given out on the private chat rooms (which they're not btw).

The paedophile could trick innocent users into visiting this site as mentioned earlier. Then when everyone gets raided that paedophile could claim that they're innocent, they could claim they were duped like the rest of the people thinking they were really clicking a link to a site about garden furtniture (or whatever you wish to claim).

It's a bad idea, it not only means you might charge innocent people but also you could undermine your own case and let the real offenders go!

Originally posted by augoldminer
Some people do not know how the Internet works.

One when i travel and want to send emails i just drive my motor home around a town till i find a unsecured wireless connection.

Does anyone else see the irony there?

many times it is a computer store like circuit city.

And I'm sure sometimes it's some innocent guy's home network. I really doubt you're selective about whose network you use.

as for the FBI sting what they are doing is going on a underground pedo chat room.
yes they have underground chat rooms.

Yes, so far you still haven't said anything that we haven't been saying.

they find pedos in the chat rooms that want to trade photos.
what they get is the photos the pedo trades plus the pedo goes to the FBI honey trap to download the trap photos

This is where you start to be wrong. Re-read the original article. This isn't about the tried-and-true methods that have previously been in use. This is a new method, in which they just go to these forums and post links for all the world to view, in exchange for nothing. The wording of the post was something along the lines of, "If anyone has more, please post." In other words, this sting wasn't designed to target a specific person they were already investigating. Keep reading before formulating a reply, because the rabbit hole gets deeper.

this let the FBI track the pedos ip plus lets the FBI break in to the pedos computer if he does not have a very good firewall.

IP numbers are a two-way street. If the FBI can identify the downloader's IP, the downloader can track the FBI's. Now, keep in mind these videos showed a garbled mess of nothing. As soon as the downloader viewed it, they would know they were being played for something. There was no hacking involved on the FBI's part. Read the article. It was just arresting people who click a link. There's no sense arguing otherwise, the article was VERY clear about this.

this keep anyone from accidentally finding the honey trap with out the password

No, it doesn't keep anyone from clicking the link. As I just illustrated, if the downloaders have half a brain on their shoulders, they're going to know the link was a set-up as soon as they watch the video and see that it's a fake. If they were feeling malicious, they could then send the DIRECT LINK TO THE VIDEO to other people.

They might do this in the hopes that the FBI's servers would be flooded with too many requests to track. They might do this with the plan of arguing in court that they were just one of the people that they themselves tricked. Or they might just do it "For the lulz," as one user here put it.

We all know that nobody's going to click the originally posted link on the underground web site unless they are actually guilty. BUT!!!! The bottom line is, anyone who's used the Internet for more than five minutes knows that there's no measure in place at all that prevents the honeypot video from being linked to from somewhere else.

they have the photos the pedo sent. and him logging on to there site with a password that the FBI gave him in the chat room.

READ THE FREAKIN ARTICLE. There was no password or login to the FBI servers required to download the video. There were no files being sent from the downloader to the FBI. This was a link, posted for a bunch of people to see, and nothing in place to stop those people from reposting the link elsewhere, and disguising it as something else.

this leaves the pedo with no way to explain what he was doing on the cp site.
most just plead guilty. a few blow there brains out before trial.

The issue isn't "explaining why people were on the site." The issue is the fact that you could be sent to these videos without having ever been to the site in the first place, courtesy of the sick freaks who *have* been there.

the FBI is not the only one doing this. the military does this on there bases.

i got this info from a computer guy that works for NCIS.

Military courts and justice operate differently from the civilian system. This happens for a reason. Regardless, neither you, nor your friend at NCIS seem to be filled in on the details of this sting operation. I'm willing to bet that you told your NCIS friend what you *think* is happening with this sting, and he agreed that it's commonplace. If he were made aware of the *actual* method of this sting, he would probably be right here arguing against you on this.

Nothing else you said pertains to this debate, some of it was off-topic, and the shameless plug for the software was flat out spam. Frankly, the half of your post I haven't quoted would be deleted for spam and off-topic discussion if this were my site.

If you're not convinced that what I'm saying is true, let me quote for you a snip of the original article which you obviously haven't read (but should):

A CNET News.com review of legal documents shows that courts have approved of this technique, even though it raises questions about entrapment, the problems of identifying who's using an open wireless connection

These questions wouldn't be issues if this were the type of investigation you believe this to be.

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.

Notice: The arrest comes from the link click, and requires nothing but a link click.

There's no evidence the referring site was recorded as well, meaning the FBI couldn't tell if the visitor found the links through Ranchi or another source such as an e-mail message.

This is the part we are complaing about. You people need to stop acting like we're complaining about the arrest of pedophiles, and actually READ.

Since you obviously haven't yet, go read The article this was sourced from

(Edit to fix BBCode.)

[edit on 30-3-2008 by mattifikation]

reply to post by mattifikation


I think we should give up matt, these people don't want to read the article and they really don't understand or want to understand the internet. They will never grasp how it can be so easily abused. You, myself and many others have explained exactly how this could be abused, we have laid it out step by step but people who disagree are merely acting on emotion. They do not apply logic or careful consideration, some of them i think are simply scared to disagree in case they are then suspected of being paedophiles. Others simply react with pure emotion and no consideration.

I'll keep bashing at it here on this thread but i doubt i'll get anywhere, i feel very like a fly against a windscreen.

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


Yeah, I'm getting the same feeling. This thread would be half as long as it is now if people would just read the whole article and at least the first three pages of the thread before posting. Apparently, informed contributions are too much to ask from some people.

This is very concerning, because I get a lot of spam mail and I remember I received 2 child porn mails, one I deleted and then the next time I received the message I called my ISP and complained... I think child porn is completely gross and anyone involved should be castrated and sodomized... My suggestion is if you get anything in your mail like I did, would be to report it to your ISP... If this is our government trying to trap us then that is just sick... And if you are clicking on the links then I say you are sick and you deserve a raid on your house...

So basically I don't agree with the ways they are trying to trap people, but I don't agree with child porn even more... So you get caught clicking it's your deal and you deserve any repercussions that come your way...

Just think of this if you are contributing or viewing this you and everyone else involved are basically stealing the children's innocence... The only people I know who would even think of doing this are those wrapped up in satan...