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

reply to post by Sri Oracle


This isn't entrapment, if that's what you're getting at. These links aren't in locations that 99% of internet users commonly go to.

Originally posted by sharpest
reply to post by Sri Oracle

 

This isn't entrapment, if that's what you're getting at. These links aren't in locations that 99% of internet users commonly go to.

I have to ask how it isn't entrapment? They are creating a situation that if entered will lead to arrest.

I think catching paedophiles who act upon their temptations is a very important thing, but again my issue witht his method is you can catch a lot of innocent people. Please go back to my first post here and see what i mean before you say "only the guilty would click that link". There are many other ways someone could be tricked into viewing it.

To just go over the one point i made in my previous post. If someone has a wireless router and hasn't secured it then i could sit outside their house, with a wireless laptop and view this link through their connection. They would find it extremely hard to prove it wasn't them who did it.

[edit on 24-3-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


You don't understand what entrapment is.

"Entrapment is the act of a law enforcement agent in inducing a person to commit an offence which the person would not have, or was unlikely to have, otherwise committed."

Face it, a pedophile would be likely to have clicked a dummy link.

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by sharpest
reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

 

Face it, a pedophile would be likely to have clicked a dummy link.

en.wikipedia.org...

You don't understand computers then do you, i could mae a link look like it was a link to a dairy products information site and it could take you anywhere on the internet. So you click that and it redirects you to this FBI server, what then?

I oculd hijack a computer and use that to access the site, again you wouldn't be able to prove it wasn't your computer that did it.

Please go back and read my post, computer security is what i do, i know about it and i know how dangerous this idea the FBI has had is. It will end up as a weapon, if someone now annoyed me and i was a vindictive person i could set them up.

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


The FBI isn't disguising links to kiddie porn as something innocuous. You don't have a case.

Originally posted by sharpest
reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

 

The FBI isn't disguising links to kiddie porn as something innocuous. You don't have a case.

No the FBI aren't but i could as could many average computer users! Posted on a forum or even on a social networking site i bet it would get plenty of hits. People clicking ona link think they're being taken to an eczema advice page and find themselves on the page the FBI have set up. They would then have their IP logged and be raided. Do you understand that?

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


No, I don't think that would be possible. The FBI is only interested in links WHERE THEY PLACE them. I don't think a redirect link would show up on their radar.

Originally posted by sharpest
reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

 

No, I don't think that would be possible. The FBI is only interested in links WHERE THEY PLACE them. I don't think a redirect link would show up on their radar.

Yep you just showed you have no idea what you're on about. i'm a computer security professional, mainly networks and servers so i do know about this thanks.

If you access a website, your IP is logged, granted i think it's a poor way of identifying someone but it's what the law uses. It doesn't matter where you came from, it just matters that you accessed the site according to the article from the OP. Even if you're redirected to the server in question, your IP is logged there.

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


Thank you Captain Condescension. So...you think the FBI hasn't thought about this, eh? I bet they've got network security techs just as good if not better than you. The FBI is not going to do something like this if there in fact is the titanic loophole you say there is. Now, I don't have time to read up on this, but I would virtually guarantee you there would be a way to determine what traffic came from redirects and which was direct traffic.

Nice try, though.

What happens if you have a bunch of people living in 1 residence with everyone having access to 1 computer? Do the police arrest everybody in the house? What happens if I have guests over for the weekend or something and I give them access to my computer? Do I get arrested because my brother-in-law from Belgium clinked on the link, but denies using my computer when the FBI shows up? The link might give them my IP address and thus my location, but how do they know WHO logged on and clicked the link?

I'm all for nailing pedophiles, and in theory it might be a good idea because who else besides a pedophile would click the link? In reality though, I don't see how you can positively I.D. the pedophile from just an IP address.

reply to post by PsykoOps


Exactly what I was thinking. Malicious webmasters would put a link to that page on their site and write a false description.

"Click this link to make money now!!", then when you click on it, the FBI comes knocking at your door.

edit: what I was thinking, not talking

[edit on 24-3-2008 by TheBandit795]

So what do you guys propose, eh? Sure this isn't a perfect method of law enforcement but there never has been one of those. How else is one supposed to catch predators other than with sting operations?

I know I'm getting into this late but it seems to me that sitting in wait for somebody to click a link then raising them is a little ridiculous for a number of reasons.

Any IP's that are logged by this baiting method will most likely be followed and maybe put into some database to keep track of how often they are connected with links like this. There are a lot of idiots out there who will click just about anything for any reason. The FBI probably wants repeat clicks from the same IP and even then they will probably investigate each repeat IP for any other activity within the scope of the investigation.

Otherwise I see a lot of wasted time and money and a lot of people getting off on technicalities ala the Dateline To Catch a Predator fiascoes.

The war on kiddie porn is a lot like the war on drugs. Users are usually just a step to distributers. That's what they want.

Originally posted by sharpest
So what do you guys propose, eh? Sure this isn't a perfect method of law enforcement but there never has been one of those. How else is one supposed to catch predators other than with sting operations?

I like the way "To Catch a Predator" does it on TV, they get the people who are willing to actually go and get hold of a child in their house. That for me is a good system, only the ones willing to commit crimes with a child are found.

As you can see a few people have posted about the redirect one, or simply renaming an entire link. This wil lead to lots of innocent people being arrested, are you saying we should allow a few innocents to be charged for acrime they havn't commited just so we get some guilty ones?

I'msorry t have sounded condesending but i find it tiring that someone without technical knowledge of servers and networks is lecturing me on how they work. Proving it came from a misdirect is very difficult, also if it's a direct link on a website that is completely renamed then you are really in trouble.

So what about me accessing your network and then using your internet connection directly? How do you feel abot that becuase there would be NO way to prove it wasn't you, i could go as far as copying the MAC addrss of your network card when i log into your router if i felt i really wanted to cover my actions.

How about if someone else uses your computer, as someone said maybe you have friends round, hard to prove otherwise huh.It's a bad idea is all i'm saying, instead the police should stick with how they traditionally catch these horrible people, with diligent investigation.

Again though, i do like the idea of the "To Catch a Predator" programs, they believe they're talking with a child, someone who tells them their age and yet they go and try to meet the child. That for me shows clear intent, you can't blaim it on someone else, there is no way out.

Entrapment isn't what most people think it is. An officer offering, for example, drugs or sex (including a price of those things) to someone is not entrapment. Entrapment occurs when an officer hounds someone until they, in effect, go "If I buy some of your drugs, will you leave me alone?".

The problem isn't with pedophiles getting busted. The problem comes in when it is truly innocent people. If you get busted for drunk driving, and are found not guilty, more than likely you are not going to be socially stigmatized and avoided. You think your neighbor is going to freak out about you getting arrested for drunk driving? But what about child pornography? Do you think there might be some stigmatization going on merely with the ACCUSATION? Entirely different concept.

I belong to a specific message board where direct links are not allowed. The only links that are allowed are TinyURL links. To the user that suggested "right click on the link, and find out where it goes", I make the following challenge. Tell me where this link goes: /2bpt57 Anyone? (BTW, it goes to this link, not that anyone would be interested politicalgraveyard.com... ) The point is, I had to VISIT the link to discover where it went, having just did a search for the first example I could find. How hard would it be to have that tinyurl go to someplace else? How easy would it be to drop tinyurls to websites that have some message I wish to shut down? How easy would it be to have a link that says one thing, but goes somewhere else?

The problem people are talking about aren't when pedophiles are arrested for looking at kiddy porno. The problem is DO YOU TRUST YOUR GOVERNMENT ENOUGH TO NOT ABUSE THIS? I don't, and never will.

I am putting my mom on the internet for the first time in about 3 weeks. She is 76 years old. Do you think that during the first month or two she might click on some links that a more savvy computer person would know to never touch? So, old granny clicks on a link marked "pictures of hummingbirds", but in reality a person with a sick sense of "humor" has linked those words to the sites listed above (in a previous post). She sees it, closes it, but here come the FBI kicking her door in.

How about spoofing e-mails? From anonymous hacker: E-mail looks like it comes from someone that targeted person regularly corresponds with: "hey guy, here's a link where you can download those product proposals- Linktokiddyporn-disguisedaslinktoproposal". For any of those who think this is implausible, I once did a practical joke on my brother-in-law's brother when I was working on their server that amounted to the same thing. (Edit: Same, as in the same procedure, not same as in going to porn sites) Getting e-mail to look like it comes from someone it doesn't is TRIVIAL. As a matter of fact, I do it all the time in my job, to test for open relays.

Do you think the FBI quietly investigates this kind of thing, to know if the person is actually guilty or not, or do you think they grab the local news crew on the way to the "bust"?

Ever know someone found not guilty in a criminal jury? Congratulations, you have just met someone who was innocent, yet arrested anyway. I would rather be FORMALLY CHARGED with a murder I didn't commit, then deal with the ramifications of being ACCUSED of child pornography by the police. Doesn't this tell you that they should tread extremely lightly, and make absolutely sure that they know that the person is, in fact, a pedophile?

A little off-topic, but only slightly so: There was a guy from a nearby city who committed suicide because of allegations he was involved with a 14 year old girl. Whether he knew the girl's age or not, I do not know. But I DO know that my mom was MARRIED AND HAD MY OLDEST SISTER at 16. Back in the 40s, when she was young, this wasn't shocking, or even unheard of. The point is, when police talk about child this, and child that, they never differentiate between if a girl of 14 looks like a 20 year old, or a 12 year old. That makes a TON of difference. Since I was 13 or 14, I was always mistaken for 18, 19, or 20. Now that I am older, I'm always thought to be much younger than what I am. For almost all of humankind's history, girls of 14-16 years old were considered MARRIAGE MATERIAL. And most of the time, they married older men. (mid 20s to mid 30s). Granted, those girls from those times had the mental maturity that most women today don't get until their mid 40s, but still. I get that the images were clearly labeled as a pre-pubescent CHILD, and not as a girl that could be mistaken for a woman.

Which leads me to the point that other people have said. What if they are labeled as "teen videos" (meaning 18 or 19 year old women), but actually point to those links? So, someone merely surfing "regular" porn, could in fact get something they don't want to see, all on the whims of some vile person changing a URL.

What about re-directs? Hey, looking for how to make a new souffle? Check this link out: Oops, you were re-directed to kiddie porn, now the FBI is going to bust down your door.

My point is not that they are doing this to catch child predators. I have no argument with that. My question is what are they doing to ensure that someone that is strictly innocent does not have their name smeared because of redirects, tinyurls, mis-named links, and forged e-mails? Anything? If they find illegal stuff on the computer, do they ever look for viruses/trojans for evidence of the PC being hi-hacked, or do they just assume the guy is guilty?

Here's an interesting note. In our county, the judges regularly sentence child predators to light sentences. By God, though, don't get caught driving drunk in our county! They'll release child molesters from the jail to make room for drunk drivers. No joke. (And before anyone asks/accuses, no, I've never been arrested for DUI.)

For those of you so confident in our justice system, go sit in a courtroom for a couple of days. Watch as the first time offenders of relatively small crimes get the book handed to them, while repeat offenders of serious crimes get relatively small and/or light sentences. It will open your eyes as to whether it is actually about "justice" or not.

[edit on 24-3-2008 by sir_chancealot]

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


...except when you consider that the strategy of targeting users has been successful...

That was the primary strategy used in the 90s, when drug statistics where primarily in favor of the pro-drug war people.

www.mediacampaign.org...

Cheesy looking website, I know.

Originally posted by sharpest
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

...except when you consider that the strategy of targeting users has been successful...

That was the primary strategy used in the 90s, when drug statistics where primarily in favor of the pro-drug war people.

www.mediacampaign.org...

Cheesy looking website, I know.

Dude, I can't click on that website. I don't know if it is going to take me to a child porn site via redirects or not.

I am being FACETIOUS!

How about a nice big helping of chilling-freespeech?

How long until my little attempt at sarcastic humor becomes reality?

reply to post by Master_Wii


Fake links like all the rest of FAKE TV 911 some one, not saying who,
produced on the fake 911 day.

Sure, go out and capture fake criminals.

Instead of finding inside jobber OR finding real links to porn and locking
up the real porn people.

Lock up the originators of the porn... oh no that can't be done.

reply to post by sir_chancealot


Ha, I needed a good laugh. But, I guess, if you really DO become that scared of Big Brother, then he's really won, hasn't he? Even if I KNEW the FBI was raiding people who clicked on fake links, I'd still be clicking away like there was no tomorrow.

This is a can of worms for sure.

kiddy porn is wrong any way you look at it and the individuals that use the kids need to be exterminated.

Now on the other side.

What if someone was pissed off at you?

What if someone wanted to frame you?

Can you imagine the scenario if some unsuspecting idiot leaves his computer on and someone else uses his computer to view the links?

Hell, if someone has a trojan on their computer they don't even have to be present to use the host system, just online somewhere in the world.

Can of worms, entrapment, against the law I would wager. I would like to see these pedophiles caught just like anyone else, but not at the expense of our rights.