Again there is the assumption of course this guy was looking at cp. If you look at the agent comments its very vague what kind of board it actually was. Illicit porn is very vague depending what state you are in that could mean anything. Im curious have they caught all the producers so now they have to set up fake links? Ive gone searching thru forums and blogs, you keep clicking links god knows where you wind up. Also once again we are a industry that uses the word teen for advertising very freely. you hear check out our new teen site, you click on the link assuming they are going to be over 18.

Well said :thumbsup

I was not talking about the trial, I was and have been discussing whether or not it is entrapment. It isn't. The cops are not wasting resources setting up shit that is going to nab some innocent grandmother that accidentally clicked a link on some coupon forum she frequents.

You know this how or are you assuming ? Read the agents words again slowly, he doesnt say clearly it was a pedo board and think about working in adult the times you have clicked on a link that had the word teen in it. Also have they gotten all the producers yet. Those are the scumbags that are hurting children, no producers no cp for scumbags to watch.

I'm sure I could have said it even better, but hell I could make the immaculate argument and there's still going to be shitloads of people, living in fear, who are ready and willing to hand away any resemblance of freedom they have to do away with the latest evil. Then it's all fine and dandy until they find themselves the victim of some strange open-ended law which they blindly supported. I'm sure in using the method they will catch and convict a handful of kiddie fiddlers, but the method is left way to open. I don't agree with the application...

Up in Canada we had a police operation make I think 81 arrests just recently. I'm willing to bet that the group behind the project was made up of at most a couple dozen actual full-time investigators. They didn't have to use lame driveby tactics like this to make arrests.They used real police work, and I think they did a hell of a job in the process. You ever see the interviews on the news with the guys working in these units? It's like 3 dudes in an office, cooperating with 2 dudes in another detachment, who have a connection to 3 guys over in some other city at another office. They almost always mention that they feel their units are understaffed. What we need is MORE dedicated officers doing the job, and with some REAL international cooperation, doing real investigations... :2 cents:

I don't want to see the internet turned into another controlled and regulated medium, where the lawmakers can slip by any strange law they'd like and tell us it's in our best interests. Is it going to get to the point where they start arresting people calling them terrorists if they make a post on some political forum saying the government is corrupt and needs to be dismantled? Are the feds going to throw up dummy terrorist links next and arrest anyone who visits them for being a terrorist supporter? Are we going to one day be living like the chinese where everything we view online is controlled 'for our own protection'? It's oddball little things like this that if allowed will gain acceptance and allow for worse to come...

Absolutely right and I highly doubt that anyone will be convicted for clicking a link if there are no other charges...but if someone destroys his harddrives when the cops arrive and there are even two CP thumbs found, it's more than obvious that this person isn't innocent.

Innocent people don't destroy any data storage devices when the FBI arrives, because they have nothing to hide...they don't have CP thumbs on their computers, because they don't surf on sites with CP. Basic common sense.

This is only one arrest out of what I'm sure were many people who clicked their links, and I do hope this is the way they are going about doing things. I'm sure they don't just blindly run out and convict everyone who clicks one of their bait links. They people behind the law are human too, and I'm sure none of them want to be responsible for convicting someone who is innocent. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

police state... its becomming dangerous to live there - you can get arrested for anything

Actually, a half assed-lawyer could blow the doors off of someone merely clicking a link and actually being convicted even if they are arrested just because of what links are intended for because you could click one with no intention whatsoever but out of absolute curiosity alone or perhaps for research for a term paper or something.

But you are absolutely correct about entrapment as a lawyer has explained to me personally when trying to show me the difference between everyday business transactions in street drug deals and things such as the Delorean case where it was actually valid.

this part of the so called "common sense" needs to be careful, because I would bet there are millions of unsuspecting and totally innocent internet users out there that have questionable thumbs in their IE cache (which one can assume was where they found this guy's thumbs), even from surfing around on music or martial arts or funny video sites etc. from around the world..... do you doubt that there could be a topless 17 year old girlfriend site thumb on some Russian music sharing forum that you might casually surf past and not even take notice the thumbnail that IE automatically caches on your hard drive? better stay away from any anon chan type forum too because some anonymous person might post a pic of their girlfriend and your computer is going to cache the thumb on your hard drive just by opening the main page at the wrong time even if you don't click on it or even open the thread, yet if they seize your computer for any reason they will find that thumb and possibly use it against you even if the original reason they seized your computer turned out to be bogus

damn.This is complety fucked up

I can take it a step further:

One of the major dating sponsors uses stolen amateur pics in its ads, including at least two nude pictures of girls under the age of 18.

Visit one of the many huge sites featuring that sponsor's ads using IE, and you now have "cp" on your computer.

Do you really think the FBI will go after any random person that clicks on the link? You don't think they check referrer logs to see if it actually came from the pedo forums they were targeting?

interesting view of entrapment:disgust

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20080319/fbi2.jpg

Yeah, I can see how someone that was just "curious" might have accidentally clicked that. How many boards do you hang out at that a thread with that topic would have lasted more than five minutes.

Pretend you have a clue. CP stings are not targeting those looking at 17 year olds.

Stop with the logic.

fair enough then.

Specifically? No.

But once you're arrested and they search your hd, anything that matches the database of verified underage porn gets flagged and used. Besides, in the case of that well-known dating sponsor, we're talking a fair bit younger than 17. More like 14-15.

I'd out them, but I'm not particularly interested in getting involved in the shitstorm that would inevitably follow.

You should look up what ENTRAPMENT is ....:2 cents:

I have to say, clicking something like that is pretty damning.

On the other hand, a danger is that someone could shorten an url like that with a service like tinyurl, and post it on other boards.

Good find. Pretty smart actually now that I think about it, they spread the files amongst different hosts.

True, you show as a hit to all 4 files, it is going to be pretty hard to pass that as accidental...

You should read the thread. I did post the definition. I am sorry, I did not look up the difference between US law and Canadian law, but since we are talking about the FBI, US law should suffice.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda. They didn't. This is not entrapment, it is a sting.

It isn't like they don't know how to do this.

The thing is... how do you know someone else didn't do just that?

The goal isn't to get to know that someone most likely did something, but that he did it beyond a shadow of a doubt. In this particular case, clicking the link provides a perfect reason for seizing someone's computers and storage media, but without a decent amount of other evidence (e.g. a stash of cp), it's still a problematic case.

Nothing is going to convince you that the man isn't trying to keep you down, is there?

It's not just my "view", it's the current state of US law regarding Entrapment.

Nothing to do with "the man" keeping anyone down.

It's about running the risk of convicting innocent people, even when the chance of that happening is very small.

So you make up scenarios and avoid doing anything because someone might do something.

fuck.. thats crazy.. BUT it would work best if they did a full background check or investigate the people who click those links BEFORE they raid anybody's home.... However, I think... just a hunch here... that they might be getting more hits that they can possibly handle ...

From any perspective ... its scary shit...

I don't make up scenarios. Rather, I apply existing scenarios to this situation.

On 4chan, a while back, it was pretty popular to trick people into searching for "lolita" on a site which then produced a page that their illegal search had been recorded and that their information had been passed on to the FBI. At first, it was simply done by telling them to search for that site, later on people switched to url masking.

When honeypot links for the FBI were first mentioned in the news, quite a while back, there were hundreds of threads on 4chan hypothesizing about how best to find them and trick people into visiting them.

Some parts of the internet are filled with people who would consider it the ultimate prank to get a random stranger arrested for supposedly trying to download cp.

In cases like this, you HAVE to be aware of the fact that there are people out there who will abuse this if possible.

Just a few weeks ago, a kid got arrested over here for using his neighbors' unsecured wireless network to announce a school shooting. It was a "prank", of course. Had he known more about technology, his neighbors would be sitting in prison now because of his prank.

Yes and no they didnt:

'When anyone visited the upload.sytes.net site, the FBI recorded the Internet Protocol address of the remote computer. 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.'

Know what? If some sick fuck is willing to click a link claiming to have illegal shit, then fuck them!! Let them get what they fucking deserve for wanting to see whatever it was that they said it was

You raise very valid points and arguments, however that doesn't change the fact that the average "idiot" surfer might click on something because they say "Ahhh, NO WAY <click>" and then what ? Id guarantee, people seeing this on a regular forum (Not a pedophile forum) would assume it was some kinda joke, or link to something that's not actually child porn.

Lots of people are idiots, and curious... I don't see how this can be fair to the average 'tard, so many people could easily make this mistake. Not even taking into account those who find the link and change it's name.

Right now, you could change the link name, put it on a random forum in the "Off Topic" section with the post named "LOL :1orglaugh" with a few laughing smiley faces.. It'll get like, 50 clicks easy. And that's innocent people that could get screwed over from somebody else screwing with them (You know plenty of people would do something like that just for fun, we got a lot of sicko's around)

:2 cents:

VPN or proxy with Euro or Asian IP.

Problem solved.

Click away.

Actually I think they define entrapment as " convincing you to do something you would not NORMALLY do "

And as for no crime committed no law broken? Hell they convicted a man for murder and had NO BODY!

Is this link entrapment?...

http://www.break.com/geico/return-of-numa-numa-guy.html

like you really expect us to click that in lieu of this topic? :1orglaugh

I would NEVER EVER click a link that clearly advertises the content as CP. Not even in curiosity... those that do, well you need to get a morality check... and quick.

1. *.google.com -> go via tor
2. manually delete Google cookies once or twice a day to break the chain

Works for me. Google can GGF.

Wow, that would be a pretty hard document to call entrapment!