The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer

[lcpiper]

I think my issue would be if they seize a server and shut it down and use its data to find people that have taken or contributed material that is fine. I feel if they run said server for a while and only have fake material or unrelated material masked as kiddie stuff to find people, that is fine. I take issue if they were actually distributing the kiddie stuff itself and catching people. I am not sure how far they went with it but that would be a terrible zone to be in. Lets say Bob goes to fbi run site and downloads a ton of videos, gets busted and goes to jail. But Bob distributed that to dozens of other Bobs who never got caught, in a way the fbi contributed to the demand of such material to catch a single person but supplying many.

Would be similar if an undercover cop was posed as a prostitute but didnt arrest you until after she had sex with you for money lol. Or better sold you actual drugs that you then sold to others before getting arrested.

To play Devil's advocate;

Conversely, Bob downloads what he expects to be kiddie porn from a site that always supplied good kiddie porn in the past. But when he views said kiddie porn it's a VW commercial instead. Bob is curious, Bob checks the size of the download, checks the size of the video file, and checks how much data he has downloaded since logging on. Some things are not matching up for Bob, Bob has downloaded more data then the video file accounts for. Bob downloads more files and all the kiddie porn is gone replaced by other video format files. Bob get's worried and Bob tells Tom and Steve and Howard. Bob goes to prison, the other three do not because Bob saved them from downloading the NIT. The week started out great with many old accounts returning for more downloads, and then it all trickled down to nothing as the rats started sniffing the trap. The FBI was only able to arrest half of the scum bags as they otherwise would have. Half are still free downloading their stuff from other sites not yet known to the FBI, paying good money and funding the hurt and damage as it continues.

And Darunion, if I am understanding you correctly, then I agree. I would not be happy if they were trying to catch "New Users", but I have no problems if, as I suspect, they knew who they wanted to catch from their previous activity on the server, and just wanted to run it a week to see how many would return again so that the FBI could identify these people.

 

[Darunion]

To play Devil's advocate;

Conversely, Bob downloads what he expects to be kiddie porn from a site that always supplied good kiddie porn in the past. But when he views said kiddie porn it's a VW commercial instead. Bob is curious, Bob checks the size of the download, checks the size of the video file, and checks how much data he has downloaded since logging on. Some things are not matching up for Bob, Bob has downloaded more data then the video file accounts for. Bob downloads more files and all the kiddie porn is gone replaced by other video format files. Bob get's worried and Bob tells Tom and Steve and Howard. Bob goes to prison, the other three do not because Bob saved them from downloading the NIT. The week started out great with many old accounts returning for more downloads, and then it all trickled down to nothing as the rats started sniffing the trap. The FBI was only able to arrest half of the scum bags as they otherwise would have. Half are still free downloading their stuff from other sites not yet known to the FBI, paying good money and funding the hurt and damage as it continues.

And Darunion, if I am understanding you correctly, then I agree. I would not be happy if they were trying to catch "New Users", but I have no problems if, as I suspect, they knew who they wanted to catch from their previous activity on the server, and just wanted to run it a week to see how many would return again so that the FBI could identify these people.

Fair argument. It really would come down to how far is too far to go to catch them? It really is like the war on drugs, just cat and mouse. The ones at the top you will likely never find while the bottom dwellers will always be the low hanging fruit.

For a chuckle: Could VW indirectly be profiting from kiddie porn if their adverts were put in place of it?

 

[lcpiper]

Fair argument. It really would come down to how far is too far to go to catch them? It really is like the war on drugs, just cat and mouse. The ones at the top you will likely never find while the bottom dwellers will always be the low hanging fruit.

For a chuckle: Could VW indirectly be profiting from kiddie porn if their adverts were put in place of it?

The FBI better make sure they evenly distribute their videos and not show any favoritism by naming convention or thumbnail