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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand the objection to this. Continuing to operate the site for a short period in order to catch more pedophiles seems fine to me. They weren't abusing children themselves, and shutting down the site wouldn't have prevented the continuing abuse of children by its users.

All shutting it down immediately would have done is prevented them from sharing the photos with each other, which seems like an extraordinarily small price to pay to catch even a single additional child molester, let alone a whole community of them.

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If the actual owners were observed by the FBI operating the site for two weeks, and served N specific images, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm? Yes?

If the original owners sold to new owners, and the FBI observed the new owners serving the same N specific images for two weeks, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm. Yes?

If the FBI muscled in and took over the site, serving those exact same N images for two weeks, would they be committing a crime? Causing harm? Yes?

Yes, but that is a tradeoff that has been made in nearly every non-trivial investigation of organized crime in the history of investigation or crime. You can always get the people at the bottom first, but you let them roam free committing crimes for a time so that you can take down the entire entity.

The tradeoff ought to be evaluated on a case by case basis, of course. Because you are trading some small harm for the theoretical reduction in some greater harm. However, I think it's pretty clear that stopping actual child abuse is much more important than preventing the dissemination of child pornography.

1. Based on DOJ and Court rulings what the FBI did here was actual child abuse. The FBI abused children in the course of their investigation. The Official DOJ and US Supreme Court position is that any distribution, or viewing of child porn images is in fact child abuse. As such the FBI running the server is in fact child abuse.

2. Who were these mythical "kingpins" you believe the FBI was seeking, in every case publicly known about prosecution resulting from this operation is about simple possession of child pornography, Not production. From my understanding of the cases not a single child porn producer has been prosecuted, and I believe the FBI has stated most of the images are very old and previously known to the FBI or other agencies. That made that statement to attempt to curb some of the outrage. Given that however it contradics your reasoning for them to continue operating the server as they had already caught the largest "kingpin" the server owner. It would seem they worked backwards in this operations, they caught the top guy first then used the server to sweep up the "street level" or bottom level persons.

>They weren't abusing children themselves, and shutting down the site wouldn't have prevented the continuing abuse of children by its users.

By that logic the people who were using the site to view child porn should not be arrested. Only those that produce it should.

Well, to be honest, i'm not so sure that they should be. Why should you be prosecuted for looking at child pornography? Because you and I find it morally abhorrent? You may be able to argue that it creates a demand for the product, which leads to more abuse, but that argument is tenuous and ought to be born out by something other than conjecture before it's etched into law.

That being said, I suppose it's irrelevant what we think the law ought to be, the law does define the consumption of child pornography and therefore the facilitation of that consumption to be a crime, and by extension to be causing some kind of harm. However, all investigative agencies via undercover and covert informant based work engage in this sort of behavior, that either supports indirectly or prolongs unnecessarily some level of criminal behavior in order to infiltrate and stop a greater criminal syndicate from operating. This is not even remotely unprecedented, and, in my view is a fundamentally sound principle to follow. If you can prevent substantially greater harm (actual child abuse) by temporarily facilitating a very small harm (consumption of images of child abuse), you should do so.

I agree with your points about the legality of the material and share the thought that more research should be done.

What doesn't sit well with me is the government directly running or supporting illegal behavior. If they had infiltrated the server and backdoored it(say by offering tech support) while the owner ran it I would not have any problem. When they took over the server by not shutting it down they became the top of the criminal syndicate not just someone providing support.

I have similar problems with when they arrest a group of 'terrorists' by actively recruiting people, putting together a plot, providing the (fake) explosives and finally using tactics akin to brainwashing and abuse the get the 'terrorists' to carry out the plot so they can be arrested.

The entire reason they have leeway is so they can get the head of the organization, not so they can be the head.

Addendum: I want to thank you for being able to discuss this without being emotional and resorting to personal attacks. It is rare to get this nice of a discourse on such a subject.

> Continuing to operate the site for a short period in order to catch more pedophiles seems fine to me.

Was that what happened, though? We saw that there were more logins, but were those unique logins? Did those additional 39,000 logins result in a significantly higher number of arrestees? Or were all 186 people who were prosecuted part of the initial 11,000?

Do we, as people not involved in the investigation, even get to find this out?

Does it matter? I mean, why else would they operate this site but because they think they might get more information? Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried.

If I spend my grandmother's retirement fund on lottery tickets, maybe I'll win her a lot more money, maybe I won't -- should I try?

Of course the likelihood of effectiveness matters. As does the potential harm you're risking. What the article is arguing is that keeping the site up allowed for a much greater distribution of the photos -- to potentially many, many more individuals who continue to elude prosecution, and may continue to spread those photos themselves.

At the time the FBI took over the site, there were 11,000 weekly user logins. During the additional time they ran it, it grew to 50,000 weekly user logins. Out of a potential 50,000 individuals, the FBI is able to prosecute only 186. pavel_lishin is asking a fair question when he wonders if allowing a potential 39,000 additional individuals to download those photos and potentially distribute them elsewhere actually resulted in any additional prosecutions, and if so, is that number worth it compared to the (potentially massive) amount of additional distribution the FBI enabled?

You're missing the point, I think. IMO, it is unequivocal that in theory continuing to operate the site for some time could lead to substantially more arrests. Whether or not the FBI succeeded in doing so is an operational matter. If they failed to exploit this opportunity properly, that doesn't invalidate the concept.

Now, you could criticize their operational use of this power, but that is entirely distinct from criticizing, in general, the use of this sort of tactic. Which, I think, on its face, is clear can be an effective one.

I'm in your side in this - we grant a lot of latitude here, because the harm prevented is much greater.

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