Also, you're joking, yes?

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What about the potential to use the links for purposes other than busting perverts for being perverted? What if they use it as a way to exact political revenge? Any other kind of malicious prosecution?

Has anyone ever done a study to determine what percent of men are attracted to children? It seems like the more we learn, the more there are. Doesn't seem to be much of a big issue with women. But seriously... could the numbers be far higher than we suspect even?

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Alternatively you could strap people into a chair Clockwork Orange-style and test their physical reactions. Maybe we should try this at Guantanamo before we close it?

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People may not admit it, but they love shows like To Catch a Predator and the frantic stories about little kids getting molested; some weird part of them is actually titillated. Of course, most will claim that they want to go lynch-mob on child molesters in the name of seeing justice done, but I have a strong suspicion there's something deeper at play.

Sex education isn't going to convince grown men (and women, I guess) not to want to sexually abuse children. Stopping the cycle of sexual abuse will -- and perhaps addressing some of the fascination our society has with perversion, murder, etc. might. What does it say that shows like CSI and Law & Order: SVU are so popular? (Not to mention American Idol! Kidding. Kind of.) We absolutely fetishize the dirty, weird and wrong with some unfortunate results.

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Better sex education will provide a foundation to discuss exactly what you're talking about sensibly. Also, it may not keep grown-ups from molesting kids, but it might help kids get out of dangerous situations.

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Also, I was only considering the impact of such education on now-adults, not the potential victims. You're right; it seems like a lot of abuse could stop earlier if we could convince children nothing bad will happen if they tell a parent/other trusted authority what happened. (I know that's a more complicated issue than that, but it's a good start.)

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It's probably not impossible to build a case of intent on someone frequenting pedo boards, though.

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Who is "we" white man?

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And same goes for conspiracy. There have to be actual acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. And, you know, some actual conspiring with other people going on.

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I figure it all depends on how the law you are violating is worded.

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@Astigmatism: In part, it seems like it depends on where they're doing this stuff. If the message board in question really is a hotbed of child pornography and it's not some place you might run across randomly, I'm less bothered (although it seems like in that case there ought to be a way to crack down on the most prolific distributors and follow them back to the material's sources).

What scares me is the idea that someone who's never looked at child porn before, on a lark (admittedly, a stupid, stupid lark), finds his way onto a message board, sees a link supposedly advertising child porn, and out of somewhat incredulous curiosity clicks it. Is that stupid? Yes. But is it worth three years in prison? I can't see how, personally.

And other comments have made the valid point: What if someone gets tricked into clicking on such a link? I don't like child porn, obviously, but the lack of any real engagement here between the cops and the alleged criminals concerns me. It seems way too easy for someone to get stung who's not really part of the problem, and way too likely that even a credible defense won't be taken seriously.

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Yeah, I agree. That's exactly what bothers me about this too.

In my mind, an equivalent scenario -- in the non-cyber world -- might be a person walking through the park, and spotting a child-porn magazine lying on the path in front of them. What if that person, horrified at seeing something so vile lying around in a public place, actually picked it up and briefly look inside out of shocked curiousity before tossing it aside in disgust?

And what if a cop then rushed up behind that person, slapped cuffs on them and told them they were under arrest for viewing child pornography?

Now consider this: What if the cop was the one who put the magazine on the path, and was crouching behind a bush waiting for someone to come along, pick it up and look at it so they could bust them?

Would that be fair? Would it be just? Because I think that's the equivalent of what the FBI appears to be doing in this case.

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Also, if I were tricked into clicking a link for child porn I would call the police station and find out what I should do.

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Re: "If I were to find something like that on the ground I WOULD pick it up and I would take it to the police station." That would be a risky thing to do. Better to leave it on the ground and tell the police where you left it. If you pick it up and take it with you, you're in possession of it - and possession of child pornography is illegal. It doesn't matter if your "intent" was to take it to the police - you couldn't prove that if they caught you with it. (In fact, that's probably a common excuses given by people busted in possession of that stuff: "I just found it on the ground, and I picked it up so I could turn it in to the police!" Sure you did.

Re: "If I were tricked into clicking a link for child porn I would call the police station and find out what I should do." If clicking the link is enough to get you arrested, then calling the police an telling them you did it could be self-incriminating. I'd sooner call a lawyer in that situation than the police.

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Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

We've know each other for so long

Your heart's been aching

But you're too shy to say it

Inside we both know what's been going on

We know the game and we're gonna play it

Simply put, your web browser tells every site you visit where you came from. If you were tricked into clicking an FBI link, and the referrer wasn't from the forum place the FBI posted it on, they probably wouldn't bother tracking you down.

A tech-savvy defense lawyer would quickly point out the incorrect referrer means the link had been improperly used.

Of course, referrers (and cookies, for that matter...) are VERY easily faked, and if you manually copy and paste a URL into your address bar, you'll have no referrer at all... Good thing to know!

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You still could.. sometimes the URL itself has a referral-identifier. Look for "?" in URLs.

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And so is HTTP-REFERER for that matter.

Rule #1 of web security: Anything sent by the client can't be trusted!

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"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."

Don't count on the FBI for intelligence.

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I didn't know about the stabby thing. Should I feel honored, outraged, or fearful?

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Listen Phineas, I for one object to the generalization of Jezebel as a legion of humorless harpy-bloodhound hybrids dogging the blogosphere, ever intent upon the slightest pretext to evince stagmata.

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And once upon a time, I even made a funny satire blog about it. Oh good times. That was like... a year ago though.

HOLY SHIT it still exists.

[jezeblargh.tumblr.com]

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