This is pretty scary

[trekgeezer]

I'm all for nabbing perverts who could harm children, but I don't think this is the way to be doing it.  Looks like you could nab a lot of innocent folks this way.


http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9899151-38.html?tag=nefd.lede

[odinn7]

Wow....that is some scary stuff. I hate child porn just as much as the next guy but you are right, Trek, this is not the way to be doing it.

Not only is this bad but it also opens the door for the government to do so much more if they feel like it. Now you have to be careful about clicking on any link as you will never know for sure where it will take you until it's too late.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

heck, a guy could program a hijacker program to click infect computers there and mess the whole system up big time. 
-Ed

[Patient7]

What if you have a child who sees a link that says, "Young Boys Here,"  he might click on it thinking he's supposed to.  Then what?  Exactly.

[Allhallowsday]

Absolute horsesh!t. 

[Jack]

Just the other day I was looking at a stereo receiver, and wanted to click on "features", but wasn't paying attention and accidentally clicked on "similar products".  I guess if I'd been on the wrong website, I'd be facing ten years in prison now.

[akiratubo]

Hmm.  Couldn't someone "copy shortcut" and then paste the link anywhere, claiming it was something innocuous?  Like, say, someone could copy one of those links and post it here, claiming it was a link to a montage of bad movie clips.  A lot of us would be doing time for "attempting" to download child porn.

[AndyC]

The line between a sting operation and entrapment is getting pretty thin.

[IRSISRSRI]

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.

That's the disturbing part. It means you could get rick-rolled into it. Someone could send you the link via email/irc/forum/whatever pretending it is whatever they want, legal or not. And if you clicked, you're still pwn3d.

[BTM]

I'm all for nabbing perverts who could harm children, but I don't think this is the way to be doing it.  Looks like you could nab a lot of innocent folks this way.
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9899151-38.html?tag=nefd.lede

DUDE!  I was just about the post the same story!

I mean, what the hell?  Someone could send you a message and be like, "Hey, this site out, it's funny!" You click on it, get a message like, "This site was closed" and be like, "Huh, wonder what that was all about..." and then BAM, FBI is at your f**king door arresting your ass!

What the hell???

Guess we all need to think twice about each and EVERY single link we click, huh?  Guess next time one of you guys post something that claims to be cool, I should just ignore on the offchance it might be an FBI trap site.

[Doc Daneeka]

Hmm.  Couldn't someone "copy shortcut" and then paste the link anywhere, claiming it was something innocuous?  Like, say, someone could copy one of those links and post it here, claiming it was a link to a montage of bad movie clips.  A lot of us would be doing time for "attempting" to download child porn.

Oh man, that is AWESOME! *Goes to seek FBI links to post*

[ER]

I would imagine the ISP's they are paying the most attention to would be those of the people who returned more than once to the site.

[ulthar]

I would imagine the ISP's they are paying the most attention to would be those of the people who returned more than once to the site.

Uh?

Why would anyone return to the site?  They are not actually offering child porn, are they?  Seems to me a 'legit' user clicking on the link to find that stuff would figure out pretty quick there's nothing there...and thus never click it again.

A lot of ya'll hit on exactly why this will never fly as a viable enforcement tool...there is

(a) no way to determine intent; an accidental http request looks like any other
(b) no way to determine who actually clicked the link (multiple users on one machine like libraries, schools, most homes, etc)
(c) NAT/IP spoofing, so there really is no way to ID what computer/LAN it came from anyway.  This might.be a good way to hose somebody (at the very least their reputation) - set up your outbound corporate router to 'spoof' a coworker's IP addy and poof, they are on the list.  Go high enough upstream on the router and you could actually slam some random person this way. Huge problems with NAT-ed firewalls, too, where the IP address they record is the public address of the firewall, not the specific user (that IP address is re-written by the firewall).

In other words, this is fantastically stupid and can not work, regardless of the legal implications.

But hey, it lets some automaton in government tell the story that they are fighting child porn....

[Killer Bees]

It's illogical to think that you can nab innocent people with this technique.  If you know before hand that the link leads to child porn, then you can't possibly be innocent.

People who are anti-child porn would never click on a link like that.  I think it's a excellent thing the FBI are doing.  It sounds like an excellent way to nick perverts who might otherwise go unnoticed in the community.  And I don't buy the possible argument that "innocent" people would just be curious.  If you are curious about a subject such as this, then you are a pervert and must be stopped.  End of story.

If you are truly innocent, you have nothing to fear.  No stone should be left unturned in the protection of children.

[odinn7]

It's illogical to think that you can nab innocent people with this technique.  If you know before hand that the link leads to child porn, then you can't possibly be innocent.

People who are anti-child porn would never click on a link like that.  I think it's a excellent thing the FBI are doing.  It sounds like an excellent way to nick perverts who might otherwise go unnoticed in the community.  And I don't buy the possible argument that "innocent" people would just be curious.  If you are curious about a subject such as this, then you are a pervert and must be stopped.  End of story.

If you are truly innocent, you have nothing to fear.  No stone should be left unturned in the protection of children.

Really? How about this....at one time I used to try to fight spam in my inbox. Not only did I get the headers from my mail, but I would often open the link to whatever spam it was (bank scams, meds, porn, anything...) so I could get more information from the actual site rather than just the e-mail headers. I know that wasn't a real good idea to begin with but now...oh no...now I would go to jail for trying to get more information to shut the offending site down.

Or how about this...perhaps the argument could be made in this case that this link shouldn't have been touched by anyone innocent....but did you actually read some of the comments here and think about this? This is just the beginning if someone wants to take it further. At what point do you stop this? Do we allow the feds to disguise a link as something else and nail anyone who clicks on that? How do we know that the person being arrested is the one that clicked on the link? I have 3 people in my house...how would they know which of us did it? Would all of us go to jail just in case?

Or how about work...how many people have computers at work? How many are available for anyone in the building to use it? Mine is locked out when I am not near it with a password that only I know....but I am not allowed to do that. I only do it until I am caught. Many places won't allow you to password your computer...so....when you're away, someone sits at your computer and clicks on that link...let's see....who goes to jail then?

Never mind what has been said here that someone could copy and paste such a link and disguise it as something else...so now you could theoretically become a criminal for clicking on a link to anything.

Fighting child porn is great...but there are better, more efficient and less mistake prone ways to go about getting someone.