The FBI ran a large child pornography website for almost two weeks last year in order to catch users who were downloading photographs and videos of children, USA Today reported Thursday.
The Justice Department revealed in court documents that the FBI ran the site, known as “Playpen,” from Feb. 20 to March 4, 2015. It was at least the third time that the FBI has kept a child porn site live after taking control of it in order to catch users, the newspaper reported.
When the FBI took over the site, there were 215,000 registered users and links to more than 23,000 sexually explicit images and videos on the site. Users could also download more than 9,000 files directly from the FBI, according to the report.
The Justice Department had previously avoided such tactics to combat child pornography, arguing that a child is harmed each time the images are viewed. But officials told USA Today that there was no other way to identify site users.
“We had a window of opportunity to get into one of the darkest places on Earth, and not a lot of other options except to not do it,” Ron Hosko, a former senior FBI official, told the newspaper. “There was no other way we could identify as many players.”
I guess there wern’t any dufuses to lend money too, buy terrorist stuff for, and then arrest with great fanfare this week.
While we may have largely eliminated lead from its ubiquitous presence and harm to our children, each one of the kids victimized by these monsters now has a hole blown in their psyche that will be with them the rest of their lives. I hope they find the strength and resilience to have loving productive relationships and not suffer by passing their abuse on to another generation.
Good on the FBI.
WWJD-What would Jared do?
FBI: kiddie porn and terrorist provocateurs. Keeps the FBI employed, and poor gullible schmucks in prison.
May as well commit murder for hire, in order to catch those who would hire murderers.