Age of consent is the crux of the why cP is a criminal offense? Even FBI "Child Victims" can not legally engage in or approve video-taping and distributing them being forced to engage in even staged sexual abuse...Some where for every CP video there is a child too young to give informed consent.

For FBI/ LE to show and distribute these children's pictures further takes sexual advantage of children too young to 'consent' To encourage the viewing of CP) To say that running a large CP sting opperation is OK (while using my tax money) actually does meet their own (FBI/LE) definition regarding why Internet CP does re-abuse harm Children and is criminal.

Claiming it's OK because it's only a (sting?) operation to trap and arrest others who downloads the CP the FBI makes available is ludicrous. It's meant to entrap people who might otherwise give CP a pass if it had not been made so available. Why not put more effort in stopping the actual (instead of virtual) child abuse?
This seems rounding up prostitutes on street corners while studiously ignoring the pimps and the Johns who profit from and make the sex trade possible .

In reading the comments posted by readers to the article one of the best analogies I read is that what the FBI did is no different than a cop standing there watching a woman being rapped just to see if he can catch any other guys joining in on the crime.

The FBI knew people were on that site to obtain child porn so the FBI knew they were permitting a crime to occur and given the fact the FBI had the authority and ability to shut the site down, but decided not to with the purpose of enticing or permitting people to commit a sexual crime makes the FBI equally guilty of the crime committed. Moreover, it makes the FBI a hypocrite given that it has led the way in arguing that the re-distribution of child porn re-victimizes the victim no matter why it was downloaded.

Just who is the pervert now?

Well, we have always known that for those in government they believe they are above the law and this is yet another example of how they put their belief into practice.

Here is the motion to dismiss mentioned in the article

http://tinyurl.com/jh3wysh

It's the exact same argument I've made on here several times before when commenting on the other times the government operated similar sites

Perhaps you can highlight he main arguments in the Motion for those who do not want to set up an account or download the motion from a sight they are unfamiliar with.

It's like pouring heroin on a city and arresting anyone who uses it.....

Another example of the government creating crime so they can make more arrest. One of the telling lines in the document above is the number of unique or one-time visits to the site. Stated simply, someone clicked on the site, saw what it was and left. The FBI has had many cases where they created the crime and then arrest the target of their entrapment. This outrageous conduct on the part of the government is becoming common place and apparently the courts are to much of a coward to stop it. The police-prison operation pays and preys.

The victims should sue the FBI for allowing their images to be downloaded, shared and uploaded while under their control. The point was to REMOVE these sites, not keep them up. If I knew anyone who had their photos shared on line, I would have them contact an attorney to start a class action lawsuit against the FBI for possession and distribution of CP.

Now wouldn't that be ironic -- victims suing the FBI for distributing their porn pictures, and yet there is a certain poetic justice in doing such.

Your tax dollars at work. Taxpayer money being used to distribute CP.

I have many, many strong words but most of them are nasty so I will keep them in my head.

As some of the board members know, I was a child that had porn made of them.

For a government so hell bent on punishing those and inducing measures to prevent child porn distribution, I think this is disturbing, disgusting, backwards and wrong.

I was one of those children, not old enough to be in kindergarten that was sexually assaulted and photographed. I know those pictures are circulating out there.

What pisses me off is they are using that to catch people who aren't a threat to a damn person on this planet.

Do they really think they are catching the bad guys? No. They are catching people who have a stupid curiosity, those who clickeddownloaded the wrong thing or some poor bloke that's lonely and addicted to porn.

The pure idiocy I see with these dumbasses constantly never ceases to amaze me.

Did they catch anyone who was uploading new pictures?

All the while they tell people like me I'm forever a victim and they make money off of my suffering.

I can't stand this. These stupud, STUPID government morons!!

The FBI say that possession of CP is just as bad as actually raping the children. I guess all of those agents would be willing to abuse kids. At least if it meant they could catch some bad guys.

@LegalGuardian The site is DropBox and the document should be available to anyone without an account, If it isn't please let me know.

The motion is to dismiss all charges because of outrageous government misconduct. When the government or its agents move beyond monitoring a site to taking control of it and operating it as they have done here, then they become active participants in the victimization of children, They not only allowed but facilitated and ensured the victimization would continue under their direct control for two weeks. Their active distribution was also uncontrolled. They have no idea how many other times videos and images they distributed have been viewed, traded or copied.

There is no set of circumstances where it becomes acceptable for the government to victimize children.

KnowNot: As a child abused and used in CP you personally have gone on to become a survivor but since the videos perpetuate your own abuse and humiliation ad infinitum, ( just as they re-abuse other children on other videos) reopening new wounds each time a sting like takes over and runs a CP site, I wondered, is there anyway you can find out if videos of your abuse were re-distributed by the FBI in this particular instance? Maybe it's not too far fetched to contact one of the defense lawyers in this case and if you can identify yourself as a person the FBI re-harmed in this sting perhaps you could seek civil, monetary damages?

Since their basis for criminal CP charges against viewers and distributors of CP is that each time the video is distributed/viewed a real child (now an adult) is re-harmed, re-humiliated, re-victimized, I don't see how the FBI could argue they were not causing you direct (criminal) harm.

Maybe if they had to literally pay $$$ damages for their activities they might do more to shut down the sites, remove the videos from the market and stop the filming of sexual abuse instead of becoming an active participant in the CP distribution chain. The FBI argument that because of incription they are forced to become the distribution chain is spurious when you consider the personal harm done to people like yourself when LE engages in stings that may improve their arrest statistics but actually re-harm real people.

The article quotes, “At some point, the government investigation becomes indistinguishable from the crime, and we should ask whether that’s OK,” said Elizabeth John, a University of California Davis law professor who has studied undercover investigations. “What’s crazy about it is who’s making the cost/benefit analysis on this? Who decides that this is the best method of identifying these people?”

She is a law professor interested in such stuff, maybe she has law students interested in taking your case pro bono?