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I frequently see cp discussed on here so maybe there will be some input to shed light on something that really bothers me. First off, porn has never bothered me and I've often imbibed in viewing it myself,however I go to two sites only that I know are clean and have done so since a teenager(I. Don't wanna see weird shit and I don't wanna wreck my computer!!). I don't understand how someone can look at porn sights that obviously aren't clean- adware, viruses, redirect you too illegal/ CP. I've seen it happen,and it seems like common sense to me that if one encounters a site like that,one would NEVER revisit the site?!!
and isn't it common knowledge that more often than not, porn sites carry viruses and malware, so you have to be very cautious to avoid ruining your computer?!
I had an ex who I would see in his browser history,pages with pictures and videos off VERY OBVIOUSLY well under18 yr old girls, sometimes little kids, mixed in with the "normal" porn on said site. It was usually not the same site though, but they were always compilation sites (videos and pictures divided by category)and the CP would be plain as day on the home page under "teen" or "amature". A couple times there was a site or two that looked like links listed to only illegal (child and snuff), no other normal porn.
He would SWEAR two things:
"The web sites say 18 and over , all over the place,and I don't think those women look anything under18" but I'm sorry, what illegal porn site is going to admit to being under 18 or illegal!! (Granted,I know they're our there,and in fact DID note some times the titles would say "ILLEGAL" or "6yr old girl etc..") BUT WHAT PERSON IN THEIR RIGHT MIND THINKS THAT LOOKS LIKE AN ADULT? How can that be rationalized???
H would also say these sites were not the original sites he was using, but that they would pop up as a result of a hacked link redirect,and then when that would happen,he'd immediately exit of that site . Now,I know that DOES happen, but WHY then keep going to the original site that has proved untrustworthy??? (Unless you're anticipating/hoping for that to happen..)
If the desired result is not child porn (which of course he'd deny for the 18+yrs old. Posted disclaimer) wouldn't common sense dictate that this wouldn't keep happening if he chose to stick with safe sites??
The more I read about CP on here,the mishaps of people both innocent and guilty,the more I don't understand how and why CP happens,of both the innocent and guilty....
Was this man a CP addict or something? And if so,how could he bold faced lie to me so poorly, or expect me to believe his denials???? He was a compulsive liar, but I'm in NO way frilly or girlychild like in my appearance (very curvy, woman body) and sex life and physical chemistry were great. This plagues my mind...
Sorry if this post is tmi for some...but I just don't understand CP or my encounter with it with my ex
and isn't it common knowledge that more often than not, porn sites carry viruses and malware, so you have to be very cautious to avoid ruining your computer?!
I had an ex who I would see in his browser history,pages with pictures and videos off VERY OBVIOUSLY well under18 yr old girls, sometimes little kids, mixed in with the "normal" porn on said site. It was usually not the same site though, but they were always compilation sites (videos and pictures divided by category)and the CP would be plain as day on the home page under "teen" or "amature". A couple times there was a site or two that looked like links listed to only illegal (child and snuff), no other normal porn.
He would SWEAR two things:
"The web sites say 18 and over , all over the place,and I don't think those women look anything under18" but I'm sorry, what illegal porn site is going to admit to being under 18 or illegal!! (Granted,I know they're our there,and in fact DID note some times the titles would say "ILLEGAL" or "6yr old girl etc..") BUT WHAT PERSON IN THEIR RIGHT MIND THINKS THAT LOOKS LIKE AN ADULT? How can that be rationalized???
H would also say these sites were not the original sites he was using, but that they would pop up as a result of a hacked link redirect,and then when that would happen,he'd immediately exit of that site . Now,I know that DOES happen, but WHY then keep going to the original site that has proved untrustworthy??? (Unless you're anticipating/hoping for that to happen..)
If the desired result is not child porn (which of course he'd deny for the 18+yrs old. Posted disclaimer) wouldn't common sense dictate that this wouldn't keep happening if he chose to stick with safe sites??
The more I read about CP on here,the mishaps of people both innocent and guilty,the more I don't understand how and why CP happens,of both the innocent and guilty....
Was this man a CP addict or something? And if so,how could he bold faced lie to me so poorly, or expect me to believe his denials???? He was a compulsive liar, but I'm in NO way frilly or girlychild like in my appearance (very curvy, woman body) and sex life and physical chemistry were great. This plagues my mind...
Sorry if this post is tmi for some...but I just don't understand CP or my encounter with it with my ex
maybe that's wrong or cowardly? but if they truly want help? they can still get that without the mention of internet CP and end up in more freaking trouble than imaginable?
in all honesty, i have never understood the fascination anyone has with porn. and yes i have seen a few movies, it just seems to be basically ridiculous to me. you can't have any of the people in the pics or movies. the action is contrived and usually 'dead' and by rote. and the music they use very seldom matches what's going on or is corny as hell. i have done one of 4 things at the time i watched it. giggled at the absurdity, gotten extremely bored, fell asleep or left the room.
and i have accidentally found porn and what looked like it would be CP while doing searches on the net. when i got our first computer, i'm guessing 17yr ago? i had come across a poem site that i was trying to find again. i simply searched the word love..... some of the sites that came up had *nothing* to do with my definition of love!!!
Let's also keep in mind the FBI isn't using this as a new tactic, that it happened in one situation, and they didn't advertise people to come to their website, it already had traffic. From my knowledge they didn't change how the site was ran, they just kept it online, so it definitely does not meet the legal prong of inducement.
And when it comes to an email having CP on it, how do we know where that email originated from? If the government was sending that and then arresting people for it, then I wholeheartedly agree, that is entrapment. But I would like to see evidence that that is the case. There are alt of crazy vigilantes and other just crazy people, anyone with a degree in computer science or anyone that taught themselves to code could probably do that.
But getting back to frogpond's point, how many are on here for accidentally accessing CP? I'm sure there are a few, but the overwhelming majority of people that are here because of CP are not here for an accident.
I agree the title was kinda odd, I guess I meant "is this intentional CP" or "is he looking at CP" I think you are right.. but do you think that its plausible its what people are saying about these pop up/redirect instances? It seems like it's much more prevelant than I even realized.... He would swear up and down and sideways he wasn't going to those sites, that they would pop up and he would exit out.
I guess what is conflicting for me is that I see how that could be 100% the case, but then... why argue that the ones that obviously weren't 18.. he would defend the fact that there is a site disclaimer...... saying they're 18..
If its an addiction to porn like you say, which I think could be the case, and could be he wasn't seeking CP, but just addicted to porn, regardless of the risks, I get that.
how do you know if someone is a porn addict, versus someone who is into CP? My knowledge and understanding of CP and pedophelia only extends to the fact that its a problem, like an illness, not that someone is a bad person, evil, etc. does anyone have resouces that I could read to understand this more? I really don't intend for this thread to be inflammatory, I know many of you here have loved ones or you yourselves have been convicted of CP charges and my emphathy goes to both.. which is why I broached the subject, since I figured many of you may have deeper understanding and insight to the issue
I really freaked when I found my current boyfriend has been looking at porn, because I knew how "unsafe" internet porn is, and what could happen to him considering he is ALREADY an RSO . I know hes innocent. And I know he's just looking at "normal" porn. But he is really naive to this stuff (his naivety is what landed him in jail.. cos you know.. innocent people are protected by the law, and in this country, you're innocent until proven guilty.........) Its brought up emotions from my past relationship when I found my ex looking at sites that looked like CP to me. I was really disturbed, and really struggled to figure out if he was honest to me or not.
I was basing my assertion on the original post that outlined the feds running a site that had embedded CP - it was not a CP website - it was an ADULT website.
Also, I have discussed with you before and I have to tell you - although many of us on this board disagree from time to time - I once again take offensive to the way you make assertions about things and people you know nothing about. You are also entitled to your opinion and even though you may not think the majority of people were accidentally exposed to CP I for one take offense to you constantly saying things like that on the forum. We are not here to point fingers at anyone - we are here to support each other and share information - every time you say things like that you are basically calling people here liars.
I'm not calling anyone a liar, I said most people don't stumble onto CP accidentally. Some people certainly are innocent of their crime or accidentally downloaded it, but those people are the exception to the rule. If you are innocent, I am not talking about you when I say that most people do not accidentally stumble onto CP.
And an adult website that has CP on it is not entrapment like those stings. First of all a lot of those stings are legal and are not entrapment. When they go so far over the line to be completely ridiculous they fall into entrapment. In these newer stings, cops are switching a legal relationship to an illegal one. On a porn website their still are legal things to look at, you are comparing apples to oranges. This does not fit into an illegal inducement, because the cops are giving an option of both legal and illegal porn. Like I said, it's tough to make a statement that you thought 9 year olds were 18. But I do get it if the models were 16 and lied about their age to the website, those are two completely different situations. I think the corner should be prosecuted while the latter should not.
How do you know that? There are no statistics. I, personally, opened a download it was porn. It wasnt' cp but I wasn't looking for porn either. Maybe the majority ARE accidental. You don't know that and neither do I..
The DOJ is part of the executive branch and is led by the highest law enforcement official in the country, the Attorney General. While the information the DOJ provides on entrapment is accurate as far as it goes you have to understand that information is presented from the viewpoint of a prosecutor and is biased in favor of the Government.
Predisposition is a very important consideration however the threshold question to even begin an entrapment inquiry is inducement and there are instances where an entrapment defense is available even to a predisposed defendant. It is up to the defendant to show he or she was induced by a preponderance of the evidence. If this threshold is met it is then up to the Government to establish the defendant was predisposed beyond a reasonable doubt. Predisposition must be "pre" meaning the disposition to commit the crime must exist prior to and independent of contact with law enforcement. Ready commission of the crime can show predisposition but that does not automatically mean the defendant was predisposed and great care must be taken when evaluating predisposition based solely on ready commission.
Another facet of entrapment concerns the concept of random virtue testing. The law does not tolerate Government actions to provoke its citizens into committing a crime so that it then may prosecute. As an example a sting operation that places an undercover officer as a drug dealer in a area known for drug trafficking that arrests everyone that approaches the undercover asking to buy drugs is permissible. Entrapment isn't a question because the defendants initiated the criminal activity by asking to purchase contraband showing clear evidence of being predisposed to buy drugs. If someone approaches the undercover to ask for directions instead of drugs and the undercover still tries to sell them drugs then entrapment comes into play. Did the suspect readily purchase drugs after the offer was made? Did the suspect resist and then only after coercion by the undercover decide to purchase drugs? These are the kind of questions that a jury, as the trier of fact would have to decide if entrapment was raised as a defense. Finally if the undercover officer accosts every passer-by asking every individual if he or she wants to purchase drugs then it's virtue testing the citizenry at random and is probably not permissible police behavior.
As applied to the Government operating a website:
There are multiple issues with this practice and the two instances of the Government taking over existing websites probably should have been rejected by the courts on grounds other than entrapment but I'll get to that later. For now let's assume it was permissible.
Both of these sites were known to cater solely to CP so this is analogous to setting up an undercover drug dealer in an area known for drug trafficking. Ok so far. Now, can only people specifically looking for these sites find them or can they be discovered by chance or by perfectly legal activity such as searching for adult pornography? If they can only be found be people specifically looking for them then entrapment is not option. Just because the Government is now providing contraband that does not mean they are inducing any behavior. They are merely providing the opportunity to obtain contraband material and the suspects would have shown ample predisposition by taking several affirmative steps to access that material and ideally a warrant is executes as soon as possible after the material is accessed.
If the sites can be discovered by chance that raises the question of virtue testing. Did the Government force contraband images on the unsuspecting passer-by? Put another way did simply loading a webpage with an innocuous description automatically provide contraband images? If so then the Government has moved beyond providing a mere opportunity into making an explicitly frank offer to someone they had no reasonable grounds to suspect even wanted contraband images. The Government definitively induced the behavior in this instance and proving predisposition beyond a reasonable doubt could be extremely difficult.
A variation of this would be being able to locate one of the sites by searching for adult pornography. In this instance the Government would be using bait and switch tactics. The bait is the promise of legal adult material which the Government then replaces with illegal contraband. The Government inducement is the legal activity without question. It would now be up to the Government to prove predisposition beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless there was clear evidence of prior possession of contraband images or a previous offense involving underage children proving predisposition would be difficult to do. When there is a mixture of legal and illegal images what was the actual intent? Without clear evidence of being predisposed it becomes impossible to determine and in some jurisdictions is considered a due process violation which would get the case tossed.
The real reason the Government should never provide contraband images:
The concept of police breaking the law in order to enforce it is not as cut dried as many believe. While the courts do give the police a lot of latitude in this area the legislatures also generally give the police statutory authority to violate certain laws in order to enforce them. The most common of these kinds of statutes involve narcotics. There are Florida statutes that allow the police to participate in all kinds of illegal drug activities but draw the line when it comes to the manufacture of drugs.
The federal government has repeatedly declared all CP images to be contraband and can only be handled by government agents under strictly controlled conditions. The transmission of contraband images by government agents can only be to other authorized agencies for evidentiary purposes or victim identification. Once under government control the only authorized non-governmental agency allowed to handle contraband images is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children where it is catalogued and the process of victim identification performed.
When the Government operated the two sites discussed in this thread they allowed and even initiated the uncontrolled dissemination of contraband images to numerous unauthorized individuals. Since the individuals depicted in the contraband images are victimized each time the images are viewed anew the Government was an active participant in each and every one of those victimizations. That kind of thing is the very definition of outrageous government misconduct that shocks the conscience. Any court that allows the prosecutions from those operations to continue is complicit in that victimization. The cases should be dismissed as they offend the universal sense of justice and taint the court by their very existence.
I maintain my position - if the website has a choice of underage porn that is certainly a different story but that is NOT what the article was about
So if a government agency takes over a website and does nothing to change the marketing policy it is entrapping people. However, if the cops merely just followed the traffic that came there it wouldn’t be entrapment right? So you have this situation, John Doe goes to website on August 21st, while the website was being run by criminals. Looks at CP, downloads it, cops track him and then charge him with CP. Cops then start running the site August 22nd, John Doe B looks at CP on the 23rd. The law enforcement agency did not do anything to drive traffic to the site other than what the site already was doing. Are you saying John Doe B should get off because the government “entrapped” him into committing the crime but John Doe A should be sent to jail?
If it is automatically entrapment for the government to run a CP site (which has not been answered or even brought up as a question in court at any level to my knowledge), then why would the government take over any site? Why would they not just cut a deal with the operator, give them immunity or a reduced prison sentence and track all of the patrons of the site? Or if that is still too messy for you legality-wise, what if the government just decided not to prosecute the people running the website right away? That is certainly within their discretion of when to bring charges, they could find a CP site and not make any arrests for a year and track every single IP address that goes to it.
Are you saying Aladdin that it would be a “bait and switch” if the government has a porn site with links to both adult and CP? If there was a website with 2 links, one saying adult porn, and a link saying CP, if the person clicked on CP link, then they were entrapped because the website has links to both? That to me seems like a mere opportunity and not a frank offer because any person on the website most click the CP link thus proving intent to look at CP. You can take the red pill and stay with adult porn and not go to jail, or you can take the blue pill and see how far the rabbit hole goes -- in prison.
Under the objective test of entrapment, would a normally law abiding citizen who goes to porn sites click on a link to go to CP when offered both choices? I think that answer is clearly no, a normal law abiding citizen is not going to click on CP if they are looking for adult porn when giving the option of both.
Under a subjective test, the government may need to prove predisposition which as you were saying is much tougher to prove. However the defendant would first have to get past the inducement prong by the preponderance of the evidence. If the government is offering two options one legal and one illegal where is the persuasion or coercion for either option?
The main problem with entrapment is that is not a constitutional protection, it is a statutory one. So, even if you think it shocks the conscience of the court, the legislature can vote to make it so in effect it cannot shock the conscience of the court. In one swoop of the pen legislatures can allow this to happen. Do not get me wrong, I completely agree with your point that if it is as dangerous as the government is claiming that it is, then why on earth would they mess around with it? It is a similar argument that we as SO’s or loved ones of SO’s have about our crimes: If we are so dangerous and must be monitored after we get out of prison and community supervision, then why the heck are you letting us out? How do you win an argument with the government when they can keep on redefining the rules to whatever they want?
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=725281
You can find the relevant information on page 317.