What are your thoughts on the ethics of the police themselves circulating relatively uncirculated pieces of child pornography in order to catch criminals? This happened with the Australian Police where they seized the website “Child’s Play” via a vulnerability in the forum software which leaked the IP, operated it for an entire year, collected evidence on the various users and shut it down.
During that, they circulated relatively uncirculated images on a very specific schedule so that no one would suspect them and otherwise kept a significant piece of infrastructure up for that community.
I obviously don’t agree with it. Using it to capture impetuous criminals doesn’t change the fact that it is illegal to manage in the first place. Using trickery and deceit to accomplish your goals… I might be a bit naive, but I would never resort to something that could potentially harm innocents and myself. Who says being an authority figure exempts you from the given rules?
My suspicion is that the police doesn’t actually believe it’s that bad and that it is more of a routine arrest than one against a real crime, so to speak.
What they likely think is the “real problem” is the idea that looking at a lot of it “turns” people into molesters. It’s a very easy mindset to see right through.
It also shows you a very pixellated screenshot (it seems they had to hide some portions of it for publication) of what a child pornography site actually looks like.
The reason why possession of CP/CSEM material is illegal is because images and videos of the victims getting abused must disappear from the web and stay only in CP databases in order to prevent this material from spreading again, spreading it even if to catch criminals completely misses the point and it wastes time that could be used to catch criminals who are producing new CP/CSEM material