Official hypocrisy: porn bust.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: FBI child pornography sting - Citings - Brief article

As part of a recent child pornography investigation disconcertingly known as Operation Pacifier, the FBI ran a website that distributed photographs and videos of children being sexually abused.

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Last year, according to The Seattle Times, "after arresting the North Carolina administrator of The Playpen, a 'dark web' child-pornography internet bulletin board, agents seized the site's server and moved it to an FBI warehouse in Virginia." The bureau used the website to run "a sting and computer-hacking operation of unparalleled scope that has thus far led to criminal charges against 186 people," mostly for receiving or possessing child pornography.

In other words, the government became a major distributor of illegal images in an attempt to catch people who look at them, thereby committing a more serious crime than those arrested.

As attorneys representing the people busted by the FBI have pointed out, the government's position is that...