The FBI crossed many lines with its child porn sting.

I’ve been trying not to think about a recent news story that caught my eye. The topic is inherently upsetting and unsettling. It’s hard to imagine reading anything about child pornography without coming away feeling sad and revolted. Which is why I usually avoid looking at articles like the one I read.

But my curiosity got the better of me this time when I saw the headline on Reason.com’s Hit and Run blog: “The FBI May Have Run Not One But 24 Dark Web Child Porn Websites.” It was puzzling; we’ve all heard of sting operations, but surely actually running a child porn site (or worse nearly dozens of sites) — being responsible for the transmission of these troubling images — would be a step too far for a domestic intelligence and security service of the United States. Wouldn’t it?

Perhaps the answer isn’t as obvious to everyone as it seems to me; perhaps an ends-justify-the-means attitude has become acceptable given just how awful the scourge being fought is (understandably) deemed to be. That would presumably explain how it came to be that the FBI sought and received authorization to host 23 child porn websites at a government facility, as uncovered by an FBI affidavit that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) obtained. This was in addition to “The Playpen,” a “dark web” child pornography bulletin board — complete with images and videos of sexual abuse — that the bureau ran on a server in an FBI warehouse for two weeks after seizing it from (and charging) its administrator. All in an effort to catch the criminals using the site, of course. But is that sufficient justification?

When “The Playpen” operation was revealed last summer, Reason’s Jacob Sullum summarized it this way: “the FBI became a major distributor of child pornography to catch people who look at it, thereby committing a more serious crime than the people it arrested.” Ouch.

Over the following months, at least 15 federal judges ruled that the child porn evidence obtained through the Playpen scheme (during which the FBI hacked Playpen users’ computers to locate them) was obtained without a valid warrant. The judges suppressed the evidence in at least three of the cases, due to the unconstitutional nature of the searches. If similar legal qualms about this sort of hacking remain a live issue (if the FBI isn’t able to sidestep them by refining the warrant process), there’s no point in continuing. Convictions will be elusive, and convictions are the only possible good reason — if such a reason exists at all — for the FBI distributing child pornography.

The FBI’s actions are a problem even if it is able to convict people of child porn offences with the evidence, though. As Sullum has pointed out — in part by referencing a thoughtful law review article by Canadian lawyer Howard Anglin, who now runs the Canadian Constitution Foundation — the U.S. government’s position is that every single view and transfer of child porn is a new instance of the abuse of the child in the picture or video. If that’s the case, Sullum concludes correctly, American federal prosecutors “are bringing cases that, by their own lights, required the FBI to victimize children thousands of times.”

The other perturbing thing about the Playpen operation, and the others like it, is the real possibility that the FBI actually increases the consumption of abusive images. Indeed, we know that in the case of Playpen — which the bureau made more enticing to potential users by speeding it up and making it more convenient — about 50,000 visitors a week came to the site during the FBI’s rein, compared to only 11,000 visitors a week when it was not a government-run site. This unexpected talent for making technology userfriendly would be far better used for improving dreadful government administrative websites than for making child pornography easier to obtain.

Some actions are so base that they must taint the person or entity who takes them irredeemably, no matter how noble the underlying motivation or reason. Pushing child porn, I would argue, could be one of them

But even with a relativistic approach, stings such as Playpen still fall short because they’re not catching the direct abusers of children — the people visiting the horrors on the kids in question. If they were, at least the “ends” would be of clearer import, even if the means would be equally troubling. But as it is, the inherent evils of actively distributing child pornography outweigh the uncertain returns of arresting people for possession of the terrible stuff. I hope someone in authority gives the FBI the message before the next round of Playpens are hosted by the U.S. government.