According to Ars Technica, the FBI is using extremely questionable tactics to try to catch people seeking child porn on the internet. Apparently, if you click on a link that “points to anything even pretending to be child porn, that's enough evidence for the FBI of intent to download it. The authorities could then raid your home and possibly throw you in jail. No joke, it just takes one click and you're under intense suspicion” [emphasis theirs].

The FBI has planted hyperlinks in online forums known to attract child porn enthusiasts, and anyone who clicks on them immediately comes under intense scrutiny. It doesn’t matter how you’re referred to the site—once you click on the link, your IP address is logged and that’s that. When you think about the way the internet and link distribution works, this is pretty scary. People click on stuff without knowing where it will take them constantly—how many times a day does someone send you an email or IM that says something like, “Yo, check this out”? Clicking on a link initially posted on a given forum obviously doesn’t mean you visited the forum in question. 

The FBI used this supremely shady tactic to indict Temple University doctoral student Roderick Vosburgh, even as it admitted it had zero other evidence connecting him to child porn. “Vosburgh's attorney also pointed out that the affidavit that was used to charge Vosburgh provided no probable cause to believe that any criminal activity had taken place, that he was home at the time that the file was allegedly accessed, or even that there was a computer with an Internet connection in Vosburgh's apartment.”

Yet Vosburgh went to trial and was convicted of “clicking on an illegal link and possession of child porn due to two tiny thumbnails that the FBI believes depict underage females—this is despite the testimony from multiple computer experts saying that the cache was created automatically and Vosburgh had no idea how or where to find these thumbnails on his machine.” It’s a pretty remarkable result given the flimsiness of the evidence. (I’d be remiss if I failed to note that Vosburgh was caught in the act of trying to destroy his hard drive and a flash drive, which, while having nothing to do with the ridiculousness of the case, can’t have helped his cause.”)

In addition to possibly tarring people as child porn collectors who, well, aren’t, this tactic strikes me as extremely lazy. It would require only minimal extra investigation to prove that the user attached to a flagged IP address actually seeks child porn—if he or she actually deserves to be charged with a crime, his or her hard drive and/or browser history will contain illegal material. It’s as simple as that. And yet the FBI seems to be charging people simply for having clicked on a single link that could have come from anywhere.