[true_religion]

To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them.

This database is decades old.

The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will have trouble finding someone capable of planting a picture taken in the 1960s.

[meowface]

>To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them.

Could you show how you know they're still storing the photos, and not just the hashes?

>The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will have trouble finding someone capable of planting a picture taken in the 1960s.

Unless you're talking about cases of formally government-sanctioned raping of children by adults, I don't think this analogy works.

I could also say that any organization fine with assassinating people in cold blood would be fine with planting child pornography on someone's computer, and there may be some superficial logic to that, but I think it's completely false. I think there are millions of people who wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over assassinating someone in cold blood, but wouldn't be able to live with themselves if forced to acquire and plant images and videos of children being raped so that a political prisoner could be falsely convicted.

Of course, with any intelligence agency (and the FBI), one's prior for anything like that happening is much, much higher than average. I definitely believe they could've wanted to do such a thing and could have done it. But even with that prior, it's still a big claim, and it requires at least a little evidence. Ideally big evidence; not no evidence, and especially not nothing to even refute the comprehensive evidence and logs the FBI has laid out over hundreds of publicly released pages, and probably hundreds or thousands of more pages that we're not (yet) privy to.

[akiselev]

> I think there are millions of people who wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over assassinating someone in cold blood, but wouldn't be able to live with themselves if forced to acquire and plant images and videos of children being raped so that a political prisoner could be falsely convicted.

Why?

I think if there are millions of people who can justify assassination for their country/ideology, they'll be able to justify planting child pornography too. They'll just look away from the pictures themselves, just like they've looked away from every single other atrocity committed in their name. It's not like they have to pull a trigger: they have to print out some paper, stick it an envelope without looking while repeating to themselves "I wasn't the one who took the pictures" (if they even get that far in their thought process), and go about their business framing someone. It's even easier if they work in tech because they probably don't even have to open the file. Just grab ten thousand binary blobs from the database and thats it. One will be enough! Then they'll go home to their children, look them in the eyes, and forget all about it.

Perhaps I'm just too cynical.

[meowface]

It's certainly possible, but I just disagree that assassinations are as psychologically weighty, personally. Killing someone who's killed other people or contributed to their deaths vs. rigging the justice system and planting child pornography on someone who leaked some of your secrets are really different things.

[harikb]

I fail to see how planting evidence crosses a higher moral barrier than killing someone.

By the way, in both cases, the person who makes the decision genuinely believes, probably on wrong information, that the person they are entrapping is evil and they just lack the right evidence

So I don’t buy the argument that they would lose they sleep over what they did.

[meowface]

Because there are different kinds of "evil". Killing an individual who they believe is responsible for the deaths of many people is different from framing a US citizen and going around the justice system by planting child pornography evidence, because they leaked secrets. These are not apples-to-apples situations.

[kelnos]

> I think there are millions of people who wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over assassinating someone in cold blood, but wouldn't be able to live with themselves if forced to acquire and plant images and videos of children being raped so that a political prisoner could be falsely convicted.

Even supposing what you say is true, why does it become unlikely that there's a disjoint set of people (sizeable enough to assume that some work for some law enforcement agency) who wouldn't blink an eye at doing the latter thing, if they truly believed it was for the good and safety of their country? I think there are absolutely people like that, and suggesting that there aren't feels incredibly naive.

[meowface]

I'm sure there are some people who would be doing that. I'm just saying that there are a lot of people who are okay with the former but not the latter, so I disagree with the suggestion that most or all of the CIA or FBIA would be okay with it. That leads me to think the probability of this happening at an organizational level (i.e. the director orders it) is low.

The probability of a few people acting independently is a lot higher, but I think still low. And whether it's low or high, you still need evidence. Any evidence. For example, evidence that they may have doctored chat logs.

[alasdair_]

The same people are content to have a drone blow up a house full of children to kill a single target.

[meowface]

From an objective morality standpoint, you're probably right that that is worse. But subjectively and psychologically, I think most of them put them in different boxes.

[scarejunba]

You know you have the bad guy. He knows he's bad. But the system is going to let him get away. He's not a child pornographer but you and I both know we don't put other people away the way we did Al Capone. He knows he's the bad guy and he laughs in my face just because some lawyer will get him off. I'm the good guy, man. If I let this guy off who knows how many lives he'll ruin.

Society is peaceful because rough men stand ready to do violence in the night in its name. They can judge me, but I did the right thing.

Plant the drive, Dave.

[magduf]

>I think there are millions of people who wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over assassinating someone in cold blood, but wouldn't be able to live with themselves if forced to acquire and plant images and videos of children being raped so that a political prisoner could be falsely convicted.

I think Nazi Germany should have been enough proof that humans are perfectly happy to do anything to support their side. Planting CP to target political prisoners is nothing compared to what the Nazis and various other regimes have done. What makes you think the humans in this place are any different?

[meowface]

Because I haven't yet seen the CIA be as bad as the Nazis, as bad as they might be.