The FBI's Rick Roll

There's this really cool video. I'm telling you, it's the coolest thing you've ever seen and it'll explain this whole post. It has laser beams and explosions! You can see it by clicking here.

Go ahead, click it and come back.

And if you clicked that link without thinking about it, as many people would be prone to do, you would have just been Rick Rolled. In the original definition of Rick Rollin', a link that is said to go to one thing actually goes to a video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". No harm done, other than a wasted few seconds (or minutes if you actually watch the thing.)

But the FBI is doing something similar, and the damage is a lot worse than a few wasted seconds. They put up a link in a pedophile message board, and the link says that leads to kiddie porn. When you click it, it takes you to a site which obviously doesn't have kiddie porn. Instead, it logs your IP address, and the FBI stages a morning raid on you the next day.

That might not seem to be too bad. I mean, it's only posted on a pedophile message board, so only pedophiles will see it, right?

Wrong. Links don't stay in one place. The move all around the internet. Between search engines, robots, and plain old human involvement, links move from point to point across the internet. It's not only possible, but likely, that this link has already moved off it's board, and there are people sick enough to find it amusing to post it in places where innocent people will click on it absent-mindedly.

So, you say, no harm no foul. It's all about the intent, right. WRONG. According to the Justice Department, just clicking on the link is illegal. This has already held up in court once. That case is full of murky details, like no kiddie porn was found on the guys computer (though a thumbnail.db file was found with grainy thumbnails.) The FBI says if you click the link, you intended to find child pornography. But what's to stop someone from doing what I did above: Just enclosing a word or a phrase in a hyperlink, and an unsuspecting user clicks on it, leading to their arrest.

This is a dangerous precedent. While I understand the FBI's need to catch pedophiles, this method is entrapment. The courts say no, it's not, but I don't think they recognize the reality of the internet.

So click carefully, or else find yourself Rick Rolled into a stay in a federal penitentiary.