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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?

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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 a 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?