FBI ran website sharing thousands of child porn images

[paulpablo]

It wouldn't be the FBI's responsibility to arrest people abroad, that would be put upon interpol and the law enforcement from other countries.

Thanks, Captain Obvious.  My point is that given the absence of reports of arrests abroad -- by whatever agency -- you can't reasonably say that 137 arrests aren't all that there are. If you want to build an argument about the efficacy of this operation, you'll have to present better numbers. And you'll have to avoid relying on suppositions. You wrote:

Well exactly, you don't know one way or the other about the other arrests or the percentage of the overall users of the website that were in America so the percentage you established as a success rate is void.

The success rate that I have quoted is supported by the numbers we have at hand.  The success rate you wish to use in justifying this operation has no support in the data, by your own admission.

To me it seems logical that if the FBI simply shut down the website that would mean they wouldn't have been able to infect the website, and identify it's users.

Obviously not the case. They could shut down the site, and at the same time redirect anyone trying to browse it to a page which infects their computer without delivering kiddie porn. This isn't rocket surgery.

I never said the 137 arrests aren't all that there are.  I said that I think 137 arrests are quite a lot, the information was passed onto Interpol and you have no way of knowing how successful the task was.


If there is an absence of arrests abroad this has nothing to do with the inadequacy of the FBI, and we have no way of knowing if there were arrests or weren't, we just know it has nothing to do with the FBI they just did the right thing and passed the information on to interpol. 

Yes you are quoting a success rate based on the numbers we have at hand.  Which aren't in anyway detailed enough to give an accurate success rate.  This means the percentage you keep quoting as a success rate is void.  We do know there were 137 arrests, by the standards of a typical law enforcement operation I'd say that number is quite high.  If it was very successful, or not successful enough is subjective to our uninformed opinions based on information we don't know, but 137 arrests is at least some success.

I don't know much about taking over websites, hacking and so on.  According to the FBI statements they claim they had to keep the site running in order to get the information they did, it's possible it was done with more than just clicking on a website maybe the offenders had to download pictures and so on in order for their location to be established.  If this is wrong then of course it's wrong to keep the website going for no reason, I don't know enough about the situation they were in or enough about computers in general to say the FBI statements were wrong.