On Tue, 22 Oct 1996 02:35:32 -0400 Perry Lucas said:
>>That is one possibility.  Another is that the Feds themselves are doing it.
>>They do it with snail-mail, why not with email?  Just keep bombarding this
>>person with the same sleaze and maybe he'll bite after a couple of years
>>out of curiousity and they can jump on him to show what a great job they
>>are doing.  Somtimes the courts slap such things down as inticement and
>>sometimes they don't.  Just in case, I wouldn't touch this garbage.
>
>Um, this is called intrapment and no police organization in the United
>States will do this. Besides, the expense of doing something like this
>would be phenomenal when budgets are already tight.
 
They <probably> wouldn't do it now, since they got bit back good when
they tried it via snail mail bombardment of some poor guy in the Midwest
a few years ago.  He finally bit just to see what it was they were trying
to send him and the Feds locked him up.  The Supreme Court reversed and
said that the FBI had no business bombarding otherwise-innocent people
with bogus offers for pornography just to see if they would bite.  I
think the guy is suing the federal government for beaucoup millions
in reparations at the moment.
 
This naturally doesn't mean they aren't trying something similar via
e-mail.  In fact, that was the first thing I thought of when this subject
surfaced on LSTOWN-L...
 
Nathan