Manufacturing Criminals, 2nd Edition: Wiretapping and Planting Evidence

Winner of the 2024 Warren Johansson Book Award.
This documentary exposes Fourth Amendment violations by ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force). The police organization ICAC uses tactics which directly violate the interception and privacy laws derived from our Fourth Amendment. The 2nd edition provides five additional chapters detailing how they are wiretapping without a warrant. It also has a chapter explaining how officers plant evidence on computers and cell phones, including how they backdate evidence to the time they wanted the “crime” to have occurred.

The book’s discussion on wiretapping has greatly expanded. Peer-to-Peer products gives a better explanation of peer-to-peer networks using diagrams. Wiretapping BitTorrent discusses the RoundUp software tool suite and includes screen shots of the government’s wiretapping software. The Wiretapping Freenet chapter is new. Wiretapping email provides excerpts from an affidavit describing how Yahoo is in cahoots with the federal government to wiretap their email system for anything “of interest” to the government. Yahoo did not dispute or refute this affidavit. The last chapter now discusses various recommendations, including updates to statutes and how to regulate the use of Deepfakes.

ICAC originated in Virginia, but is now a nationwide organization. I wrote two amicus briefs with appendices as a pro se litigant and filed them with the Appellate Court of Virginia describing these tactics: Officers claim to be a child and impersonate someone else to intercept communications – without Court authorization. Officers use special tools over the internet to secretly break into private computers and search them without a warrant. Officers unmask the identity of anonymous online users and geolocate them without a warrant. The ICAC Cops Database inventories and tracks content of people's private computer data obtained without a warrant.
Police and prosecutors should be held to the same standard of law as citizens. These tactics manufacture criminals using grant money, and account for a significant percentage of inmates in Virginia and nationwide. I wrote this book to inform everyone how our Fourth Amendment rights are eroding away because people do not understand modern technology as it relates to the law. Law enforcement needs to understand why the current techniques violate the privacy laws, and how to catch online criminals correctly without violating citizen’s Fourth Amendment rights. Attorneys and judges will find a wealth of references to law, case law, and explanations of the technology referenced in the law. Politicians need to understand the ramification of their statutes, what is poorly written, and how to improve it. General citizens will learn about these law enforcement techniques and how they should be done. Everyone should ponder whether billions of our tax dollars should be spent to rescue zero children from these manufactured criminals.