Information Technology Reference
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police when requested. Second, sting operations can affect everyone's chat-room expe-
riences. They demonstrate that people are not always who they claim to be. This knowl-
edge may make people less vulnerable to being taken advantage of, but it may also reduce
the amount of trust people have in others. Sting operations prove that supposedly pri-
vate chat-room conversations can actually be made public. If chat-room conversations
lack honesty and privacy, people will be less willing to engage in serious conversations.
As a result, chat rooms lose some of their utility as communication devices. How much
weight you give to the various consequences of police sting operations in chat rooms
determines whether the net consequences are positive or negative.
KANTIAN ANALYSIS
A Kantian focuses on the will leading to the action rather than the results of the action.
The police are responsible for maintaining public safety. Pedophiles endanger innocent
children. Therefore, it is the duty of police to try to prevent pedophiles from accom-
plishing what they intend to do. The will of the police detective is to put a pedophile in
prison. This seems straightforward enough.
If we dig a level deeper, however, we run into trouble. In order to put a pedophile
in prison, the police must identify this person. Since a pedophile is unlikely to confess
on the spot if asked a question by a police officer, the police lay a trap. In other words,
the will of the police detective is to deceive a pedophile in order to catch him. To a
Kantian, lying is wrong, no matter how noble the objective. By collecting evidence of
chat-room conversations, the police detective also violates the presumed privacy of chat
rooms. These actions of the police detective affect not only the alleged pedophile but also
every innocent person in the chat room. In other words, detectives are using every chat-
room occupant as a means to their end of identifying and arresting the pedophile. While
police officers have a duty to protect the public safety, it is wrong for them to break other
moral laws in order to accomplish this purpose. From a Kantian point of view, the sting
operation is morally wrong.
SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY ANALYSIS
An adherent of social contract theory could argue that in order to benefit everyone, there
are certain moral rules that people in chat rooms ought to follow. For example, people
ought to be honest, and conversations ought to be kept confidential. By misrepresenting
identity and/or intentions, the pedophile has broken a moral rule and ought to be
punished. In conducting sting operations, however, police detectives also misrepresent
their identities and record everything typed by suspected pedophiles. The upholders of
the law have broken the rules, too. Furthermore, we have the presumption of innocence
until proof of guilt. What if the police detective, through miscommunication or bad
judgment, actually entraps someone who is not a pedophile? In this case, the innocent
chat-room users have not broken any rules. They were simply in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Yet society, represented by the police detective, did not provide the benefits
chat-room users expect to receive (honest communications and privacy). In short, there
is a conflict between society's need to punish a wrongdoer and its expectation that
everyone (including the agents of the government) abide by its moral rules.
