>"...undercover agents sent links of YouTube tutorials for mapping via drones and augmented reality software, then asked Google for information on who had viewed the videos, which collectively have been watched over 30,000 times."
For fuck's sake, there are thousands upon thousands of companies and individuals with totally legit commercial interest in this tech. I bet Zwift and the likes are doing just that.
"Mapping via drones" is from what I understand the #2 income source for professional drone operators, right after visual or IR maintenance surveys of industrial building exteriors.
Entrapment isn’t just “any time police trick you during an investigation”. It is only entrapment if the police actually induce you to commit the crime you are charged with. Viewing these videos is not a crime.
I think you have missed a key detail in the story. None of the video content is in any way criminal.
It’s an attempt to unmask someone the police are investigating for completely unrelated criminal activity (money laundering with cryptocurrencies). The video was apparently something completely innocuous about drone surveying.
Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.
Viewing the links and using technology covered by those is anything but. This is trying to make crime suspects out of thin air. So much for fucking free democratic society.
I didn't take it that those videos were illegal. But they tried to trick the criminal into watching some videos with low view counts that they would be interested in, and then planned to ask youtube who viewed all of those videos during that time.
Like an ip gathering honeypot website. Except they probably assumed the criminal would be too smart to click a link to some random website. But they would visit some youtube links. And then they knew Google would roll over and give them the info of all viewers.
It's a scummy plan, but mostly because Google will give away that info without putting up any fight.
For fuck's sake, there are thousands upon thousands of companies and individuals with totally legit commercial interest in this tech. I bet Zwift and the likes are doing just that.