Maybe we had a chance to do something but we didnt because the feds dont understand the internet...

http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-website30.story?coll=bal%2Dnationworld%2Dheadlines

Didn't your former vice-president Al Gore invent it? :)

Seriously, I don't know if the issue's as cut-and-dried as the article makes it out to be. One of the fundamental problems with owning and operating the site is that sooner or later, the domain name would have been traced back to that Messner guy (or to the US government if he turned it over) and suspicion would arise there.

The other disadvantage to planting fake information is that it would may lead to repercussions down the road should the US government have done something about it. What if they arrranged a meeting at someone's house and a neighbour or something showed up not knowing what was going on? Or what if the group containing anyone who really was guilty that got arrested found out about it and got angry about it?

I don't often agree with most of what the US government says or does; however, they really would have gotten in over their head in this case.

But even if they decided to do nothing thats fine. It is the fact that it took them so long to try and figure out what and how to do it. They could have tried something passive like just collecting e-mail for the domain etc. Instead they couldnt find someone who knew what to do.

I know this doesn't happen a lot, but I know that sometimes when people do stuff like this they get in trouble for doing it.

Sometimes the most valuable people to the government are its citizens. They probably didn't even think of doing something like this. And if they would have discovered this themselves they probably would have gotten all over his back :(

heh that sucks fbi = slow