>>157774 (OP)Probable cause is an extremely wide term, especially with faux-entrapment. If entrapment is signed off by the government, it becomes a sting. If someone during the sting tries to persuade or force an individual into engaging in it, it becomes entrapment again. It's the same reason no-knock warrants exist, to terrify the public out of crime while hurting the legitimacy of criminals. It doesn't matter if you clicked by accident or out of curiosity or because you are a pedophile. As long as you clicked, that's all that matters.
Unless you record your screen and self at all times, there's no way to prove it was anything else. The government can't be charged with entrapment in this case because there was neither force nor persuasion The government lays out these things intentionally from the idea that the people actively seeking them will start seeking them anyway, like their use of hookers in real life, yet it's almost certain that them doing this otherwise illegal action creates more criminals by furthering proclivities.
The justification for this being a good thing is that these people would have come to them eventually, so it's good that they were weeded out by the government before they could hurt someone, despite the government hurting a child by spreading child pornography or a female officer and the real prostitute friends she makes in her assignment by planting her as a prostitute. From here, it's justified as making it known that engaging in crime is like stepping into a minefield. At any moment, anything you view and anyone you talk to could be an agent or informant. This doesn't prevent the likely regular outcome of someone seeing the activity being carried out by the government, becoming interested, seeking a more trusted source, and engaging in it without the law's intervention.
Stings are just soft entrapment, but entrapment can only be legally pursued if it's hard, and hard entrapment doesn't include standard tactics used by the criminals the government is emulating. By displaying the crime, the individual may be indirectly coerced into engaging in it through soft persuasion or soft force. Things get far worse when assets and informants are involved, since they can be used for illegal activities that the government wouldn't touch. The line between sting and entrapment blurs.
Federal agencies don't exist to be directly preventative. They exist to be reactive. A reactive force would be closer to death squads than secret agents.