Sometimes, law enforcement agencies in order to catch criminals go the extra mile by setting up traps for the alleged criminals to fall into.

For instance, when the government of Edo state, Nigeria decided to take aggressive action against street prostitution in the city of Benin and chased the roadside prostitutes away from the regular stands, Some policemen or task forces set up by the Edo state government will sometimes disguise and appear like patrons of the prostitutes; how they operated was that they will approach a random girl standing by or walking around this renown prostitutes stand, they negotiate the price with the girl for sex and once the girl accepts the fee for the sex, thereby agreeing that she is a street prostitute the task force will bring out their handcuffs and get her arrested.

This is called entrapment and it is a valid defence in criminal trials, i.e. the girl arrested or the alleged prostitute that was arrested through this ploy of the task force when charged to court can raise the defence of entrapment and she could be acquitted by the defence.

The most prevalent entrapment used by law enforcement agencies in the USA is law enforcement agents pretending to be minors or underage girls on social media and engage in sensual and sexual conversations with adults in other to catch or arrest paedophiles: A law enforcement agent will create a social media account and pretends to be a minor or an underage girl, then initiates a sex chat with an adult, once the adult offers to meet the minor physically for sex, the agent will burst the adult and arrest him for being a paedophile.

This is also another example of entrapment but for this defence to successfully get a suspect an acquittal, the law enforcement agents must have been the ones that induced the suspect to commit the crime.

Therefore, the entrapment defence is used when an accused person while facing trial alleges that he never would have committed the crime or he never would have formed the intent (the mens rea) to commit the crime if a law enforcement officer had not invited, inspired, incited, persuaded and lured him to commit the crime. The defence of entrapment is thereby established where the defendant engaged in criminal conduct after being induced or encouraged to do so by law enforcement who was trying to obtain evidence against that defendant. This is most common in drug cases both possession and sale of a controlled substance and prostitution cases just like the early example I raised.

The most populous case in the history of criminal trials where the defence of entrapment was used as a defence to acquit an accused person despite the fact that he was caught red-handed committing the crime was the case of United States v. John DeLorean, 561 F. Supp. 797 (C.D. Cal. 1983). 

In this case, John Z. DeLorean, a renowned American car builder and one of the richest men in America (at that time) was arrested on October 19, 1982, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was caught with 55 pounds of cocaine in his hotel room and was immediately charged to court for smuggling drugs, conspiracy to obtain and distribute cocaine etc.

What could have led a renowned automotive builder and one of the richest men in America to start dealing and smuggling drugs? 

His (John DeLorean’s) car company was on the verge of going bankrupt and he needed $17 million to save the company from collapse.  He was desperately in need of money to save his company. Out of this desperation, he was approached by a person claiming to be an investor named James Hoffman who claimed to have a business opportunity to help save DeLorean’s company. Unknown to DeLorean, James Hoffman, was an FBI informant who decided with the help of the FBI to prance on DeLorean’s desperation for money and entrap him into smuggling drugs to sell in order for him to raise money and save his company.

DeLorean’s attorney successfully argued the defence of entrapment claiming that John Delorean, a reputable inventor and businessman would never have thought of engaging in drug smuggling had the FBI through their informant not induced and incited him to. He was therefore based on this defence acquitted of all the drug charges brought against him after two years of trial.

It should be noted however that the defence of entrapment can only be valid if raised in victimless crimes, such as buying illegal narcotics or soliciting prostitution. Charges of violent crimes like rape or murder or robbery cannot usually be avoided or evaded by the accused by raising the defence of entrapment.

On Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before U.S. Congress in a much anticipated hearing prompted by the U.S. government’s move to ban the video-sharing app, as security concerns from its use heightens.

TikTok has been banned on government-issued devices by governments, including the Congress, in and outside the U.S. The ban stems from concern that U.S. user data can be accessed in China.

Chew told U.S. lawmakers that TikTok employees in China, who had been caught earlier tracking the location of journalists in the West, still have access to some U.S. data from the app. The CEO explained that such access will be completely eliminated at the completion of Project Texas; a risk mitigation plan the company had activated to ameliorate the national security concern that has become an existential threat to the app in the West.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech giant based in Beijing. Under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) law, the government is empowered to obtain information from any company when the need arises, particularly in relation to national security.

However, untangling the video-sharing app from its ties with Beijing, to set it free from the CCP law, has become the hard nut to crack. The U.S. has asked TikTok’s Chinese stakeholders to sell their stakes in the company.

The U.S. and its allies are becoming increasingly concerned that ByteDance, upon demand, will deliver user data into the hands of the Chinese government.

TikTok has been trying to move its data centers to the U.S., out of the reach of the Chinese government. Chew, in response to Rep. Bob Latta’s question on whether ByteDance employees could currently access U.S. data, implied that the answer lies on Project Texas.

“After Project Texas is done, the answer is no,” Chew said. “Today, there is still some data that we need to delete.”

CNBC quoted TikTok as saying on Thursday that Project Texas is already in action but there are many steps to reach its completion. The company said it began the process, which includes deleting data from TikTok’s servers in Singapore and Virginia, last week. The data on those servers is the kind that could theoretically still be accessed by China-based ByteDance employees for the time being.

TikTok said once that data is deleted those employees will no longer have access to U.S. user data from the app.

The testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee came amid growing decision by Western governments to prohibit the use of TikTok on work devices due to concern that the app could be used as a back door for Chinese espionage.

There was a bipartisan agreement by the U.S. lawmakers during the testimony that TikTok poses a national security risk through its handling of user data from 150 million Americans.

Chew said that TikTok is a “private business” that, like many others, relies on a “global workforce,” denying that it shares U.S. data with the Chinese Communist Party. The short-form video app had last week denied a report by Wall Street Journal that it represents a Chinese espionage operation. A TikTok spokesperson said in a statement that there is no truth in the allegation.

“Since October of 2022, all new U.S. user data has been stored exclusively in the Oracle Cloud Environment, with protected data fully out of reach of any foreign government,” the spokesperson added. “That data is managed exclusively by U.S. Data Security—a TikTok subsidiary made up of Americans, led and located in America—whose sole focus is to protect U.S. national security interests by securing U.S. user data and preventing outside manipulation of our systems.”

Also, in a statement on Thursday, a TikTok spokesperson criticized the lawmakers and the entire hearing, saying it was “dominated by political grandstanding that failed to acknowledge the real solutions already underway through Project Texas or productively address industry-wide issues of youth safety.” The spokesperson added that the committee failed to take into account the livelihoods of the 5 million businesses on TikTok or the First Amendment implications of banning a platform loved by 150 million Americans.