Strange as it may seem, there's an xkcd quote for that.

Egads, man, just think what they'll do to poor Venus! It won't be terraforming, it would be terracide!

...not that there's much difference sometimes.

Let's nuke it all from the orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Sorry for the overused quote, but it just had to be here.

Well, for example, some of the victims may become traumatized enough to seek revenge against his/her offenders and do something really nasty... like, say, become a head of NSA or GCHQ and bring demise to the society that allowed said offence in the first place? Hmm...

We all know how this ends - one small boy in a damaged starfighter or one billionaire in high-tech suit with a nuke on his back and this mighty army of yours suddenly turns into a mound of scrap metal. Not to say that an army of machines is often considered evil - in itself or as a tool of some bad guys.

Nope, there's a big difference between "can't" and "don't want to until there is no other option". It's just a path of the least resistance - why spend hours or even days on decrypting some messages when you can just write one letter, receive the keys and read everything anytime you want? But that doesn't mean that they don't have the means of breaking encryption if they really want to.

Probably somewhat around two football fields.

Yes, maybe it was a poor choice of words on my part - of course you have to take threats to commit suicide (or homicide) at least somewhat seriously and not dismiss them outright. But my point was that often the opposite happens - there are no obvious signs of real treat of suicide until it suddenly happens. It takes special training or personal experience (not of the pleasant kind) to notice some subtle hints of this and take action in time. And in this case parents even took some measures to protect their child - only it was not enough. And that, for me, is the saddest part of this whole story.

Oh, man, I'd hate to live in the world you consider normal. Luckily it exists only in your imagination.

A lot of good points to think about, thanks.

Well, there is still such thing as "parallel construction" (if I remember the term correctly), and it is much easier to present a solid case against you if said agency already have all details about your personal life in the first place - less work needed to invent something up. Government efficiency at its best, ain't it?

Your cellmates would be really interested in your stories. And you would have plenty of time to tell them, being in prison for the possession of child pornography. Maybe somebody there would even believe that "it was planted".

Oh, please, many kids (especially teenagers) would not even answer the direct questions from their parents about bullying and similar stuff. It is normal to just say "It's nothing, it's okay" and go cry in your room (and maybe even try to kill yourself), rather than sit and tell your story to your parents - even if they are truly caring and compassionate.

People who are prone to the real suicide are much more quiet about it than some drama queens who are shouting "I'm going to kill myself!" several times a day. Well, the same thing with the real homicide, too - even as adults we are prone to exclamations like "I swear, I'm going to kill that guy!", but these exclamations do not correlate with the real murders so often, right?

It is truly a challenge for any parent to admit that there is something wrong with their kid (not mentioning some crazy hypochondriacs and the like), be it a suicidal or sociopathical motives. In this particular case I personally would put more blame on the parents of the bullies, than on the parents of the victim. At least with sociopathy there are often other signs that are hard to miss, and often there is something wrong with the whole family - abusive or neglectful parents, for example, or some other emotional disfunction.

Ugh... how rude! Such particle would lie on a whole new, previously unattainable profanity level!