"Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, said the online stratagems are reminiscent of more commonly accepted police tactics - - like a detective lying to a suspect during a murder investigation or posing as a fictional child online to nab sexual predators - - but in this case they go too far.
“It’s very common for law enforcement to work with informants, use deceptions in order to catch criminals but there’s a difference between misrepresenting something about the world and taking over a real person’s identity,” he said."