>The bottom line is that paying people to report crimes in certain situations inevitably results in many more false alarms, which can be irreversibly damaging to the accused.

False alarm or not, paid or not, the Best Buy guy only identified and turned the pictures over to authorities. He did not file the criminal charge and had no influence on that process. There are many more safe guards in place, the FBI and the prosecutor and the prosecutors boss. They made the decision based on the pictures, and yet another safe guard was the judge.

Your point is taken and well received about the damage being done, but that has nothing to do with the Best Buy guy/payments. The FBI/prosecutor could each have independently made the decision the photos were not child porn.

Prior to digital cameras, drug stores that used to develop film (maybe still do) were notorious for identifying pictures of crimes (child porn included) and turning them over to authorities. In law school there was a pretty well known case of one such defendant who was the grandfather and the photos were of the grandkids running through the sprinklers in the yard naked. I won’t mention the outcome, but charges were filed and either way the damage was done, but is it the fault of the film developer? Does it really matter if the developer was paid or not?

> It's not just about planting fake evidence. It's primarily about being incentivised to lower the bar.

Yes, people do bad things without monetary incentive. It could just as easily be that some employee didn't like some 'jerk' customer. Well, maybe I will let the FBI harass them.