The honey pot is their only effective technique for incriminating people without leaving evidence. If any of us was a real target, they could hack your PC and leave poorly encrypted CP hidden in .png files, but they don't risk such things because everything electronic is traceable, even if you are CIA/NSA.

It would just take one amateur network annalist to cast doubt on every future CP case, and they aren't gonna risk burning their post powerful and practical control technique on some inconvenient people like conspiracy theorists. They save that shit for the assanges and kim dotcoms.