Slashdot Mirror
Navy Guilty of Illegally Broad Online Searches: Child Porn Conviction Overturned
An anonymous reader writes In a 2-1 decision, the 9th Circuit Court ruled that Navy investigators regularly run illegally broad online surveillance operations that cross the line of military enforcement and civilian law. The findings overturned the conviction of Michael Dreyer for distributing child pornography. The illegal material was found by NCIS agent Steve Logan searching for "any computers located in Washington state sharing known child pornography on the Gnutella file-sharing network." The ruling reads in part: "Agent Logan's search did not meet the required limitation. He surveyed the entire state of Washington for computers sharing child pornography. His initial search was not limited to United States military or government computers, and, as the government acknowledged, Agent Logan had no idea whether the computers searched belonged to someone with any "affiliation with the military at all." Instead, it was his "standard practice to monitor all computers in a geographic area," here, every computer in the state of Washington. The record here demonstrates that Agent Logan and other NCIS agents routinely carry out broad surveillance activities that violate the restrictions on military enforcement of civilian law. Agent Logan testified that it was his standard practice to "monitor any computer IP address within a specific geographic location," not just those "specific to US military only, or US government computers." He did not try to isolate military service members within a geographic area. He appeared to believe that these overly broad investigations were permissible, because he was a "U.S. federal agent" and so could investigate violations of either the Uniform Code of Military Justice or federal law."
These criminals should be thrown in jail, hell solitary confiment would be too good a treatment for such scum.
And by the way give them a copy of the constitution. Maybe they'll learn something worthwhile during their pathetic life.
Military equipment is the property of the people of the United States. So if what he was doing was against the law then will he be charged with misusing military equipment?
Looks like the basis was the Posse Comitatus Act rather than an actual constitutional issue. Hard to say how this will play out over time. The Supreme Court could go either way, or Congress could act to allow it if they so choose.
Navy Guilty of Illegally Broad Online Searches
Writing in dissent, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain noted with apparent regret that the majority was the first ever to apply the "exclusionary rule" to violations of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Excluding evidence under the rule should be a "last resort" and done only after consideration of the "social costs," he argued.
"Yet, in a breathtaking assertion of judicial power, today's majority invokes this disfavored remedy for the benefit of a convicted child pornographer," O"Scannlain wrote. "It does so without any demonstrated need to deter future violations of the PCA and without any consideration of the 'substantial social costs' associated with the exclusionary rule."
I wonder if legally speaking this would even be an issue if the Coast Guard was doing it? The Coast Guard is considered law enforcement unless acting under the direction of the Navy in wartime.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Expect typical knee-jerk reactionary training to take place over the next few Saturdays. Unfortunately it will consist of tons of good info every sailor/airman/soldier/marine should know, but will presented in a format that equals click-click-click-click-finished-enjoy the rest of your weekend.
You have all been trained to accept this as normal- NCSI (the TV show, among most police procedurals) shows the resident geeks (McGee and Abby) operating dragnets on cellphone metadata, surveillance camera images, internet data and metadata, GPS locations and even breaking into classified networks to fetch this or that file on the suspect that they were not supposed or cleared to have.
You know they are justified because of the foregone conclusion: you have seen the evildoer doing the bad deed and you are rooting for him get caught.
Although real life doesn't work that way people are conditioned to believe if law enforcement bent the rules they did it in order to untangle themselves from the red tape and get the bad guys.
Those rules are there for a reason (look up general warrants and why the U.S. founding fathers specifically banned them in the 4th amendment), to prevent the exact kind of abuse that is happening right how.
But the media is doing the damnedest effort to convince the people that if police accuse someone he is certainly guilty of something and it is a matter of digging deep and broad enough to nail him.
...is sidestepped with parallel construction. The Navy investigators are only guilty of not keeping up with the times.
Next time, the illegal surveillance will be turned into legal surveillance.
Which show is he from?
You are zeroing in on child porn.
The court is addressing the activity of a military investigator stepping out of bounds.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
to allow the military to forward cases of child pornography to civilian law enforcement.
Until then, Agent Logan will have to be content to find runners fleeing their year 30 "renewal" ceremonies...
This and recent others, including the Sotomayer story, buoy our optimism the system is still occasionally self-correcting.
It's not over doomsayers, not by a long shot.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Well it's good that something is done about law enforcement misusing their powers, but I can't help feeling that the (morally, if not legally) right solution would be to let the child porn conviction stand but to bring a charge against the agent who was misusing his powers. That way a known bad guy receives his due punishment and the misuse of investigative powers is also punished. Once a few cops / agents are prosecuted for misusing their powers the rest are more likely to stop, but it doesn't seem necessary to quash convictions where the problem is the authorisation of the evidence gathering rather than the evidence itself.
Still, now this is the case can the police use the fact that CP was found on this guy's computer (even if not legally acceptable as evidence) as probable cause to keep a darned close eye on him in the future?
You must be trolling.
Or you don't have a fucking clue about civics, or exactly why it is so important that the "good guys" don't break the law to catch the "bad guys". Ever.
I believe that "the ends justify the means" is not how I want my government to do business. I suppose you wouldn't mind me searching your house on a regular basis to look for contraband so long as I eventually found some in one of the houses where I look, but I'm pretty sure most others would object.
Hell, I'm a civilian so I wouldn't even need a search warrant. I mean, I would be tresspassing, but who's going to care? You're not because I'm doing it for virtue, and the person who actually has the contraband does have grounds to object because he did something wrong first.
dom
How is it a violation of rights or privacy to search a search engine for files that you deliberately make public for the purpose of sharing. This isn't even the gray zone of a search engine finding pages not exposed to the public, gnutella is designed expressly to publicize data.
These child porn cases where the perp 'wins' are always tough. On the one hand there is the emotional plea to protect children and what not, but the other side of the coin is that such 'save the children' type laws are almost invariably used (abused?) in cases they were never meant to cover. A similar case can be made against anti-terrorism acts (such as the much maligned PATRIOT act) following 9/11. When people get too emotionally invested in something they tend to over react, often failing to consider the longer implications in a 'knee-jerk' reaction to make sure this 'never happens again'.
The reality is that we cannot prevent every crime from happening without also sacrificing every personal liberty we have, submitting to constant surveillance and living in conditions that would make the average prison feel like freedom. This is a slippery slope, and I feel that legally this case is a win for the masses, even if it means a guilty man avoids any sort of legal punishment. Course if it's any consolation for those 'he got off too easy' types, Michael Dreyer is probably now isolated from much of his former friends and family, and will likely have difficulty finding work. Even if he does seek treatment for his sexual deviancy, and never looks at or touches another child for the rest of his life; he will always be painted with the brush of a 'child abuser'.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Islamic terrorism as a fig-leave to cover the corruption of your liberties.
guilty? Was he found guilty? I thought the evidence was merely thrown out.
let the child porn conviction stand but to bring a charge against the agent who was misusing his powers.
Laziness like this, and an unwillingness to properly modify and/or conform to the Constitutional framework is why we are already in so much trouble. Take jury nullification for example. The proper way to remedy abuses during the Civil Rights Era would have been (perhaps) to amend the Constitution so as to specify that assault (including sexual) and murder could not be nullified.
Instead, the same kind of laziness you advocate took hold--judges routinely lie to jurors. This is just one of many abuses that have caused many of us to lose respect for the system.
So. We have a guy who is almost certainly guilty; but improperly convicted. Allowing improper convictions is not the solution. If you can find a constitutionally sound way to allow the conviction without trampling our rights, I'm all ears. Alternatively, it may be warranted (as in obtaining a warrant) to place this individual under surveillance. If he so much as twitches in the direction of a child, swoop in and arrest for attempted abuse. There are ways around problems like this that don't involve throwing our rights out the window. They just takke more work.
A good chunk of the road towards totalitarianism is paved with laziness.
The reality is that we cannot prevent every crime from happening without also sacrificing every personal liberty we have, submitting to constant surveillance and living in conditions that would make the average prison feel like freedom.
It's not even a trade-off between liberty and security. It's a trade-off between liberty and nothing. Look at how many crimes are committed even in prisons: rapes, murders, smuggled weapons/drugs/cash. If a completely controlled environment monitored constantly by armed guards can't prevent crimes, then why the hell are we trying to make the entire country a prison?
The court is addressing the activity of a military investigator stepping out of bounds.
May have stepped out of bounds, may have. The trial judge didn't think so. I'm not sure that is clear yet that he did despite the fact that there has been an initial appellate decision. There are still two more stages of appeal (appeals court en bloc, Supreme Court) that could come and either could reverse the decision. Since this was apparently the first time that such a standard as been applied there may be reasonable doubt about the outcome. Congress could act to allow evidence in cases like this. In either case it is a question of public policy, not Constitutional law or rights.
Consider this - suppose the investigator was looking for a fleeing prisoner and used binoculars to search as he traveled through the city. While engaged in that search he saw a robbery in progress through the binoculars and called the city police to make the arrest. Would he have violated the law by making that search? Should there be a legal difference between searches by photon versus those by electron?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Oh yeah?
Well those cops that planted cocaine on you can get a slap on the wrist, but you still get Felony possession since it is still technically illegal to be in possession of any amount of coke.
Sound absurd? Thats exactly what you are advocating, taken to an extreme.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
You have all been trained to accept this as normal- NCSI (the TV show, among most police procedurals) shows the resident geeks (McGee and Abby) operating dragnets on cellphone metadata, surveillance camera images, internet data and metadata, GPS locations and even breaking into classified networks to fetch this or that file on the suspect that they were not supposed or cleared to have. You know they are justified because of the foregone conclusion: you have seen the evildoer doing the bad deed and you are rooting for him get caught. Although real life doesn't work that way people are conditioned to believe if law enforcement bent the rules they did it in order to untangle themselves from the red tape and get the bad guys. Those rules are there for a reason (look up general warrants and why the U.S. founding fathers specifically banned them in the 4th amendment), to prevent the exact kind of abuse that is happening right how. But the media is doing the damnedest effort to convince the people that if police accuse someone he is certainly guilty of something and it is a matter of digging deep and broad enough to nail him.
You're spot on.
But like as not, there have been just as many juries use the bar set by the make-believe CSI teams to exonerate defendants, so there's at least the merit of the disinformation working both ways.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The reality is that we cannot prevent every crime from happening without also sacrificing every personal liberty we have, submitting to constant surveillance
The reality is that we cannot prevent every crime from happening. Period.
In this case, it is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act (look up a few posts). That act is what keeps the military from doing civilian law enforcement. It ran afoul of it because an NCIS agent did a search on civilians.
The perp isn't terribly sympathetic in this case but the act is very important and calls for strict protection.
Why not monitor every computer in the world 24/7 for any illegal activities?
All we need is one over-zealous law enforcement officer to do that - we can fire all the others. He would be God.
The evidence was thrown out because he was convicted of and illegally broad search, which included people not related to the military. Didn't you even read the title??? For once, the good guys win.
Tis true, though you're arguing semantics, allow me to amend my previous statement, In theory we can prevent every crime from happening with constant surveillance and sacrificing every liberty we have. In practice it wouldn't work, but in theory . . .
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
AC:
How is it a violation of rights or privacy to search a search engine for files that you deliberately make public for the purpose of sharing.
FTFA:
Using software called RoundUp from his office in Georgia, Logan searched for "any computers located in Washington state sharing known child pornography on the Gnutella file-sharing network," the ruling states.
Dear AC, I am not familiar with a search engine called "RoundUp". Will you please provide a link? It looks useful.
More FTFA:
The 2-1 majority rejected the government's argument that the military is allowed to monitor and search all computers in a state without prior knowledge that a computer's owner is even in the military.
Clearly the military has much fewer Constitutional restrictions when they investigate military personnel. This case is about whether the military can investigate the general public with that same lack of Constitutional restraint.
If the court sided with NCIS agent Logan (Logan Cale?) then unless the ruling was overturned by a higher court, the US Government could use military personnel to scan all computers in the US and simply turn over anything suspicious to the local authorities. I don't know why you think it would be a good idea to give the US government the right to constantly scan all of your computers, smart phones, and tablets. I prefer that such searches stay illegal without a proper search warrant.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
There is a group of people out there walking free guilty of illegally taking and spreading pictures of children. They don't care about the law and they don't believe there will be any consequences. Every day I contemplate the world my children face with this kind of person, and it enrages me. It should enrage you too. The NSA must be stopped.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Commit crime while being monitored illegally by government agency.
Get convicted.
Have conviction quashed due to illegal monitoring, despite evidence being factual and guilt proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Commit crime again...
Profit?
For you analogy to apply:
Suppose he had a pair of binoculars looking for a fleeing prisoner and he stopped EVERYONE within sight and grabbed their wallets, phones, took fingerprints and asked them, "Say ... do you belong in a prison?"
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
All the investigator did is lookup ip addresses sharing child porn on a p2p network, something EVERYBODY can do. We're not talking about the NSA spying on all your communications here. Yet at least half the comments treat the investigator like he was a mass murderer ! For fuck sake people.
Consider this - suppose the investigator was looking for a fleeing prisoner and used binoculars to search as he traveled through the city. While engaged in that search he saw a robbery in progress through the binoculars and called the city police to make the arrest. Would he have violated the law by making that search? Should there be a legal difference between searches by photon versus those by electron?
Nope, bad analogy. Try a car chase or something....
The binocular search is in the public view. The computer search goes into private territory. The better analogy in your case would be if the investigator had to enter someone's house (without a warrant) to view a potential crime. Can't do that.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The Military had continued to over reach after they had been warned a few times.
So I guess the whole security theater that sprung up after 9/11 is ok? If it only saved the life and virtue of even one....
Child porn, terrorism, or in earlier days communism. I can only hope that one day we'll have some Welch again asking "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While I would say this sounds like a waste of military resources, is it really an illegal search?
Isn't making files available on a p2p network akin to classifieds or placing a sign on your lawn and a cop car drive through the neighbourhood?
So the end justifies the means?
I guess then we may assume you'd be in favor of weekly raids of your house (and everyone else's)? That should pretty much ensure we can eliminate any and all drug cooking and growing happening nationwide.
The end justifies the means, after all.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The evidence was thrown out because he was convicted of and illegally broad search, which included people not related to the military. Didn't you even read the title??? For once, the good guys win.
No, there were no winners in this one. Child Pornographers were set free without prosecution because the investigators clearly don't give a crap about following the law themselves. The excessive surveillance was so shocking to the conscience that they will even allow child pornographers to go free. Bad guys on all sides, and nobody wins.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Regardless of guilty or not he was using the equipment outside of the allowed operating parameters. You can't take a tank for joyride, borrow an automatic rifle to go varmant hunting at your rural property, or misuse military computers.
The question for the masses, is this worse than committing the military network to working on folding-at-home or bitcoin production?
it is so important that the "good guys" don't break the law to catch the "bad guys". Ever.
Then, you might have to shut down several deep cover operations. Breaking the law by doing mass surveillance is a different topic although.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Open your eyes and ears, and turn around -what do you see and hear?
It's the fat lady and she's singing a very loud song about the end of our republic.
Have gnu, will travel.
... search what you've advertised as sharing on gnutella. There's no privacy case here. There's only a posse comitatis case here, and not a statutory, but regulatory one, as the posse comitatis act does not cover the navy; an executive order directs the navy to comply. The case was reasonably decided.
Well it's good that something is done about law enforcement misusing their powers, but I can't help feeling that the (morally, if not legally) right solution would be to let the child porn conviction stand but to bring a charge against the agent who was misusing his powers.
The law does not allow that type of sanction. When law enforcement abuses their power to make an arrest, the only remedy available to the courts or the defendant is to throw out the conviction. It's intended to ensure law enforcement ... obeys the law. When they exceed their authority, they are generally immune from prosecution when in the course of duty. Only things like excessive use of force and civil rights violations can be prosecuted, and even that requires proof of intent.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I don't believe "he was convicted of and illegally broad search", as I don't believe that any such charge was ever filed in that court.
Please note, this doesn't mean I believe that he shouldn't be charged and tried for such an offense (though I'm not sure what the charge would be, precisely). Merely that he has not, as of yet, been so convicted. And "improper use of military equipement" should be an additional charge filed at the same time, as it was comitted as a part of the same offense.
Caution: IANAL. These are just my opinions. Adopt them if you wish.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
While your post is an absurd exaggeration, it does point out why Mr. Logan was looking in public forums for people distributing child porn. It's a problem in the military - he was looking for pedophiles. But he exceeded his authority.
Ok there are lots of ways to do illegal search. One of which is to scan an entire cities homes & peoples bodies using satellite interferometry to create holographic copies of everything for inspection. for example they could literally find each and every gun / weapon (and go and confiscate it, or at least track it, if they wanted). They do this type of search now illegally, and information is passed along to whom ever covertly..
Now what this particular example says is the guy didn't even do something this broad. He basically went into the equivalent of a Google search bar, typed in some gooblygook, and found children porn, because the user was publically sharing it on a network for people to find, then the government traced it to the people he was after to prosecute perhaps using identifying data like IP addresses that were available & other stuff made available by the user.
This IMO is one of those things that while the current criteria restricts, might be found legal by the US Supreme Court, because technically anyone can perform such a search like this and the user is making their data available to search in a public fashion. It wasn't even a serious violation like say, a search through satellite using electromagnetic waves aimed at the persons home enabling full remote body/home scans/object scans/holographic images to be remotely made of everything when people made attempts to build privacy by building walls and assumed the walls made themselves and their possessions invisible (only in the visible spectrum, sillies, does it actually protect anyone)..
Ninth Circuit Error hopefully the US Supreme Court takes it up. Because this was publically shared child porn. Not unlike anything else that is publically distributed.
http://www.obamasweapon.com/.
Even if he does seek treatment for his sexual deviancy, and never looks at or touches another child for the rest of his life; he will always be painted with the brush of a 'child abuser'.
That's the first thing I thought of. Is there any evidence he ever did anything to children? He distributed child porn yes, but I don't see any claims he created the works in question (that would be a different charge) or hurt anyone (yet another charge). Its also the case that such works may be fictional, and no one may have been harmed. Everyone is likely to assume the worst about him, which may be true, but it also might not be. It would be nice if he could treat his disorder, change his name and live a good life. I think he is kinda screwed though. Sucks to be him: he may have been a careless fool (really, don't expose your PI sharing things like that! I'll ignore that its trivial to frame someone for that) but he defended our rights, and suffered from a mental disorder. However he is considered evil and we all are gonna hate him.
Not everyone who is sexually attracted to someone sexually abuses them, child or not. I have to wonder if sexual abuse rates are higher or lower among pedophiles: the data we see tends to have so much selection bias its not even useful. Everyone assumes higher, but unbiased data would be nice (but we are never going to get that data: those who never hurt anyone won't admit their problem freely I fear).
Err? What military equipment? Nothing I read said the individual had any current affiliation with the military or was using military equipment. The NCIS agent just randomly looked at every computer he could find in the state of Washington without any care about whether it had anything to do with the military or not.
buried in the details in the description is a nice **official** nugget of knowledge:
any router jockey knows this is possible...but the fact that they seem to have an API and it all set up...that is interesting news
so...they can search all of Gnutella live for who is sharing CP...think about what that means...
Thank you Dave Raggett
He cannot be found guilty until he is charged with a crime, something which the poster you replied to was suggesting should happen.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It's not clear that what he was doing was against the law. He had no authority to provide evidence against a civilian to local authorities, so it couldn't be used against the defendant; but if the defendant had been in the military there wouldn't be any issue.
1) It denies innocent people their rights.
2) Because it rightfully results in guilty people going free, actual victims may be denied justice.*
*For the sake of argument let's assume I'm talking about a crime where everyone agrees there is an actual victim e.g. burglary, assault, etc. - I acknowledge that at least a small percentage of /. readers (NOT including myself) may consider typical cases of possession or downloading child porn as being a victimless crimes, making this particular case less than ideal for supporting my argument that bad policing is bad for the 2nd reason stated above.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No, he was not convicted of an illegally broad search. The appeals court found that the search was illegally broad so following the poisoned fruit doctrine, all evidence obtained that was connected to that search could not be used in the conviction of someone distributing child porn. The naval officer and the navy itself was not convicted of anything and likely will not face charges.
The title is misleading if you consider guilty as a conviction in a criminal court. The issue at hand was the court found as a "matter of fact" that the search was overly broad and violated a law so the evidence could not be used. When doing so, it is actually saying the navy did something wrong or illegal but no one was prosecuted over that act so no one was convicted (so far).
I would actually suggest that this should read "for once, the over reach of government loses". I'm not entirely sure the navy is the bad guys and I'm pretty positive the guy with kiddie porn is not exactly the good guy.
The "fuck the constitution" reality show.
You mean that show on C-SPAN that shows Congressional committee hearings and votes in Congress?
Not to be confused with the Federal Trade Commission reality show, also on on C-SPAN.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
> But like as not, there have been just as many juries use the bar set by the make-believe CSI teams to exonerate defendants,
Citation please.
But the media is doing the damnedest effort to convince the people that if police accuse someone he is certainly guilty of something and it is a matter of digging deep and broad enough to nail him.
Not always.
Take that NFL football player who was indicted last week for child abuse. He's not contesting the facts of the case. The media isn't rushing out to tar him as a child abuser, they seem to be waiting for this one to play out in front of a jury. I wonder how the press will react if a Texas jury looks at the undisputed facts and declares that his actions did violate Texas's child-abuse laws. My bet is that a few press outlets will be calling for change but most will not.
On the other hand, if the NFL doesn't hold him accountable in accordance with whatever policy was in effect at the time of the actual acts then the press will tar and feather top NFL officials - an act doesn't have to violate a criminal law to be so socially unacceptable that organizations like the NFL cannot be seen to tolerate it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Anyone got any r@ygold, hussyfan, babyshivid, pthc to trade? Meet on efnet #r@ygold
I gets in trouble?
Pffft its getting hard to get a decent fap now that the fappening is over... :-P
No, there were no winners in this one. Child Pornographers were set free without prosecution because the investigators clearly don't give a crap about following the law themselves. The excessive surveillance was so shocking to the conscience that they will even allow child pornographers to go free. Bad guys on all sides, and nobody wins.
I still call that a win. There is no evidence (thrown out or otherwise) for the child pornographer even molesting a child so what we have here is illegally gathered evidence thrown out and a person committing a victimless crime going free. I'd rather see someone gathering evidence illegally being stopped when going after a victimless crime than one where someone actually got hurt.
For anyone interested, the paper detailing the software (RoundUp) used in the dragnet can be found here: http://www.dfrws.org/2010/proc...
RoundUp is a Java-based tool that allows for both local and collaborative investigations of the Gnutella network, implementing the principles and techniques described in the previous sections. RoundUp is a fork of the Phex Gnutella client, and it retains Phex’s graphical user interface. Our changes in creating RoundUp from Phex focused on three key areas: adding specific functionality to augment investigative interactions, exposing information of interest to investigators in the GUI, and automating reporting of this information in standard ways.
Regardless of guilty or not he was using the equipment outside of the allowed operating parameters. You can't take a tank for joyride, borrow an automatic rifle to go varmant hunting at your rural property, or misuse military computers.
The question for the masses, is this worse than committing the military network to working on folding-at-home or bitcoin production?
Misuse of military equipment, a computer in this instance, is quite a different matter than distributing child pornography. The person accused and convicted prior to appeal was caught by an investigation that exceeded its jurisdiction and was too broad as it included the private computers or activities thereon of Washington State residents many of whom are not employed, directly or indirectly, by the Department of the Navy or more broadly by the Department of Defense.
The NCIS agent just randomly looked at every computer he could find in the state of Washington without any care about whether it had anything to do with the military or not.
Yes, and that is the misuse of military equipment. The NCIS agent is the one who should be charged.
The excessive surveillance was so shocking to the conscience that they will even allow child pornographers to go free.
Degree of shock to the conscience has no bearing on the law. We are a nation of laws, not feelings. The searches were in violation of the law. That is the only reason a purveyor of child porn was set free.
I suspect they're keeping an eye on the dude now, though.
If this saved the life and virtue of even one child, then I have a hard time feeling like they did anything wrong.
Okay. So let's have all your passwords and full access to your home, office and other property to make sure you're not breaking any laws. What? You have nothing to hide? Good. So we can install audio and video monitoring devices in your car and your house, including the bedroom, bathroom, providing full 24/7 coverage. Nothing to worry about citizen, this is for your protection.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Thing of it is, now that this evidence has been ruled inadmissable, they probably can't find enough evidence through other means that doesn't tie back to this evidence to build a case. Doesn't matter that they might have charged him with improper use of military equipment, they probably cannot find a method by which to demonstrate that improper use occurred without resorting to inadmissable evidence to find it, so the fruit of the tree is poisoned, as it were.
I am not a lawyer either, but I have been interested in how this aspect of law would play-out. It may affect the prosecution of those detained in the War on Terror too, if judges recognize illegally-obtained evidence and the subsequent evidence produced from it. That could well mean problems with interrogations, and given that this ruling cited a problem with military justice, there's a possibility that such rulings could apply to military tribunals too.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"We didn't engage in Jury Nullification, Your Honor, we did not feel that the State presented a case beyond a reasonable doubt."
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
> ...amend the Constitution so as to specify that assault (including sexual) and murder could not be nullified.
Good idea! Punish jurors for reaching the "wrong" verdict! What could possibly go wrong with that?
If the images were images of actual children, then the crime is not victimless. Even if this person was not the one who produced the pictures, by re-distributing them he is complicit in the guilt of the ones who did produce the pictures.
If the images are digitally rendered images from 3d models made without an actual human model, or if they are hand-produced art (again made without a human model), then an argument can be made the the crime is victimless (though there remains a debate as to whether the availability of such images serves as an outlet and hence reduces actual crime, or serves as an exacerbator and hence creates actual crime).
One of our country's most important cases dealt with the rights of a well-known scumbag at the time of his arrest. Look up the 1966 case of Miranda vs. Arizona.
He was subsequently retried and convicted without the excluded evidence. So it is possible to obtain a conviction in some cases without some evidence.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
No, they were people watching child pornogrophy. The actual pornogrophers that make the stuff are still out there. It's just too hard to go out and do real police work and get those making it. Much easier to sit in an office and search for the watchers.
WE are a nation of both laws and feelings. Passion changes law every single day. You would be foolish to ignore the human aspect of law.
Good-bye
> Dear AC, I am not familiar with a search engine called "RoundUp". Will you please provide a link? It looks useful.
RoundUp is a fork of the Phex Gnutella client. Phex is GPL, but RoundUp is only distributed to law-enforcement. Distribution comes with the source, I suspect that it also comes with a GPL-violating requirement of non-disclosure. The government has gone to court in order to fight a request by defense attorneys to reveal the source code.
The Constitution defines how the country operates. The legal framework for everything that happens. If the evidence was not gathered constitutionally, then it cannot be applied.
If we allow punishments from unconstitutional evidence gathering to stand, then we are basically saying that it's not important. The ends justify the means and all of that. Ignore the Constitution, and all of the reasons that the American colonies told England to fuck off, and all of the people who died, and all of the ideas put into creating a Constitution that made sure people could not be abused in the way the colonies were abused. All of those smart ideas don't mean anything because this one guy should be punished.
That's not how the country works. If you want it to work that way, you are against the American Constitution, against the American people, and therefore a terrorist. You might as well be in the desert chopping journalists' heads off. The ones that reported this story, because obviously it undermines how you feel America should be. Why not, if the ends justify the means?
If the way to a better America is to require Americans to quarter troops at home, and the troops can go through their hosts' belongings looking for any crime at all, it's fine, because the ends justify the means, right?
It is a tragedy that this guy goes free. But it is one tragedy. To think that sidestepping the way things are done here is a good thing is to desire an end to America. This is not hyperbole. That's why you will find Mencken quotes scattered about.
The Troll moderation on parent is not appropriate. This is probably a genuine concern, and deserves to be moderated up. Likewise, I put the time into illustrating just why, even though it sounds good, it cannot be allowed to stand, for the express reason of explaining just how contrary to the foundation of the entire American government this idea is. The idea should not be buried as a troll - it should be shouted widely, and ridiculed all the while.
And the only thing worse than "hang him anyway" would be "lol they are shitting on the Constitution anyway" because, while you aren't calling for the Constitutionally innocent to be punished, you are actively dismissing a chance to rein in bad actors before they spread.
I forgot to mention that I believe refusing to disclose the source code for RoundUp is a violation of the 6th amendment's right of confrontation. It is entirely possible that RoundUp is buggy enough to mis-attribute files to the wrong IP address.
If there was actual child porn but it was published by the person in the picture after that person became a legal adult, then possessing that image is a victimless crime. When I say "published" I don't mean "gave a copy to my girlfriend" I mean publish with the expectation that the image would become generally available to the public.
I'm not saying that the person in the picture wasn't a victim of the photographer who took the pictures of course.
Here's a pure hypothetical case of truly victimless child porn:
10 year old kid's parents set up a security camera in the living room but never look at the recordings. They never erase them either. They don't tell their kid. The 10 year old kid is home alone and bored and does something sexually explicit in view of the camera. A couple of years later the parents tell the kid about the security camera and he wonders "was I on the camera." He doesn't investigate immediately but years later when he's working on his Masters Thesis in sociology he goes back and reviews the tapes. He wants to publish them but he's afraid the cops will seize and destroy them. He takes a gamble and uploads them to pastebin.
You make presidential pardons of deep cover agents standard and you have what they're doing deemed illegal.
They do their jobs, they get their convictions, and then when all is said and done, they get pardoned and retire.
Anything else is just a violation of the foundations set for this never-actually-illustrious country.
When the perp wins, it is not a moral victory, but a national one.
From the article, I gathered that he was trading known images, not creating new ones. The plea to "protect the children" would be a plea to prevent sharing images that already exist, not preventing further abuse. We can make all kinds of arguments about what he might do, but he is not accused of hypotheticals.
That should make it easier to be okay with this decision, for people who aren't already. Possession of CP and transmission of CP are meant to stop people from producing, and in any way benefiting from producing, such images. And in that sense, we can guarantee that this guy, who is looking at 20 years in jail, is going home and wiping his drive, and will stick to the "barely 18" porn in at least the near future. Therefore, Mission Accomplished.
The perp did not win. Especially given your last sentence.
That's not winning. He is legally innocent, but factually guilty.
Unless you want to build a time machine, go back to 1775, and tell everyone to hold off and make some changes to the Constitution, this is not tough.
You: "Hey guys, what you're about to write means that some guy trading pictures of what most of you are doing with your slaves in real life is going to be freed because an asshat is going to go all England on him and violate his Constitutional rights."
Them: "Good, now die you redcoat."
Well, if civilian rules of evidence were in play, the evidence should still be thrown out - an overbroad search is an overbroad search. Even though might have found the same evidence with a narrow search, you didn't. But then, I have no clue what the rules of evidence are for the UCMJ, and it's a different world than civilian law. (And of course in the civilian world, they'd just use parallel construction to falsify the origin of the evidence.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Gnutella is like an unencrypted Bittorrent.
Additionally, like bittorrent, it sends 'chunks' of files between clients in order to help provide higher aggregate bandwidth than any seed node would normally apply.
That said: He could in fact have not viewed child porn, but indiscriminately chose to download files from a non-cp search he made, which lead to him offering some of the as yet unverified as cp files to other users simply because they were in his download folder. Similiar argument to some of the napster filesharing cases. If the file is inappropriately named you might not realize it is infringing/illegal until you actually go to view it. Given the less net-savvy population's tendancy to indiscriminately download stuff via both web browser and p2p, without necessarily ever getting around to viewing it, I could give him benefit of a doubt without other evidence proving he was intentionally distributing child pornography.
While it would be nice to use stupidity as a metric for punishment, if we're not using it against our (un)elected officials, we shouldn't be using it against any regular schmuck who has been through either our lower or higher education systems, because critical and logical thinking skills have not been emphasized in the majority of them for quite a long time.
I just come back to "probable cause". Any search without a warrant is bad, and to get that warrant you should need to show that more than half of those you search have the specified contraband. That's what "probable" means, after all.
Bayesian reasoning tells us that's a remarkably high bar to clear based on any sort of profile, but it's technically possible. If, say, you have good evidence that more than half of those who visited Silk Road have illegal drugs in their house right now, then, OK, that's a legit reason to search the houses of everyone who did.
But most profiling and broad searches are closer to 0.05% than to 50%. Search all the computers in the state and find one guilty? What percentage is that? Stop 1000 people at a sobriety checkpoint for every drunk you find? Well, that's a bit less than half, now, isn't it. Search people who fit a profile because they have a one in a million, instead of 1 in 100 million chance of being a terrorist? "They're 100 times as likely if they fit!" Yeah, well, 1 in a million is less than 1 in 2, so keep working on that profile buddy.
Probable cause. It's a simple concept.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I don't know about that, Michael Dreyer probably feels like a winner.
Trooper Powell used a program called Roundup 1.4.1 (`RoundUpâ(TM)) to search files available for sharing in the Gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing network. . . . RoundUp is a modified version of the file sharing software PHEX. . . . RoundUp utilizes a database of `hash valuesâ(TM) from files known to contain child pornography
Here you go
Not quite true. I've stopped watching shows because the "good guys" were routinely breaking the law (e.g Hawaii 5-0, NCIS LA).
Anybody that uprated the above comment is now being watched. Don't believe you're anonymous. We've got an eye on you.
It may affect the prosecution of those detained in the War on Terror too, if judges recognize illegally-obtained evidence and the subsequent evidence produced from it. That could well mean problems with interrogations, and given that this ruling cited a problem with military justice, there's a possibility that such rulings could apply to military tribunals too.
You are probably correct in cases where the cops aren't hiding things from the judge.
However, if one set of cops uses illegal means to find that a suspect did a crime then anonymously tips off another set of cops with enough information so that they could get a conviction if the tip had been given to them by someone outside the government then it's very unlikely that the shenanigans will ever be uncovered and it is very likely that the conviction will stand.
This "investigate once and ignore the rules, then do it again legally to cover our tracks" technique has a name but I can't remember it now.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Except gnu tells advertises what you are sharing
The evidence was thrown out because he was convicted of and illegally broad search, which included people not related to the military. Didn't you even read the title??? For once, the good guys win.
No, there were no winners in this one. Child Pornographers were set free without prosecution because the investigators clearly don't give a crap about following the law themselves. The excessive surveillance was so shocking to the conscience that they will even allow child pornographers to go free. Bad guys on all sides, and nobody wins.
No, I won. I am an US citizen, and by forcing the law to be upheld, regardless of the releasing a child pornographer, I won. The law should be upheld to prevent the abuses by the state. By saying it doesn't matter if he is a child pornographer, the law was broken to arrest him I won and so did the next "criminal" that is really just, say, a civil rights activist.
The excessive surveillance was so shocking to the conscience that they will even allow child pornographers to go free. Bad guys on all sides, and nobody wins.
This is not "excessive surveillance". The person possessing child pornography put it on a file sharing service. Set its permissions to public and seemingly deliberately placed the files into a publicly searchable database.
This isn't even a case of a search engine finding things on a server that wasn't supposed to be exposed to the internet, Gnutella's entire purpose is to share files with other people. The fact that a government agent bothered searching this man's index of public files he intends to share with others is not an overbreach of his privacy. It would be like me putting my couch on Craiglist "Free couch at this address" And then a NCIS officer finding cocaine inside. It's not like the NCIS broke into every single person's house in Washington state.
The only reason this was overturned was not due to shocking surveilance, but because the officer who performed the search was in the military. The FBI should and can continue to perform these types of searches.
We finally found who watches the watchers.
Well, that's just an inherent problem with NCIS, the TV show, in general. Their supposed base is "revolving around a fictional team of special agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which conducts criminal investigations involving the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps." Think about that for half a second and you'd realize that near every episode would involve someone from the Navy or Marine Corps guilty of some crime. Given the scope of the genre, that'd often be murder or mass murder. Talk about a great way to taint the military. But, then, the US is so gun-ho about its own military that it never actually turns out that way.
Honestly, a realistic NCIS would be very boring and the more exciting ones would be court marshals involving questions of actions on the battlefield without clear answers. But, then, that's not the sort of [N]CSI--how you spelled it and not NCIS--interesting thing people "want".
You do know that the "child porn" in question may be drawings? And that "distribution" and "production" are two different things?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Actually, going after the producers of this stuff (in cases where children get abused in production) is not desirable at all: It would dry up the nice stream of people that never harmed any children but have downloaded it form some file-sharing network. If they dried up production of this stuff, they could not blow it all out of proportion anymore and might have to work for their money. So they have a real interest in _not_ going after too many child abusers with cameras.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed. If "law enforcement" can resort to criminal practices at will, it will be used against anybody not in bed with them in short order.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It makes sense, that if the Navy goes beyond it's jurisdiction, it cannot initiate a prosecution.
What doesn't make sense is that this Court decision didn't call for cooperation between military and civil authorities, where the Naval operator becomes a witness of the crime, while passing said evidence to the right civil authorities, who in turn would prosecute the perp.
The Navy cannot always guarantee that it scans only military assets. However, when it does scan a non-military asset that is actively engaged in illegal activity, it would only make sense that prosecution is expedited by the Naval personnel, by submitting to the proper civil authorities the evidence that was gathered, and offer that naval personnel as witness to this crime. It sounds like either protocols were not followed, or they don't exist.
As for anyone who want privacy, realize that the internet is a public forum, and unless you participate in a protected transaction, such as a banking transaction by a bank sanctioned as legal, you don't have such rights. Given that, if you participate in illegal activities on the internet, and someone from the military or a private citizen, or a civil law enforcer witnesses that activity, you should expect prosecution.
Do the following thought-experiment: Full surveillance of everybody everywhere 24/7 with cameras, sound, infrared. That may save a few children. Is it an acceptable trade-off? Because that is what you are arguing for in the ultimate consequence. Law enforcement will always extend its powers if given a chance. That is why the result of not holding them to the standards they are supposed to enforce is called a "police state". It is a direct precursor of Fascism, where all pretense is dropped.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You have just used a prohibited word in a public forum. This may be seen by and hurt a child, so you are clearly a child abuser. Your 20 year sentence will be handed out administratively, as people like you do not deserve a fair trial. .... See anything wrong here?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The search itself was illegal. It's called fruit of the poisoned tree. They can't pass it along, no matter what they do. I don't give a fuck what they found, it should all be thrown away and they should do it properly from the very first step with a LEGAL search.
Do you think he (the NCIS agent) used his home computer or the resources at work? Abusing military resources is a serious crime. You realize that the headline says "Navy" and the guy we're talking about performing an illegal search was a member of the armed forces, right?
Just to clear that up for you, Welch asked that because of McCarthy's abusive treatment, not because Communists weren't a threat. The Communists certainly were a threat, and you pretending they were an imaginary boogeyman doesn't change that.
There are enough bodies in the ground and missing limbs or scars on the living due to terrorists associated with al Qaida that we know they aren't imaginary boogeymen either.
As to sex trafficking and pornography involving children.... that's real too.
The so called "security theater" of the TSA has keep thousands of guns and various other dangerous materials off from planes, and it seems pretty clear that militants have tested the boundaries over the years just looking for an opportunity. Is it flawed? Certainly. Is it useless? Probably not.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
1) Wow, just wow. A real live usenet troll, I haven't seen troll work like this in years. Congratulations you've made my weekend
OR
2) Oh then there could be the minute chance you really are as stupid as your post makes you seem, but that would be stunning considering the scope of your moronic statements. Police on special duties like these are more than willing to spend lots and lots of effort and time to find and punish the producers of child porngraphy and the amount of work they have do to find, track and then gain enough evidence to convict these people would astound an idiot like you. The vast majority of cops that work these special duties want nothing more than to shut down the producers.
I don't understand how searching for known CP files on Gnutella is an illegal search. It could be a lack of technical understanding on my part, but I thought of it like this:
There's an officer looking for users of the new getuhigh drug. If the officer stops everyone to search them for getuhigh, I understand that that's an illegal search. If the officer stops and searches only those people who are yelling out to the general public "want to buy some getuhigh?, I've got some right here," then that wouldn't seem like an illegal search.
Now suppose there's an officer looking for CP on the Gnutella file sharing network. Let's say the officer has a special program, hackunow. If the officer uses hackunow to search the entire computer (not just the shared files) of everyone on Gnutella, I could see that as an illegal search. If the officer searches Gnutella for publicly shared files called herestheCPrighthere.jpg and only then uses hackunow on the specific users sharing those files, that wouldn't seem like an illegal search because those users are publicly announcing that they have CP. If the file has a more generic name ( hereitis.jpg ), then that might be too generic to justify use of hackunow, but wantsomeCPherecomegetit.jpg wouldn't seem to be generic.
I don't understand anything beyond the basic idea of Gnutella as a file sharing network, but don't you have to place whatever you want to share in a folder or specifically tell Gnutella to share a particular list of files? I don't understand how that wouldn't be equivalent to yelling out "here's the CP," "gethuhigh for sale here," etc..
Watcher watcher watchers?
Well, AC's never have a clue what is really going on, and you are no exception.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why is the Navy searching for child porn in the first place? Aren't there better departments for that sort of thing? Or is "searching for child porn" just a generic excuse anyone can give for invading privacy?
Why? This works in many other countries exactly like that. If good guys brake the law we punish them also. They don't have any immunity as in the US. Works really well.
I honestly don't want to engage in the debate whether commies were a threat. The ones in Russia with the bombs, most likely. The idiots running around in the US? Very debatable.
I know the hearing between Welch and McCarthy rather well (I dare say most likely better than most non-US people). Its importance is less in what transpired, what mattered is what effect it had. It was the end of the witch hunts. Because that's what the whole zeal to find commies turned into. What went down in the US during those years around whether or not someone was a commie was not far from what happened in Russia with whether or not someone was anti-commie. The main difference being mostly that the outcome was less lethal in the US. The process itself, though, was the same mix of hysteria, opportunism and people who used it to get rid of opponents, as well as an excuse to do "whatever is necessary" and "end justifying any means".
I cannot help but find the same attitude now towards the proverbial four horsemen of the infocalypse. Is there a threat? Yes. Is it as big as we're led to believe? Hell no. But it is a very neat vehicle to get whatever you want because nobody may oppose it without provoking the question "or are you a commie/terrorist/pedo/whatever?"
Black and white. You're on one side or the other. The idea that BOTH sides could be wrong is not even offered as an option.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
IN this case the cops would have been caught, because we know the cocaine was planted, right? Why should it be a slap on the wrist? I mean, the polce officers distributed cocaine, I'm sure there is a bigger penalty than slap on a wrist for that? Also, because we now know they planted it, the person didn't really have it in their possession knowingly, he was framed. So no conviction there. I don't see the problem.
"The computer search goes into private territory. "
If I understood right he was just searching some file sharing network. So.. is it really private if your computer tells about it to the whole world?
No you can't. You'd hav to have means of actually acting in under a second when someone is committing a crime.
You can't stop me from bashing someones head in with a baseball bat even if you had cameras on me 24/7. If I had a good enough a reason to do it I would, never mind the cameras. Might break some of them just for fun if I had time while waiting for the police to arrive.
Your scheme would require over half the population to act as law enforcement, and then, someone would have to look out for crimes they might commit. And be ready to act against them. And so on.
Again, arguing semantics, but see my point about depriving someone of liberty. If I put you in a padded cell the first time I see any indication that you have any inclinations that you 'might' at some point think about committing a crime the system works In theory. (heck if we want to be really oppressive about it, I can envision a system where the only way to get a baseball bat is to requisition one at an approved 'practice cage') I agree that practicality aside this would require huge increases in manpower for both the surveillance and enforcement side of the puzzle, and that society as it is right now would never stand for that sort of invasion of privacy, but slippery slope man.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Does that reasoning apply to sites that host pictures of actual killings/beheadings etc? Are the people hosting the site complicit in the guilt of the murders commited? Does that apply to news channels as well?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUqytjlHNIM
The better analogy in your case would be if the investigator had to enter someone's house (without a warrant) to view a potential crime while the homeowner had a sign out saying "come on in!".
FTFY. If you install P2P software and share files with the world, you are no longer operating in private.
Joe Biden is a square shooter. Joe Biden for 2016.
Your logic is off a bit. Sadly, the criminals involved in viewing this child pornography would never even have been caught if the investigator had been following the letter of the law. But at least now, the FBI is aware of those people, as are their friends and neighbors. Hopefully, they're ostracized from normal society, and they're under further observation from the non-military feds.
"If you want to live in a society where a guilty person is set free because of technicalities of how evidence was discovered, with no regard as to its credibility, go for it."
Those "technicalities" are what's known as "the law." Rules of civil and criminal procedure (and ther military equivalents) exist for a reason, and everyone is supposed to play within the rules. Failure to do so is a violation of the law. Since you seem to believe that "getting the bad guys" is more important than following the law, I wonder how you would feel if you were on the wrong end of your own flavor of seeking justice. There are very good reasons why doctrines such as "fruit of the poisonous tree" exist. Breaking the law to enforce the law is still breaking the law, and the evidence obtained by committing that crime is no different than money and property obtained from theft, larceny, blackmail, or drug trafficking.
This is a nasty case of cognitive dissonance. Either the law matters or it doesn't. This is not a corner case that should be covered by a magical exception. If you think the man whose conviction was overturned should not have had his conviction overturned, you must also think that the law enforcement officials involved should face criminal prosecution and ultimately be imprisoned for breaking the law. Likewise, if the rulebook we are all supposed to play by matters, the defendant cannot be convicted using evidence that was obtained by violating the law.
Thing of it is, now that this evidence has been ruled inadmissable, they probably can't find enough evidence through other means that doesn't tie back to this evidence to build a case. Doesn't matter that they might have charged him with improper use of military equipment, they probably cannot find a method by which to demonstrate that improper use occurred without resorting to inadmissable evidence to find it, so the fruit of the tree is poisoned, as it were.
OK, you seem a little confused. The evidence is inadmissible as evidence against the people whose computers and activities were searched. The fact that an officer committed an illegal search which turned out to be inadmissible in the trial of the people he or she was investigating (and the facts surrounding that) are NOT inadmissible in an investigation or trial of the original investigating officer. Otherwise police misconduct would be nearly impossible to enforce.
Just to clarify - the inadmissibility of a piece of evidence is a property of the evidence that only applies in the context of a trial. Evidence ruled inadmissible in one trial may be used in another trial.
I'm so tired of hearing the same tired old line of "It's just too hard to go out and do real police work..." from people who have no clue about LE. I am a federal agent involved with similar operations. So let me ask you, Sherlock, "How would *you* go about finding those individuals producing child pornography (i.e. sexually abusing children and recording it)? Seriously... what do you suggest? If you have any good ideas, I'd love to hear them. I suppose I could go door-to-door and ask people if they were making child porn. Or maybe I could surveil every person in a given area to see if they're producing it. Oh that's right... that would be too intrusive, wouldn't it? Maybe target NAMBLA? Oh wait, they're just expressing their First Amendment rights, right? Maybe we should require anybody who desires to make child porn register for a child porn license? Or put a sticker on their driver’s license like an organ donor? Should we poll all the children on their first day of school and ask them if they were molested over the summer? No? Well, how about "beating the bushes" a little on traffic stops? You know, searching cars or cell phones to proactively look for evidence of additional criminality. Don't like that either, huh? Should we follow those people we see just hanging out "minding their own business" by the playground? Or maybe just the "creepy looking" ones? No? Okay, let’s go way out of the box and track those lone males who come back from “vacation” in Thailand or Cambodia to see if they’re into child porn or raping children. Oh that would be profiling, wouldn’t it? You ask the police to go do "real police work” but are the first to complain when we do. So you, yes, *you*, tell me: How should LE proactively work to combat the heinous crime of child sexual abuse? Or should we just sit around and wait for victims to call us?
Your hypocrisy aside, back on point: Truth is you don't find producers without first finding consumers. And often times, consumers are also producing their own stuff and/or distributing it. Heck, P2P = distribution. And before you say it, yes, it *is* a big deal. Research shows those who are "just" looking at child porn are likely to molest kids. Yes, *I know* other research exists that disputes this. Spare me the pedagogy. And regarding the military/civilian issue, perhaps we should require all military members to put some kind of beacon on their personal computers so online investigators know who's military and who's not. Oh wait... that might violate somebody's rights, huh?
As with other earlier P2P networks, wouldn't it just be a matter of "look for something bad and see who has it? Personally, if you're sharing out "illegal [xxx] blah" on a public network, how is it different from hosting a webpage with the same material?
Now if he was breaking into people's computers to find it, I can understand, but in this case it sounds like he pretty much just looked for what people were sharing publicly. If it's public, the expectation of privacy should be pretty low, so what are the search restrictions in that case?
like traffic tickets. It's a lot easier for a cop to sit on his ass eating donuts in front of a computer monitor than it is to go out and prosecute actual sex crimes
I know somebody who does this job. If you think it's easy then how about YOU try it. Firstly, it isn't just "randomly searching the internet for bad stuff", but quite often investigating the computers of people who have an outstanding accusation of abuse (e.g. Timmy said uncle Frank has been doing something fairly heinous) for further evidence. At that point, they'll often find images of the person committing the abusive acts in question, as well as a trove of some fairly sick shit. We're not talking bathtub and beach pictures here, we're talking pain, degradation, and suffering.
Perhaps you think you can get away with looking at pictures of children being abused for days on end and not end up being not being affected, but it's certainly not a job that *I* would want to do.
Now, your initial argument is that 18 years is too long for just "traders." That may be a bit more reasonable, especially since these days it's pretty easy to pick up some weird/borderline crap on your computer just by visiting some hack/torrent sites (nasty banners). I'm not sure what the threshold for content is between "collecting" and "has nasty crap on computer", but that would be much more of a concern than your so-called "lazy" cops who have to look at sludge all day long.
I wonder how much the perp actually one. Being named for having said material but getting off on a technicality may keep you out of jail, but it isn't going to do much for your social life or career (assuming he had either).
What if it's a search that any civilian can do. As an individual, I can report things on the internet that are obviously illegal. Is there anything stopping him from reporting to the police/etc - as Navy personnel - material that any regular citizen would just as easily been able to find?
One question becomes who to report to (because frankly, some cops may be just as likely to investigate the person making the report). In the case of child abuse, I'd prefer www.missingkids.com for child abuse, but is there any truly effective and anonymous reporting agency?
If they're using it for internal use, then no. GPL comes into play with distribution.
People like you are the biggest problem this nation has. Those in your position who espouse your attitude will gladly destroy the lives of other people and trample every human right that exists in your mad quest to find criminals. You also assert that " Research shows those who are "just" looking at child porn are likely to molest kids" which is a big fat [citation needed] and shows that you don't really understand the subject of child abuse and pornography in the first place. Spare you the pedagogy? I suppose truth is too inconvenient.
I'm a person who was dragged through the mud in the court system because of pieces of sub-human hate-mongering shit like you. My guilt or lack thereof was completely and totally irrelevant to you assholes. Risk factors? Fuck risk factors, we're doing something about bad people! These people are trash and will never be anything but damaging to society, and the ends always justify the means! This is a war on immorality and ten innocents going to prison are noble causalties in that war if it means one guilty person gets hit in the process!
You know what? Let me know when you start prosecuting rotten.com for posting photos of illegal acts. Let me know when your legislated morality stops considering "appeal to the prurient interest" as a magical special factor that decides if a photograph of a criminal act is a felony to possess or not. I know it won't happen. You always need some shit to witch-hunt against, though, so I doubt it will ever happen. Fuck logical consistency, after all, because this is about how YOU have some sort of moral high ground with a law enforcement ivory tower on top of it.
People like you who disregard the rights of others and bulldoze anyone who gets in the way of your morality crusades by DARING to question you are the true face of evil. I could have done so much more with my life, but people like you decided that it was more important to scratch another line in the tally of people you've successfully prosecuted than to go after actual criminals who've actually committed crimes. People like you think justice is somehow served best by adding bodies to jails and to the statistics instead of seeking the truth. How many families do you have to tear apart and lives do you have to destroy before the guilt hits you?
With law enforcement like yours, we don't need the terrorists. You spoony bards are doing a fine job of wrecking the place on your own. Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if you jack off to pictures of children being raped and love the fact that you get away with it, considering what hypocritical assholes every moral crusader ever seems to be.
Nope. Guess again. Got clues unfortunately you seem to be playing the "I hate the cops they never do anything right" game.
Now politicians will use "what about the children" arguement for their own ends and maybe in your corner of the world the special duties officers don't care but in my corner of the world they spend lots of time and effort finding the producers. They want the children protected signifigantly more than they want to arrest the people who watch it.
Well, then in your area of the world, things are different than in most. "Low hanging fruits" and all that. Cops cannot do things right if they get orders to produce as many visible results as possible and orders to stay away from things that are hard but would actually help people. I am of course talking about the higher ups giving the orders (and bowing to politics more often than not), not the ones doing the actual work. I do not doubt that many of them would prioritize exactly as you say, but they have to follow orders.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Were they caught with child porn? If so its a pity they will get off on a technicality rather than facing a long prison due to the fact that the person who discovered it was exceeding his authority. I do see something wrong with that.
Feel better now? You make some great assumptions about who I am and how I work. Do you have any basis for those assertions you've made about me? Or are you just talking out your ass? I mean, I can appreciate ad hominem attacks as much as the next guy, but for crying out loud man, at least have a basis for your attack. By the way, I don't actually go around violating people's rights. Besides, if you read my post, you'll see I was just addressing how some people complain about LE only going after low-hanging fruit, then in same breath, want to limit LE's ability to actually find anything *but* low-hanging fruit. It just gets tiresome.
So what happened to you? You get busted for possessing child porn? I mean, come on, you're anonymous. Did you? What you get busted for?
I normally don't get into internet arguments (you know, the whole "wrestle with pigs" thing, but since you bring up so many points, I feel compelled to answer.
1. What is my "attitude that I espouse" exactly? You seem to know so please enlighten the class. Go on. I promise to admit it if you get it right.
2. I've disregarded human rights? Really? I can't recall doing that. Please provide examples. Extra points for dates and names.
3. "sub-human hate-mongering shit like you." Excellent reply. Very rational. You win the argument.
4. I've never sent an innocent person to prison. And in fact, the guilty people I sent got there without me violating their rights. Go figure.
5. Wait, you *want* me to prosecute rotten.com? What about their free speech rights? Make up your mind, already.
6. "People like you who disregard the rights of others..." People like me, huh? Again... who's rights have I violated? When? What did I do?
7. "it was more important to scratch another line in the tally of people you've successfully prosecuted than to go after actual criminals who've actually committed crimes." You mean crimes like possession of child pornography? Distribution of child pornography? Production of child pornography? Sexual exploitation of children? Child rape? You mean those crimes? Or are those not crimes?
8. Lastly, I know it probably made you feel really tough with that whole "jacking off" comment, but it only stings if it were true. Since I don't, you just look defensive and desperate. So what *did* you get busted for?
Ahh, the bastion of non-logic wants to pretend to argue logically. How very typical. You'd love to dish out vague rhetoric and generalize away things that destroy lives but demand that any such generalizations about you be only specifically about you and therefore false because you, too, are anonymous and therefore impossible to know anything about. You preach about justice and criminality in broad terms and throw out implications and generalizations about others, yet when vague insinuations about you and people in your line of work are levied in your direction, you respond no differently than an interro- er, I mean "interview" subject would.
I can see how you sleep at night, since you've supposedly "never sent an innocent person to prison" and you are so very certain that this is the case (I suppose a mental stretch can be made that you don't send people to prison because the only class of demon higher than yourself, the prosecutors, are the ones who ultimately obtain the convictions). I fail to see how attempting to answer your "questions" will lead to valuable discussion. I wanted to see if you are the way I suspected you are. I am both amused and unsurprised. I wonder if you're really an officer...or just someone performing the motions of a cliche Law & Order persona. Feel free to take guesses at what character I'm playing. I'd love to read some more of this interactive fiction.
I regret to inform you that I won't be subscribing to your newsletter. Take care, Anon.
There isn't a better place for it so I'll just leave this here... Reid technique
In the NCIS tv series the crew always seemed to have a ridiculous extent of authority and access to information. I wonder if that was an accurate representation of some attitudes at NCIS, or whether they were actually influenced by the show.
That was the unfortunate third option I came up with earlier today.
3) Scumbag political interference stops special duty officers from taking serious action against the producers of child porn and instead focuses on the watches of child porn to increase `low hanging fruit` conviction numbers.
To that end I would like to apologize for my misunderstanding and offer my condolences that your corner of the world has that type of political interference in special duty investigations. In my corner of the world the special duty officers can tell politicians to go away (perhaps not that politely ) if they attempt to interfere in their primary duty of resucing children from child pornographers and a call to the press would have the politicain facing a very public wrath that would destroy most if not all good standing the politician had with the majority of the voting public. Low numbers of watcher convictions but good conviction rates on producers and rescued children matter more to the general population where I live.
No, the investigator wasn't found guilty. The evidence he found was illegally obtained, and the pervert's conviction was overturned. Whether the investigator is charged is a separate issue and would be a court martial probably.
Want to make generalizations? Go ahead, but when you're talking to somebody who knows better, you immediately lose credibility. In this case, you were and you did.
I'm not sure what I said that made you so angry (except maybe me calling out your BS accusations for what they were). All I said in my original post was that I'm tired of people who complain that LE doesn't do anything about "real crime" then cry foul if we do anything proactive. Am I not entitled to that opinion? Then I provided numerous examples of why it's just not that easy working within the law to identify producers of child porn (since we were, after all, talking about child porn.) Next thing I know you come spewing your vitriol. I'm sorry if you were wrongly accused of something, but 1) I didn't do it to you, and 2) that has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted.
Apology accepted. Your 3) is spot on and there is also serious pressure from those pushing for even more surveillance. They do not even publish statistics of how many producers they have stopped here, likely because the number is so low.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We have politicians involved in 3) for other types of crimes but that is because they can get away with it and the public will not vote them out.
That politicians attempt to interfere in the special duty officers primary duty of rescuing the children is morally repulsive. Yes you arrest the watchers and squeeze them for all the information you can legaly get but you don't ever think that stopping the watchers is your primary goal. Primary goal is rescue the children, that does mean you need to convict the producers and disrupt(or stop) distribution network but you alway focus on rescuing the children.
If one cannot do anything about a particular crime without trampling rights then perhaps it is best to do nothing. The legal rulebook is inconvenient to everyone - innocent, guilty, law enforcement, prosecution, all of them - in some way or other. It could use many changes but it is still the rulebook. It looks like (to me) the problem is that a lot of the people I listed also want to stretch the rulebook out, see how thin it goes without breaking.
I'm not sure if I can swallow that it would be best to do *nothing*. I think you'd have to define what rights we're talking about more and what constitutes as "trampling" for me to address that. But I agree with your basic premise that LE needs to play by the rules. The problem is the rule book keeps getting bigger. And yes, I *will* use every legal trick in the book because that's what we're supposed to do. If the law says don't cross "this line." Why should I stand back 10 feet from it? If the law says you must pay $1000 in taxes, have you ever written a check for $1500? If the speed limit is 55mph, do most people drive slower than that? So of course I'm going to do whatever I can within the law to catch criminals, especially those who are involved with child exploitation. I am curious (in all seriousness) what you meant by "stretching the rulebook out." Can you give me an example? Again, I don't mind playing by the rules. I just get tired of the criticism that LE is not "doing enough" when The People/The Courts keep taking tools away from us. Take for instance the use of GPS transponders on vehicles. They provide no information that physical surveillance of a target (no warrant needed) couldn't provide, but they do it obviously with greater security and less manpower. We used to be able to use them without a warrant. But the courts have recently ruled that a warrant is now required. Okay, fine. I don't mind getting a warrant if I have PC. But understand that surveillance of a target is a primary tool that's often used early on to *develop* probable cause. People may not *like* being surveilled (heck, I wouldn't) but there's a lot of things people don't *like* that are not in violation of the Constitution. We have no reasonable expectation to privacy when we drive down a public street. Given the manpower, I could follow you around 24/7, 365, and there are no legal issues. Yet the courts have ruled against GPS trackers (collecting the same information) because they're "too automated." Makes my job harder. Moving back to my original point... The public has no duty to make my job easier, but then they aren't being intellectually honest when they (those that do) complain about LE only going after "low-hanging fruit."
That doesn't necessarily apply. If the LEO stood up in court and said "This is what RoundUp showed", it would be reasonable to discuss the possible failings of RoundUp. If it was used as the basis for further investigation, then it may be irrelevant where the original lead came from (as long as it's legal). If the police get a few tips from informers, manage to get a search warrant, and search some place and find illegal stuff, then the defendant will not see the informers in court, but rather the people who did the search. (There is the question about whether the search warrant was properly issued, how the search was conducted, etc.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
...I didn't know you could hand-pick the computers you searched on gnutella. Isn't it a p2p search-tree (or a broadcast) that you can't limit to any geographic area or ip range other than filtering the end-results?
Thanks for taking time to post on Slashdot. While we have you here, I am curious what do you think of the following: it's easier to watch and find out where and how the CP is being produced when the trading environment is not disturbed by law enforcement, and the opposite would also be true (finding producers is far more difficult when the distribution "goes dark" after a bust and existing trails to follow get exhausted.)
A valid point. And for some situations you're right. The only issue I would take with your premise is that the CP trading environment is not nearly so stratified as say, the illegal drug trade, "Drug Package A" can only be in one place at one time, must be physically moved from place to place, and once consumed is gone forever. But "CP Package A" can exist in literally thousands of places around the world, be instantly "teleported" around the world, and be traded and "consumed" indefinitely. Generally, a bust in one particular area, say New York, doesn't really scare people in Los Angeles. So the distribution never really "goes dark." Sure if it hits national news, it might make some people gun shy (no pun intended) for a while, but for the hard core pedophiles, the compulsion is so strong they *have* to have come back up to the surface looking for more. I realize I'm only addressing the demand side of the equation, here. Which leads me to this: In many cases the producers are not part of some giant organized international child porn ring. Everyday users/traders are often found to be producing their own homemade stuff using either their own kids or kids they have access to. And even if they're not producing and distributing CP, they're often found to be sexually abusing them. So we (LE as a whole, that is) are able to rescue those kids from abuse. Obviously, the more sophisticated any target is (criminal or otherwise), the more difficult it will be to penetrate. As in most aspects of LE, big cases usually start with small cases. The guy busted for possession of drugs got them from some street-level dealer, who bought them from somebody bigger, and on up the food chain. The guy caught in a stolen car knows where to chop it. The burglary suspect knows the fence. The guy caught stealing scrap metal has to take it somewhere. You often have to take down end-users to develop the intel to target bigger fish.
Slightly off topic here, but your comment reminded me of the age-old dilemma in the intelligence field: Say we have a really great, one-of-a-kind, source who provides us with some amazing intel. If we act on the intel, it will be obvious who/what our source is. But if we don't act, then what good is having the information? There is no easy answer. So, speaking just for myself here, if I can turn a "low level" case into something bigger, I will. If not, well, we're talking about children here, so I'll help who I can where I can.