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."

Comments

When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Where is the misuse of military equipment charg

[gweihir]

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.