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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."
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
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.
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.
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
Right on! And take his badge away while you're at it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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
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'.
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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.
I'm bucking for the Constitution of the United States, Bubba, and, indeed, "he seems to have exceeded his statutory jurisdiction in pursuit of actual crimes."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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
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.
No you aren't "bucking for the Constitution of the United States." The case is based on statutory law, not Constitutional rights. The Posse Comitatus Act is an ordinary law passed by Congress. That can change it or undo it if they care to.
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
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 . . .
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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.
That's fine with me, but I'll go for the derivative of the 4th Amendment.
It's not cool to throw wide nets.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Disagreeing with one crime is no excuse for agreeing with another.
Yes, I do expect law enforcement to act within the law. For the very simple reason that if there's some way to rubber stamp a way around it with "serves to protect against child porn/terrorism/organized crime/money laundering/choose the horrible crime of the month", whenever it is convenient, any kind of check that serves to protect you from your law enforcement invading your privacy can as well be abolished. A law that only exists as long as the one limited by its existence allows it to be, if it can be ignored at will by the entity subject to it, is void by definition.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The criminals here worthy of being described as scum and deserving confinement are the people involved in child pornography, not the investigator. At worst he seems to have exceeded his statutory jurisdiction in pursuit of actual crimes.
Allow me to quote the immortal words of Mr H.L. Mencken:
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Now, on behalf of Mr Mencken, and all those who fight for human freedom, allow me to suggest you fuck off, and to remind you that just because there are a few scummy characters in the world, it still doesn't justify putting the entire state of Washington under surveillance, which is what happened here.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
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!
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.
When there's a statutory violation, no need to continue to try a constitutional violation. It's almost like federal was written to prohibit this overreach, and when it occurred, the evidence was thrown out.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
That, definitely. I'm not really sure he's "scum", but he's certaily demonstrated that he doesn't undertstand the law well enough to be trusted with enforcing it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
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).
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.
I didn't suggest that the entire state of Washington should be under surveillance. I only commented on the application of "scum" as applying to child molesters,
Distinction without a difference.
do you think he might lean towards the sentiment expressed in another of his famous quotes?
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats. -- H. L. Mencken
You've misunderstood the quote. He's talking about being a pirate ("black flag"), about going against the state. That you take it as an endorsement of abusing state power to go after a comparatively minuscule threat is sad, predictable, but sad.
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
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.
Yes, you are trying to be "funny." This isn't a matter of Constitutional law but ordinary statutory law passed by Congress. They don't need to pass a Constitutional amendment to change an ordinary law.
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
Disagreeing with one crime is no excuse for agreeing with another.
If you trouble yourself to read what I wrote you'll see that I didn't. But straw men arguments are the way of Slashdot, aren't they?
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
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.
To put it in a different perspective, one person was violating the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution in order to enforce a law violating the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. And everyone thinks his victim is the dangerous one.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Could you provide a perspective on something that actually happened? Where is the 4th Amendment violation?
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
No, he's just familiar with the history of abuse by the government that inspired our rules regarding due process and how they are absolutely necessary to combat tyranny. The government always starts overreach with something easy to be against and slowly turns up the heat. Due process lets murderers run the streets so that mass murderers don't sit on the seat of power.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
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.
Where is the 4th Amendment violation?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but did Mr Logan have a warrant to search all of Washington? And where's his probable cause? Or maybe his search for child porn, wasn't a search?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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
It would be great if you could simply stick to the real Constitution instead of making up crap.
But I see crap is popular content, so I guess that hope is forlorn.
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
> 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.
Everyone but you is construing your post to mean that the government investigators was OK to exceed his authority because child molesters are scum. When you call enough people idiots for misunderstanding you, you should start to think that you were perhaps unclear.
Or as the old saying goes "if everyone you see is an asshole, look in the mirror".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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, I'd be with you if the government was poking around on the users' computers, but they weren't. The users were hosting the files on a public peer-to-peer network where you essentially advertise to the world you've downloaded the file and are making it available to the world. Since both those acts are illegal, you don't really have an expectation of privacy once you've told *everyone* you've done it. While the broadcasting of the file's availability doesn't prove you have criminal intent, it's certainly probable cause for further investigation.
These guys got off on a narrow technicality. Of course technicalities do matter; a government that isn't restrained by laws is inherently despotic. The agents simply misunderstood the law; they weren't violating anyone's privacy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
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.
>pursuit of actual crimes.
bullshit. He's been randomly searching intertubes, in a gross violation of civil liberties, and just so happened to be caught when he brought criminal charges.
I don't like pedophiles either, but when you commit extra-legal investigations, its rarely what makes headlines are you sole motivation.
Don't tell me you actually beileve either internet censorship or internet surviallence is actually in place to stop pedophiles.
did these people actually touch kids, or did they just get caught with verboten images. Because there is a pretty big diffrence.
It seems to me "child porn" is always brought up when the government is caught snooping online where they shouldn't be. I think there is no way of knowing what other stuff he was *really* looking for, when they drag up a handful of kiddie porn cases to justify their abuses.
Thats the war on drugs in a nutshell, its a wanton power grab, where everyone has become a suspect, and all rights are at the whim of the government, and all they need to do is find a few really dirty scumbags to haul in front of the public to justify their continued operations.
But you see, the larger problem isn't drugs or pedophiles, its well placed cynacism of the government. What you have with them is an British India Python problem, where the enforcers made a business out of enforcement, and see a gain at breeding problems to solve for fun and profit.
> Due process lets murderers run the streets
due proccess keeps innocent men from getting framed as murderers. Its an imperative for law enforcement to act proffesionally, to the end it keeps then honest, and makes them engage in fact based investigations, not willy nilly witch hunts.
The evidence was thrown out because a military investigator found the material, not because it was an unconstitutional search.
Nice try but that is not what the fine article says. It says:
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.
Even a modicum of common sense should tell you that people in military service do not have the same Constitutional rights as the general public even without the huge hint in the fine article. From Does the Constitution apply to rights of military members?:
But in other respects, even basic rights against unreasonable searches and seizures are virtually non-existent [for military personnel].
The problem was not that a person in the military was conducting a search that would have been Constitutional had a non-military person conducted it. The problem was that the search was performed using the lax (and generally Unconstitutional) standards the military uses for searching its own but it was conducted on an entire state. If the government wins this case then they will have a right to search all of your computers without any warrant or any probable cause just by asking a member of the military to conduct the search and then hand off anything interesting to the police of FBI.
Please stop just making shit up in order to twist a story into fitting your political agenda.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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.
The zealotry you people show in defending the U.S. Constitution makes religious extremists look like moderates.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
How do you show the government that they have violated the law? By letting illegally obtained evidence stand?
So, in the future, any case should be OK, and any violations of law should be OK, as long as it is for a greater good? What if it's a "greater good" that you disagree with? Who gets to draw that line?
Much as I think the guy need to go to jail, I have to go with the evidence is inadmissible.
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.
The dissenting judge disagrees with the majority opinion. It is ridiculous to use the dissenting opinion to explain the majority opinion. Agent Logan was legally able to perform what would normally be an Unconstitutional search when the search was restricted to military personnel only. I said your common sense should have told you that military personal don't have the same Constitutional rights as normal citizens. I also provided a link to a page that described this in detail. Therefore your insinuation that I was relying solely on common sense is another fabrication. If you disagree and think that military personnel have the same Constitutional rights as normal citizens, fine, let's discuss it. But don't insinuate I was relying on common sense when I provided a link (and you could just as easily use Google to get the same results).
Regardless of which laws were used by the defense to throw out the results of a search that was clearly Unconstitutional [see below], the following facts remain:
The fundamental question is whether the US Government has the right to search all of the computers in the United States without a warrant and without probable cause. The majority ruled they do not. The choice to use the Posse Comitatus Act was made by the defense attorneys, not the judges. It is usually much cheaper to avoid arguing things on Constitutional grounds. But the use of the PCA by the defense does not at all imply that no Constitutional rights were violated.
It boggles my mind that anyone would honestly think such a search was Constitutional as long as it was performed by non-military personnel. What possible use is the 4th Amendment if such searches were legal? If you really want to argue that such a broad search of normal people would be Constitutional then let's do it. Don't hide behind implications and insinuations.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Unfortunately what we tend to get is idiocy in the defense of liberty, and indifference to the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.
Many people on Slashdot would undue the Republic if they could, even though for many of them it would be by accident.
I find no small irony in you quoting Barry Goldwater.
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
I've got a question for you. Since your post wasn't really connected to anything in the thread, why didn't you just start a new thread?
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
We finally found who watches the watchers.
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.
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.
There is a reason why even the religious nut-balls realized that judgment must be deferred in most cases: Everybody does smaller and larger sins all the time. Prosecute them all and society collapses. (See also "You Commit Three Felonies a Day" http://online.wsj.com/articles...)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No. If anybody but a LEO does it, it is "searching for illegal pornography" and "trying to obtain illegal pornography" and a crime.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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..
Everyone but you is construing your post to mean that the government investigators was OK to exceed his authority because child molesters are scum.
Not everyone is, no. But a certain portion of people posting are pretending that is what I wrote to suit their own purposes. It is a common problem, especially when you aren't going with the crowd and the mistaken ideas they may have on any particular subject.
When you call enough people idiots for misunderstanding you, you should start to think that you were perhaps unclear.
In an honest discussion with people making good faith posts based on reasonable understandings, perhaps. I'll allow that it does seem possible I may have overtaxed the ability of some portion of the Slashdot community by suggesting something requiring an "AND" to understand: child molesters are scum, AND the investigator exceeded his authority.
Unfortunately on Slashdot there is no shortage of straw man arguments, deliberately misrepresentations, axe grinding, grandstanding (I'll defend my misunderstandings of the Constitutions to the death!), and so forth. There are a range of other explanations from unsavory to far worse. Slashdot doesn't lack for pedophiles, defenders of pedophiles (as opposed to people holding a rigorous view of the law and civil rights), (selectively anti-government) narcissists, anti-Americans, anti-Semites, and people that hold extremist views or are otherwise from the political fringe.
Of course since I have regularly been mod bombed over the years for simply quoting the law or the news contrary to popular opinion, who can tell? Some people have made it clear in the past that they will mod bomb me whenever they have mod points, and I seem to be getting some "interesting" moderation today over a range of posts. On the plus side I haven't seen much in the way of death wishes today.
Or as the old saying goes "if everyone you see is an asshole, look in the mirror".
Don't worry, I already know I have some behind me too. But thanks for the tip.
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
While possible, I doubt the case would have reached a conviction in that case, (or at least there would have been a slap on the wrist style plea bargain) rather than a full blown 'fruit of the poisonous tree' style evidential suppression. Instead I expect the defense would have looked for a more mens rea style defense. Granted fighting that sort of fight would require a somewhat capable lawyer with a decent understanding of the technical details of the case, but given the ultimate result of this case, it doesn't seem like the defense was lacking adequate legal council.
Ultimately I think being able to say you won (or pled out) the case because you accidentally downloaded a mislabeled file would sit better with most people who might inquire about it in the future, than saying you won the case because of a legal technicality that prevented the court from being able to 'prove' your guilt.
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I disagree.
Presuming that you subscribe to the notion that uploading child pornography should be a crime (which indeed it is by federal law), then it is not unreasonable to open an investigation into any computer located in the US which is openly offering to upload child pornography.
There is nothing wrong with "casting a wide net" in a situation like this, because the only IP's you are going to snag are those used to commit crimes. I would see it as similar to installing a license plate reader at a toll plaza that triggers an alarm when a stolen car passes by.
Now, there are some specific issues I think are relevant.
1) There is not a lot of evidence that most people who share this material are actually involved in harming children in any way.
2) Even being accused of such a crime can cause irreparable harm to someone.
3) Many of the IP's involved may be compromised in some way or used by someone who is not the owner, someone likely to suffer significant social, legal, financial, and occupational consequences even if the charges are dismissed.
But those concerns aside, what the agent did was perfectly appropriate and lawful. The conviction was thrown out not because "casting a wide net" in this regard is unconstitutional, but because he did not have law enforcement authority over civilians per the federal code, so basically, it was thrown out on a technicality designed to keep the military out of police work.
Maybe you could kindly elaborate how
"The criminals here worthy of being described as scum and deserving confinement are the people involved in child pornography, not the investigator."
does not fit the description of
"Disagreeing with one crime is no excuse for agreeing with another."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Yes, I'll elaborate. You omitted something which is what creates the misunderstanding.
At worst he seems to have exceeded his statutory jurisdiction in pursuit of actual crimes.
"Exceeded his statutory jurisdiction" != "agreeing with another."
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
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.
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1) There is not a lot of evidence that most people who share this material are actually involved in harming children in any way.
18 years for trading child pornography?
I'll come out and say it, these laws are wrong. We have a higher incarceration rate than anyplace else in the world, rivaling Russia and China. Do you want to send those rates up even further?
I agree that child sexual exploitation is wrong. I think child pornography should be used as evidence for prosecuting the underlying crime. I can accept a reasonable criminal punishment for distributing child pornography, if that's the only way to send a message that our society strongly condemns child sexual exploitation. It seems that prosecuting people for having child pornography on their computers does more harm than good overall. I'm not convinced that prosecuting people at six degrees of separation from the underlying crime should be a crime itself. And I'm also not convinced that possessing child pornography created outside the U.S. should be a crime within the U.S. (Our bombs blow children to pieces in our many wars, which I think is a greater harm than their being sexually abused.) We don't prosecute web sites like bestgore.com that show beheadings and rapes.
But 18 years for trading child pornography is way out of bounds. That's the sentence we should give to somebody who originally abused the children to create the pornography, not someone at several steps removed who winds up with the images of it.
I think child pornography prosecutions are 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. And it would take a large shift in budget from uneducated cowboy cops to social workers, criminologists and social scientists who actually understand child sexual abuse and how to stop it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
Child abuse rises with income inequality
February 11, 2014
Summary: As the Great Recession deepened and income inequality became more pronounced, county-by-county rates of child maltreatment -- from sexual, physical and emotional abuse to traumatic brain injuries and death -- worsened, according to a nationwide study.
http://www.bmj.com/content/347...
Research: Preventing sexual abusers of children from reoffending: systematic review of medical and psychological interventions
BMJ 2013; 347 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.... (Published 9 August 2013)
http://www.miamiherald.com/201...
Florida spurns $50 million for child-abuse prevention
Unfortunately it's usually impossible to prosecute cops for misconduct. The only thing that has some small deterrence is throwing out the evidence (which the cop shouldn't have gotten in the first place).
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09...
Challenges Seen in Prosecuting Police for Use of Deadly Force
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
SEPT. 3, 2014
MIAMI — For decades, Florida has had a history of deadly, racially tinged police confrontations, many of them involving unarmed men, which have led to riots, protests and a steady undercurrent of rancor between minorities and the police. But in the past 20 years, not a single officer in Florida has been charged for using deadly force.
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
Not just statutory. Constitutional.
Investigating his fellow Navy personnel he doesn't need warrants, because the Military can detain it's members without a warrant ("I order you to sit right there"), and extensive powers to search without a warrant ("Show me the contents of your locker Private"). These are covered by the Commander-in-Chief clause, and therefore the Fourth Amendment is irrelevant, which is probably why a Navy cop apparently had no idea why he'd need a warrant.
But the Commander-in-Chief clause does not apply to civilians, so he damn well needed a warrant. If he'd had a somewhat less bullshitty explanation of why he was searching all of Washington state he probably would have been fine -- there's actually a legal doctrine that if the government agent thinks he's within his rights to search you, the evidence doesn't get thrown out just because the agent was wrong -- but "Of course I can do that, I;'m a Federal Agent" won't cut it.
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.
If anybody but a LEO does it, it is "searching for illegal pornography" and "trying to obtain illegal pornography" and a crime.
Neither of those are a crime in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with. Maybe there are some ass-backwards states in the US where that's true, but they would be the exception rather than the rule. Nice try though.
I think his point was that the investigator's crime of over-zealousness was somewhat less serious than the fucking child poroographer's, and that the only scum going to prison should be the paedophile.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Proportionality is the key, but the anti-government crowd here cannot conceive of any government employee's over-enthusiasm as other than the start of the Apocalypse.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Did you see that the guy who ran the search did it across the entire state?
Sorry, that's the penalty for not following the law - the evidence gets thrown out and cannot be used, ever. This is the only thing that can prevent large scale abuse by law enforcement, as long as it is applied consistently. Lately, that latter assumption is being called into question quite frequently.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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?
Then we'd just throw a few patsies at political enemies who would gladly take on such 'patriotic' duties. No, the solution is for the government to follow the law.
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If they're using it for internal use, then no. GPL comes into play with distribution.
Typically it is something like the crime is "downloading illegal pornography", and the attempt to do so is criminal as well. That is why searching for illegal pornography is illegal, because it is classified as a step in an attempt to obtain it. I have no idea how US law words this, an usually attempting and failing to do a crime like this is exceedingly hard to prove, so I expect you could just get away with it.
Anyways, searching for this stuff is an exceedingly bad idea unless you are not only an LEO, but are also tasked with this sort of thing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The posts here aren't anti-government, they are pro-due process. Because we are pro-due process and the investigator violated due process, we do not allow this evidence to be used against him in court. It doesn't matter if we had a letter confessing that this guy murdered half the west coast, it wouldn't be admissible evidence if acquired illegally and he could walk free. That's the basis of the US legal system, and if you don't like, please leave. We've already got too many idiots that don't respect due process as it is.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Oh, I'm sorry, being a non-native speaker I took "at worst" to mean "if he did anything wrong at all"...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Where to draw the line? And who gets to pick and choose what crimes are worse than others. The egoist in me would say that a government employee ignoring the privacy of citizens is a bigger threat to me than any pedo on the planet. Because he may be a threat to me, the pedo most certainly won't be. I'm kinda too old for that...
This just to illustrate that "worse crime" is highly subjective. I'm fairly sure if you ask the RIAA, the crime behind trading pedo pics is the potential copyright infringement.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's pretty much what would happen in most countries in Europe. I am not aware of a "poisoned well" provision in our laws over here. If there's evidence against you and it's neither fabricated ("planted") nor required an incentive from law enforcement so you commit the crime (agent provocateur), it's a-ok to use it against you.
What keeps police in check is that they essentially have a job for life once they're in, they get a LOAD of job perks (official ones and "less official ones") and breaking the law to get evidence is almost certainly the end of that rather comfy job, and even if you don't get locked up (with all the nice guys that you got in there first...), what's left for you is some sort of mall cop crap job.
Seems to work really well.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This reminds me of an interview with the lead designer of Google Glass who was demonstrating that our current laws are problematic. If you were in a park streaming from your glasses and turned to look in the direction of a noise and saw a man raping a child, then you would be guilty of distributing and would face a worse punishment than the man who is committing the crime!
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.
"handwave away child abuse"
The submission says nothing about the defendant abusing any children, or any person at all. So your particular statement is a non-sequitur. It says he distributed child porn. Isn't this the same mistake as claiming Internet piracy is stealing?
You could claim they're both *bad*, but they certainly are not *the same*.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Well, he didn't molest a child, did he?
Since this case is breaking new ground legally and it is working its way through the appellate process it may not be settled yet that what he did was meaningfully out of bounds.
When you milk it you shouldn't over do it.
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
Investigating his fellow Navy personnel he doesn't need warrants,....
You don't know what you are talking about. It is common for military investigators to need a warrant to search the property of service members. It isn't rare at all.
But you should be clear there isn't a universal requirement for warrants to search civilians even for civilian police. There are a number of exceptions in fact.
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
Investigating his fellow Navy personnel he doesn't need warrants,....
You don't know what you are talking about. It is common for military investigators to need a warrant to search the property of service members. It isn't rare at all.
Spoken like a true lawyer. True on every factual point, but still completely misleading.
None of that comes from the Constitution proper. It comes from statutes. And the rights granted under the statute are much more limited. For example, an Officer commanding a base can both authorize investigations of his base's personnel AND sign the warrant. The same goes for an arrest.
The Check that keeps this power from being abused isn't that some third party with unique legal knowledge (ie: the Courts) safeguards the people's rights, it's that there's a paper trail and any officer who has a habit of arresting people for no damn good reason is gonna have to explain himself to his superiors.
But you should be clear there isn't a universal requirement for warrants to search civilians even for civilian police. There are a number of exceptions in fact.
This is true as well. If the police reasonably believe you are hiding something from them then the search they do on you is not "unreasonable," and they don't need a warrant because the Fourth only applies to "unreasonable searches." This particular fact is rife for abuse, because as far as the Courts are concerned it's very hard to be unsuspicious and black at the same time.
This particular fact is rife for abuse, because as far as the Courts are concerned it's very hard to be unsuspicious and black at the same time.
What a pity, I thought you had more on the ball than going there, especially since it is nonsense. Well, ... it's worse than nonsense.
The Check that keeps this power from being abused isn't that some third party with unique legal knowledge (ie: the Courts) safeguards the people's rights, it's that there's a paper trail and any officer who has a habit of arresting people for no damn good reason is gonna have to explain himself to his superiors.
I guess you haven't heard of the JAG corp, military judges and magistrates, military courts, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, review of sentences, or much else involving military justice. Would it surprise you to learn you might be missing out on some inportant details?
None of that comes from the Constitution proper. It comes from statutes. And the rights granted under the statute are much more limited.
Members of the mlitary have Constitutional rights.
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
I love lawyers. They are so busy looking at the trees that they can never find the fucking forest.
For example, as a civilian my locker at work is my space. Nobody can open it except me. If my manager thought somebody on-premises was smoking weed she couldn't just have the security guy snap all the locks off, and then detain whomever had weed in the break room until the cops came. A cop walking in and saying "hey these guys really look like potheads," couldn't get a warrant. !Either my boss of the cop could search a specific locker, but going through all 100 or so would be no. In the military your Sergeant can orders a full inspection of every locker at any time. He can then order you detained if you have weed.
To a lawyer the fact that he ordered you "detained," and then had to get paperwork to call it an "arrest," means your Constitutional rights were the same as a civilians. To any sane human being, who lives in the actual real world, the whole line of argument you're making is a distinction without a difference. Everybody got searched with no warrant, and then Bill got arrested, also with no warrant.
The JAG System, etc. has some relevance when talking about searches in service member's homes, or even their cars, but even there it's limited because it's all in the military. Let's say we're talking about an Air Base commanded by a guy named Colonel Kerpinski. Who commands the Security Force cops? Colonel Kerpinski. Who commands the JAGs? Kerpinski. The suspect? Kerpinski. There's a reason "Command Influence" is a really good defense at military trials.
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.
repeat that to me when you become a victim of a serious criminal act and you see your perpetrator get off on a technicality
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
i understand that but i'm talking criminal acts with a specific victim. i still hold that if the information is true and in the public interest then it should be out there. if the patsie is caught doing illegal things to get this info he/she should go to jail.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Loopholes in due process are inevitably abused, typically with techniques similar to foot in the door, and child porn and terrorism are two of the most common ways to get in (and it's nigh impossible to get them out). Due process exists for a very good reason.
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Repeat it yourself when you are the victim of prosecutorial misconduct, etc. That's what these laws are for. To prevent that. The only issue is that they don't punish the real offenders strongly enough. Generally, there are enough crimes committed that if there is sufficient evidence, they'll get the perpetrators for one or more of the other ones. If not, See the AC reply above and place your blame appropriately. Illegal activities by law enforcement and those on the side of the prosecution should never be rewarded.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Thanks for the RIAA fatwah. Hosting and/or downloading files from peer-to-peer networks is not inherently illegal, not matter what your religious dogma says.
Ideally, that's what would happen.
In practice, it doesn't work. The courts really can't prosecute, and throwing somebody in jail (other than for contempt, which doesn't apply here) requires prosecution. Prosecutors are not going to go after police officers for collecting evidence illegally, and it may not be clear who actually did something illegal. Conviction, in criminal cases, requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and that may not be forthcoming.
What the courts can do to curb police and prosecutor abuse is to refuse to consider certain evidence. When that works, it means that illegally gathering evidence is useless for police and prosecutor, and so presumably they won't do it. It isn't necessary to prosecute anybody, and doesn't require definitive evidence pointing at specific people. It's pretty much all the courts can do.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Child abusers are scum. Was this a guy who abused children, or just had pictures of that happening, or perhaps just depictions (which are illegal in some jurisdictions)?
I really don't know whether possession of child pornography spurs people on to more child abuse or serves as a replacement and helps the possessor not commit child abuse, and I think that's vital information for considering the laws.
I also think you are minimizing the principles here. A single over-zealous LEO isn't much of a problem. Allowing that to go unpunished means that there will be more over-zealous LEOs, and eventually there will be no restrictions on gathering evidence. A runaway police state is much more of a threat than a child pornography possessor.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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
So where is the line where it is ok to break the law for law enforcement? What crime do they have to prosecute so they can ignore any and all rights you have?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...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?