Navy Guilty of Illegally Broad Online Searches: Child Porn Conviction Overturned 286
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."
Where is the misuse of military equipment charge? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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guilty? Was he found guilty? I thought the evidence was merely thrown out.
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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?
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Re:Where is the misuse of military equipment charg (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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Re:Where is the misuse of military equipment charg (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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I don't know about that, Michael Dreyer probably feels like a winner.
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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 sha
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You do know that the "child porn" in question may be drawings? And that "distribution" and "production" are two different things?
Re:Where is the misuse of military equipment charg (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
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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.
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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.
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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 t
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Parallel construction.
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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
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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.)
Posse Comitatus Act (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like the basis was the Posse Comitatus Act [wikipedia.org] 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 [courthousenews.com]
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.
You have all been trained to accept this as normal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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> 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. [dfrws.org] 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. [blogspot.com]
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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.
NCIS agent Steve Logan (Score:3)
Which show is he from?
Re: NCIS agent Steve Logan (Score:5, Funny)
Which show is he from?
The "fuck the constitution" reality show.
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So, NCIS it is?
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The "fuck the constitution" reality show.
Wow... a reality show that actually depicts reality!
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The "fuck the constitution" reality show.
Available from any exterior-facing window near you!
(as well as some interior ones)
The ultimate test of freedom is that of the most (Score:2)
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.
How to get off scott free for any crime: (Score:2)
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?
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We have gone from "It is better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be convicted." to "It is better that ten innocent men get convicted than to let one guilty man go free".
It is disgusting.
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First of all, no innocent person was convicted.
But more importantly, law enforcement is supposed to do one thing. Benefit society by making it a safer place for everyone.
Society does not benefit from quashing the conviction.
The law enforcement agency is not punished for their own crime.
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.
I would rather the judge in this case weighed up the
Search? (Score:2)
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?
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It is a the military policing your neighborhood. That happens to be illegal except in times of emergency, and for good reason.
The Navy searched ... (Score:2)
capabilities (Score:3)
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...
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All users moving any known file have unique data about their network and computers used (beyond MAC, ip) recorded as the file is networked.
The US gov could have looked at all networks and then sorted for gov and mil workers legally. Or had the mil sort for on base networking connections on a base or mil network.
Or loo
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http://www.dailytech.com/Senat... [dailytech.com]
"Agents then track the offender on a “daily” basis, identifying them by their IP address and, in some cases, a “unique serial number” sourced from offender’s computer."
"Investigators have recorded almost 1.3 million of the unique serial numbers thus far, with about half of them residing in the United States – and that number is steadily increasing ea
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They can search all of Gnutella live for people currently sharing filenames and/or hashes known to be illegal. Just like people and p2p indexers and really the whole goddamned internet.
What does that mean? That Gnutella is operating like it should?
Here's your API - search for anything that ends in jpg or mov or avi or whatever else. With the list of hashes you get back, see if you get any matches. If so, return the result.
Law enforcement has piles of lists of hashes and filenames, and if a new p2p techn
so while on base if I ask for... (Score:2)
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
Details of the "RoundUp" software in question (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone interested, the paper detailing the software (RoundUp) used in the dragnet can be found here: http://www.dfrws.org/2010/proc... [dfrws.org]
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.
Re:Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are zeroing in on child porn.
The court is addressing the activity of a military investigator stepping out of bounds.
I would also have accepted (Score:2)
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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.
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
Re:Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
"We didn't engage in Jury Nullification, Your Honor, we did not feel that the State presented a case beyond a reasonable doubt."
Re:Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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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 l
Re:Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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He was subsequently retried and convicted without the excluded evidence. So it is possible to obtain a conviction in some cases without some evidence.
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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
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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?"
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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 yea
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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.
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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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
Right on! And take his badge away while you're at it.
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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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:4, Insightful)
That's fine with me, but I'll go for the derivative of the 4th Amendment.
It's not cool to throw wide nets.
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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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Interesting)
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... [sciencedaily.com]
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... [bmj.com]
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.... [doi.org] (Published 9 August 2013)
http://www.miamiherald.com/201... [miamiherald.com]
Florida spurns $50 million for child-abuse prevention
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Re:Like traffic tickets (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a story, I think on Slashdot, about cops who would go online and pretend to be sexually aggressive 13-year-old girls, luring in social misfits.
A lot of it seemed to be entrapment, that is, they trapped people into committing a crime who would never have committed a crime without the encouragement and manipulation of the cops. The entrapment defense has an unreasonable burden of proof.
That's not the kind of policing I would admire.
If Timmy said that Frank had been doing something heinous, then the cops could get a search warrant to arrest Frank and search his house and computer. They wouldn't need to trap him into exchanging child porn.
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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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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?
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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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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Could you provide a perspective on something that actually happened? Where is the 4th Amendment violation?
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Interesting)
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? [flexyourrights.org]:
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.
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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 insinuati
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When the cat's absent, the mice rejoice (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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?
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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".
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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 requiri
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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.
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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 ri
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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.
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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.
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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?