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posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 17 2014, @12:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-play-by-the-rules-and-thems-the-rules dept.

AP reports that a federal appeals court has overturned a civilian's conviction for possessing and distributing child pornography because he was found out by a military investigator who used a high-powered software program in 2010 to search computers throughout the state of Washington. When the program picked up two child porn images and a video, the agent contacted the FBI, which tracked down the suspect's name and address. The naval office then got in touch with local police, who obtained a search warrant. The Department of Homeland Security later got a federal search warrant, and the suspect was charged in federal court.

When the search was challenged, the government argued that the search was justified because there are military bases in the greater Seattle area, and it's a crime for military members to distribute child pornography. Those actions, the three-judge panel said, violated the Posse Comitatus Act, the 1878 law that prohibits the U.S. military from taking part in civilian law enforcement activities. The ruling said the search was so sweeping, it shows "a profound lack of regard for the important limitations on the role of the military in our civilian society." It noted "abundant evidence" that the Navy frequently hacks into civilian computers to search for evidence of child pornography and turn it over to the police if the computer owner has no relation to the military. "This is, literally, the militarization of the police," says defense attorney Erik Levin. "They have enough funding that they can go out and stray from the core mission of national security and get into local law enforcement."

 
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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @11:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @11:50PM (#94732)

    I'm not saying that the government wouldn't do that, but I think the paedophiles might have beat them to the punch. I'm not sure which motive I find creepier.

    I think you guys are missing a third and much more likely option - somebody did it for the lulz. 4chan has a history of that sort of thing, there were even rumors of people finding FBI "honeypot" websites and embedded images from them on 4chan in order to trick people's browsers into accessing the honeypot and getting in the FBI's logs of people to persecute.

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  • (Score: 1) by JNCF on Wednesday September 17 2014, @11:56PM

    by JNCF (4317) on Wednesday September 17 2014, @11:56PM (#94733) Journal

    Yeah, that's probably fair.