Posse Comitatus
Child porn charge overturned because a Navy guy scanned all computers in a state. Frightening.
12 Responses to “Posse Comitatus”
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September 14th, 2014 at 1:56 pm
Are you frightened because the “child porn” charge was thrown out or because of the NCIS behavior?
September 14th, 2014 at 2:22 pm
That they can scan all computers in the state.
September 14th, 2014 at 6:49 pm
After reading the opinion excerpts at the first link, it looks like that’s not actually what happened. He didn’t “scan all computers in the state”, he was checking the files on a file sharing service that originated from ip addresses in the state. Anybody who knows how could do that, so it’s pretty much public information.
Also, posse comitatus only applies to the Army and Air Force. The Navy is not mentioned at all, and it’s only DoD policy that restricts their involvement in civilian law enforcement.
It sucks, but applying the exclusionary rule was probably an overreach by the court.
September 15th, 2014 at 9:06 am
“There could be no bona fide military purpose to this indiscriminate peeking into civilian computers.”
That Sums it up.
September 15th, 2014 at 12:13 pm
Jake:
Not correct. A Navy captain was court-martialed for directing the Coast Guard to a smuggler in the Caribbean.
Shortly after that, Posse Commitatus was amended to allow the military to ignore it in cases of drug interdiction and terrorism.
CP ain’t terrorism or drug smuggling, so the case failed.
September 15th, 2014 at 1:02 pm
Kristopher: Which part are you saying is not correct?
September 15th, 2014 at 4:03 pm
Jake is correct.
Contra the headlines they’re not “scanning all computers in the state – they literally can’t, because almost all of them are behind firewalls and not accessible by a real address anyway (welcome to 2014, where your cable or DSL router is providing you with excellent inbound security!).
They were, again, looking at publicly shared files on a distributed filesharing network; the computers in question were broadcasting the fact of sharing those files, quite deliberately, as part of the sharing network.
This is uncharacteristic sloppinesss on Reynolds’ part – usually, historically, he knows better than that.
September 15th, 2014 at 5:43 pm
Me thinks the case stands. He was overreaching his military duty and hacking yes Hacking civilian computers. What other term would you use for surreptitiously accessing data of complete strangers under the guise of law enforcement, but without probable cause or warrant??? The Military has to go through the same processes as Civilians if they want to investigate civilians that are not employed by the military.
What you guys really want to say is that you would rather he had gotten away with breaking the law than have a child pornographer freed. Of course such thinking is what unc makes fun of on this site. Violating people’s rights under the guise of doing what is “right” in ones own eyes…
September 15th, 2014 at 6:46 pm
I don’t see it as a problem with Posse Comitatus — there’s a reason why, when they wanted to use active duty personnel to enforce the borders, they used Marines (Department of the Navy) — Posse Commitatus *legally* applies to the Army (and by derivation, the Air Force).
The problem was lack of search warrant for the initial search — the fact that they cops felt the need to go get a search warrant based on the DoN tip shows that THEY didn;lt think “exigent circumstances” applied.
It’s inherently a Fourth Amendment case, not a Posse Comitatus case; the only reason it would be legal if military personnel were the only ones caught in teh search net is that Posse Comitatus doesn’t apply to the military investigating military personnel — that’s not civil law enforcement, it’s military law enforcement of military personnel.
September 16th, 2014 at 12:52 pm
Jake: That the Navy had special immunity to Posse Comitatus.
They are still regulated by it.
September 16th, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Paul: If an MP discovered CP during a routine inspection, his commander would call local police, and the evidence would stand.
In this case, the officer was doing blanket sweeps of everyone ( including civilians ) using a compromised torrent client, without a warrant under the PAtriot Act, in search of terrorist activity. Evidence against a terrorist would stand, as Posse Comitatus was amended to allow this.
September 17th, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Kristopher:
What part of that statute regulates the Navy?
This may have been a violation of DoD regulations or policies, or even some other statute, but it was not a violation of Posse Comitatus, because Poss Comitatus only regulates the Army and Air force, not the Navy.