Loss of hard drive images not due process violation without bad faith says Third Circuit

In United States v. Heiser, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6430 (3d Cir. 2012), the Third Circuit upheld a denial of a motion to suppress evidence where the state had not acted in bad faith in the destruction and loss of complete mirror images of Heisner's computer. The drive was in poor condition when seized, but experts were able to find 495 images of child pornography. A mirror image was made, and a copy of the image was sent to the local police department. Additionally, the images were also placed on a CD. The district court ordered the government...

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7th Cir. reverses conviction for receiving CP, requires knowledge requirement in jury instructions

In United States v. Rogers, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 6382 (7th Cir. 2012), the Seventh Circuit reversed a conviction for receiving child pornography because the jury instructions omitted the requirement of knowledge. Rogers had been convicted on several counts after engaging in chat room conversations with a 14-year-old where nude photographs of the child were sent to Rogers. Additionally, in a conversation with a second child, Rogers sent an obscene image of himself to the 13-year-old. On appeal, Rogers argued that requirements of knowledge...

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5th Circuit finds chat log authenticated with detective testimony

Concurring with decisions from other jurisdictions, a Fifth Circuit panel held yesterday that chat logs were properly authenticated by the "detective testifying that the transcripts were an accurate reflection of the chats." United States v. Lundy, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6315 (5th Cir. 2012). The detective, who was a party to the conversation, had copied and pasted the text into a Word document. Additionally, he "was subject to cross-examination on his biases and methodology." Also, the detective used software to take a video screen...

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Illinois appellate court remands identity theft case

In People v. Hernandez, 2012 IL App (1st) 92841, an Illinois appellate court has held that the state must prove that a defendant knowingly used personal identifying information belonging to another person in order to convict on identity theft. Because the "defendant's knowledge was contradicted and not overwhelming," the charge was vacated and remanded for a new trial. The defendant had used another person's social security number to obtain credit...

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Nebraska Supreme Court supresses CP evidence after law enforcement invented the probable cause

In State v. Sprunger, 283 Neb. 531 (2012), the Nebraska Supreme Court ordered suppression of evidence of child pornography obtained during an initial investigation for credit card fraud. The court found that law enforcement invented the child pornography suspicion themselves and committed "an obvious Fourth Amendment violation." Law enforcement tracked unauthorized use of a debit card to Sprunger's IP address and went to his home for a knock-and-talk....

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Judge expresses concern with CP sentencing guidelines

In United States v. Price, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38397 (C.D. Ill. 2012), an Illinois federal judge "express[ed] concern with the overly harsh sentences that result from the application of the child pornography sentencing guidelines." Further, "[t]his Court finds that § 2G2.2 is especially problematic because it contains numerous enhancements based on facts that exist in almost every child pornography possession crime and considerably increase the offense level." The court found the same problem with the production section, and referenced many...

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Court struggles with sentence of CP possessor, orders 18 months in prison

In what appears to be an agonizing decision for a federal judge, a defendant convicted of attempting to possess child pornography was sentenced to 18 months incarceration, ten years of supervised release, and a $100 special assessment. United States v. Rothwell, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38379 (E.D. Tenn. 2012). The defendant has an IQ of 77, and he spells and does math at elementary school levels. Additionally, he is a diabetic and has recently had a variety of other health problems including an enlarged liver, pancreatitis, thrombosis, and...

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Verizon Report: Data breaches rise 4,250% in 2011

According to Verizon's 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report, data breaches skyrocketed in 2011 to 174 million (up from only 4 million in 2010). The 80-page report provides a wealth of information about who is responsible for these acts and how they are committing them. It's definitely worth at least a quick sk...

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Court finds website editor's comment on post does not remove CDA immunity

A federal court recently upheld the "robust" immunity of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in a case where the website's editor commented on a post referring to the plaintiff with rather crude language. S.C. v. Dirty World, LLC (W.D. Mo. 2012). The case concerned www.TheDirty.com where visitors are given the opportunity to post about a variety of topics. Many people use it to post about cheating significant others or former friends such as this one post about the plaintiff (edited for language and length): This nasty b**** who was my `friend'...

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Magistrate addresses pretrial release conditions on Twitter, IRCs, and monitoring

A federal magistrate in California recently addressed several interesting conditions of pretrial release such as having no access to Twitter and deleting Internet history. United States v. Collins, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35980 (N.D. Cal. 2012). The 14 defendants in the case are alleged members of Anonymous who executed a DDoS attack on PayPal's website after the site terminated WikiLeak's account. At their initial appearance, the defendants were released after agreeing to these conditions: not participate in or accessing Internet Relay Chats ("IRCs");  not...

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Oregon court reverses removal of children from father, a former "predatory sex offender"

The Court of Appeals of Oregon has reversed a decision to take children away from their parents because the father had sexually abused children and viewed child pornography in the past. The evidence did not support a finding of likely harm to the children. Dep't of Human Servs. v. B.B. (In re K.B.), 274 P.3d 242 (2012). The father physically and sexually abused children in the past and was sexually abused as a child himself. In 1994, he went...

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Court awards $240,000 to CP victim in default judgment

In Larsen v. Larsen, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34179 (D. Minn. 2012), the court awarded a victim of child pornography a default judgment of $240,000 for emotional distress and psychological treatment. The suit was brought against the victim's uncle who adopted him at age eleven, began abusing him shortly thereafter, and posted videos of him from a hidden camera in the bathroom on the Internet. The victim, now an adult, originally brought suit against his uncle (who is serving a 25-year prison term) and anonymous downloaders, but ultimately dismissed...

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Android's pattern lock halts FBI investigation

According to a report from Threat Level, the FBI has been unable to crack an Android phone's pattern lock. When trying to guess a password, the phone locks up after three tries, requiring the user's Google account username and password. Now, the FBI is trying to obtain the pimp's username and password directly from Google with a search warrant. They are also seeking instructions for overriding the security as well as any information Google may...

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District court orders suppression after lengthy delay for cell phone search

A Georgia federal district court has ordered suppression of evidence obtained from cell phones because of an unreasonable three month delay in searching the phones. United States v. Shaw, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32624 (N.D. Ga. 2012). The phones had been searched incident to arrest and were placed into inventory. Months later, the government obtained search warrants to further search the phones. The court cited Eleventh Circuit precedent in Mitchell (565 F.3d 1347 (11th Cir. 2009)) which found that a 21-day delay to search a computer was...

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Michigan court addresses limited context test, image cropping

In United States v. Stewart, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32550 (E.D. Mich. 2012), the defendant sought a new trial after being convicted of transporting child pornography. Finding no plain error in the defendant's six arguments, the motion was denied. The closest argument was that images were improperly admitted in violation of the limited context test. "The Sixth Circuit's limited context test allows additional images only of the same victims and explicitly excludes images of other victims." These additional images (not "accused" images) are...

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NY court orders $3M in restitution to CP victim

A New York federal court has ordered a defendant convicted of child pornography crimes to pay restitution of $3,381,159 to the victim. (United States v. Lundquist, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 153971 (N.D.N.Y. 2012)). Many courts have only ordered defendants to pay a portion of the damages, but this court found "it is entirely fair, reasonable and appropriate to hold Defendant liable for payment of the full amount of restitution (rather than to apportion liability among all the individuals in question to reflect the level of contribution to...

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Mass. man committed as sexually dangerous person

A Massachusetts man has been civilly committed as a "sexually dangerous person" under 18 USCS § 4248 of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. The act allows commitment if the person: has engaged or attempted to engage in sexually violent conduct or child molestation, suffers from a serious mental illness, abnormality, or disorder, and would have serious difficulty in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation if released as a result of his mental illness, abnormality, or disorder. The court found the man to...

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NM court reverses CP conviction for double jeopardy violation, asks legislature to revise statute

In a New Mexico child pornography case (State v. Ballard, 2012 N.M. App. LEXIS 10), the Court of Appeals of New Mexico addressed the appropriate unit of prosecution in a double jeopardy appeal. The court noted that the definition of the word "medium" was key as the relevant statute makes possession of a "visual or print medium" illegal. The defendant argued that only one count existed because the "medium" was his computer where all of the images...

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Conn. man loses suit against psychiatrist who knew of his CP addiction

A Connecticut man under investigation for child pornography crimes has had a lawsuit against his psychiatrist dismissed. In the suit, he alleged that he had told the psychiatrist that he viewed child pornography, then as a minor, and the psychiatrist took no action. After reaching adulthood, he continued viewing the illicit material and was caught by law enforcement. He sought redress for "the emotional distress occasioned by the...

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Former Perverted Justice volunteer's CFAA conviction affirmed by 3rd Cir.

In United States v. Raisley, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 5002 (3rd Cir. 2012), the Third Circuit affirmed the conviction of former Perverted Justice volunteer Bruce Raisley after he created malware to attack websites that had written about him. Perverted Justice, using volunteers pretending to be minors, engages in and investigates illicit conversations between the adults and the pretend children. Raisley had begun to disapprove of the group's methods and soon thereafter he was caught as he attempted to meet an underage girl at an airport. Radar and Rolling...

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10th Cir. relaxes standard for proving CP sent through interstate commerce

Last month, the Tenth Circuit held en banc that to prove child pornography had been sent through interstate commerce, the prosecution must only show it had happened "at any point in time." United States v. Sturm,   672 F.3d 891 (10th Cir. 2012). This decision reversed Tenth Circuit precedent which held that it must be proven that the defendant received the specific file through interstate commerce. United States v. Schaefer, 501 F.3d 1197 (10th Cir. 2007). On appeal, a Tenth Circuit panel had found that "the Government...

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Ill. court reverses summary judgment grant in SCA case

An Illinois woman recently argued that her former employer violated the Stored Communications Act after they accessed her personal e-mail account. (Borchers v. Franciscan Tertiary the Sacred Heart, 2011 IL App 2d 101257 (Ill. App. Ct. 2012)). Two accounts were accessible on her computer - her personal and work e-mail, and the former employer connected to the personal account and printed 36 of the e-mails. The trial court entered summary judgment....

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ICE seizure of bodog.com causes international concern

Visitors to bodog.com are now shown this image. The federal government's "Operation Our Sites" has been used to seize nearly 1,000 domain names in the past few months - most of which were for websites used to illegally stream sports events and television shows. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson recently told Threat Level that ICE "has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that...

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Court orders suppression for evidence found two years after warrant was issued

In United States v. Salceda, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28211 (C.D. Cal. 2012), the district court ordered suppression of evidence found in unlawful searches. Law enforcement obtained an original warrant to seize the defendant's digital devices for evidence related to child pornography. The warrant was executed and devices seized, but two years later, law enforcement sought a new warrant to "conduct a more complete search" of the devices. The warrant was denied and law enforcement then determined the second warrant was unnecessary. Defendant...

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Helpful tools for developing presentations

While this is a little off-topic, I wanted to write a quick post highlighting some great tools for those of you who often present on the subject of cybercrime (or anything else). These are services that I have found helpful, and I hope that you will share your own in the comments. Prezi - very attractive presentation tool with a "zooming user interface." Prezi is an online application, but can be downloaded if you wish to pay for it. Otherwise, it is $59/yr except for the free student or teacher licenses they offer. SlideRocket - an even better...

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7th Cir. okays cell phone search at arrest for device's number

The Seventh Circuit recently held that a search of a cell phone to obtain the phone's number at arrest was a valid search under the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Flores-Lopez, 2012 WL 652504 (7th Cir. 2012). The defendant was arrested during a drug bust, and his cell phone was searched at arrest in order to determine the telephone's number which was later used to subpoena the call history. On appeal, the defendant argued that the search of the phone was unreasonable, making the call history fruit of an illegal search. Judge Posner, the opinion's...

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Maryland district court addresses cell site location data, finds no Fourth Amendment issue

The Maryland federal district court recently held that obtaining cell site location data does not implicate the Fourth Amendment, and even if it did, obtaining such information without a warrant does not require suppression. (United States v. Graham, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26954 (D. Md. 2012)). Of the two orders issued under the Stored Communications Act, one "authorized [221] days and 20,235 individual cell site location data points."  The defendants "argue[d] that the privacy intrusions available through this type of technology...

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7th Cir. affirms 32-year CP sentence; judge expresses sentencing guidelines concern

The Seventh Circuit has upheld a sentence of 32 years for production and possession of child pornography (United States v. Klug, 670 F.3d 797 (7th Cir. 2012)). The defendant had videoed children showering and changing clothes on church trips while he was serving as a chaperone. An investigation revealed 59,000 still images and 12,000 videos of child pornography. Noting a related case with a reasonable 80-year sentence (United States v. Noel, 581 F.3d 490, 500 (7th Cir. 2009)), the court affirmed. In a concurring opinion, Judge Cudahy...

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1st Cir. affirms restitution order to CP series victim "Vicky"

The First Circuit held that a distributor of child pornography may be ordered to pay restitution to the child victim portrayed in those images (United States v. Kearney, 672 F.3d 81 (1st Cir. 2012)). Federal courts have long disagreed as to the requirements of a restitution order under 18 U.S.C. § 2259 for child pornography. These cases often concern a distributor of a pornography series (referred to by aliases such as "Amy" or "Vicky"), and the issues the court must address are (1) whether the child portrayed in the images is a victim,...

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