“This is the most extreme type of monitoring that I’ve seen,” says Pilar Weiss, founder of the National Bail Fund Network, a network of over 90 community bail and bond funds across the United States. “It’s part of a disturbing trend where deep surveillance and social control applications are used pretrial with little oversight.”
It was a condition of his release, so their choice was either leave him in jail or turn over their phones. The US justice system only exists to fuck people, not to provide justice or follow the laws.
we're gonna monitor all of your family's devices, including people who are not charged with or suspected of a crime. if any of them do anything we don't like, we'll assume it's you and charge you
we acknowledge that requests to forbidden sites can be made without the user's knowledge or consent, but we're still going to throw you in jail over it
Imagine you're legally banned from driving a car. Let's even make the hypothetical situation a little bit more cut and dry than the real one from the article and assume you've actually been convicted of something and aren't just charged. This is the equivalent of saying "we're going to put monitoring devices in every car in your driveway, if any of them start up we'll get an alert. If we get an alert, we'll assume you're driving and come arrest you for violating the ban. We also get an alert if the alarm goes off and even if it's because an acorn fell on your car we're going to come and arrest you."
This is truly an amazing violation of the rights of several people. Welcome to the panopticon, you're never sure you're not being surveilled so you have to always act like someone could be watching.
To my knowledge, a lot of these tracking and accountability applications end up in hot water because of their usage from bad actors.
I know there was an app on Android called Cerberus that was supposed to help you track your phone if it was lost/stolen, and it had the ability to open the covertly take videos/screenshots, so you could provide it as evidence to authorities.
The major players in tech, imo, have done a good job in preventing people in accidentally installing these applications that could invade their privacy (and instead, allow their own applications to steal your data...) It's another discussion to see how much personal data we allow big tech to access, but I can say that they've done a solid job preventing these third party tracking applications to stay on their devices. The only way they can be installed is if you agree to it being installed on your devices, or being coerced into it.
The only solution I can think that would work long-term is if people get educated on the benefits and sanctity of their right to privacy, and don't give these tracking companies any business, leading to their eventual collapse. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen, but until that happens, more and more of these stories will pop up.
Covenant Eyes doesn’t just block pornography. Though the app is designed to block traffic to adult sites, Hannah shared reports that show she was unable to access The Appeal, a nonprofit news organization that focuses on injustice in the criminal-legal system
The legal system is so detached from reality when it comes to technology that it leads to this kind of horseshit where someone, before any court proceedings proving guilt are even started, is subject to extreme and unjust punishment.
Privacy on the internet is a lifeline at this point and they might as well be cutting off his water or electricity, which would be only slightly more egregious. But the people who create legislation and operate the judicial system are comprised largely of crusty old boomers who need a secretary just to send an email or open a fucking PDF. They are information troglodytes who are simply incompatible with the modern world.
I saw this application once in the past doing tech support for customers. It used a proxy or forced dns servers to allow you on to the internet it seemed "safe". The user was trying to access websites we used for work. That crazy software takes screenshots of your desktop every few minutes. We worked in the healthcare industry... I forwarded it to our security dept and had to file a HIPAA report...
Terrible software. The persons family didn't trust their own adult kid... I figured it was some form of religious thing.
It is a religious thing. I grew up fundamentalist Baptist and then softened up into the Evangelical world before leaving Christianity behind, and this was very common for both parents to use to get reports and see if their children were looking at porn and for men who had gotten caught or admitted to struggling with porn or cheating to have another man as an "accountability partner" and give access to his internet history through this program.
The software came up during the Josh Duggar trial because his wife had put it on his computer before either his cheating or his other inclinations became public knowledge.
Prosecutors and judges really need a reminder of the concept of innocent until proven guilty.
The day her husband was released on bond, Hannah sat down with their kids and tried to explain how all of their devices were going to be monitored: The probation department would see anything they looked at on their phones and assume it was their father using the device. The constant surveillance had an immediate impact on the family, Hannah says.
And:
In near real time, probation officers are being fed screenshots of everything Hannah’s family views on their devices. From images of YouTube videos watched by her 14-year-old daughter to online underwear purchases made by her 80-year-old mother-in-law, the family’s entire digital life is scrutinized by county authorities. “I’m afraid to even communicate with our lawyer,” Hannah says. “If I mention anything about our case, I’m worried they are going to see it and use it against us.”
Any reasonable person would describe that as not just a punishment, but a pretty severe one.
And one that affects children. Having a teenager know that a person she never met, who she has no way to contact, is looking at her activity every minute isn't just punishment in fact. It's victimization.
Thus, I think we can conclude from this that the Monroe County, Indiana prosecutors office is victimizing children. Full stop. Time to make some arrests.
Wasn't there some other big police wrongdoing case in Monroe County Indiana recently? I can't think of another reason I'd recognize a county in a state i don't live in.
The very idea that they can forcibly monitor the entire families devices in order for him to be granted bail is insane. Personally, I think the idea of not being allowed any electronic device shouldn't be allowed anymore, but using that as a pretext to affect the entire family is absurd.
In 1950, if you were told as a pretrial release condition, you weren't allowed to use paper because your alleged crime involved a book, no one would have thought that reasonable. Today, devices are the equivalent of paper.
I agree that this is cruel and unusual punishment, however, I strongly dislike the paper == computer metaphor. The two are hardly comparable.
Compared to paper, it is easy to comit serious crimes from the comfort of your own home with a computer. Computers facilitate Lightspeed communication, and can be used for instantaneous financial transaction. They can be used to collect information anonymously, and deseminate information publically.
Very very different risk levels.
That said, subjecting an entire family to 24/7 electronic surveillance (and making them pay for it!?!) Is fucked up. I think we need a different paradigm for dealing with "e-criminals" like perhaps the state provides state-administered devices to those charges with electronic crimes? Idrk, but this ain't it cheif.
Computers are remarkably efficient but at the dawn of the Gutenberg press, you could have made similar observations. For the first time with paper, it was possible to commit crimes in the privacy of your own home merely by writing things down and sending them to a publisher.
Except for the "instantaneous" and "Lightspeed" observations, which I think are the real key here. Also, commiting a book crime would require conscious cooperation and coordination with another person/people (the publisher), whereas internet crimes can be done completely solo.
I think a more sensible comparison could be made between computers and telephones or telegraphs
In large part I agree, however, it leaves a problem unsolved.
In the case of cp possession/production, how do you effectively sanitize a person's internet traffic?
I think providing devices that only connect to state DNS servers, and only serve approved content could be one way. But it also raises privacy concerns.
Honestly I would argue it doesn't matter in either case.
If it is about possession, there just isn't enough of a negative effect from allowing someone to look at that stuff for another month or so to justify serious infringement on rights without a conviction. The abuse has happened, and a single individual looking at it some more won't affect things much. And after an actual conviction they'll just be in prison, or after release you would have a justification to monitor at least their own internet traffic.
If it's about production, the internet traffic isn't likely to be the problem. Someone sexually abusing children isn't likely to stop just because they can't put it on the internet anymore. At that point you'd rather need to keep them away from children in the first place.
Well, I'm happy to say I have no idea how the consumption of cp works, but I imagine it's not ad supported. Perhaps you can find it for free, but if you're paying for it, than stemming the flow of funding for child abuse seems worthwhile. Also, do people really get through trail in ~1 month?
Part of the premise of the criminal justice system is supposed to be that the system is designed to occasionally fail to punish the guilty if it protects the innocent. That's often expressed as, "it's better to let 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man go to prison."
You might just have to accept that you can't always be completely sure that someone's internet usage is sanitized. Could they reoffend awaiting trial? Possibly. Same as letting an alleged mugger walk the streets until trial or an alleged rapist be around women. Innocent until proven guilty means that, as it stands right now until a verdict otherwise is returned, an innocent man and his family are having their right to use a very basic feature of modern existence, the internet, infringed upon.
You would have to be completely out of your mind to voluntarily add this app to your device. And I’m sitting here at work talking about it and my religious co worker just informed me that he has a group of friends that use this app. WTF?!
even if the guy did and would be found guilty of child porn (for which he would deserve to rot in hell)
he hasn't been convicted and is therefore innocent at this time. subjecting someone who is innocent to this is insane, regardless of allegations
the phrase "he chose to agree to be monitored and they chose to continue living with him" was uttered. what the fuck
so like assume i'm adversarial to him. i send him an email which entices him to click a link like "hey neighbor, we went to the campsite and took picture (link)[pornhub.com]. he clicks the link and goes to jail?! actualy scratch that, he's not allowed to touch electronic (again, insane but less so) his wife clicks it and he goes to jail?
even if his wife went to pornhub deliberately, so what? is she not allowed to look at porn? if so, why? if she is and they're just assuming he did it because reasons, is he not allowed to look at porn(beyond the using a computer at all thing)? would a porn mag be okay, and if so why or why not?
in this guy's shoes i would be this close to encasing a bulldozer in concrete and going for a ride.
I can maybe understand monitoring the accused, especially when accused of possessing cp, with this.
The article doesnt go a whole lot into the case, but it sounds like it was flimsy, but then again i like to think cases like that are hopefully well researched to make sure the person is guilty, but often in the legal system, with any accusation, the goal is not to find truth but to find jail time on sometrhing the prosecution has made its mind up about, because a loss i guess could be seen as embarrassing.
But if this was going to be deployed the limit should be the accused phone, not family members, and from what i understood they have to pay for it?
Several legal experts expressed concern about the monitoring conditions imposed by the judge in Hannah’s husband’s case. But Phyllis Emerick, the chief deputy public defender in Monroe County, argues that because Hannah’s husband and his family consented to the surveillance, they gave up their rights to privacy. “He agreed that he would not access electronic devices in his household in exchange for release,” she says. “It was the family’s choice to continue living with him.”
what the fuck kind of logic is this, lets say the guy is a piece of shit, if he is, still its not easy to just move, especially with the stress of leaving someone youve known for years, or forever. Not to mention the financial burden.
This is some CCP shit. If we allow this to permeate across the US, we will have a far worse problem than the NSA constantly monitoring us which most people didnt care about, device level spyware is next level, and maybe people wont care then either.
This feels like that shit in the game watch dogs, while i imagine not as fantastical as the game, what if control of these apps is gotten not just b the governemnt, already doing shady shit, but hackers as well. the precedent set here can be very alarming.
I despise the CCP not with one but with for passions, for all the shit they did and still do, and because it seems they won't be paying for all their crimes anytime soon.
But by pulling these shenanigans, the US gets closer and closer to the CCP, which they denounce every chance they get, this making it progressively more difficult for people from everywhere else to justify their support for the US, if not as the champion of freedom, at least as the lesser evil.
They are still far ahead of China in human rights and law abiding, but the gap is closing with shit like this and increasing inequality.
I have to say this is quite a worrying abuse. Both of software, and of privacy.
It's being deployed for something it's not meant for, and being used to remove liberties for it. Of course, much of this will be lost to media circles as in CSA cases, the presumption is guilt in the public's mind.
Whatever the truth of the original conviction, the use of this software as a condition of bail should be banned, and abhorrent to anyone who values justice.
That is not to say the software doesn't have it's uses - especially in cases of porn addiction. However, the software is nowhere near good enough to be used in legal cases. It says so itself. It errs, intentionally, on gathering more data, on being more conservative, simply because it's not good enough to make the judgement on its own.
That's before we look at the unintentional consequences of impinging on the freedom of an innocent person ('Hannah'), and the way in which the software is not 'intelligent' enough to make judgements on whether or not it should take a photo of emails. It also led to fear of accessing help (and an inability to access help).
Not to mention the fact that any reasonable person would say that its use constitutes a punishment in and of itself.
We need a standard for pretrial release where if any measure could, if taken in isolation, be considered punitive, prosecutors are not allowed to ask for it.
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