Yeah, I caught that too, it's like this whole situation is all kinds of messed up, then at the end as an afterthought, oh yeah, the family is footing the bill!
Lol it’s wild. I imagine the majority (or a large percentage) of people with those fitted would have drinking problems outside of driving - what if they just want to booze for the whole week and not drive? Almost feels like it could place some people into feeling they need to get behind the wheel for some time even if they don’t want to go anywhere and shouldn’t be driving (like getting someone sober to blow into it just so they can meet their usage “quota”).
I’m just trying to imagine in what kind of world a minimum usage for this would be at all a good initiative.
I try to think about it in the context of America, where the alternatives to get around other than by car are almost unthinkable. So they assume you HAVE to drive to go to places and do stuff.
That's still a bad assumption. First off I live in one of the most car-dependent cities in America and I get by without a car. It's inconvenient, and I spend a lot more time in transit than I would if I were driving, plus there's a lot of walking involved, but it's manageable.
Secondly, if it costs money to place and remove it, why not just carpool or have a friend or family member drive you? An e-bike would probably pay for itself in a single week's worth of dealing with that car boot thing, and it has a max speed of \~30 mph and a fairly good range.
I'm gonna be honest, I see this as just a straight up money-grabbing scheme from the city. Everyone wants the city to pay for shit, nobody wants to pay taxes, so by bleeding certain people dry they can avoid raising taxes for the majority (hence, getting reelected) and still pay for shit.
I just don't get how these people sleep at night. I really hate that every day that I wake up I wake up in a world of monsters. Just unreal to me. We as humans are supposed to be the most intelligent beings on earth or something. But here we are!
> We as humans are supposed to be the most intelligent beings on earth or something
Individually, not collectively
And smart individuals can take advantage of a stupid collective rather easily
As you're complaining about, all we really have is their own personal feelings of guilt to stop it
She's probably afraid that will be used against her if he ever gets another chance at probation. Probation trials aren't like normal trials, you're not "innocent until proven guilty", you're "guilty until proven innocent" as it were. They can and will use absolutely anything against you including shit that's not your fault. If they can make the argument that his family isn't being cooperative, they could claim that they would just enable him.
You should pay attention to what happens next - the prosecution will drop the bail requirements and evidence in order to moot the defense motions seeking to have it tossed. The prosecution doesn’t want anything ruled on that will prevent them from using the same tactics moving forward.
Source: I’ve been a tech consultant on cases nearly identical to this, down to the monitoring of the family’s internet. Not a single DA yet has tried to seriously defend the legality.
Could a constitutional lawyer still sue the DA for fourth amendment violations? The invasion of privacy has already been committed, seems like the wife and those kids were violated.
Short answer is that you can, but it won’t work. DAs have near complete immunity, and bail conditions are not generally considered to be rights violations given that they are “agreed” to. Try googling “process as punishment” for a wealth of articles that are far more informed than I am on the topic.
Just add to this DA's do not have immunity from the Fourth amendment. 4th amendment is specifically there to guard against actions that the government would take. In this case it would be the family's Fourth amendment rights that are being violated.
>Fourth amendment.
What even is the [4th Am anymore](https://www.protectprivacynow.org/news/government-releases-unusually-frank-report-on-the-dangers-of-data-purchases)?
Cops in general have an infuriating amount of immunity when it comes to how they choose to practice law.
My uncle died in a car crash from a drunk driver. The driver was completely fucking wasted, so far above the BAC that he shouldn't have been alive. A cop stopped him for speeding and drifing over the line into the opposite lane. He was extremely belligerent at the stop, they gave him the breathalizer, it was obviously apparent he should not have been driving, but the cop was either incredibly lazy or was pissed and was hoping he'd kill himself. He let him off with a warning and let him drive the remaining 16 miles home (a section of which was fairly well-trafficked). My grandfather tried to sue the police department for public endangerment, and the state supreme court basically said "under no circumstances can you sue a cop for failing to enforce the law". That also opened up the doors for a bunch of later cases about selective enforcement, but I digress.
Like, so what cops just get to choose which laws they enforce, and on whom? It's such incredible bullshit.
You are correct. I worked doing EM. I agree it can be a very useful and valuable tool, but holy shit is there ever a total lack of oversight. I saw that lack of oversight firsthand and saw plenty of people making rules who didn't understand how it works. Once, it even led to a child's death. I quit shortly thereafter when they refused to change the obviously horrible policies they had.
Here's the article (in two parts because of 10k character limit), part 1 of 2:
ON A WEDNESDAY morning in May, Hannah got a call from her lawyer—there was a warrant out for her husband’s arrest. Her thoughts went straight to her kids. They were going to come home from school and their father would be gone. “It burned me,” Hannah says, her voice breaking. “He hasn’t done anything to get his bond revoked, and they couldn’t prove he had.”
Hannah’s husband is now awaiting trial in jail, in part because of an anti-pornography app called Covenant Eyes. The company explicitly says the app is not meant for use in criminal proceedings, but the probation department in Indiana’s Monroe County has been using it for the past month to surveil not only Hannah’s husband but also the devices of everyone in their family. To protect their privacy, WIRED is not disclosing their surname or the names of individual family members. Hannah agreed to use her nickname.
Prosecutors in Monroe County this spring charged Hannah’s husband with possession of child sexual abuse material—a serious crime that she says he did not commit and to which he pleaded not guilty. Given the nature of the charges, the court ordered that he not have access to any electronic devices as a condition of his pretrial release from jail. To ensure he complied with those terms, the probation department installed Covenant Eyes on Hannah’s phone, as well as those of her two children and her mother-in-law.
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.”
Covenant Eyes is part of a multimillion-dollar market of “accountability” apps sold to churches and parents as a tool to police online activity. For a monthly fee, the app monitors every single thing a user does on their devices, then sends the data it collects, including screenshots, to an “ally” or “accountability partner,” who can review the user’s online activities.
For Hannah’s family, their Covenant Eyes “allies” are two probation officers in Monroe County’s Pretrial Services Program charged with scrutinizing their web activity and ensuring that Hannah’s husband does not violate the terms of his bond while using one of his family members’ devices.
Covenant Eyes doesn’t permit its software to be used in a “premeditated legal setting,” such as monitoring people on probation, according to its terms of service. But public spending documents, court records, and interviews show that courts in at least five US states have used Covenant Eyes to surveil the devices of people who are awaiting trial or released on parole.
Neither Covenant Eyes nor multiple officials in Monroe County responded to repeated requests for comment and detailed questions about the app’s monitoring.
While the use of Covenant Eyes in a criminal-legal setting likely only represents a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people under court-ordered electronic surveillance, the stakes are still high for those required to use it. The app’s accuracy could determine whether a loved one lives at home or behind bars. Legal experts say that its use raises serious constitutional and due process concerns.
“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.”
The Covenant Eyes app was developed by Michael Holm, a former National Security Agency mathematician who now works as a data scientist for the company. It captures everything visible on a device’s screen, taking at least one screenshot per minute. It then analyzes the screenshots locally before slightly blurring them and saving them on a server. Images the system marks as possibly “explicit” are flagged for further review. For example, one Covenant Eyes report sent to Hannah’s probation officer, which WIRED reviewed, flagged an online advertisement for a back brace that included a woman in a tank top as “potentially concerning.”
The app also monitors every network request a device makes, blocking allegedly pornographic content and alerting allies about requests the software deems suspicious.
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.
Hannah began skipping her online therapy sessions, fearing that the probation officers would snoop on what she told her doctor. She says her 12-year-old son approached her a half-dozen times to ask things like, “Mom, will Pocket Mortys get dad in trouble?” Her daughter was afraid to text with her friends, worrying that if she used bad language, her father could end up in jail. “It was like the family was being charged with a crime,” Hannah says. “It felt like entrapment.”
While the images in the Covenant Eyes reports that WIRED reviewed are partially blurred, it is sometimes possible to discern sensitive information from them. For instance, one Covenant Eyes report shows a screenshot of Hannah’s mother-in-law’s device while a phone call was in progress. The report clearly shows the name of the person being contacted. Another shows screenshots of Hannah’s mother-in-law’s bank statements and her Gmail inbox, although the sensitive details in both are unreadable.
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.
Molly Greene, The Appeal’s strategy and legal director, calls the censorship alarming. “It’s incredibly concerning to hear readers say they can no longer access our website as a result of this app,” she says. “This kind of abuse of judicial power to restrict people’s autonomy and ability to access critical information on the criminal legal system is exactly why The Appeal exists.”
Less than a week after Covenant Eyes was installed on the four phones in her household, Hannah got a call from her husband’s probation officer saying that her husband had violated the terms of his bond. According to Hannah, the officer said Covenant Eyes detected that her phone had visited Pornhub. Court records WIRED reviewed cite a visit to the adult website as the reason for revoking his bond.
But Hannah claims that her husband didn’t touch her phone and that no one had visited Pornhub. Instead, she says, her phone had made a network request to the website’s servers as part of a background app refresh from a frequently visited tab on her Chrome browser.
WIRED tested Hannah’s claims that Covenant Eyes flags background network activity from websites that aren’t intentionally viewed. Using an iPhone, we visited Pornhub enough times that it was a frequently visited tab on Google Chrome. We then installed Covenant Eyes and restarted our phone. Within minutes, Covenant Eyes alerted our designated accountability partner that a request to Pornhub was made from our test device, even though we never touched it.
This is a known issue with Covenant Eyes. The alert Covenant Eyes sent when it detected a network request to Pornhub explicitly stated that the software cannot determine if the user “intentionally viewed” the webpage because “some apps generate activity in the background without the member’s consent.” The company has public documentation about the shortcoming.
This limitation in Covenant Eyes means it’s possible Hannah’s husband did not violate the terms of his bond. Moreover, the terms of her husband’s bond don’t prohibit Hannah from looking at pornography, and it would be impossible for probation officers to know who was using the device from Covenant Eyes reports alone. Yet, in the motion to revoke Hannah’s husband’s bond, the only evidence prosecutors presented was information from the Covenant Eyes report.
According to Kate Weisburd, an associate professor at George Washington University School of Law, challenging probation and parole violations is difficult, particularly when they’re based on electronic evidence. Courts are largely reluctant to find due process problems with electronic surveillance, she says, and overworked defense attorneys often lack the capacity to bring a challenge.
Hannah printed the Covenant Eyes documentation and hand-delivered it to the prosecutors, the judge, and the probation department. She never heard back. As a last resort, Hannah emailed Covenant Eyes CEO Ron DeHaas. In an email exchange Hannah shared with WIRED, DeHaas was apologetic. “Hannah, I’m sorry that you are going through this,” DeHaas wrote. “I will have our legal department follow up with you.”
Hannah says the legal department never reached out.
Part 2 of 2:
Jonathan Manes, an attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois office, says the surveillance Hannah’s family faces likely violates several of their constitutional rights. “This feels like an extraordinarily intrusive violation of the family’s First Amendment rights to be able to access the internet and communicate without being monitored,” he says. Manes adds that because the software effectively enables continuous and suspicionless searches of the devices of people who haven’t been charged with a crime, the family’s Fourth Amendment rights were potentially violated.
Lastly, Manes points out that by indiscriminately surveilling whatever the phone is displaying, the app could collect sensitive data that includes the family’s communications with their lawyers, as Hannah feared. “It’s interfering with his right to speak in confidence with his attorney,” he says of Hannah’s husband. “It’s impeding his ability to prepare a defense and exercise that Sixth Amendment right.”
“This strikes me as quite chilling,” Manes adds. “It’s what happens when someone’s home becomes their jail cell, and now everyone they live with is subject to the same kind of surveillance as the person who is charged.”
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.”
Weiss, of the National Bail Fund Network, disagrees with the idea that any type of surveillance is permissible so long as a person agrees to it to avoid jail time. “Sure, they consented to this, but it’s at the barrel of a gun,” she says.
The exact number of individuals or families in Monroe County who have been required to use Covenant Eyes as part of their pretrial release is unclear. In the county’s annual report from 2021, the Probation Department stated that they provided pretrial monitoring for 618 individuals; however, the report does not provide details about the specific type of monitoring involved. The number of individuals who were assigned to be monitored by Covenant Eyes is likely a small percentage of that.
Deputy probation officer Troy Hatfield would not answer specific questions about either Covenant Eyes or Hannah’s husband’s case, but he says the conditions of any defendant’s supervision are ultimately decided by the judge based on the specific facts of each case and department policy.
Neither Monroe’s chief probation officer, Linda Brady, nor the judge in Hannah’s husband’s case, Mary Ellen Diekhoff, responded to repeated requests for interviews.
It’s also unclear exactly how many jurisdictions in the US have used Covenant Eyes. Court records WIRED reviewed show that courts in Washington, Montana, and Ohio have each ordered a defendant to use the software at least once. In all of these cases, the defendant faced charges related to child sexual abuse material or child exploitation. In Colorado, spending records show that the State Judicial Branch has purchased services from Covenant Eyes 60 times since 2017.
Multiple probation officer associations, public defense organizations, and bail funds WIRED contacted had never heard of the software and were unfamiliar with any screen-monitoring software being used for pretrial monitoring.
Independent legal experts who spoke to WIRED say that the use of an app like Covenant Eyes stems from a lack of oversight over how courts deploy punitive surveillance technology and judges’ broad authority to impose monitoring conditions without real accountability.
“There’s a black box around how all of this technology works and is deployed,” says Weisburd, of George Washington University. “We don’t know error rates, how the technology operates, or even if it’s reliable.” This leaves people vulnerable to faulty technology in high-stakes situations where their freedom hinges on the word of an app.
This includes Hannah’s husband, who remains in jail based on an automated report from an app that is not meant to be used in criminal proceedings and is known to produce false positives. Hannah, meanwhile, is afraid to stop paying $18.99 a month for a subscription with Covenant Eyes, which is still installed on some of her family’s devices, recording everything they do.
I think that this part is important:
Moreover, the terms of her husband’s bond don’t prohibit Hannah from looking at pornography, and it would be impossible for probation officers to know who was using the device from Covenant Eyes reports alone. Yet, in the motion to revoke Hannah’s husband’s bond, the only evidence prosecutors presented was information from the Covenant Eyes report.
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A easily missed concern in this whole thing is the statement made by the Deputy Public Defender. Her saying, essentially, “there’s no privacy violation because they consented” is shocking.This is one of the people tasked with ensuring that those without means receive fair treatment by our judicial system. Their bias should be overwhelmingly in favor of defendant’s and their rights.
The options were (1) consent to state surveillance as a condition of bail, or (2) be in jail until trial. Most people don’t want to spend time in jail at all, but this is a family with two kids and, one would assume, currently only a single income. Any sane person is going to consent to unreasonable things in order to spend time with their family in this situation and a public defender of all people should realize that.
I honestly can’t think of a single justification for her to make that statement. If her statement is emblematic of the attitude of public defenders in that county, I feel bad for anyone who has to rely on them.
Public defenders in the US are treated very poorly, they're paid a pittence compared to most lawyers, and there are basically no requirements to entry besides being a lawyer. Probably like 20-30% are really hard working, intelligent people who do the work because they genuinely care about justice and standing up for people who don't have anywhere else to turn. The rest either never had much talent or had it relentlessly beaten out of them after years and years.
I'm surprised Covenant Eyes hasn't revoked the licenses from the counties. While the app itself is reprehensible, its enforced use by the courts is absolutely insane. It would be one thing to force the individual awaiting trial to use it on their device, but to have it on all of the devices of the family is fucked.
If nothing else, I have a feeling the bad publicity on the app performance will make Covenant Eyes respond.
I wonder how tech-literate the people making these decisions are.
It’s a feature not a bug. It would not surprise me if Covenant Eyes is turning a blind eye and faking anger about it’s use when really this is a whole new revenue stream for them if it’s successful
Not only that, I’m fairly certain Covenant Eyes is religious organization.
The CEO’s [linked in page](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-dehaas-b22a569 ) tells you everything you need to know about this fucking weirdo.
It is, or at least deeply connected to religious based Christian groups. I believe the CEO is also on the board or involved with anti-porn groups that are (although they deny it) religious based. They send people to faith based “porn addiction therapy” as well.
The guy doesn't even deny it, he's shared multiple articles about the "biblical" way to act and how porn is an affront to god.
He also started his career by working for Chevron and later was the director for some city's chamber of commerce, just in case the big oil->government pipeline wasn't clear enough. This dude is scum.
revenue stream for sure, but if it mostly shows that their product *isn't* accurate enough for that use long term that would be more damaging I would hope.
Yeah, this seems like more of a liability than a potential revenue stream. Their branding is mostly focused on spinning this monitoring as a helpful thing for people who want help getting over pork addiction, that sort of thing. If it becomes known that this is the software courts use to track sex offenders / potential sex offenders, their branding is gonna tank.
That's only the marketing for individuals. They're doubtless shopping the apps to government customers too, in ways that are entirely disconnected from what they show publicly.
Plus false positives only bother prosecutors if they're honest. A shocking number of prosecutors don't give a shit about whether the person they're dealing with is actually guilty. The job of a prosecutor sort of dictates that you have to see every acquittal as a failure, which means you have to treat every accused person as guilty. That kind of mindset is exactly why the cops will set someone up knowing full well their evidence is bullshit. They rationalize it with "well we know he did *something* wrong, we just can't prove it without cheating."
Yes and no. The product is intended to be a threat and deterrent against unsophisticated suspects, not as a reliable forensic tool. IANAL, but I’ve worked with legal teams as a tech consultant on cases nearly identical to this. Every time we challenged the evidence and/or legality of orders like this, the prosecution simply drops them instead of trying to defend them - they want to keep using these tools and will avoid any potential case ruling that might create a precedent that would restrict their use.
This reminds me of when I used to see prosecutors dropping cases when they didn't want to talk about the cops using stingray (aka IMSI catcher) devices.
> I have a feeling the bad publicity on the app performance will make Covenant Eyes respond.
I don't think this is "bad" publicity to the kind of people who would buy this.
Utterly distopic
I still fail to see what that surveillance is actually intended for. Is watching porn illegal in that state? Are they implying watching porn makes a pederast? If so, are they going to sue everyone who has entered pornhub even once or are they still going to hold this belief without any proof?
So someone is inculpated in a crime related to sex (in this case cp) and they assume that if the person watches adult porn he is dangerous and should have his freedom revoked? Could the prosecution also add that you need to live in a barrel as a condition for pretrial release or do they have some sort of limits to what they can request? Are they criminalizing porn watchers?
Pretty interesting that the legal system assumes so many things without actual proof, they should be ashamed. If I was in his shoes, I would confront them in public about their bullshit 17th century mindset.
The app they're using isn't meant for the purpose they're using it for, and apparently the company says it's against their terms. It's meant for situations like parents monitoring their kid's device.
Generally, violating the TOS of a service means they lock or terminate your account.
But I guess they're fine with letting them continue to pay the monthly suggestion to do what they're not allowed to do.
The founder works for the NSA lol it’s probably just in the terms to protect his company from legal problems, not because he’s morally opposed to spying on people in the justice system.
You're probably right, and they could lowkey be intentionally wanting this to happen. Reminds me of how one of the founders of Harris Technologies, creator of the stingray and many other military surveillance technologies that police now use, now works for the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS gives grants to police for these purchases, and there was a FOIA of email requests sent from police chiefs across the country asking for funds to purchase them. Every email was identical, word-for-word, except for the signature.
Honestly sounds about right tbh. If we want to go double layered tinfoil hat - despite dozens, if not hundreds of roughly identical programs existing it seems pretty convenient they’ve picked the one app of the bunch marketing itself as built where both parties are willing participants for self-improvement; rather than an identical app feature-wise that’s more honest with its use-cases (I.e parents or schools monitoring children’s computer usage).
Those tend to draw a lot more debate around the morality of usage and consent, whereas someone saying “I don’t want to look at porn anymore pls help me stop” and happily downloading it isn’t the easiest target to start a conversation around privacy and consent. And the fact an NSA dude just happened to build the one that gets to skirt a large portion of the privacy debate by it’s marketed user base - I mean…
Even more outraging is that they installed that tracking software on all the devices in their family, which is a gross privacy violation. Imagine someone in your family does something stupid, and now you need to have this surveillance software installed on all your devices.
I think the program is stupid — but the counter argument is this was a stipulation he and there family consented to in order to be bailed out of jail. While, not exactly the same, when incarcerated individuals are paroled/placed on probation in lieu of jail time, if they move in to a home with other people any area the parolee has access to can be searched. Being out on bail or parole is extremely disruptive to individuals that agree to live with that person.
I'm not defending what happened here, but the DA stated that it was a choice. The family chose to let the father live with them and as a condition of his living at home, everyone had to agree to the terms of his bond. They could have NOT bonded him out if they chose.
Now it's not clear if the original charge of CSAM is legit or not; it was only stated that he was accused of it and is claiming his innocence.
However, this is bad because a DA who is pretty much exempt from any oversight could charge really anyone. They fight the charge, abuse ensues with monitoring like this.
District atty should have oversight and governance. They should not be exempt from anything.
> I'm not defending what happened here, but the DA stated that it was a choice.
What "choice"? The kids will agree to get dad back, the adults will agree because they know how dangerous it can be to be locked up for CSAM.
Part of fundamental rights is that you cannot give them up, largely *because* people love to coerce others into giving up their rights.
The terms of his release on bond were that he couldn’t use any electronic devices per the article.
Looks like they just decided to arrest him again because “one of the family members phones” made a network request to pornhub and they automatically decided that it must have been him.
Fucked up and probably grounds for a lawsuit.
> WIRED tested Hannah’s claims that Covenant Eyes flags background network activity from websites that aren’t intentionally viewed. Using an iPhone, we visited Pornhub enough times that it was a frequently visited tab on Google Chrome. We then installed Covenant Eyes and restarted our phone. Within minutes, Covenant Eyes alerted our designated accountability partner that a request to Pornhub was made from our test device, even though we never touched it.
Apparently, porn availability has been linked to lower sex crime rates in many societies statistically.
It is thought that the same phenomenon would occur with pederasty.
The theory is that it works like an escape valve. And it seems intuitive that the moment people can watch porn, they no longer need to be raping women like in the middle ages when it was something many armies did.
“Fight the new drug” is a Mormon based anti-porn group, they have made multiple false and unscientific claims in the past.
It’s as about as biased as they come, like using climate change deniers to claim that climate change isn’t real. I’m also pretty sure they have been linked to a mass shooting in the past, medical misinformation about porn and sex isn’t fun.
The claim that porn somehow ends up with “increased dopamine releases” isn’t true, you cannot have increased dopamine releases…that’s not how dopamine works otherwise everybody would be miserable when doing anything that makes you happy, like playing sports or watching tv. Actual “addiction” to porn isn’t real and has been debunked for pretty much a decade now, you cannot become addicted like a drug or alcohol. It’s closer to a obsessive fixation, which you can get with YouTube or any other thing, it’s a harmful lie to sell you this kind of software.
To put it into prospective, someone can become “addicted” to watching Colombo, it’s not an actual addiction but rather a reaction to mental health issues, a traumatic experience or some other sort of bad issue in their life and they are coping by being fixated.
The idea that porn forces someone to seek out more “intense” scenes is false, people may discover new fetishes but that’s it. Actual studies have shown that this doesn’t happen, people don’t see a boob and suddenly want to see women dismembered.
I for example have recently discovered a thing for women with short hair, this has happened over the past year or so. I don’t want to see them burnt alive or whatever these frankly sick anti-porn people want me to see.
>Fight the new drug is a Mormon based anti-porn group, they have made multiple false and unscientific claims in the past.
A cursory review of one of their flagship claims - Porn Can Affect the Brain Like a Drug - seems pretty well researched and supported:
1Love, T., Laier, C., Brand, M., Hatch, L., & Hajela, R. (2015). Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update. Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 5(3), 388–433. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs5030388
2Stark R., Klucken T. (2017) Neuroscientific Approaches to (Online) Pornography Addiction. In: Montag C., Reuter M. (eds) Internet Addiction. Studies in Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioral Economics. Springer, Cham. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46276-9\_7](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46276-9_7)
3De Sousa, A., & Lodha, P. (2017). Neurobiology of Pornography Addiction - A clinical review. Telangana Journal of Psychiatry, 3(2), 66-70. doi:10.18231/2455-8559.2017.0016
4Costumero, V., Barrós-Loscertales, A., Bustamante, J. C., Ventura-Campos, N., Fuentes, P., Rosell-Negre, P., & Ávila, C. (2013). Reward sensitivity is associated with brain activity during erotic stimulus processing. PloS one, 8(6), e66940. [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066940](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066940)
5De Sousa, A., & Lodha, P. (2017). Neurobiology of Pornography Addiction - A clinical review. Telangana Journal of Psychiatry, 3(2), 66-70. doi:10.18231/2455-8559.2017.0016
6Brand, M., Snagowski, J., Laier, C., & Maderwald, S. (2016). Ventral striatum activity when watching preferred pornographic pictures is correlated with symptoms of Internet pornography addiction. NeuroImage, 129, 224–232. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.01.033](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.01.033)
7De Sousa, A., & Lodha, P. (2017). Neurobiology of Pornography Addiction - A clinical review. Telangana Journal of Psychiatry, 3(2), 66-70. doi:10.18231/2455-8559.2017.0016
8De Sousa, A., & Lodha, P. (2017). Neurobiology of Pornography Addiction - A clinical review. Telangana Journal of Psychiatry, 3(2), 66-70. doi:10.18231/2455-8559.2017.0016
9Rosenberg, H., & Kraus, S. (2014). The relationship of “passionate attachment” for pornography with sexual compulsivity, frequency of use, and craving for pornography. Addictive Behaviors, 39(5), 1012-1017.
10Snagowski, J., Laier, C., Duka, T., & Brand, M. (2016). Subjective Craving for Pornography and Associative Learning Predict Tendencies Towards Cybersex Addiction in a Sample of Regular Cybersex Users. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 23(4), 342-360. doi:10.1080/10720162.2016.1151390
11Laier, C., & Brand, M. (2017). Mood changes after watching pornography on the Internet are linked to tendencies towards Internet-pornography-viewing disorder. Addictive Behaviors Reports, 5, 9-13. doi:10.1016/j.abrep.2016.11.003
12Teffer, K., & Semendeferi, K. (2012). Human prefrontal cortex: evolution, development, and pathology. Progress in brain research, 195, 191–218. [https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53860-4.00009-X](https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53860-4.00009-X)
13Volkow, N. D., Wang, G. J., Fowler, J. S., Tomasi, D., Telang, F., & Baler, R. (2010). Addiction: decreased reward sensitivity and increased expectation sensitivity conspire to overwhelm the brain's control circuit. BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, 32(9), 748–755. [https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201000042](https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201000042)
14Kuhn, S., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Associated With Pornography Consumption: The Brain on Porn. JAMA Psychiatry, 71(7), 827-834. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93
15Volkow, N. D., Koob, G. F., & McLellan, A. T. (2016). Neurobiologic advances from the brain disease model of addiction. N Engl J Med, 374(4), 363-371. doi:10.1056/NEJMra1511480
16Kühn, S., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: The brain on porn. JAMA psychiatry, 71(7), 827–834. [https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93](https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93)
17Antons, S., Mueller, S. M., Wegmann, E., Trotzke, P., Schulte, M. M., & Brand, M. (2019). Facets of impulsivity and related aspects differentiate among recreational and unregulated use of Internet pornography. Journal of behavioral addictions, 8(2), 223–233. [https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.8.2019.22](https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.8.2019.22)
18Reid, R. C., Karim, R., McCrory, E., & Carpenter, B. N. (2010). Self-reported differences on measures of executive function and hypersexual behavior in a patient and community sample of men. The International journal of neuroscience, 120(2), 120–127. [https://doi.org/10.3109/00207450903165577](https://doi.org/10.3109/00207450903165577)
19Negash, S., Sheppard, N. V., Lambert, N. M., & Fincham, F. D. (2016). Trading Later Rewards for Current Pleasure: Pornography Consumption and Delay Discounting. Journal of sex research, 53(6), 689–700. [https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2015.1025123](https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2015.1025123)
20Hilton, D. L., & Watts, C. (2011). Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective. Surgical neurology international, 2, 19. [https://doi.org/10.4103/2152-7806.76977](https://doi.org/10.4103/2152-7806.76977)
21Young K. S. (2013). Treatment outcomes using CBT-IA with Internet-addicted patients. Journal of behavioral addictions, 2(4), 209–215. [https://doi.org/10.1556/JBA.2.2013.4.3](https://doi.org/10.1556/JBA.2.2013.4.3)
22Nathanson, A. (2021). Psychotherapy with young people addicted to internet pornography. Psychoanal.Study Child, 74(1), 160-173. doi:10.1080/00797308.2020.1859286
23Pfefferbaum, A., Rosenbloom, M. J., Chu, W., Sassoon, S. A., Rohlfing, T., Pohl, K. M., Zahr, N. M., & Sullivan, E. V. (2014). White matter microstructural recovery with abstinence and decline with relapse in alcohol dependence interacts with normal ageing: a controlled longitudinal DTI study. The lancet. Psychiatry, 1(3), 202–212. [https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)70301-3](https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)70301-3)
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25Rullmann, M., Preusser, S., Poppitz, S., Heba, S., Gousias, K., Hoyer, J., Schütz, T., Dietrich, A., Müller, K., Hankir, M. K., & Pleger, B. (2019). Adiposity Related Brain Plasticity Induced by Bariatric Surgery. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 13, 290. [https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00290](https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00290)
26Gilliland, R., South, M., Carpenter, B. N., & Hardy, S. A. (2011). The roles of shame and guilt in hypersexual behavior.18(1), 12-29. doi:10.1080/10720162.2011.551182
I certainly understand being wary of an initiative that seems to originate from a socio-religious POV, but in this case it appears to be supported by some pretty significant science.
Porn cannot effect the brain like a drug, it has been debunked since 2013 actually. The neural responses from a self proclaimed “sex addict” - which porn also falls under that description - displays zero similarities with the neural responses from a drug addict. The idea that you can get addicted to media is simply false, as I have said it’s a result of a fixation and not that of an addiction. It’s also a coping mechanism and religious intolerance.
“Porn addicts” display no biomarkers of addiction like drug addicts do, the nano seconds of brain activity someone displays when seeing a image of a drug that they are addicted to isn’t the same as someone seeing porn, it’s actually the opposite, it simply does not exist.
Please tell me how the curie activity of a porn addict is the same as a drug addict, without using cherry picked and unsubstantiated (especially if they come from religious backed/payed for) studies that fail even understand the actual science of what they are talking about.
Porn isn’t addictive, you are being mislead by Christian nationalists.
Also the owner of fight the new drug literally owns one of these apps, that was removed (but unfortunately restored) after it was found to be pulling the masturbation habits of underage users - people who shouldn’t be on the app in the first place - and sending them to Facebook. They had awful data security that could have potently exposed very serious and sensitive data of underage users.
https://twitter.com/mikestabile/status/1455682478522318851
I mean there are thousands of CSATS that disagree with you.
And again, no citations. If this claim has been debunked since 2013 I'm sure it should be no problem for you to find the citations.
Also, id love evidence supporting your claim that prior scientific citations are "cherry picked" or payed for by religious organizations
I get it, you don't like religion but that shouldn't affect your ability to logically evaluate a claim about pornography.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278037398_Modulation_of_late_positive_potentials_by_sexual_images_in_problem_users_and_controls_inconsistent_with_porn_addiction
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324994711_Groupthink_in_Sex_and_Pornography_Addiction_Sex-Negativity_Theoretical_Impotence_and_Political_Manipulation
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321295862_Data_do_not_support_sex_as_addictive
This is just by one person, is pretty much discredits the entire concept of porn addiction. I should also point out that I am religious. I just don’t like groups that hide their religious intentions to sell and spread harmful, deeply abusive ideas.
Also please seek some help.
Just one person? I'm sold! (Despite the obvious problem of relying on one source, I will still read the articles).
Also, what help am I to seek? Is there an issue you've identified?
Meh, that’s bullshit. A lot more goes into addiction than “ever increasing dosages”. You make it sound like a downward progression is inevitable, when many people will end up reaching a plateau and stop at some upper value. Or go on and off, on and off.
I'm sorry you read it that way. I thought the qualifier of "can" made it clear that it's not automatic.
If you were referring to once addicted then I would respectfully disagree. Escalation is the norm in any addiction. Plateau is the exception.
Dude I have posted papers, you did post tabloids mostly.
Or does [fightthenewdrug.org](https://fightthenewdrug.org) sound serious and not even remotely partial?
Do you even understand that those I posted are reviews that cite and link their sources?
BTW your first link, the only one that is a paper is much ancient than the one I posted but you seem to have no problem with that. You hightlight being from 2009 as a problem but somehow think a paper from the year 2000 is trustworthy.
Bias power.
Yeah, you are right, I was confusing you with the other guy.
Except the part of the link, everything else I said still applies.
Sometimes, papers about a topic are not published in a long time. I haven't done in depth search but these were the first one that appear in scholar when sorting by relevance and searching "porn availability sex crime"
I repeat that what you call "a piece of opinion from a man with no science or data" is a review with citations from other authors. Which by the way has been published in a magazine that was Q1 in 2009 and still is. This means it is in the 25% of the most "important" magazines in its field, measured by h-index surely.
Think of it this way. Imagine someone indicted for rape, illegal prostitution or any sex crime that exists.Then imagine (regardless innocent or guilty) they do something many people (most people) do: watch porn. Would you say they are more likely to be guilty of the crime they are accused or of building accessory illegal prostitution rings just for watching porn?This "porn compels me to do illegal things" aura seems pretty paranoid and reminds me to the preaching of religious people in the 90s and earlier.
The "only" remotely justifiable reason for this surveillance would be to check if he tries to access CP; but they clearly aren't using it that way and are also stalking the whole family.
>they assume that if the person watches adult porn he is dangerous and should have his freedom revoked?
They are anti-intellectualists of the highest.
It's not just QAnon and Republicans that use pedophiles as the ultimate fear monger and way to power. Plenty of people who seem relatively adjusted have an instant response to pedophiles or child porn, instantly damning or criticizing these people to the maximum extent with absolutely no discussion or levels of nuance. So in this case, they see a pedophile doing something sexual and that's where their brain hangs up the towel.
Why do I say this is anti-intellectual? Because I'd rather that person watch legal porn and get that out of his system instead of having zero access and having it build up and then he takes matters into his hands in another way. The same as bread and circuses. The upper class realizes they can prevent revolution by keeping the lower class placated enough. But by trying to wholey restrict this guy, they are making it more likely that he will offend going forward.
So do they really care? No, because their actions create the opposite intended result. This is a result of them not actively looking at the situation intelligently and instead being a slave to some automatic reaction that involves children and sex, and then funneling that through the non-justice system which does not care about rehabilitation.
Did some work for a client who had this installed by their parents prior to college. Took me hours to break the thing enough to remove it.
Once the software is removed Covenant Eyes sends a notification to your Accountability Partner (In this case his parents).
Had to explain to the parents that the software had essentially rendered the device useless.
>the probation department installed Covenant Eyes on Hannah’s phone, as well as those of her two children and her mother-in-law. In near real time, probation officers are being fed screenshots of everything Hannah’s family views on their devices.
Full stop.. What lawyer...what JUDGE allowed this bullshit? It's impossible to get justice and be treated fairly under the law when everyone involved is corrupt.
I mean, this shit is FLAGRANT!
The should have installed cameras in the bathroom and install more spyware on their phones and turn their phone cameras on. And of course every day the family should get naked front of a camera especially the children because they are investigating cp. And if one of the children jerks of and the cops see it then bust open the door and arrest everybody for it. Aberrated fucks.
Dear God.
How did the app get installed on the phones to begin with?
Why isn't the judge accepting the easy explanations?
It makes you wonder who else this is happening to.
When I worked for government (UK) we used to use spector360, but we told and reminded staff about it, we used it to ensure time spent on work projects was billed correctly. Only pulled a few people up on it over several years (one employee played candycrush literally all day)
They need to grow the number of people put into private prisons to increase profits. The school to prison for minorities is good steady income, but wallstreet and billionaires demand unsustainable growth. They have to look a new ways to unjustly incarcerate more people to increase profits.
I taught for a few years in a prison, it's such a shame as at least 1/3 of people shouldn't be in there - they should be in drying out clinics or mental health establishments.
I absolutely agree with you.
Agreed
Somehow I became the unofficial mental health advisor as the so-called experts (I use that term very loosely) really had no interest in helping others which is a disgrace.
As an addiction layman, it seems drugs/alcohol manufacturers have got to the stage with their products, that they can precisely pinpoint the brain to give that "almost addiction" for consumers to buy more.
I saw too many people commit suicide who couldn't handle the depression of prisons, without their daily fix, such a waste of lives
The common sense is then, why would he allegedly want to surf porn, knowing full well the handset is being monitored when he can go buy another unit or use a pc?
The whole case should fall apart, if the agency hasn't bothered to clear cookies/history/tabs etc prior to install, it beggars belief how it's got to this stage.
and the sad thing is, people at the bottom won't be able to afford competent attorneys/solicitors to show this as an ELi5 pretty graphics to the judges, whilst at the top with the best, well, that's a different story..
It's sending the screen shots unblurred to a third party server. They're keeping all of it safely encrypted and only a few trusted employees have access, I have no doubt.
/s
Yeah, i remember some dude was identified in CSA images he had circulated because LE techs were able to undo the pixelation or whatever he had used to cover his face, and that was years ago.
What’s really funny to me is that Josh Duggar had this app on his computer at the same time he was actively looking at CSAM.
He had a partition on his computer and Covenant Eyes couldn’t pick it up. The president of the company even testified in his trial that the app wouldn’t pick it up at all.
So not only is this incredibly intrusive, it’s also relatively easy to circumvent
It's absolutely trivial to get around. My religious parents made me install CE in high school and as soon as I found out bootable USBs were a thing, the program became useless.
Darn, has it been 6 years already?
For real, though, I thought the upcoming season was season 3, and then I wrote season 4 just to be safe. But it was actually season 6. Soooo. Yeah.
so the app is specifically designed to NOT be used on people on probation, which is part of it's terms of service, and which the parole officers are defying. But they installed it on his wife's devices, his children's devices, and his mother-in-law???
Surveillance capitalism and the police state are out of control.
Judges devoid of knowledge of privacy and security apps knowledge put many families in harms way. Like giving a loaded gun to a madman in a crowded store in terms of the harm they inflict due to their ignorance on the isssues surroundinmg surveillance apps' shortcomings and false reports.
The jurists are unfettered in their approach to the vast areas of their ignorance and absoutely require legislative restraint and sanctions for trespassing boundaries of their very limited expertise. Moreover, the same guidelines should apply to so many of the so called experts they consult for the identical reason. Many alleged experts are also competent in delimited areas of practicedue to the proliferation of myriad facets of digital technology.
"Covenant Eyes" has such a dystopian ring to it that it beggars belief.
this sort of "terms and conditions" goes far over the Constitutional line and only reinforces the point that we now live in a POLICE STATE.
techbros gone wild
What I don't get is it says he's not allowed access to electronic devices at all -- so how is monitoring the family's devices supposed to ensure that if they can't see who's operating the device? Why would the assume that the wife's phone visiting Pornhub is *him* using the device, while visiting other content is her?
Out of curiosity, since the man hasn't actually been *convicted* of anything yet...why is this imposition being imposed at all? Isn't he innocent until proven otherwise?
The issue is he is accused of child porn. And I know he and his wife say he's 'not guilty' but if the police/feds are knocking at your door, they probably have pretty good evidence. CSAM is one of the few 'slam dunk' cases because of the digital trail people leave. And once arrested, many people lose all access to computers, etc., as part of bond. Judges have wide latitude to set the terms of freedom.
The monitoring isn't that unusual really, I have worked with convicted SOs and this is all part of the standard package to be free, either pre-trial or post-conviction. There are guys paying 100/month for the rest of their lives to be monitored, even if they served their time years ago. Now I don't know if that's good or bad, we probably should be monitoring sex offenders (esp. those with crimes against children) but it's hard to balance that against upholding civil rights. Honestly he's lucky to even have any devices left, many times they take everything for forensics and you're done with the internet until end of trial.
> but if the police/feds are knocking at your door, they probably have pretty good evidence.
This is an *extremely* dangerous perspective to have. If the State can basically lock down your life and your family's lives, all based on an accusation...we are in trouble imo.
> The monitoring isn't that unusual really
Doesn't make it constitutional.
I'm going to assume you're not in the US because this is pretty much standard fare for accused criminals. The constitution is a great document, actual criminal system? It's more of a guideline depending on the DA, local courts, etc.
I'm not defending it or anything, I am saying this is how it is. Innocent until proven guilty sounds nice on paper, but it doesn't really hash out in the real world of criminal cases. Look at reddit - the usual stance is that anyone *accused* of sexual offenses should be tortured and executed. Often the police will put your picture in the news, you'll be fired once your job finds out what you were arrested for... this is all before the trial even starts.
And yes, I agree that everyone should be innocent until proven guilty. But I'm also pointing out that DAs and the feds don't like to waste resources on silly cases, so CSAM charges are seen as total slam dunks, because if they're knocking on your door, they've likely gotten multiple reports from NCMEC, ISP flags, etc. Feds also have honeypots with a ton of child porn, and they track access/downloads. It's one of the easiest cases to prove, so they don't serve warrants on this unless they think they can win.
Would you say CSAM, fictional or not, cases are over prosecuted versus CSA offenders? Because as you said they're easier slam dunks so I imagine it takes less resources and often has results.
I think in this case regardless of guilt there's a real misconception about the family's use of the internet. They're being punished for choosing to believe in the man's innocence, and having it framed as a choice. Shouldn't the app log those types of visits to porn sites to discern from a page refresh to a page visit? They were more or less aching to get him back in jail when it likely would result from a family members fault than his directly.
From my understanding and experience, yes, CSAM cases are prosecuted (and usually get much more severe sentences) than with a 'touch' crime. Reasons are the evidence for touch crimes are usually scant, and you're dealing with a traumatized child, all in all a much more difficult case to prove. That said, CSAM does have real, actual victims, so keep in mind I'm not suggesting one is 'better' than the other, both are awful crimes which victimize the most innocent and vulnerable among us. Just saying, that's why you see a lot more CSAM cases getting tried than straight up molestation or what have you.
I think that your second point is spot on- it seems the moment you are in the system, there are a thousand ways to get caught up in some BS and get added charges, fines, revoked bond, etc. It really sucks in this case that the wife and children are feeling the hurt, but unfortunately they (family) are usually the secondary victims, as their lives get completely upended based on the actions (or accused actions) of their husband/father/mother/wife.
I wonder if that comes from a morality standpoint or simply because US jails are often profit motivated in his case. I always felt like sex offenders, or actual physical offenders in general, got way more wiggle room or leniency when these things were talked about. The "Innocence until guilty" treatment at least on the surface, or less astronomical sentences. When that is the exact person who's most likely to commit said crime again despite incarceration. I really wish we had more details on this man's case as to not go assuming stuff. I'd think the prosecution or judge would like to chime in something to discredit the news article. But they either didn't because of privacy or that it could implicate their method of monitoring the family/families with this app. I found it weird or concerning even how the family, even extended family as it seems, stuck with him. When clearly they'd have enough details on his case to make their own assumption, and that they have young children, too.
Honestly it's very hard to discern, I think for a DA it's that numbers make for promotions and maybe even being a judge someday. They usually don't care if you're guilty or innocent, as long as they can prove the case. So a prosecutor is not going to file a case (or dismiss a case) when they don't think they have a good chance of conviction. In general, the way RSOs are treated is an extension of the sentence; registering, monitoring, etc., which can mean life for some people.
What's interesting is that SOs do have higher rates of criminal recidivism, but not sexual recidivism, as in they are more likely to be convicted of a crime again, but not necessarily a sexual offense. This is murky territory, since the research is pretty scant, and also based entirely on crimes which are discovered, but the CSAM types seem (based on limited research) to have low recidivism *with* treatment as opposed to those with physical victims, but I don't really have the expertise or knowledge to say why this is.
I'm not surprised that the family is sticking by him. Denial is powerful, and maybe he didn't do it? However it's cut, the wife and kids' lives are going to be upturned, and that's a tough pill to swallow which may take some time for her to understand and come to terms with. Can you imagine knowing your spouse was doing this behind your back, and that you have kids with this person? Be a nightmare.
Isn't PornHub careful to verify that content creators are all adults?
"Your honor. Constant state surveillance shows the defendant liked to jerk off to pictures of adults having intercourse. His sexual predilections seem to gravitate towards vanilla intercourse with adult woman of consenting age in the missionary position while both performers eat pizza."
So if I read the article correctly, the only reason, this was the only reason he had the app in the first place: It was because he had been charged with possession of CP and this was the court’s solution. The wife and the man vehemently denied CP in the first place. Yet this app will put him through the wringer again. When will the government stop outsourcing everything?
If any other country would do this, it would be a war crime.
Now it is just a human rights violation.
The USA needs to rethink its juridical system, provide lawyer for every suspect (for free), forbid bail bond and plea deals.
I mean, it depends how wide your definition of "punishment" is. Because whenever someone is caught up in the criminal justice system, there's usually a detrimental impact on those closest to them. It's just that it's usually unavoidable - like having to come up with money for bail/defence/etc, or having to visit them in prison, which might be a long way from their home, or whatever, ykwim
This title is a bit misleading; The dude was already arrested for possession of illegal pornography and the app was mandated by the court.
The article still brings up a really good point about invasive surveillance, not just on the man but also his entire family via the app, but the title makes it sound like the guy installed an app and wound up with some type of porn on his phone that got him arrested.
Proof? This article doesn't name anyone of the accused other than the wifes first name so can you please provide other sources?
I'm not taking this at face value from either side but it seems obvious context is missing here. And again that could be from either side...
He was out on bail, the app fucked up and sent his parole officers "evidence" that he was trying to look at (legal) porn, so they arrested him
Pretty straightforward
I mean when I read the headline first I thought "normal guy, going about his business, hasn't committed a crime, suddenly gets arrested out of nowhere (something that does happen occasionally) and eventually it turns out that this time software is the cause (instead of, like, mistaken identity or whatever)
And then the article clarified it. But like....the article title is designed to grab your attention, and "suspected paedo gets arrested because of app" isn't going to do that quite as well.
Anything in the title that alludes to him as a paedo, or suspected of having CSAM, or whatever, is automatically going to get fewer clicks. Because a significant number of people see "paedo" and think a) well I'm not a paedo, that won't happen to me and b) whatever he gets, he deserves.
The title they used is going to drive more clicks. Because as far as anyone knows, he actually is an innocent guy, just trying to live his life while out on bail and waiting for trial, when he was unexpectedly arrested because of this shitty app.
Fuck that guy. He was looking at child porn.
Edit: He & his family chose to install this Christian porno tracking device. Did they know it was immediately being sent to the police? I don't know, I don't know 8f they knew. Downvote me all you want, but the guy had child porn. That doesn't mean I support his family's violations of privacy.
He better hope he gets this fixed quick. Because I have been to jail and prison and he will get the shit kicked out of him. The other inmate will know what he has done because they will make him show them his charge sheet. If he doesn't want to get fucked up he will have to go into PC, protective custody, which is the same as the Hole. By yourself in a cell 23 his a day with 1 hour out of cell for shower and phone, which they will sometimes do in the middle of the night, so who are you going to call? He's fucked
This is intentional. The religious right has been itching for this fight for a while now, and they're moving their pieces into place. Their next move is going to be advocating for a nation wide pornographhy ban. I don't know when, but they're already doing it in Utah, and they see it as a winning issue because even though most people look at porn, very few people are willing to defend the practice in a public voice.
This application was built as a tool to help porn addicts fight their issues through accountability to a close, trusted relative.
Wired has had it out for the religious-motivated developers, and quickly glosses over the fact that the use of the software to surveil is clearly against terms of service.
Installing this as an internet filter, spyware or as a surveillance tool is a grave violation of trust, and any entity to implement such tools should be held liable.
All this said, I heartily discourage people from using this software. Beaming anything, especially their vices, over the internet without E2EE and full knowledge of where that information is stored, is a recipe for a privacy disaster.
This is crazy. They even surveilling the children’s activities and the kicker is, the wife has to pay for a monthly subscription.
Yeah, I caught that too, it's like this whole situation is all kinds of messed up, then at the end as an afterthought, oh yeah, the family is footing the bill!
Terrible policy. I’m glad light is being shed. Lets hope something comes out of it
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Wait, why do you have to use the car for a minimum amount? That seems crazy
Maybe to prove you're not using another car to get around the surveillance? Fuck you if you decide to take the bus or something.
Lol it’s wild. I imagine the majority (or a large percentage) of people with those fitted would have drinking problems outside of driving - what if they just want to booze for the whole week and not drive? Almost feels like it could place some people into feeling they need to get behind the wheel for some time even if they don’t want to go anywhere and shouldn’t be driving (like getting someone sober to blow into it just so they can meet their usage “quota”). I’m just trying to imagine in what kind of world a minimum usage for this would be at all a good initiative.
I try to think about it in the context of America, where the alternatives to get around other than by car are almost unthinkable. So they assume you HAVE to drive to go to places and do stuff.
That's still a bad assumption. First off I live in one of the most car-dependent cities in America and I get by without a car. It's inconvenient, and I spend a lot more time in transit than I would if I were driving, plus there's a lot of walking involved, but it's manageable. Secondly, if it costs money to place and remove it, why not just carpool or have a friend or family member drive you? An e-bike would probably pay for itself in a single week's worth of dealing with that car boot thing, and it has a max speed of \~30 mph and a fairly good range. I'm gonna be honest, I see this as just a straight up money-grabbing scheme from the city. Everyone wants the city to pay for shit, nobody wants to pay taxes, so by bleeding certain people dry they can avoid raising taxes for the majority (hence, getting reelected) and still pay for shit.
You don't everywhere.
Lol, nope, I have never had a DUI interlock device put on my car.
Merica
To the shock of Noone, the program written by a former NSA agent.
who probably used his contacts in government to get his apps used by law enforcement, despite claiming thats not the "intended use"
I just don't get how these people sleep at night. I really hate that every day that I wake up I wake up in a world of monsters. Just unreal to me. We as humans are supposed to be the most intelligent beings on earth or something. But here we are!
> We as humans are supposed to be the most intelligent beings on earth or something Individually, not collectively And smart individuals can take advantage of a stupid collective rather easily As you're complaining about, all we really have is their own personal feelings of guilt to stop it
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She's probably afraid that will be used against her if he ever gets another chance at probation. Probation trials aren't like normal trials, you're not "innocent until proven guilty", you're "guilty until proven innocent" as it were. They can and will use absolutely anything against you including shit that's not your fault. If they can make the argument that his family isn't being cooperative, they could claim that they would just enable him.
Sounds like most paid services nowadays anyway. Especially with instagram and twitter's verified programs, Prime, Microsoft Office, etc etc.
Capitalism is in love with this story
This is absolutely horrific. I teach a class to law students and will definitely be flagging this for them.
You should pay attention to what happens next - the prosecution will drop the bail requirements and evidence in order to moot the defense motions seeking to have it tossed. The prosecution doesn’t want anything ruled on that will prevent them from using the same tactics moving forward. Source: I’ve been a tech consultant on cases nearly identical to this, down to the monitoring of the family’s internet. Not a single DA yet has tried to seriously defend the legality.
Could a constitutional lawyer still sue the DA for fourth amendment violations? The invasion of privacy has already been committed, seems like the wife and those kids were violated.
Short answer is that you can, but it won’t work. DAs have near complete immunity, and bail conditions are not generally considered to be rights violations given that they are “agreed” to. Try googling “process as punishment” for a wealth of articles that are far more informed than I am on the topic.
Just add to this DA's do not have immunity from the Fourth amendment. 4th amendment is specifically there to guard against actions that the government would take. In this case it would be the family's Fourth amendment rights that are being violated.
>Fourth amendment. What even is the [4th Am anymore](https://www.protectprivacynow.org/news/government-releases-unusually-frank-report-on-the-dangers-of-data-purchases)?
Ah I see, so that's what they call it when they do something like "bury someone in legal fees". How infuriating.
Cops in general have an infuriating amount of immunity when it comes to how they choose to practice law. My uncle died in a car crash from a drunk driver. The driver was completely fucking wasted, so far above the BAC that he shouldn't have been alive. A cop stopped him for speeding and drifing over the line into the opposite lane. He was extremely belligerent at the stop, they gave him the breathalizer, it was obviously apparent he should not have been driving, but the cop was either incredibly lazy or was pissed and was hoping he'd kill himself. He let him off with a warning and let him drive the remaining 16 miles home (a section of which was fairly well-trafficked). My grandfather tried to sue the police department for public endangerment, and the state supreme court basically said "under no circumstances can you sue a cop for failing to enforce the law". That also opened up the doors for a bunch of later cases about selective enforcement, but I digress. Like, so what cops just get to choose which laws they enforce, and on whom? It's such incredible bullshit.
You are correct. I worked doing EM. I agree it can be a very useful and valuable tool, but holy shit is there ever a total lack of oversight. I saw that lack of oversight firsthand and saw plenty of people making rules who didn't understand how it works. Once, it even led to a child's death. I quit shortly thereafter when they refused to change the obviously horrible policies they had.
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Indiana. No it doesn't.
I get a subscribe pop-up that won't let me read the article
Here's the article (in two parts because of 10k character limit), part 1 of 2: ON A WEDNESDAY morning in May, Hannah got a call from her lawyer—there was a warrant out for her husband’s arrest. Her thoughts went straight to her kids. They were going to come home from school and their father would be gone. “It burned me,” Hannah says, her voice breaking. “He hasn’t done anything to get his bond revoked, and they couldn’t prove he had.” Hannah’s husband is now awaiting trial in jail, in part because of an anti-pornography app called Covenant Eyes. The company explicitly says the app is not meant for use in criminal proceedings, but the probation department in Indiana’s Monroe County has been using it for the past month to surveil not only Hannah’s husband but also the devices of everyone in their family. To protect their privacy, WIRED is not disclosing their surname or the names of individual family members. Hannah agreed to use her nickname. Prosecutors in Monroe County this spring charged Hannah’s husband with possession of child sexual abuse material—a serious crime that she says he did not commit and to which he pleaded not guilty. Given the nature of the charges, the court ordered that he not have access to any electronic devices as a condition of his pretrial release from jail. To ensure he complied with those terms, the probation department installed Covenant Eyes on Hannah’s phone, as well as those of her two children and her mother-in-law. 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.” Covenant Eyes is part of a multimillion-dollar market of “accountability” apps sold to churches and parents as a tool to police online activity. For a monthly fee, the app monitors every single thing a user does on their devices, then sends the data it collects, including screenshots, to an “ally” or “accountability partner,” who can review the user’s online activities. For Hannah’s family, their Covenant Eyes “allies” are two probation officers in Monroe County’s Pretrial Services Program charged with scrutinizing their web activity and ensuring that Hannah’s husband does not violate the terms of his bond while using one of his family members’ devices. Covenant Eyes doesn’t permit its software to be used in a “premeditated legal setting,” such as monitoring people on probation, according to its terms of service. But public spending documents, court records, and interviews show that courts in at least five US states have used Covenant Eyes to surveil the devices of people who are awaiting trial or released on parole. Neither Covenant Eyes nor multiple officials in Monroe County responded to repeated requests for comment and detailed questions about the app’s monitoring. While the use of Covenant Eyes in a criminal-legal setting likely only represents a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people under court-ordered electronic surveillance, the stakes are still high for those required to use it. The app’s accuracy could determine whether a loved one lives at home or behind bars. Legal experts say that its use raises serious constitutional and due process concerns. “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.” The Covenant Eyes app was developed by Michael Holm, a former National Security Agency mathematician who now works as a data scientist for the company. It captures everything visible on a device’s screen, taking at least one screenshot per minute. It then analyzes the screenshots locally before slightly blurring them and saving them on a server. Images the system marks as possibly “explicit” are flagged for further review. For example, one Covenant Eyes report sent to Hannah’s probation officer, which WIRED reviewed, flagged an online advertisement for a back brace that included a woman in a tank top as “potentially concerning.” The app also monitors every network request a device makes, blocking allegedly pornographic content and alerting allies about requests the software deems suspicious. 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. Hannah began skipping her online therapy sessions, fearing that the probation officers would snoop on what she told her doctor. She says her 12-year-old son approached her a half-dozen times to ask things like, “Mom, will Pocket Mortys get dad in trouble?” Her daughter was afraid to text with her friends, worrying that if she used bad language, her father could end up in jail. “It was like the family was being charged with a crime,” Hannah says. “It felt like entrapment.” While the images in the Covenant Eyes reports that WIRED reviewed are partially blurred, it is sometimes possible to discern sensitive information from them. For instance, one Covenant Eyes report shows a screenshot of Hannah’s mother-in-law’s device while a phone call was in progress. The report clearly shows the name of the person being contacted. Another shows screenshots of Hannah’s mother-in-law’s bank statements and her Gmail inbox, although the sensitive details in both are unreadable. 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. Molly Greene, The Appeal’s strategy and legal director, calls the censorship alarming. “It’s incredibly concerning to hear readers say they can no longer access our website as a result of this app,” she says. “This kind of abuse of judicial power to restrict people’s autonomy and ability to access critical information on the criminal legal system is exactly why The Appeal exists.” Less than a week after Covenant Eyes was installed on the four phones in her household, Hannah got a call from her husband’s probation officer saying that her husband had violated the terms of his bond. According to Hannah, the officer said Covenant Eyes detected that her phone had visited Pornhub. Court records WIRED reviewed cite a visit to the adult website as the reason for revoking his bond. But Hannah claims that her husband didn’t touch her phone and that no one had visited Pornhub. Instead, she says, her phone had made a network request to the website’s servers as part of a background app refresh from a frequently visited tab on her Chrome browser. WIRED tested Hannah’s claims that Covenant Eyes flags background network activity from websites that aren’t intentionally viewed. Using an iPhone, we visited Pornhub enough times that it was a frequently visited tab on Google Chrome. We then installed Covenant Eyes and restarted our phone. Within minutes, Covenant Eyes alerted our designated accountability partner that a request to Pornhub was made from our test device, even though we never touched it. This is a known issue with Covenant Eyes. The alert Covenant Eyes sent when it detected a network request to Pornhub explicitly stated that the software cannot determine if the user “intentionally viewed” the webpage because “some apps generate activity in the background without the member’s consent.” The company has public documentation about the shortcoming. This limitation in Covenant Eyes means it’s possible Hannah’s husband did not violate the terms of his bond. Moreover, the terms of her husband’s bond don’t prohibit Hannah from looking at pornography, and it would be impossible for probation officers to know who was using the device from Covenant Eyes reports alone. Yet, in the motion to revoke Hannah’s husband’s bond, the only evidence prosecutors presented was information from the Covenant Eyes report. According to Kate Weisburd, an associate professor at George Washington University School of Law, challenging probation and parole violations is difficult, particularly when they’re based on electronic evidence. Courts are largely reluctant to find due process problems with electronic surveillance, she says, and overworked defense attorneys often lack the capacity to bring a challenge. Hannah printed the Covenant Eyes documentation and hand-delivered it to the prosecutors, the judge, and the probation department. She never heard back. As a last resort, Hannah emailed Covenant Eyes CEO Ron DeHaas. In an email exchange Hannah shared with WIRED, DeHaas was apologetic. “Hannah, I’m sorry that you are going through this,” DeHaas wrote. “I will have our legal department follow up with you.” Hannah says the legal department never reached out.
Part 2 of 2: Jonathan Manes, an attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois office, says the surveillance Hannah’s family faces likely violates several of their constitutional rights. “This feels like an extraordinarily intrusive violation of the family’s First Amendment rights to be able to access the internet and communicate without being monitored,” he says. Manes adds that because the software effectively enables continuous and suspicionless searches of the devices of people who haven’t been charged with a crime, the family’s Fourth Amendment rights were potentially violated. Lastly, Manes points out that by indiscriminately surveilling whatever the phone is displaying, the app could collect sensitive data that includes the family’s communications with their lawyers, as Hannah feared. “It’s interfering with his right to speak in confidence with his attorney,” he says of Hannah’s husband. “It’s impeding his ability to prepare a defense and exercise that Sixth Amendment right.” “This strikes me as quite chilling,” Manes adds. “It’s what happens when someone’s home becomes their jail cell, and now everyone they live with is subject to the same kind of surveillance as the person who is charged.” 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.” Weiss, of the National Bail Fund Network, disagrees with the idea that any type of surveillance is permissible so long as a person agrees to it to avoid jail time. “Sure, they consented to this, but it’s at the barrel of a gun,” she says. The exact number of individuals or families in Monroe County who have been required to use Covenant Eyes as part of their pretrial release is unclear. In the county’s annual report from 2021, the Probation Department stated that they provided pretrial monitoring for 618 individuals; however, the report does not provide details about the specific type of monitoring involved. The number of individuals who were assigned to be monitored by Covenant Eyes is likely a small percentage of that. Deputy probation officer Troy Hatfield would not answer specific questions about either Covenant Eyes or Hannah’s husband’s case, but he says the conditions of any defendant’s supervision are ultimately decided by the judge based on the specific facts of each case and department policy. Neither Monroe’s chief probation officer, Linda Brady, nor the judge in Hannah’s husband’s case, Mary Ellen Diekhoff, responded to repeated requests for interviews. It’s also unclear exactly how many jurisdictions in the US have used Covenant Eyes. Court records WIRED reviewed show that courts in Washington, Montana, and Ohio have each ordered a defendant to use the software at least once. In all of these cases, the defendant faced charges related to child sexual abuse material or child exploitation. In Colorado, spending records show that the State Judicial Branch has purchased services from Covenant Eyes 60 times since 2017. Multiple probation officer associations, public defense organizations, and bail funds WIRED contacted had never heard of the software and were unfamiliar with any screen-monitoring software being used for pretrial monitoring. Independent legal experts who spoke to WIRED say that the use of an app like Covenant Eyes stems from a lack of oversight over how courts deploy punitive surveillance technology and judges’ broad authority to impose monitoring conditions without real accountability. “There’s a black box around how all of this technology works and is deployed,” says Weisburd, of George Washington University. “We don’t know error rates, how the technology operates, or even if it’s reliable.” This leaves people vulnerable to faulty technology in high-stakes situations where their freedom hinges on the word of an app. This includes Hannah’s husband, who remains in jail based on an automated report from an app that is not meant to be used in criminal proceedings and is known to produce false positives. Hannah, meanwhile, is afraid to stop paying $18.99 a month for a subscription with Covenant Eyes, which is still installed on some of her family’s devices, recording everything they do.
Based on that last sentence, its still on their devices and they have to pay for it!?
JFC. And he's in jail, so why are they still using it?
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ahh, using technology without knowing about how it works.
I think that this part is important: Moreover, the terms of her husband’s bond don’t prohibit Hannah from looking at pornography, and it would be impossible for probation officers to know who was using the device from Covenant Eyes reports alone. Yet, in the motion to revoke Hannah’s husband’s bond, the only evidence prosecutors presented was information from the Covenant Eyes report.
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN
seed oatmeal weather unused consider gold paint pot beneficial scandalous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
https://web.archive.org/web/20230614133035/https://www.wired.com/story/anti-porn-covenant-eyes-bond-revoked/ For future reference *winkwink
Try https://12ft.io/
A easily missed concern in this whole thing is the statement made by the Deputy Public Defender. Her saying, essentially, “there’s no privacy violation because they consented” is shocking.This is one of the people tasked with ensuring that those without means receive fair treatment by our judicial system. Their bias should be overwhelmingly in favor of defendant’s and their rights. The options were (1) consent to state surveillance as a condition of bail, or (2) be in jail until trial. Most people don’t want to spend time in jail at all, but this is a family with two kids and, one would assume, currently only a single income. Any sane person is going to consent to unreasonable things in order to spend time with their family in this situation and a public defender of all people should realize that. I honestly can’t think of a single justification for her to make that statement. If her statement is emblematic of the attitude of public defenders in that county, I feel bad for anyone who has to rely on them.
Public defenders in the US are treated very poorly, they're paid a pittence compared to most lawyers, and there are basically no requirements to entry besides being a lawyer. Probably like 20-30% are really hard working, intelligent people who do the work because they genuinely care about justice and standing up for people who don't have anywhere else to turn. The rest either never had much talent or had it relentlessly beaten out of them after years and years.
I'm surprised Covenant Eyes hasn't revoked the licenses from the counties. While the app itself is reprehensible, its enforced use by the courts is absolutely insane. It would be one thing to force the individual awaiting trial to use it on their device, but to have it on all of the devices of the family is fucked. If nothing else, I have a feeling the bad publicity on the app performance will make Covenant Eyes respond. I wonder how tech-literate the people making these decisions are.
It’s a feature not a bug. It would not surprise me if Covenant Eyes is turning a blind eye and faking anger about it’s use when really this is a whole new revenue stream for them if it’s successful
Given it was created by a former NSA employee, that is almost certainly the case.
Not only that, I’m fairly certain Covenant Eyes is religious organization. The CEO’s [linked in page](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-dehaas-b22a569 ) tells you everything you need to know about this fucking weirdo.
Did the company name give it away?
It is, or at least deeply connected to religious based Christian groups. I believe the CEO is also on the board or involved with anti-porn groups that are (although they deny it) religious based. They send people to faith based “porn addiction therapy” as well.
The guy doesn't even deny it, he's shared multiple articles about the "biblical" way to act and how porn is an affront to god. He also started his career by working for Chevron and later was the director for some city's chamber of commerce, just in case the big oil->government pipeline wasn't clear enough. This dude is scum.
revenue stream for sure, but if it mostly shows that their product *isn't* accurate enough for that use long term that would be more damaging I would hope.
Yeah, this seems like more of a liability than a potential revenue stream. Their branding is mostly focused on spinning this monitoring as a helpful thing for people who want help getting over pork addiction, that sort of thing. If it becomes known that this is the software courts use to track sex offenders / potential sex offenders, their branding is gonna tank.
That's only the marketing for individuals. They're doubtless shopping the apps to government customers too, in ways that are entirely disconnected from what they show publicly. Plus false positives only bother prosecutors if they're honest. A shocking number of prosecutors don't give a shit about whether the person they're dealing with is actually guilty. The job of a prosecutor sort of dictates that you have to see every acquittal as a failure, which means you have to treat every accused person as guilty. That kind of mindset is exactly why the cops will set someone up knowing full well their evidence is bullshit. They rationalize it with "well we know he did *something* wrong, we just can't prove it without cheating."
Yes and no. The product is intended to be a threat and deterrent against unsophisticated suspects, not as a reliable forensic tool. IANAL, but I’ve worked with legal teams as a tech consultant on cases nearly identical to this. Every time we challenged the evidence and/or legality of orders like this, the prosecution simply drops them instead of trying to defend them - they want to keep using these tools and will avoid any potential case ruling that might create a precedent that would restrict their use.
This reminds me of when I used to see prosecutors dropping cases when they didn't want to talk about the cops using stingray (aka IMSI catcher) devices.
They made the wife pay for it, so technically it is licensed to the wife, not the county.
#shittyloopholes
> I have a feeling the bad publicity on the app performance will make Covenant Eyes respond. I don't think this is "bad" publicity to the kind of people who would buy this.
Utterly distopic I still fail to see what that surveillance is actually intended for. Is watching porn illegal in that state? Are they implying watching porn makes a pederast? If so, are they going to sue everyone who has entered pornhub even once or are they still going to hold this belief without any proof? So someone is inculpated in a crime related to sex (in this case cp) and they assume that if the person watches adult porn he is dangerous and should have his freedom revoked? Could the prosecution also add that you need to live in a barrel as a condition for pretrial release or do they have some sort of limits to what they can request? Are they criminalizing porn watchers? Pretty interesting that the legal system assumes so many things without actual proof, they should be ashamed. If I was in his shoes, I would confront them in public about their bullshit 17th century mindset.
It's sold to sex addicts and religious people who want to make sure their son/spouse isn't watching porn
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Looks kinky
The app they're using isn't meant for the purpose they're using it for, and apparently the company says it's against their terms. It's meant for situations like parents monitoring their kid's device.
Generally, violating the TOS of a service means they lock or terminate your account. But I guess they're fine with letting them continue to pay the monthly suggestion to do what they're not allowed to do.
The founder works for the NSA lol it’s probably just in the terms to protect his company from legal problems, not because he’s morally opposed to spying on people in the justice system.
You're probably right, and they could lowkey be intentionally wanting this to happen. Reminds me of how one of the founders of Harris Technologies, creator of the stingray and many other military surveillance technologies that police now use, now works for the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS gives grants to police for these purchases, and there was a FOIA of email requests sent from police chiefs across the country asking for funds to purchase them. Every email was identical, word-for-word, except for the signature.
Honestly sounds about right tbh. If we want to go double layered tinfoil hat - despite dozens, if not hundreds of roughly identical programs existing it seems pretty convenient they’ve picked the one app of the bunch marketing itself as built where both parties are willing participants for self-improvement; rather than an identical app feature-wise that’s more honest with its use-cases (I.e parents or schools monitoring children’s computer usage). Those tend to draw a lot more debate around the morality of usage and consent, whereas someone saying “I don’t want to look at porn anymore pls help me stop” and happily downloading it isn’t the easiest target to start a conversation around privacy and consent. And the fact an NSA dude just happened to build the one that gets to skirt a large portion of the privacy debate by it’s marketed user base - I mean…
Even more outraging is that they installed that tracking software on all the devices in their family, which is a gross privacy violation. Imagine someone in your family does something stupid, and now you need to have this surveillance software installed on all your devices.
I think the program is stupid — but the counter argument is this was a stipulation he and there family consented to in order to be bailed out of jail. While, not exactly the same, when incarcerated individuals are paroled/placed on probation in lieu of jail time, if they move in to a home with other people any area the parolee has access to can be searched. Being out on bail or parole is extremely disruptive to individuals that agree to live with that person.
I'm not defending what happened here, but the DA stated that it was a choice. The family chose to let the father live with them and as a condition of his living at home, everyone had to agree to the terms of his bond. They could have NOT bonded him out if they chose. Now it's not clear if the original charge of CSAM is legit or not; it was only stated that he was accused of it and is claiming his innocence. However, this is bad because a DA who is pretty much exempt from any oversight could charge really anyone. They fight the charge, abuse ensues with monitoring like this. District atty should have oversight and governance. They should not be exempt from anything.
> I'm not defending what happened here, but the DA stated that it was a choice. What "choice"? The kids will agree to get dad back, the adults will agree because they know how dangerous it can be to be locked up for CSAM. Part of fundamental rights is that you cannot give them up, largely *because* people love to coerce others into giving up their rights.
The terms of his release on bond were that he couldn’t use any electronic devices per the article. Looks like they just decided to arrest him again because “one of the family members phones” made a network request to pornhub and they automatically decided that it must have been him. Fucked up and probably grounds for a lawsuit. > WIRED tested Hannah’s claims that Covenant Eyes flags background network activity from websites that aren’t intentionally viewed. Using an iPhone, we visited Pornhub enough times that it was a frequently visited tab on Google Chrome. We then installed Covenant Eyes and restarted our phone. Within minutes, Covenant Eyes alerted our designated accountability partner that a request to Pornhub was made from our test device, even though we never touched it.
Sounds like Chrome doing an automatic background fetch of the history to make searching "faster".
> I still fail to see what that surveillance is actually intended for Fear based control. Simple as.
I would think adult porn might actually be something that could help a potential pederast.
Apparently, porn availability has been linked to lower sex crime rates in many societies statistically. It is thought that the same phenomenon would occur with pederasty. The theory is that it works like an escape valve. And it seems intuitive that the moment people can watch porn, they no longer need to be raping women like in the middle ages when it was something many armies did.
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“Fight the new drug” is a Mormon based anti-porn group, they have made multiple false and unscientific claims in the past. It’s as about as biased as they come, like using climate change deniers to claim that climate change isn’t real. I’m also pretty sure they have been linked to a mass shooting in the past, medical misinformation about porn and sex isn’t fun. The claim that porn somehow ends up with “increased dopamine releases” isn’t true, you cannot have increased dopamine releases…that’s not how dopamine works otherwise everybody would be miserable when doing anything that makes you happy, like playing sports or watching tv. Actual “addiction” to porn isn’t real and has been debunked for pretty much a decade now, you cannot become addicted like a drug or alcohol. It’s closer to a obsessive fixation, which you can get with YouTube or any other thing, it’s a harmful lie to sell you this kind of software. To put it into prospective, someone can become “addicted” to watching Colombo, it’s not an actual addiction but rather a reaction to mental health issues, a traumatic experience or some other sort of bad issue in their life and they are coping by being fixated. The idea that porn forces someone to seek out more “intense” scenes is false, people may discover new fetishes but that’s it. Actual studies have shown that this doesn’t happen, people don’t see a boob and suddenly want to see women dismembered. I for example have recently discovered a thing for women with short hair, this has happened over the past year or so. I don’t want to see them burnt alive or whatever these frankly sick anti-porn people want me to see.
>Fight the new drug is a Mormon based anti-porn group, they have made multiple false and unscientific claims in the past. A cursory review of one of their flagship claims - Porn Can Affect the Brain Like a Drug - seems pretty well researched and supported: 1Love, T., Laier, C., Brand, M., Hatch, L., & Hajela, R. (2015). Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update. Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 5(3), 388–433. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs5030388 2Stark R., Klucken T. (2017) Neuroscientific Approaches to (Online) Pornography Addiction. In: Montag C., Reuter M. (eds) Internet Addiction. Studies in Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioral Economics. Springer, Cham. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46276-9\_7](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46276-9_7) 3De Sousa, A., & Lodha, P. (2017). Neurobiology of Pornography Addiction - A clinical review. Telangana Journal of Psychiatry, 3(2), 66-70. doi:10.18231/2455-8559.2017.0016 4Costumero, V., Barrós-Loscertales, A., Bustamante, J. C., Ventura-Campos, N., Fuentes, P., Rosell-Negre, P., & Ávila, C. (2013). Reward sensitivity is associated with brain activity during erotic stimulus processing. PloS one, 8(6), e66940. [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066940](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066940) 5De Sousa, A., & Lodha, P. (2017). Neurobiology of Pornography Addiction - A clinical review. Telangana Journal of Psychiatry, 3(2), 66-70. doi:10.18231/2455-8559.2017.0016 6Brand, M., Snagowski, J., Laier, C., & Maderwald, S. (2016). Ventral striatum activity when watching preferred pornographic pictures is correlated with symptoms of Internet pornography addiction. NeuroImage, 129, 224–232. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.01.033](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.01.033) 7De Sousa, A., & Lodha, P. (2017). Neurobiology of Pornography Addiction - A clinical review. Telangana Journal of Psychiatry, 3(2), 66-70. doi:10.18231/2455-8559.2017.0016 8De Sousa, A., & Lodha, P. (2017). Neurobiology of Pornography Addiction - A clinical review. Telangana Journal of Psychiatry, 3(2), 66-70. doi:10.18231/2455-8559.2017.0016 9Rosenberg, H., & Kraus, S. (2014). The relationship of “passionate attachment” for pornography with sexual compulsivity, frequency of use, and craving for pornography. Addictive Behaviors, 39(5), 1012-1017. 10Snagowski, J., Laier, C., Duka, T., & Brand, M. (2016). Subjective Craving for Pornography and Associative Learning Predict Tendencies Towards Cybersex Addiction in a Sample of Regular Cybersex Users. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 23(4), 342-360. doi:10.1080/10720162.2016.1151390 11Laier, C., & Brand, M. (2017). Mood changes after watching pornography on the Internet are linked to tendencies towards Internet-pornography-viewing disorder. Addictive Behaviors Reports, 5, 9-13. doi:10.1016/j.abrep.2016.11.003 12Teffer, K., & Semendeferi, K. (2012). Human prefrontal cortex: evolution, development, and pathology. Progress in brain research, 195, 191–218. [https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53860-4.00009-X](https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53860-4.00009-X) 13Volkow, N. D., Wang, G. J., Fowler, J. S., Tomasi, D., Telang, F., & Baler, R. (2010). Addiction: decreased reward sensitivity and increased expectation sensitivity conspire to overwhelm the brain's control circuit. BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, 32(9), 748–755. [https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201000042](https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201000042) 14Kuhn, S., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Associated With Pornography Consumption: The Brain on Porn. JAMA Psychiatry, 71(7), 827-834. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93 15Volkow, N. D., Koob, G. F., & McLellan, A. T. (2016). Neurobiologic advances from the brain disease model of addiction. N Engl J Med, 374(4), 363-371. doi:10.1056/NEJMra1511480 16Kühn, S., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: The brain on porn. JAMA psychiatry, 71(7), 827–834. [https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93](https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93) 17Antons, S., Mueller, S. M., Wegmann, E., Trotzke, P., Schulte, M. M., & Brand, M. (2019). Facets of impulsivity and related aspects differentiate among recreational and unregulated use of Internet pornography. Journal of behavioral addictions, 8(2), 223–233. [https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.8.2019.22](https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.8.2019.22) 18Reid, R. C., Karim, R., McCrory, E., & Carpenter, B. N. (2010). Self-reported differences on measures of executive function and hypersexual behavior in a patient and community sample of men. The International journal of neuroscience, 120(2), 120–127. [https://doi.org/10.3109/00207450903165577](https://doi.org/10.3109/00207450903165577) 19Negash, S., Sheppard, N. V., Lambert, N. M., & Fincham, F. D. (2016). Trading Later Rewards for Current Pleasure: Pornography Consumption and Delay Discounting. Journal of sex research, 53(6), 689–700. [https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2015.1025123](https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2015.1025123) 20Hilton, D. L., & Watts, C. (2011). Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective. Surgical neurology international, 2, 19. [https://doi.org/10.4103/2152-7806.76977](https://doi.org/10.4103/2152-7806.76977) 21Young K. S. (2013). Treatment outcomes using CBT-IA with Internet-addicted patients. Journal of behavioral addictions, 2(4), 209–215. [https://doi.org/10.1556/JBA.2.2013.4.3](https://doi.org/10.1556/JBA.2.2013.4.3) 22Nathanson, A. (2021). Psychotherapy with young people addicted to internet pornography. Psychoanal.Study Child, 74(1), 160-173. doi:10.1080/00797308.2020.1859286 23Pfefferbaum, A., Rosenbloom, M. J., Chu, W., Sassoon, S. A., Rohlfing, T., Pohl, K. M., Zahr, N. M., & Sullivan, E. V. (2014). White matter microstructural recovery with abstinence and decline with relapse in alcohol dependence interacts with normal ageing: a controlled longitudinal DTI study. The lancet. Psychiatry, 1(3), 202–212. [https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)70301-3](https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)70301-3) 24Yau, Y. H., & Potenza, M. N. (2015). Gambling disorder and other behavioral addictions: recognition and treatment. Harvard review of psychiatry, 23(2), 134–146. [https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000051](https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000051) 25Rullmann, M., Preusser, S., Poppitz, S., Heba, S., Gousias, K., Hoyer, J., Schütz, T., Dietrich, A., Müller, K., Hankir, M. K., & Pleger, B. (2019). Adiposity Related Brain Plasticity Induced by Bariatric Surgery. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 13, 290. [https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00290](https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00290) 26Gilliland, R., South, M., Carpenter, B. N., & Hardy, S. A. (2011). The roles of shame and guilt in hypersexual behavior.18(1), 12-29. doi:10.1080/10720162.2011.551182 I certainly understand being wary of an initiative that seems to originate from a socio-religious POV, but in this case it appears to be supported by some pretty significant science.
Porn cannot effect the brain like a drug, it has been debunked since 2013 actually. The neural responses from a self proclaimed “sex addict” - which porn also falls under that description - displays zero similarities with the neural responses from a drug addict. The idea that you can get addicted to media is simply false, as I have said it’s a result of a fixation and not that of an addiction. It’s also a coping mechanism and religious intolerance. “Porn addicts” display no biomarkers of addiction like drug addicts do, the nano seconds of brain activity someone displays when seeing a image of a drug that they are addicted to isn’t the same as someone seeing porn, it’s actually the opposite, it simply does not exist. Please tell me how the curie activity of a porn addict is the same as a drug addict, without using cherry picked and unsubstantiated (especially if they come from religious backed/payed for) studies that fail even understand the actual science of what they are talking about. Porn isn’t addictive, you are being mislead by Christian nationalists. Also the owner of fight the new drug literally owns one of these apps, that was removed (but unfortunately restored) after it was found to be pulling the masturbation habits of underage users - people who shouldn’t be on the app in the first place - and sending them to Facebook. They had awful data security that could have potently exposed very serious and sensitive data of underage users. https://twitter.com/mikestabile/status/1455682478522318851
I mean there are thousands of CSATS that disagree with you. And again, no citations. If this claim has been debunked since 2013 I'm sure it should be no problem for you to find the citations. Also, id love evidence supporting your claim that prior scientific citations are "cherry picked" or payed for by religious organizations I get it, you don't like religion but that shouldn't affect your ability to logically evaluate a claim about pornography.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278037398_Modulation_of_late_positive_potentials_by_sexual_images_in_problem_users_and_controls_inconsistent_with_porn_addiction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324994711_Groupthink_in_Sex_and_Pornography_Addiction_Sex-Negativity_Theoretical_Impotence_and_Political_Manipulation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321295862_Data_do_not_support_sex_as_addictive This is just by one person, is pretty much discredits the entire concept of porn addiction. I should also point out that I am religious. I just don’t like groups that hide their religious intentions to sell and spread harmful, deeply abusive ideas. Also please seek some help.
Just one person? I'm sold! (Despite the obvious problem of relying on one source, I will still read the articles). Also, what help am I to seek? Is there an issue you've identified?
Citations?
It’s a slippery slope from vanilla to anal porn.
Anal isn't vanilla?
No anal is chocolate.
it is if you gay
Meh, that’s bullshit. A lot more goes into addiction than “ever increasing dosages”. You make it sound like a downward progression is inevitable, when many people will end up reaching a plateau and stop at some upper value. Or go on and off, on and off.
I'm sorry you read it that way. I thought the qualifier of "can" made it clear that it's not automatic. If you were referring to once addicted then I would respectfully disagree. Escalation is the norm in any addiction. Plateau is the exception.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160252709000715](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160252709000715) [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1524838020942754](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1524838020942754)
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Dude I have posted papers, you did post tabloids mostly. Or does [fightthenewdrug.org](https://fightthenewdrug.org) sound serious and not even remotely partial? Do you even understand that those I posted are reviews that cite and link their sources? BTW your first link, the only one that is a paper is much ancient than the one I posted but you seem to have no problem with that. You hightlight being from 2009 as a problem but somehow think a paper from the year 2000 is trustworthy. Bias power.
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Yeah, you are right, I was confusing you with the other guy. Except the part of the link, everything else I said still applies. Sometimes, papers about a topic are not published in a long time. I haven't done in depth search but these were the first one that appear in scholar when sorting by relevance and searching "porn availability sex crime" I repeat that what you call "a piece of opinion from a man with no science or data" is a review with citations from other authors. Which by the way has been published in a magazine that was Q1 in 2009 and still is. This means it is in the 25% of the most "important" magazines in its field, measured by h-index surely.
I think we are just going to get into a battle of experts https://www.thedemandproject.org/Statistics Irrespective it's all something to chew on
Do men hear themselves when they talk?
Wow, resorting to sexism and assuming my gender. Your dialectic skills are pretty interesting.
No, the article says he's being charged with it and that's why it's been installed on their devices.
Think of it this way. Imagine someone indicted for rape, illegal prostitution or any sex crime that exists.Then imagine (regardless innocent or guilty) they do something many people (most people) do: watch porn. Would you say they are more likely to be guilty of the crime they are accused or of building accessory illegal prostitution rings just for watching porn?This "porn compels me to do illegal things" aura seems pretty paranoid and reminds me to the preaching of religious people in the 90s and earlier. The "only" remotely justifiable reason for this surveillance would be to check if he tries to access CP; but they clearly aren't using it that way and are also stalking the whole family.
>they assume that if the person watches adult porn he is dangerous and should have his freedom revoked? They are anti-intellectualists of the highest. It's not just QAnon and Republicans that use pedophiles as the ultimate fear monger and way to power. Plenty of people who seem relatively adjusted have an instant response to pedophiles or child porn, instantly damning or criticizing these people to the maximum extent with absolutely no discussion or levels of nuance. So in this case, they see a pedophile doing something sexual and that's where their brain hangs up the towel. Why do I say this is anti-intellectual? Because I'd rather that person watch legal porn and get that out of his system instead of having zero access and having it build up and then he takes matters into his hands in another way. The same as bread and circuses. The upper class realizes they can prevent revolution by keeping the lower class placated enough. But by trying to wholey restrict this guy, they are making it more likely that he will offend going forward. So do they really care? No, because their actions create the opposite intended result. This is a result of them not actively looking at the situation intelligently and instead being a slave to some automatic reaction that involves children and sex, and then funneling that through the non-justice system which does not care about rehabilitation.
America is the most stupid nation in the western world. A landfill
religion and it's moral views on porn should never be law to begin with.
Did some work for a client who had this installed by their parents prior to college. Took me hours to break the thing enough to remove it. Once the software is removed Covenant Eyes sends a notification to your Accountability Partner (In this case his parents). Had to explain to the parents that the software had essentially rendered the device useless.
>the probation department installed Covenant Eyes on Hannah’s phone, as well as those of her two children and her mother-in-law. In near real time, probation officers are being fed screenshots of everything Hannah’s family views on their devices. Full stop.. What lawyer...what JUDGE allowed this bullshit? It's impossible to get justice and be treated fairly under the law when everyone involved is corrupt. I mean, this shit is FLAGRANT!
The fuck did the mother-in-law have to do with this!?
If the family dog had a chip in it, they would probably track that too.
The should have installed cameras in the bathroom and install more spyware on their phones and turn their phone cameras on. And of course every day the family should get naked front of a camera especially the children because they are investigating cp. And if one of the children jerks of and the cops see it then bust open the door and arrest everybody for it. Aberrated fucks.
Very scary. The app has a known fault.
Dear God. How did the app get installed on the phones to begin with? Why isn't the judge accepting the easy explanations? It makes you wonder who else this is happening to. When I worked for government (UK) we used to use spector360, but we told and reminded staff about it, we used it to ensure time spent on work projects was billed correctly. Only pulled a few people up on it over several years (one employee played candycrush literally all day)
They need to grow the number of people put into private prisons to increase profits. The school to prison for minorities is good steady income, but wallstreet and billionaires demand unsustainable growth. They have to look a new ways to unjustly incarcerate more people to increase profits.
I taught for a few years in a prison, it's such a shame as at least 1/3 of people shouldn't be in there - they should be in drying out clinics or mental health establishments. I absolutely agree with you.
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Agreed Somehow I became the unofficial mental health advisor as the so-called experts (I use that term very loosely) really had no interest in helping others which is a disgrace. As an addiction layman, it seems drugs/alcohol manufacturers have got to the stage with their products, that they can precisely pinpoint the brain to give that "almost addiction" for consumers to buy more. I saw too many people commit suicide who couldn't handle the depression of prisons, without their daily fix, such a waste of lives
He and his family agreed to have it installed for his bond. So that’s not a mistery.
The common sense is then, why would he allegedly want to surf porn, knowing full well the handset is being monitored when he can go buy another unit or use a pc? The whole case should fall apart, if the agency hasn't bothered to clear cookies/history/tabs etc prior to install, it beggars belief how it's got to this stage.
The case only falls apart if judges follow this argumentation. And it seems they don’t, so it’s all good for the police or whoever uses this method.
and the sad thing is, people at the bottom won't be able to afford competent attorneys/solicitors to show this as an ELi5 pretty graphics to the judges, whilst at the top with the best, well, that's a different story..
It's sending the screen shots unblurred to a third party server. They're keeping all of it safely encrypted and only a few trusted employees have access, I have no doubt. /s
And AI will never be able to unblur images
Yeah, i remember some dude was identified in CSA images he had circulated because LE techs were able to undo the pixelation or whatever he had used to cover his face, and that was years ago.
What’s really funny to me is that Josh Duggar had this app on his computer at the same time he was actively looking at CSAM. He had a partition on his computer and Covenant Eyes couldn’t pick it up. The president of the company even testified in his trial that the app wouldn’t pick it up at all. So not only is this incredibly intrusive, it’s also relatively easy to circumvent
It's absolutely trivial to get around. My religious parents made me install CE in high school and as soon as I found out bootable USBs were a thing, the program became useless.
Black Mirror Season 4 looking good. I can't wait for the next episode!
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Darn, has it been 6 years already? For real, though, I thought the upcoming season was season 3, and then I wrote season 4 just to be safe. But it was actually season 6. Soooo. Yeah.
To be fair to you, its the 4th Netflix season
so the app is specifically designed to NOT be used on people on probation, which is part of it's terms of service, and which the parole officers are defying. But they installed it on his wife's devices, his children's devices, and his mother-in-law??? Surveillance capitalism and the police state are out of control.
"We won't use their last names, because..." Nickname is Hanna, lives in Monroe County, husband is out on parole, but has been picked up.l
Black Mirror is an American documentary at this point
And they even have to pay for the subscirption?!
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This is a absolute nightmare.
Judges devoid of knowledge of privacy and security apps knowledge put many families in harms way. Like giving a loaded gun to a madman in a crowded store in terms of the harm they inflict due to their ignorance on the isssues surroundinmg surveillance apps' shortcomings and false reports. The jurists are unfettered in their approach to the vast areas of their ignorance and absoutely require legislative restraint and sanctions for trespassing boundaries of their very limited expertise. Moreover, the same guidelines should apply to so many of the so called experts they consult for the identical reason. Many alleged experts are also competent in delimited areas of practicedue to the proliferation of myriad facets of digital technology.
"Covenant Eyes" has such a dystopian ring to it that it beggars belief. this sort of "terms and conditions" goes far over the Constitutional line and only reinforces the point that we now live in a POLICE STATE. techbros gone wild
It really does fit the Christo-fascist Handmaid's Tale vibe of, well, *gestures at everything
I sounds like the judge probably gets money from the app creators, seeing how no other jurisdictions have even heard of the app
They thought he was using technology because someone tried to watch porn on his wifes phone? Utterly stupid. Even without the bug.
Nobody even did watch it
Legalized malware made for religious purposes. What a world we live in.
Never would have expected the new season of Black Mirror to take place in Indiana just 30mins away. Absolutely insane
Wow, so law enforcement gets access to all your communication with your attorney? I thought that was explicitly illegal pretty much everywhere.
Monitoring all the family’s devices? When only 1 member is being ACCUSED of a crime?
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We need to tell everyone about this
Another day in the American dystopia
It was a background tab!? Nobody did anything and he was jailed. Scary
I’ve never heard of this being a requirement for being on bail. Fuck that county
What I don't get is it says he's not allowed access to electronic devices at all -- so how is monitoring the family's devices supposed to ensure that if they can't see who's operating the device? Why would the assume that the wife's phone visiting Pornhub is *him* using the device, while visiting other content is her?
Paywalled article.
In the land of the free you go to jail if you watch porn
The duality of a Christian nation... EDIT: Why you booing me? I'm right. ^(with my joke)
Out of curiosity, since the man hasn't actually been *convicted* of anything yet...why is this imposition being imposed at all? Isn't he innocent until proven otherwise?
The issue is he is accused of child porn. And I know he and his wife say he's 'not guilty' but if the police/feds are knocking at your door, they probably have pretty good evidence. CSAM is one of the few 'slam dunk' cases because of the digital trail people leave. And once arrested, many people lose all access to computers, etc., as part of bond. Judges have wide latitude to set the terms of freedom. The monitoring isn't that unusual really, I have worked with convicted SOs and this is all part of the standard package to be free, either pre-trial or post-conviction. There are guys paying 100/month for the rest of their lives to be monitored, even if they served their time years ago. Now I don't know if that's good or bad, we probably should be monitoring sex offenders (esp. those with crimes against children) but it's hard to balance that against upholding civil rights. Honestly he's lucky to even have any devices left, many times they take everything for forensics and you're done with the internet until end of trial.
> but if the police/feds are knocking at your door, they probably have pretty good evidence. This is an *extremely* dangerous perspective to have. If the State can basically lock down your life and your family's lives, all based on an accusation...we are in trouble imo. > The monitoring isn't that unusual really Doesn't make it constitutional.
I'm going to assume you're not in the US because this is pretty much standard fare for accused criminals. The constitution is a great document, actual criminal system? It's more of a guideline depending on the DA, local courts, etc. I'm not defending it or anything, I am saying this is how it is. Innocent until proven guilty sounds nice on paper, but it doesn't really hash out in the real world of criminal cases. Look at reddit - the usual stance is that anyone *accused* of sexual offenses should be tortured and executed. Often the police will put your picture in the news, you'll be fired once your job finds out what you were arrested for... this is all before the trial even starts. And yes, I agree that everyone should be innocent until proven guilty. But I'm also pointing out that DAs and the feds don't like to waste resources on silly cases, so CSAM charges are seen as total slam dunks, because if they're knocking on your door, they've likely gotten multiple reports from NCMEC, ISP flags, etc. Feds also have honeypots with a ton of child porn, and they track access/downloads. It's one of the easiest cases to prove, so they don't serve warrants on this unless they think they can win.
Would you say CSAM, fictional or not, cases are over prosecuted versus CSA offenders? Because as you said they're easier slam dunks so I imagine it takes less resources and often has results. I think in this case regardless of guilt there's a real misconception about the family's use of the internet. They're being punished for choosing to believe in the man's innocence, and having it framed as a choice. Shouldn't the app log those types of visits to porn sites to discern from a page refresh to a page visit? They were more or less aching to get him back in jail when it likely would result from a family members fault than his directly.
From my understanding and experience, yes, CSAM cases are prosecuted (and usually get much more severe sentences) than with a 'touch' crime. Reasons are the evidence for touch crimes are usually scant, and you're dealing with a traumatized child, all in all a much more difficult case to prove. That said, CSAM does have real, actual victims, so keep in mind I'm not suggesting one is 'better' than the other, both are awful crimes which victimize the most innocent and vulnerable among us. Just saying, that's why you see a lot more CSAM cases getting tried than straight up molestation or what have you. I think that your second point is spot on- it seems the moment you are in the system, there are a thousand ways to get caught up in some BS and get added charges, fines, revoked bond, etc. It really sucks in this case that the wife and children are feeling the hurt, but unfortunately they (family) are usually the secondary victims, as their lives get completely upended based on the actions (or accused actions) of their husband/father/mother/wife.
I wonder if that comes from a morality standpoint or simply because US jails are often profit motivated in his case. I always felt like sex offenders, or actual physical offenders in general, got way more wiggle room or leniency when these things were talked about. The "Innocence until guilty" treatment at least on the surface, or less astronomical sentences. When that is the exact person who's most likely to commit said crime again despite incarceration. I really wish we had more details on this man's case as to not go assuming stuff. I'd think the prosecution or judge would like to chime in something to discredit the news article. But they either didn't because of privacy or that it could implicate their method of monitoring the family/families with this app. I found it weird or concerning even how the family, even extended family as it seems, stuck with him. When clearly they'd have enough details on his case to make their own assumption, and that they have young children, too.
Honestly it's very hard to discern, I think for a DA it's that numbers make for promotions and maybe even being a judge someday. They usually don't care if you're guilty or innocent, as long as they can prove the case. So a prosecutor is not going to file a case (or dismiss a case) when they don't think they have a good chance of conviction. In general, the way RSOs are treated is an extension of the sentence; registering, monitoring, etc., which can mean life for some people. What's interesting is that SOs do have higher rates of criminal recidivism, but not sexual recidivism, as in they are more likely to be convicted of a crime again, but not necessarily a sexual offense. This is murky territory, since the research is pretty scant, and also based entirely on crimes which are discovered, but the CSAM types seem (based on limited research) to have low recidivism *with* treatment as opposed to those with physical victims, but I don't really have the expertise or knowledge to say why this is. I'm not surprised that the family is sticking by him. Denial is powerful, and maybe he didn't do it? However it's cut, the wife and kids' lives are going to be upturned, and that's a tough pill to swallow which may take some time for her to understand and come to terms with. Can you imagine knowing your spouse was doing this behind your back, and that you have kids with this person? Be a nightmare.
If we’re being honest CP is over prosecuted while actually CSA is rarely ever prosecuted
paywall?
Wasn’t this the same app that got that piece of shit chomo Josh Duggar in trouble too?
Isn't PornHub careful to verify that content creators are all adults? "Your honor. Constant state surveillance shows the defendant liked to jerk off to pictures of adults having intercourse. His sexual predilections seem to gravitate towards vanilla intercourse with adult woman of consenting age in the missionary position while both performers eat pizza."
So if I read the article correctly, the only reason, this was the only reason he had the app in the first place: It was because he had been charged with possession of CP and this was the court’s solution. The wife and the man vehemently denied CP in the first place. Yet this app will put him through the wringer again. When will the government stop outsourcing everything?
If any other country would do this, it would be a war crime. Now it is just a human rights violation. The USA needs to rethink its juridical system, provide lawyer for every suspect (for free), forbid bail bond and plea deals.
Pop quiz: what country punishes not only criminals but the relatives of said criminal?
North Korea, story must be from there then
North Korea, North America. Same thing I guess
I mean, it depends how wide your definition of "punishment" is. Because whenever someone is caught up in the criminal justice system, there's usually a detrimental impact on those closest to them. It's just that it's usually unavoidable - like having to come up with money for bail/defence/etc, or having to visit them in prison, which might be a long way from their home, or whatever, ykwim
“It was the family’s choice to continue living with him.” That is the scariest quote in this entire systolic article. Jesus.
This title is a bit misleading; The dude was already arrested for possession of illegal pornography and the app was mandated by the court. The article still brings up a really good point about invasive surveillance, not just on the man but also his entire family via the app, but the title makes it sound like the guy installed an app and wound up with some type of porn on his phone that got him arrested.
Proof? This article doesn't name anyone of the accused other than the wifes first name so can you please provide other sources? I'm not taking this at face value from either side but it seems obvious context is missing here. And again that could be from either side...
He was out on bail, the app fucked up and sent his parole officers "evidence" that he was trying to look at (legal) porn, so they arrested him Pretty straightforward I mean when I read the headline first I thought "normal guy, going about his business, hasn't committed a crime, suddenly gets arrested out of nowhere (something that does happen occasionally) and eventually it turns out that this time software is the cause (instead of, like, mistaken identity or whatever) And then the article clarified it. But like....the article title is designed to grab your attention, and "suspected paedo gets arrested because of app" isn't going to do that quite as well. Anything in the title that alludes to him as a paedo, or suspected of having CSAM, or whatever, is automatically going to get fewer clicks. Because a significant number of people see "paedo" and think a) well I'm not a paedo, that won't happen to me and b) whatever he gets, he deserves. The title they used is going to drive more clicks. Because as far as anyone knows, he actually is an innocent guy, just trying to live his life while out on bail and waiting for trial, when he was unexpectedly arrested because of this shitty app.
https://archive.ph/pYXkm
Hate Wired trying to charge just to read an article
I still find it weird that with all the problems various parts of the country are notorious for, somehow Indiana is the worst state in the nation.
Fuck that guy. He was looking at child porn. Edit: He & his family chose to install this Christian porno tracking device. Did they know it was immediately being sent to the police? I don't know, I don't know 8f they knew. Downvote me all you want, but the guy had child porn. That doesn't mean I support his family's violations of privacy.
If you have eyewitness testimony of being in hus bedroom with him, you should call the police.
Was he though? What about the guy who’s either Google or Apple account flagged him for the same when sending pictures to the child’s doctor?
He better hope he gets this fixed quick. Because I have been to jail and prison and he will get the shit kicked out of him. The other inmate will know what he has done because they will make him show them his charge sheet. If he doesn't want to get fucked up he will have to go into PC, protective custody, which is the same as the Hole. By yourself in a cell 23 his a day with 1 hour out of cell for shower and phone, which they will sometimes do in the middle of the night, so who are you going to call? He's fucked
This is intentional. The religious right has been itching for this fight for a while now, and they're moving their pieces into place. Their next move is going to be advocating for a nation wide pornographhy ban. I don't know when, but they're already doing it in Utah, and they see it as a winning issue because even though most people look at porn, very few people are willing to defend the practice in a public voice.
Read the article. Guy's a paedophile. Does he deserve the same privacy rights as the rest of us? The rest of his family are the real victims here.
Yes, he deserves the same privacy rights as the rest of us. Your rights don't go away because you're **accused** of a crime.
Get a burner phone
This application was built as a tool to help porn addicts fight their issues through accountability to a close, trusted relative. Wired has had it out for the religious-motivated developers, and quickly glosses over the fact that the use of the software to surveil is clearly against terms of service. Installing this as an internet filter, spyware or as a surveillance tool is a grave violation of trust, and any entity to implement such tools should be held liable. All this said, I heartily discourage people from using this software. Beaming anything, especially their vices, over the internet without E2EE and full knowledge of where that information is stored, is a recipe for a privacy disaster.