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News & Current Events Mar 28, 2026 at 2:05 AM

Oregon Supreme Court reverses child sex abuse conviction on privacy grounds

Posted by 804Brady

Oregon Supreme Court reverses child sex abuse conviction on privacy grounds  • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon Supreme Court reverses child sex abuse conviction on privacy grounds  • Oregon Capital Chronicle
The case was closely watched by privacy and civil liberty advocates who expressed concern about officials trampling on the Fourth Amendment.
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cmhbob Mar 28, 2026 +1
> For more than a year, according to the ruling, **law enforcement had the business track his activity and report it to an investigating officer**, who eventually used that information to help secure a warrant and search Simons’ laptop in his home The bolded section is the problem for me. If the cops had taken the initial reported data and used that to get a surveillance warrant, I'd have been fine with that. But they asked the business to do their work for them by continuing to gather his data *for them.* The consultant who worked for the store owner to handle IT issues was acting as an agent of law enforcement. In my mind, this was less a privacy issue and more an illegal search issue. There's also the part where cops like to say that every CSAM image viewed harms the child victim, so they let kids continue to be victimized for over a year.
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wyvernx02 Mar 28, 2026 +9
Ya, I'm typically a pretty strong 4th amendment defender, but I think the court got this one wrong. There is no expectation of privacy when using public wifi. That's one of the reasons VPNs exist. I could see the court's argument if he had been using his own internet service, but he wasn't.
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GoblinRightsNow Mar 28, 2026 +5
Yeah, to me this is like saying your privacy was violated when a business recorded you trespassing. If you repeatedly violate the business's premises and they give the evidence to the cops, that's not infringing your expectation of privacy. Like if someone has a neighbor who is harassing them on their property, police will tell them to get a camera and document it. That footage can then be used to get a warrant. That's not an intrusion of privacy, it's documenting violating someone else's. 
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Gold_Drummer_4077 Mar 28, 2026 +1
This is supposed to be the same guy who photographed JonBenet Ramsey right before her death? How strange.
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platinumarks Mar 28, 2026 +1
This is a bit more nuanced than the headline may imply. First, it was based on the Oregon Constitution, which has more expansive privacy rights than the US Constitution. Second, law enforcement spent an entire year monitoring his usage of the WiFi hotspot without ever seeking a warrant during that entire year. This wasn't a case where they just requested logs once; they were actively monitoring him for that entire year and never once thought they should get a search warrant. Yes, what he was doing was deplorable, and he should be punished for that conduct. But police cannot do expansive monitoring of people without seeking a search warrant, which would almost certainly have been granted at any time during that year.
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