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[–] GhostshipResearch ago 

What you have written here is entirely false. "See recent law suit over the handling of child pornography" - The NCMEC was not “sued”, nor were they the defendant in a civil case.

This was a case in district criminal court, where a PEDOPHILE asserted his 4th Amendment protection against unwarranted searches and seizures in an attempt to get the childporn evidence collected against him by NCMEC thrown out.

The NCMEC isn't the badguy in this scenario, they are the champion.

The NCMEC surfs childporn sites and uses facial recognition software to help identify missing and endangered children, and forwards the evidence they gather to law enforcement. Webhosting companies also monitor potential childporn, forwards that data to NCMEC, who in turn forwards it to police.

In this District court decision the State prevailed, and the pedophile went to prison. The judge did not throw out the childporn evidence given to the police by the NCMEC.

This was a District court, not an Appellate or the Supreme Court, decision.

The District court judge found that the NCMEC violated the pedophiles 4th Amendment protections because they did not obtain a search warrant before opening the childporn files they received from AOL.

The judge’s reasoning was that the NCMEC was acting as an “agent” of the police, which would bind them to the same requirements as the police.

If the State had not prevailed, the decision would have been overturned on appeal, because the judge relied on colloquialism and advertising slogan to determine the NCMEC’s “agent” status, rather than the legal definition.

Having an admitted “close working relationship” is not sufficient. The Law enforcement agency would have had to have a) given the NCMEC specific instructions to act on their behalf in this case, and b) done so prior to the NCMEC taking action.

This was not the case, thus the NCMEC was not acting on behalf of the police, but merely on behalf of the victims of childporn. This is not only a right but a responsibility we all have, to uphold the law and even make citizens’ arrests.

The police would have had the obligation to obtain a warrant before opening the files that the NCMEC sent, however.