💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › news › fbi2 captured on 2023-01-29 at 09:53:30.
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Colonel guilty of sending porn over computer
Associated Press
SAN ANGELO -- The former commander of Goodfellow Air Force Base was
convicted in a court martial Monday of sending obscene material via
his home computer.
A jury of four men and one woman, all Air Force colonels, deliberated
about two hours before returning guilty verdicts on all counts again
Col. James Maxwell.
He was convicted of transmitting obscene material via home computer,
of transmitting child pornography through his computer and using
indecent language with a junior Air Force officer.
Maxwell, a 26-year Air Force veteran, now faces a possible 16-year
prison sentence and loss of his military retirement benefits.
Charges were filed against Maxwell after the FBI found his name among
users of an on-line computer network who accessed computer-generated
pornographic images of children.
Maxwell also was said to have used the computer network to inquire
about the location of homosexual meeting places.
Maxwell's attorney had sought to have the charges dropped on grounds
his transmissions on the computer from the privacy of his home were
protected under the constitution.
But the trial judge, Col. Donald Weir of Randolph Air Force Base,
allowed the charges to stand last week, ruling that freedom of speech
can be limited when it involves conduct unbecoming an officer.
"That the writings were private between consenting adults, that they
may have been welcome doesn't place them under the judicial umbrella
of a constitutional protected condition," Weir had ruled.
Weir dismissed a count alleging Maxwell had disgraced the Air Force by
allegedly using electronic mail to ask about homosexual bars and child
pornography.
Maxwell, 48, was removed from command at the Goodfellow Air Force Base
training center last summer after the charges were filed.
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COMMENT: Looks to me like this thing is full of red flags. Isn't it
coincidental that the story breaks just as there's a flap over gays in
the military?!
And where it says "the FBI found his name among users of an on-line
computer network who accessed computer-generated pornographic images
of children", one might ask what network? what was the FBI doing
there? how did the images get there? how did the FBI think to track
them? who else is getting snared? civilians? were the images really
"computer-generated" or just scanned?
It's enough to restore one's healthy paranoia...