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Trump's blanket pardon applied to Tocci and then the DoJ argued that it should not apply to easily-frameable, obscene photo possession cases, but should apply to hard-to-frame illegal gun possession cases springing from J6 searches. What kind of logic is that? And IIRC that logic worked, and Trump stood down because he can't afford to look like that guy with all the Epstein stuff going on. It would be the perfect framing these days, it's like a witch allegation 400 years ago, anyone who gets in the way of it also gets accused and it's incredibly easy to frame more people.
well this is a different argument isn't it? Trump pardoned the J6 stuff, and looks like the DOJ is arguing that evidence of other crimes collected during J6 investigation should not be prosecuted further. And yes, looks like they're only doing that for the politically defensible stuff. And yes that's bad because it's inconsistent.
But what you're saying happened to Daniel Tocci is clearly a lot different: intimidation, planting of evidence, and framing of child porn possession. Again, if Daniel is innocent, there are now plenty of platforms in which he can tell his story.
In addition, based on what I can find, "[s]ix of the pardoned January 6th insurrectionists are charged with committing child sex crimes, ranging from sexual assault to possession of child pornography." (I think I counted only 2 with child porn charges). Seeing as there's 1.5k+ J6ers, that's a very very very small amount of people being framed. I can easily see at least an order of magnitude more and most people won't bat an eye. I also don't see any reason why Daniel Tocci is so special that he needed child porn planted. Occam's razor points to that Daniel Tocci was highly likely already in possession of child porn.
I still believe it has not been proven that he wasn't framed, and therefore he isn't guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But I agree it would be a rogue framing and not systemic action by the US federal government. My priors on him already possessing it are low because I'm skeptical anybody actually enjoys obscene photographs, I'm skeptical such a person would go to J6, see the news about investigations, and choose not to throw it away or at least encrypt it, and I am generally skeptical that the few people who do enjoy such material actually let it sit around in a giant downloaded collection unencrypted. When you add all of these priors up and combine it with FBI agents being allowed to posses and distribute the obscene photographs, I'm thinking it's more likely a rogue agent or technician, motivated by hatred for MAGA, planted it, knowing that Trump would likely pardon him for the J6 behaviors.
Just as you think "it has not been proven that he wasn't framed", you also haven't provided evidence strongly against "it has not been proven that he was framed". And I do think Daniel Tocci has a lot of avenues to pursue justice if he so desires. At the very least, he probably can get someone whom he trusts to lay out the evidence that he was framed.
Uhhhhhhhh, I mean out of 1.5k+ people, only one or two did so, is it really that surprising? My priors is that people who would follow a liar are not that intelligent, they are depressed about the loss of their political idol, stressed about news of investigations, or just stupidly overconfident, and let things slip. I don't know anyone who like obscenity but there's a reason why anime is looked down upon because of the weeb's penchants for lolis, and that's the public ones, who knows what they do in private.
So this person, a rogue agent, or this group of people, a rouge group, was able to plant:
This rogue agent, or this group of rogues, was able to pull the wool over the judge (who could be part of the group), all the people that handled chain of evidence (who could also be part of the group), and the defense attorney (who could also be part of the group), and the interrogators (who could also be part of the group) would put pressure on Daniel Tocci so that even though he's innocent would then plead guilty. And they must have done it with future sight because their search (and therefore planting of the evidence) was done November 2023, a full year before the 2024 November election. And of all the J6ers, they just decided to plant evidence on this random Daniel Tocci guy.
Look, I am always ready for stories of systematic abuse of power and coverups. No need to look further than the Catholic Church and Boston to know that decades of widespread wrongdoing and injustice can escape the public eye. But that proves the point: there was a system that worked its weight to let the crime happen and then coverup the crime. Like I said, if framing Daniel Tocci was so easy, I would have expected an order of magnitude more at the very least (so 20+ instead of 2) also had that done to them.
No because he's in prison and was not allowed a fair trial. It's also illegal to publicize the evidence of the case, which I think is a property unique to obscene photographs cases. Doesn't that violate public trial provision of the US constitution? How can a trial be public if it is illegal to display the evidence in public or to even view the evidence in private?
While it would look more like framing if there were less images, it's still possible if someone who had access to his stuff for a couple of hours did it. But why do you trust your government so much? Isn't it weird that they call themselves Justice, extremely narcissistic to do, while slandering this man and violating almost his entire bill of rights? They violated his right to privacy by searching him, the violated his freedom of assembly by searching him as a result of going to a political rally, they violated his 8th amendment rights by demanding 70 months in lockup for having disgusting photographs, they violated his right to public trial through the nature of the law they prosecute him on and by intimidating him into pleading guilty, and they violated his 10th amendment right by prosecuting him for something that is unrelated to interstate commerce. Then they call themselves Justice? Yes, I don't trust those people, I don't care how nasty some of the people they lock up are, two wrongs does not make a right and there is something rotten going on there.
As I mentioned, I don't believe you've proven that it was an unfair trial.
There are plenty of other non-child-pornography examples where evidence is only described and not shown: espionage, trade secrets, etc. The right to a public trial has been broadly interpreted to mean the proceedings are available to the public. Journalists and the public certainly can go and attend the court hearings. I'm sure if we want to dig enough there is plenty of public information you can get about the trial. As for child pornography in particular, you might disagree with this but it's considered that continued existence of such materials constitutes ongoing harm (New York v Ferber and Osborne v Ohio are the relevant cases and you will probably be interested in the dissent of Osborne). And again, there is no need for public access of evidence as the prosecution, the judge, the jury, and the defense would have had plenty of time and opportunity to assess and review the evidence that would be brought prior to trial proceeding.
That I am totally in agreement with you, wouldn't take more than 15 minutes with a competent computer person. The interesting question for me has always been why would those guys not cry foul and say they were framed.
Just because I have to fight my company to get a better wage does not mean that I don't trust in my company's processes. Just because I think the processes are dumb and wasteful does not mean they don't produce correct and beneficial results for the greater whole. I trust and am cautious of the same individuals all the time, why can't I do the same thing with the government? At worse, thankfully, they can just be voted out.
Just because it's narcissistic doesn't mean that they are wrong. Also this case never got to the supreme court.
As I mention, I am not convinced of any arguments for slander or that Daniel Tocci's constitutional rights were violated. Just like the sexual abuse victims around the world, it would require Tocci to have great courage to make public the abuse and levy those charges in court of law, but it can happen, and it must start from that.
I'm sure they got a warrant, unless you're against that in general (are you?).
There is a sizable portion of this country that consider the "political rally" an "insurrection".
6 years for the participation in an illegal industry, the 6 years presumably was given by the book in that there was a minimum and maximum sentence for what he plead guilty for. "having disgusting photographs" is a reductive description of what actually happened. I have photos the disgusting litter box my cats make after they eat food their stomachs don't like, there aren't any laws about that I can assure you.
I've discussed the part about public trial above so I won't address it here. As for the "intimidation", so far you have not provided any evidence of intimidation.
Can you confidently say that all of the CSAM in Daniel Tocci's possession is Massachusetts-homegrown? I'm going to bet he didn't produce them himself and guess that Tocci got them over the internet.
At this point I'm not sure who you're outraged at. You're outraged at the judicial system? You're outraged at the Supreme Court Justices specifically? You're outraged at case details that you haven't provided evidence for (planting evidence, framing charges, intimidation)? You certainly can believe whatever you want to believe, and I came in to this discussion hoping to know or learn something I didn't know before but I am coming out of it finding your claims unexamined and unconvincing.
I'm offended by, not exactly outraged at, the people of the United States and their failure to live up to their founders' original ideal of liberty. For at least a century they have abridged their original constitution and its protections of liberty in exchange for a folkish, hoi-polloish idea of safety as well as equality. I primarily find it disgusting, all things considered, the way that they govern and they way that they call it justice.
I would say I'm a moderate libertarian. I believe the American Congress has the right to ban the sale and purchase of CSAM, appropriately defined, between states. I think it ought to do this. My moderate view is that non-commercial byte transmission does not constitute commerce, and so federal laws cannot regulate it. That's because a strong 10th amendment is key for liberty, and it's what the founders intended. I believe states can and should constitutionally regulate the non-commercial transmission of CSAM. I actually don't believe videos and photographs constitute speech and so I don't believe the 1st amendment protects them at all.
However, I believe that the 4th and 8th amendments are your commands from your founders to not fall behind Europe in terms of privacy rights and government harshness, and you have failed, in CSAM sentences and other areas like drugs, computer hacking, and threats, although tellingly not in dealing with black criminals. I think current USA CSAM laws are probably obeying the 1st amendment, but many federal charges fail the 10th, although this is irrelevant to the defendants ultimately because the cases could just be charged in state court instead. And I think many CSAM investigations fail the 4th amendment and many sentences fail the 8th. And in Tocci's case I think all these elements are present, even though he was not investigated for CSAM specifically, the J6 raids also failed the 4th amendment because they were the result of an ultimately illegitimate investigation, and the DoJ understood this for all accessory cases except for pedophilia related ones, but that is downstream of their pervasive violating of the 8th amendment regarding such cases.
The ultimate result of all this is a 19 year old in federal prison for 15 years because his girlfriend sent him a nude photo on Snapchat. Snapchat conducts essentially governmental surveillance which is illegal currently in Europe and automatically detects the nude, sent privately between two people, and immediately sends the evidence to the federal government. This is unreasonable search. The federal government has jurisdiction because the nude went through snapchat servers in another state, and snapchat is kinda involved in commerce, or something. Doesn't matter. Safety Americans want a leviathan federal government so they dumped the 10th amendment a long time ago. Ok anyway he gets arrested by surprise NKVD style, as Americans cheer on because of safety, and then has the option to plead guilty for a „lenient” five years in prison or go to trial and get a 15 year sentence when a jury of his peers convicts him after their government used illegal-for-mere-non-badgeGods (I also support getting rid of almost all special exceptions for law enforcement agents but the Constitution was not this libertarian explicitly) malware to break into his phone, which is yet again unreasonable search and seizure that is cheered on for safety reasons.
The only thing stopping what I just described is a „trust me, bro” from the American government, which is how Russia and China work, not a liberal enlightenment state. That makes the United States no better than Russia and China when it comes to „justice.” While the case I described will breed controversy when it happens, a lot of people will say he deserves the wood chipper or something like it, because 17 and 19 is a disgusting age gap. Or maybe his girlfriend will only be 16, and he will get no sympathy, lol. It will happen soon because Snapchat is going to know the age of borderline teenage girls exactly now, due to ID verification, and they're going to include that in their detection algorithms. And the tech for just detecting nudity in a brand-new photo is somewhat new as well, I think before they compared photos to a pre-existing hash database of stuff that had already been prosecuted on. We have already seen that the American government WILL prosecute late teen boys and early 20s men for their normal relationships, and it's not going to stop, and because of how unjust the American government is, it's going to pervasive, it's going to break all privacy standards ever thought of in the 18th century, and it's going to be severe. Like, sick and depraved teenage boy dating girl two grades below him sentenced to justice by the DoJ severe. Us Europeans will look on, idly wondering what is wrong with you lot, and the boys will rot in prison. Many of you will cheer for his sexual abuse behind bars. Justice will be served, United States style.
In most European countries, this type of privacy invasion is illegal. In most European countries, this kid can't do more than 18 months in jail for having a nude of his underage girlfriend. Maybe none at all, depending on the country.
To make this more Motte, I have the exact same opinions on the Aaron Swartz case. The federal government had no constitutional jurisdiction; it had practical jurisdiction because Americans have violated their own states' rights in exchange for safety for over a century. They violated his right to privacy by using secret subpoena spam to include massive amounts of pre-crime surveillance in the court case, a lot of which is more regulated in Europe. Then they threatened to violate his 8th amendment rights if he did not agree to plead guilty to charges, telling him he would get 50 years in prison, offering 6 months for a plea, which is of course violating his right to a trial through illegal threatening to deprive him of another right. Americans have destroyed their 8th amendment protections, again, for safety, because they are a cruel and scared people, and that is how their government was able to openly do this.
Ultimately I think the United States judicial system has a privacy and cruelty problem in a lot of areas of law and this is downstream of other negative trends. It's not quite a first world country any more when it comes to criminal law. It's more like what I would expect dealing with an overfunded Muslim police state or something. At least those are restricted by not having billions to dump into surveillance of thought crime. The American surveillance regime and the Snowden case is another point related to the 4th and 8th amendment.
And as a consequence, I don't trust American government agents. I think they're likely to be sociopaths. And sociopaths frame people.
Before continuing with my reply, I would like to apologize for not responding earlier. I thought this comment deserved a reply in which I sat down and devote my concentration towards it.
First, thank you for this, I know it's expected of Mottizens but it's always a treat to see someone go into depth and articulate their viewpoint, no matter the topic. I can see that you have strong positions regarding civil liberties and how they should be enforced in the US, and your concerns about government and police overreach is something we have in common as it is legitimate and well thought out. We can probably have an even longer conversation to hash out more details and nuances to your view as I certainly have questions about certain aspects of your beliefs ("how to determine what is a non-commercial byte transmission?" or "if videos and photographs don't constitute speech, and therefore shouldn't be protected as a freedom, how come this wasn't brought up by other scholars or legal minds of the last 200 years? Howabout no-text-political-cartoons?" etc.), but I respect that you have a principled position and don't want to get too deep into it at the moment.
Second, I would like to remind both of us of how far we've come in this conversation. We started off with apparently a J6er being framed with child porn material planted, and now we are worried about cases where there are no Romeo-Juliet laws (thanks Transformers for this knowledge). Though your underlying legalistic concerns (government overreach) are the same, and I agree they are legitimate, I do not think the two cases are remotely the same where in one (Tocci) we are worried about government agents engaging in conspiracy, framing the innocent, for political revenge vs (19-year-old with his girlfriend's nude) bad lawmaking, prosecutorial zealousness, etc.
Third, I would really appreciate you giving sources and citations for what you claim. Because though I am worried about government overreach, I am also worried about actually understanding the truth of circumstances to judge for myself. Your narrative of "19 year old in federal prison for 15 years because his girlfriend sent him a nude photo on Snapchat" is so perfectly tailored for your argument, it caught me by surprise because I thought it did happen and well you would have certainly proved your point. So I had to dig up for myself:
Though it is true that Snapchat complies with reporting of"child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA)" to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children NMEC in that they would report "apparent violations" as required by federal law "18 U.S. Code § 2258A - Reporting requirements of providers", I have found nothing that Snapchat would automatically scan private chat information between users of its platform unless it's reported to them. As Snapchat writes: "We do not monitor or use any private content or communications you send to your friends to personalize your experience, make recommendations, or show you ads, and will only review them in the limited circumstance that it's flagged for violating our Community Guidelines, or if you otherwise ask us to.".
Now both you and I don't know whether Snapchat scans private chat, they might, they might not, they might let others do it, but at the very least, I don't think that Snapchat "automatically detects the nudes on private chat and sends evidence directly to the federal government" is an open and shut conclusion we can get to. Anyway, there is such scant information here, it's important that I went looking for what you're referring to.
Well, google search serves me well I think because I found "Greene County man faces charges after allegedly receiving explicit images from a minor over Snapchat. Investigators said 19-year-old Braeden Turner received those images from a minor back in October. He is now charged with sexual exploitation of a minor.". Details are bare, another article says: "According to Greene County District Court records, 18-year-old Braeden Michael Turner was arrested on March 26 after an arrest warrant was issued when a report was filed that Turner allegedly received pictures of the minor female without clothes between Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, 2025 over Snapchat. Turner posted bond and has been released from custody with a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 1 at the Greene County Courthouse. Turner is facing six charges of sexual exploitation of a minor- cause to engage in act, all class B felonies, and possession of a depiction of minor in sex act, first offense, a class D felony. Across all charges, a maximum sentence of 160 years in prison and $10,245 in fines may be imposed.".
But wait, what is this "Greene County District Court"? this doesn't scream federal to me, because.....it isn't, it's a state court, specifically of Iowa 2nd Judicial District, which as you pointed out "states can and should constitutionally regulate the non-commercial transmission of CSAM".
But anyway, your concerns about prosecution zealousness and coercion stands. Maybe Braeden Turner was coerced into a plea deal so he won't have to do the maximum 160 years in prison (much higher than your 15 years). But wait, no, he only recently pleaded not guilty: "Persons pleaded not guilty to charges as follows: Tanya Marie Helmrichs, 46, of Guthrie Center, burglary- third degree, attempted burglary- third degree, theft- second degree (two counts), and criminal mischief- second degree (two counts); and Braeden Michael Turner, 18, of Jefferson, sexual exploitation of minor- cause to engage in act- six counts, and purchase/possess depiction of minor in sex act. Trial dates were set for June 16 in both cases.". So not only is Braeden Turner case not even pronounced yet, he pleaded non-guilty, the way a person who believes they are in the right and have justice on their side would plea! Which if I can remind everyone that the person with 100k CSAM material pleaded guilty.
All this anger, about how Americans are so puritans compared to Europeans. Hello? Americans didn't make "Romeo and Juliet" laws or something? Americans realize there are nuances to human relationships and different parts of the countries have different reactions and encoded their values into laws differently.
Europeans might not allow corporate privacy invasion, but they sure as hell let their governments get away with it:
So let me sum up what I have so far:
Look, I completely agree with you that if Americans don't live up to their ideals then they will be like the regimes they profess to fight against (Russia, China, Iran, etc.). But this is no where or even close to what's happening. So please don't go all outraged on something that is not true and not actually happening. I can understand your deep distrust, but then it's just as bad to then veer so far into non-truths as well.
It's literally happening in Iowa right now. You are correct that the US federal government shouldn't be singled out. Most states are just as bad. That's because it's an issue with Americans, not something particular to Washington DC. The US federal government is what it is because of politicians and personnel from those states. It doesn't exist in a vacuum or as an entity beyond the United States demos.
As for Snapchat, you already found a case involving significant proactive surveillance, which ought to be illegal. What I was talking about hasn't happened yet, but it's a fair guess that it will with new technologies and the way Americans are becoming even more hysterical about this topic.
As for Europeans, sure, every society has hypocrisy and its ups and downs. The United States is not the worst country on Earth right now, nor in history. But it is probably the most narcissistic. And it is probably worse than Europe unless you really value shouting the N word or making Nazi salutes in public.
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