Hundreds of Marines investigated for sharing photos of naked colleagues

[nitpicker]

47. Update from Marine Corps Times

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/articles/marines-nude-photo-scandal-congress-ncis

Marines' nude photo scandal could lead to significant jail time

By: Andrew deGrandpre and Jeff Schogol, March 6, 2017

WASHINGTON — Military investigators are contemplating felony criminal charges for an unspecified number of U.S. Marines who participated in a secretive social media group that metastasized into a distribution pipeline for sharing nude photos of their female coworkers and a sordid message board where some allegedly encouraged one another to commit rape.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service on Monday confirmed that the agency is working to determine whether felony charges are warranted. A spokesman, Ed Buice, declined to provide further details or disclose how many people are being investigated but said the probe, ongoing for weeks, could include active-duty personnel, military veterans and those unaffiliated with the military. NCIS routinely works with state and local law enforcement, Buice said.
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Any military personnel found to have posted compromising photos without consent could be charged with “indecent viewing, visual recording or broadcasting,” a violation of military law that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, said Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Ryan Alvis.
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Potentially hundreds of active-duty Marines and military veterans may be caught up in the scandal, made public Saturday night when journalist and Marine Corps veteran Thomas James Brennan published an explosive investigative piece on the website Reveal. The images were shared via a secretive Facebook group called Marines Untied, which included nearly 30,000 members before it was disabled.
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Prosecuting military personnel accused of distributing nude photos without consent would be "relatively straightforward" under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, said Rachel VanLandingham, a retired Air Force officer and judge advocate who now teaches at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. So would prosecuting those who may have hacked social media accounts to steal women's photos, she said. Voyeurs alone could be a different story.

"It may be more difficult for the military to prosecute those who simply were members of this closed Facebook group and passively viewed photos," VanLandingham noted. "Officers won’t be difficult to charge, ... as they are held to a higher standard and knew, or should have known, those photos were unauthorized. However, for prosecuting enlisted members ... for conduct that is service discrediting or prejudicial to good order and discipline for simply viewing the photos, the government will likely have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they actually knew the photos were unauthorized. Perhaps this is easy to show based on the details under each photo and elsewhere on the site," she added, "but perhaps not."
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