I wonder if these victims could push for charges relating to “revenge porn” against the DOJ or even the president himself if they can construct the narrative that the DOJ was acting on his orders.
Maybe. I’m no lawyer, but it would probably be hard to do. For example, here’s a few excerpts from a page on Congress.gov talking about the TAKE IT DOWN act:
The Act makes it unlawful in certain circumstances for any person to […] “knowingly publish” either an “intimate visual depiction” or a “digital forgery” of an identifiable individual.
…which means the DOJ would have to be caught on record having an employee go like “I think we should publish this girl’s face alongside all these nudes for the heck of it!”, or having an employee go “I’m not gonna bother censoring that one, I’m too lazy”, something like that, which makes it clear they did it on purpose and didn’t just like, forget to censor a photo because there were a lot of them.
However, it does state:
The terms “knowingly” and “publish” are not defined in the Act or the statute that it amends.
…which means the definition of “knowingly” in this case could be up to the courts. For example, a judge might say “you might not have chosen to leave it uncensored on record, but knowing the content would include explicit images, you did not check all the images to be sure before releasing them, therefore you knew it could happen and went along with it”
The second part is much harder to solve which is:
For the publication-related offenses involving depictions of adults, the government must show that, in addition to knowingly publishing the material, the defendant intended the publication to cause harm, or that the publication did cause the identifiable individual harm, “including psychological, financial, or reputational harm.” The offenses involving depictions of adults also contain elements regarding consent and content
Proving harm is much harder, since you can’t just rely on the fact the images were out there, but that the victim knew and was harmed psychologically, or didn’t know but was harmed in some other way, and you have to do that for every victim you want to claim under this act.
Even the minors part still has problems:
The publication offenses involving depictions of minors do not have the same consent and content elements. Criminal liability attaches if the defendant knowingly publishes the depictions and intends to “abuse, humiliate, harass or degrade the minor” or “arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.”
…since it’s hard to prove they did it specifically to arouse someone, or to abuse/humiliate/harass/degrade that minor.
Essentially, TLDR, it’s almost certainly never going to happen, but there is still a theoretical chance that with enough evidence of it being intentional, you could get someone arrested, though it would probably be some specific person responsible for the censoring of that dump of images rather than anyone high up.
I wonder if these victims could push for charges relating to “revenge porn” against the DOJ or even the president himself if they can construct the narrative that the DOJ was acting on his orders.
Maybe. I’m no lawyer, but it would probably be hard to do. For example, here’s a few excerpts from a page on Congress.gov talking about the TAKE IT DOWN act:
…which means the DOJ would have to be caught on record having an employee go like “I think we should publish this girl’s face alongside all these nudes for the heck of it!”, or having an employee go “I’m not gonna bother censoring that one, I’m too lazy”, something like that, which makes it clear they did it on purpose and didn’t just like, forget to censor a photo because there were a lot of them.
However, it does state:
…which means the definition of “knowingly” in this case could be up to the courts. For example, a judge might say “you might not have chosen to leave it uncensored on record, but knowing the content would include explicit images, you did not check all the images to be sure before releasing them, therefore you knew it could happen and went along with it”
The second part is much harder to solve which is:
Proving harm is much harder, since you can’t just rely on the fact the images were out there, but that the victim knew and was harmed psychologically, or didn’t know but was harmed in some other way, and you have to do that for every victim you want to claim under this act.
Even the minors part still has problems:
…since it’s hard to prove they did it specifically to arouse someone, or to abuse/humiliate/harass/degrade that minor.
Essentially, TLDR, it’s almost certainly never going to happen, but there is still a theoretical chance that with enough evidence of it being intentional, you could get someone arrested, though it would probably be some specific person responsible for the censoring of that dump of images rather than anyone high up.