OR Sup. Ct. Rules internet browsing (child porn) constitutionally protected

[mountaineer]

Had to shorten the actual title:

Oregon Supreme Court Rules Internet Browsing Activity Protected Under State Constitution
Oregon's top court threw out a Lane County conviction after ruling that a business secretly tracked a man's public Wi-Fi browsing for over a year without a warrant.
Ellie Harper
3/26/2026

The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that tracking the internet activity of 73-year-old Randall de Witt Simons violated the Oregon Constitution's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, overturning a Lane County conviction in a decision that reshapes digital privacy rights statewide.

Simons had accessed the internet using a publicly available Wi-Fi network operated by a local A&W restaurant near his home, and access to that network required users to acknowledge terms of service. Simons was first arrested in 2019, after the business reported suspicious activity on its public Wi-Fi network and police instructed it to record his internet activity over a one-year period. That surveillance eventually provided the foundation for a warrant to search Simons's home laptop, leading to his arrest and conviction on multiple counts of encouraging child sexual abuse.

The opinion, authored by Justice Bronson D. James, held that Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution recognizes a privacy right in internet browsing activity that does not simply vanish because a person connects through a public network.  ... It further reasoned that "the mere fact that a person accesses the internet through a public network does not eliminate their Article I, section 9, right to privacy in their online activities" — a protection that holds even when the network's terms of service explicitly warn of monitoring and cooperation with law enforcement.  ...

PrismNews

[mountaineer]

@amuse
@amuse
IDIOCRACY: Oregon’s Democrat Supreme Court determined that pedophiles have a right to privacy when they download child porn on public/unencrypted WiFi networks. Retailers cannot log usage and report to police. Oregon Supreme Court's March 2026 ruling in State v. De Witt-Simons, holding that a restaurant's year-long monitoring of a suspect's public WiFi activity, directed by police to log CSAM downloads, violated Article I, section 9 of the Oregon Constitution as an warrantless search.
6:47 PM · Mar 26, 2026

https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/2037238963505947008

[mountaineer]

The child porn aficionado in question was a photographer with some connection to Jon Benet Ramsey.

... In a decision released March 26, the Oregon Supreme Court reversed a conviction involving Randall DeWitt Simons, a man whose past already carried national controversy due to his connection to the 1996 case of JonBenét Ramsey. While the ruling centers on constitutional protections and digital privacy, the facts behind it are what have many people doing a double take.

Simons was hired in 1996 to photograph JonBenét Ramsey during her time in child beauty pageants. After her tragic and still-unsolved death later that year, he sold a portfolio of her images, drawing widespread criticism and thrusting his name into the national spotlight. At the time, he reportedly acknowledged the backlash could end his career. Decades later, his name surfaced again, this time in Oregon, under far more serious criminal allegations. ...

https://thatoregonlife.com/2026/03/cp-conviction-jonbenet-ramsey/