Investigators scour web for nude images at Marine base
MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Virginia — In a cramped office at the Marines’ Quantico base outside Washington, about 20 investigators sit elbow to elbow, staring into their computers as images of naked men and women flash across the screens.
On the walls are white boards with statistics, crime lists and a montage of social media messages directed to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The objective of this disturbing sleuth work: Rooting out the extent of a nude photosharing scandal that has rocked the Corps, embarrassed its leaders and spread to other military services. And the sheer scope of the job is daunting.
“If you do that eight to 10 hours a day, five days a week, you get pretty burned out,” NCIS Director Andrew Traver said in an interview. New agents cycled in after the first month, he said, “just because of the burnout factor, especially the ones that are doing the image review.”
This is Task Force Purple Harbor. What began as a response to military members posting nude photos online has morphed into a growing criminal investigation that now includes 21 felony cases and more than 30 others referred to Marine commanders for possible administrative action. Five Marines have received administrative punishments so far, but no details have been provided.
For the investigators, men and women, it is a broad and grueling process. Agents from all four services and the Coast Guard have scoured close to 200 different websites. They’ve pulled more than 150,000 nude or semi-nude images. They’ve identified 20,000 with a possible military connection. More than half are of men.
The overwhelming majority are selfies or photos subjects posed for and then voluntarily shared, which is not illegal even under military code. That leaves just a small number of people who could potentially be prosecuted for crimes such as extortion and stealing or hacking into someone’s computer hard drive.
More than a dozen military members — mostly women — have asked the task force for help. They want to know if any of their intimate photographs ended up on the largely private websites without their consent. In four cases, facial recognition software has helped identify victims. One woman confirmed an image was of her. The other three are still checking.