back to article US Marine Corps chiefs declare WAR on stolen sex snap sharing scum

In a hearing at the US Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington DC, the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert Neller, promised swift action against those swapping pornographic pictures of his troops. Earlier this month, a former marine blew the whistle on a private Facebook group called Marines United that was …

  1. Long John Brass
    Mushroom

    War on ${HotTopic}

    Given the success rate of...

    The war on drugs

    The war on terror

    The war on poverty

    etc ad infinitum

    This should end well :/

    Although the war on smart seems to be a resounding success

    1. GrumpyKiwi

      Re: War on ${HotTopic}

      Have an upvote for posting word-for-word what I was going to.

    2. Phil.T.Tipp
      Happy

      Re: War on ${HotTopic}

      But you are mistaken sir, both the ascendency of the God-Emperor [Praise Kek!] and the Up-coming Exit via Brexit are shining examples of the war on smartass which is being won all over the world, I think you'll find. Is the Netherlands the next to wake up and reject smartass thinking? Followed tout de suite by France? I love it.

      1. imanidiot Silver badge
        Meh

        Re: War on ${HotTopic}

        "Is the Netherlands the next to wake up and reject smartass thinking?"

        I highly doubt it. Thanks to a well timed diplomatic row with Turkey the current prime-minister and his party (VVD) have managed to suddenly work themselves back up in the polls. There is a good chance it'll be bussiness as usual after today. (It's election day in the Netherlands on the day that is today the 15th of March in case anybody was wondering)

        --> Because honestly even if the PVV where to get the most votes I doubt anything is going to change for better or worse anyway. I'm not voting for any of the big parties in any case -->

        1. Tom Paine

          Re: War on ${HotTopic}

          The3 much hyped nazi wirth the ludicrous haircut is only on 13-15% or so in the polls. Don't believe the hype.

          1. gnasher729 Silver badge

            Re: War on ${HotTopic}

            Do you mean our foreign minister? He's an incompetent and a liar, but not a Nazi. Or do you mean the orange one? He was on 40% in the polls and more in the elections. And he's not a Nazi either, he is mad in his own distinctive way.

            1. imanidiot Silver badge

              Re: War on ${HotTopic}

              I think he's talking about Geert Wilders, one of the politicians with a shot at becoming the prime minister of the Netherlands, and the whole kerfuffle happening between turkey and the Netherlands right now. Since the Netherlands refused a turkish minister into the country because there was evidence of a real and direct danger to public safety the high goatfuckerErdogan decided to call the Netherlands a Nazi remnant and Fascist regime. Then went further off the deep end by saying the Dutchbat forced murdered 8000 muslims in Szrebrenica. Now another government official is topping that by saying we sold the childrens organs for profit and ran a human trafficing scheme over there...

    3. mathew42
      Megaphone

      Re: War on ${HotTopic}

      While I agree that stamping out porn has no chance of success, this is different. This is invading a person's right to privacy.

      Would you be okay with others at your work having naked photos of you taken without your consent most likely in an area where you could reasonably expect privacy and sharing those photos? I think many people would wonder everytime someone looked at them if that person was mentally undressing them to compare with a naked photo. It is reasonable to expect that in any other work environment the participants would also be disciplined and most likely sacked. It is reasonable to expect that criminal charges would occur.

      Lastly military personel need be held to an honour code because war is a highly charged environment and it takes discipline to not take revenge on prisoners or civilians.

      1. Long John Brass

        Re: War on ${HotTopic}

        @mathew42

        I agreed with everything you said in your post. What I am suggesting however is that a war on $whatever is massively unlikely to achieve anything.

        When you get large numbers of hormonal 20 somethings in the same place at the same time; all from the selfie generation; What exactly do you expect to happen?

        Is what happened right? No! ... But not unexpected.

        Starting a puritanical witch hunt won't solve it. but at least this current reaction is better than sweeping the whole thing under the carpet, which would be much much worse.

        Punishing young idiots for being young idiots won't work. Education + a healthy dose of shame might work better.

      2. Queasy Rider

        having naked photos of you...

        or your mother, daughter, or sister.

  2. Oengus

    Digital is forever

    The problem here is once it is released to the internet you can never control where it will end up. What was done is wrong but you can't put the genie back in the bottle...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Digital is forever

      but you can give those responsible the sack.

      1. gnasher729 Silver badge

        Re: Digital is forever

        In this case, much more than just giving them the sack. They will be sacked, lose all privileges that they would have as ex-military, lose pensions, and possibly go to jail.

    2. sal II

      Re: Digital is forever

      The focus of the story is a facebook group - suppose some f the members where invited without knowing the content in advance - they could have left the group after seeing the content and report it to their superiors. Instead they remained and made derogatory comments about their colleagues/brothers/sisters in arms in a public medium - the Internet, which is somewhat different than a verbal comment like "check out that rack/ass" on a passing woman/man (which is still wrong, but often innocent)

      There are no excuses for such behavior, they knew what they are doing and it's time to bear the consequences.

  3. 0laf

    Awareness

    I hope they are also educating their marines on the dangers of taking any potentially embarrassing or criminal snaps with a digital devices. They should have been doing it anyway after some of the images from Iraqi prisons leaked causing some issues wiv da law.

  4. Potemkine Silver badge

    "pervert our culture"

    What culture are we exactly talking about?

    "If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human fucking beings. You are nothing but unorganized grabastic pieces of amphibian shit! Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless. And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. Do you maggots understand that? "

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Peter2 Silver badge

      Re: "pervert our culture"

      I think what your missing is that behaviour is deliberately designed to make all of the people hate the instructor, which causes immediate team bonding right from second one. The cultures aim is to make everybody trust each other with their lives, and be willing to fight together as a team. Where you are doing things that are insanely dangerous but somewhat safe if everybody is doing exactly what they are meant to be doing then everybody has to trust each other.

      Breaking that trust so people are always looking over their shoulder at their fellows in peacetime means that in wartime things are going to go horribly badly because you'd be looking around to check that the other hundred and fifty odd people your fighting with are doing what they are supposed to be doing instead of doing what your meant to be doing. And as soon as everybody starts doing that, everything grinds to a standstill.

      Hence why they are declaring their determination to exterminate this with extreme effort.

      This particular army culture however is one of three. You want the enlisted people to follow orders precisely, without question so this is how they are trained. This however would be disasterous in the NCO's, who are the enlisted troops line management who are trained in tactical battlefield control. And following orders without question would be even more disasterous in officers, who provide the strategic planning etc.

      1. Potemkine Silver badge

        Re: "pervert our culture"

        Thanks for explanation, I got myself to deal with that kind of education in the past ^^

        My point is that it's weird to be shocked that people dressed to kill may sometimes have an immoral behavior. I even wonder if there isn't a little bit of hypocrisy there...

    3. creepy gecko

      Re: "pervert our culture"

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j3_iPskjxk

      Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Poor management and oversight

    The military is very different than other workplaces but is still a workplace, one in which the only people who can decide the workplace culture is the management. Giving up that responsibility, as has been done to allow such activity to continue, is where the US Senate Armed Services Committee should be targeting it's inquiry. They could start by asking how such disrespect has flourished under the command General Robert Neller.

    The workplace nor the military may not be able to make co-workers respect each other but they sure as hell can make them act respectful.

  6. JaitcH
    FAIL

    Since the US Defence Department is the ISP to many Military Bases . . .

    it should be easy to prevent their 'subscribers' from accessing these web sites.

    There again, Ms. Manning, presently residing in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, also subscribed to the Defence Department InterNet and they couldn't detect her downloading hundreds of thousands of documents.

    Says it all. And these guys are supposed to be the whiz kids at 'cyber defence'? Heaven help the USA.

  7. Steve Foster
    Joke

    Hmmm, coming soon:

    All new NCIS, NCIS:Los Angeles and NCIS:New Orleans?

    A whole season of cross-over episodes...

  8. Suricou Raven

    Bah. This will be spun politically.

    I've already seen one column arguing this proves that women should not be allowed in the military.

    1. Queasy Rider

      Re: Bah. This will be spun politically.

      To his statement, 'How much more do the females of our Corps have to do to be accepted?'." the general should have added, 'AND RESPECTED'.

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