Judge sets $5,000 bail for state community corrections officer Michael C. Boone accused of possessing child pornography

Ever wonder just how secure all those files you’ve been storing in the ‘cloud’ are?–now you know! Privacy has long been dead. The thought police can and WILL arrest you for what you are thinking…or thought to be thinking. Simple possession of incriminating indices of bad thoughts…even fictitious ones…is enough. (e.g. kiddie porn, in law, need not actually be a photograph of anyone/anything, but can merely be composed of the scribbling or rendering of one’s fetid imagination.) The poetry of this particular example of big brother’s justice is the thought police have, in this instance, devoured one of their own…aided and abetted by none other than the creator of the Operating System most of us use on our computers: Microsoft!

by Amelia Dickson

Olympia, WA (4-8-15) — A Thurston County judge set bail at $5,000 for Michael C. Boone, an Olympia man accused of possessing child pornography.

The 37-year-old man, who works as a community corrections officer for the State Department of Corrections, appeared before Judge James Dixon on Wednesday afternoon. The judge found probable cause for three counts of second-degree possession of depictions of a minor engaged in a sexually explicit act.

According to the Corrections Department, Boone was hired in 2003 and works with adult offenders. He was placed on administrative leave, pending an investigation.

Boone also works as a reserve officer for the Tenino Police Department. Mayor Bret Brodersen said Boone has been placed on administrative leave there as well and that he won’t have access to Police Department facilities.

The State Patrol arrested Boone on Tuesday following an investigation that began in December. Microsoft notified law enforcement when employees discovered that Boone uploaded child pornography to his cloud account, according to court documents.

Detectives later confirmed that three of the images were child pornography that is well-known to law enforcement. The images were uploaded from an IP address belonging to Boone’s wife.

Sgt. James Mjor said in a press release that at present there is no indication that any child pornography was stored on Boone’s work computer but out of an abundance of caution, detectives seized the computer for a forensic examination.

Mjor said the investigation began when security officers at Microsoft noticed the electronic signature of well-known and frequently-traded images of child pornography on Boone’s Microsoft SkyDrive account. They contacted the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which in turn referred the matter to law enforcement.

They served a search warrant at Boone’s home and found his laptop. The computer contained the same three explicit images that had been uploaded to Boone’s cloud account, according to court documents.

Deputy prosecuting attorney Jim Powers said that Boone has no criminal history, but because of the seriousness of the alleged crime, bail was still warranted. He also requested that Boone have no in-person contact with minors and that he have no access to the Internet.

Office of Assigned Counsel Attorney Sara Hixson, who represented Boone at the hearing, argued that those conditions were too harsh. She said that there was no indication that Boone had ever harmed his children, nor was there an indication that he would fail to appear in court.

“He has significant ties to the community,” Hixson said. “He has been here for more than 10 years.”

Dixon accepted Powers’ recommendations, clarifying that Boone could contact his children via phone calls and letters.

He also found Boone ineligible for a court-appointed attorney. Hixson said Boone plans to hire a private attorney before his next court appearance, an April 21 arraignment.

Tenino residents (Where Boone was a reserve LEO) say they were shocked and dismayed.

The investigation began with a tip from Microsoft.

Security officers at the Redmond company noticed the electronic signature of well-known and frequently-traded images of child pornography on Boone’s Microsoft SkyDrive account, according to the Washington State Patrol.

SkyDrive is like cloud storage for a person’s photos, documents and other files, which one can access from multiple devices.

They turned the information over to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who forwarded it to the state patrol task force, Mjor said.

The task force said this afternoon it had no indication any child porn was stored on Boone’s work computer, but seized it for a forensic examination, and also seized his Tenino Police Department-issued smart phone.

The tip came in last week and initially was just an IP address, Mjor said.

Detectives went to speak with Boone, to see if he had any information he could help them out with, he said. While they were talking with him, other detectives were serving the search warrant at his home for his computer, he said.