Sailors targeted at more than a dozen Navy commands in growing military nude photo sharing scandal

[nitpicker]

https://www.navytimes.com/articles/sailors-targeted-at-more-than-a-dozen-navy-commands-in-growing-military-nude-photo-sharing-scandal

Sailors targeted at more than a dozen Navy commands in growing military nude photo sharing scandal

By: David B. Larter, March 14, 2017

The Navy is now knee-deep in the nude online photo-sharing scandal that started with the Marine Corps last week and senior admirals are acting quickly to crack down on a problem that is starting to look like a cyber variation of the Navy's notorious 1991 Tailhook debacle. Evidence has emerged that female sailors stationed across the globe are being targeted by anonymous online voyeurs seeking, collecting and distributing naked photos that are typically shared confidentially between couples involved in long-distance relationships. Women from more than a dozen Navy commands were specifically targeted by online users seeking nude photos — likely other sailors or people closely familiar with their command personnel — according to a Navy Times investigation.

A review of message boards such as AnonIB, a site first reported on by Business Insider, as well as 4Chan and Tumblr, reveals a network where users seeking nude photos target specific service members, often with innocuous Facebook and Instagram photos asking for “wins,” a code for naked pictures. The threads are often subdivided by command. Users will seek specific sailors, often identified by picture, job title, rank and even name, and in many cases nude photos are subsequently posted.

The sites — along with the sailors, veterans and civilians who operate them — make up an shadowy web of file sharing that has proven to be a game of whack-a-mole for investigators. As soon as one cache of nude photos is discovered, users migrate using obscure message boards, updating one another as to which new dark corner of the Internet contains the photos.

The female sailors being targeted on the publicly accessible sites come from all corners of the Navy, with their commands including the carriers Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt and Reagan; the destroyer Cole; Naval Base San Diego, Naval Station Norfolk, Naval Air Stations Oceana, North Island and Pensacola; the hospital ship Mercy, Walter Reid Medical Center; and the U.S. Naval Academy. The staggering list of command locations was compiled during a two-day Navy Times investigation, but is likely not comprehensive.

After Navy Times shared the findings with the Navy, the Navy’s top officer issued a blistering memo to all his commanders insisting that the behavior be stamped out in the fleet.
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