Opinion ID: 4405443
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Internet Conditions

Text: In challenging the Internet Conditions, Savastio argues that “the terms the court below imposed would ban Mr. Savastio from . . . using the internet (likely including email) for the remainder of his life.” Savastio Br. 13. That is incorrect. The district court merely imposed conditions on Savastio’s Internet use, namely, that he either “participate in the Computer and Internet Monitoring Program (CIMP)” or that he receive authorization from the district court or the Probation Office in order to access the Internet. App. 46. The limitation to one Internetcapable device was also imposed in order to “facilitate the U.S. Probation Office’s ability to effectively monitor [Savastio’s] internet related activities.” App. 46. In light of Savastio’s history of accessing child pornography over the Internet and his prior violations of supervised release, we 4 conclude that these conditions were reasonably related to, inter alia, “the history and characteristics of the defendant.” U.S.S.G. § 5D1.3(b). Properly characterized, the Internet Conditions reflect a computer monitoring requirement that we have previously approved under similar circumstances in United States v. Browder, 866 F.3d 504 (2d Cir. 2017). In that case, we upheld a special condition requiring that a child pornography defendant “shall participate in the Computer/Internet Monitoring Program administered by the U.S. Probation Office,” id. at 509, finding that condition “‘reasonably related’ to the nature and circumstances of the offense and Browder’s history and characteristics,” id. at 512. If a child pornography defendant can be required to participate in a computer monitoring program, it follows a fortiori that his Internet access can be conditioned on such participation. For similar reasons, this case does not fall within the ambit of United States v. Sofsky, 287 F.3d 122 (2d Cir. 2002), or United States v. Eaglin, 913 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 2019), both of which rejected special conditions that altogether prohibited the defendant from accessing the Internet without the specific approval of his probation officer. See Sofsky, 287 F.3d at 124; Eaglin, 913 F.3d at 94. We also reject Savastio’s attempt to rely on the principles articulated in Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730 (2017). That case invalidated a North Carolina statute that subjected registered sex offenders to criminal penalties for accessing “commonplace social media websites like Facebook and Twitter.” Id. at 1733. The Supreme Court explicitly linked its holding to “the troubling fact that the law imposes severe restrictions on persons who already have served their sentence and are no longer subject to the supervision of the criminal justice system.” Id. at 1737. Savastio, by contrast, remains subject to supervised release. Moreover, nothing in the Internet Conditions suggests that the Probation Office will use them to impose an outright ban on Savastio’s access to all forms of social media. Packingham is thus inapposite. For the 5 aforementioned reasons, we conclude that the district court did not err in imposing the Internet Conditions. At a minimum, those conditions do not constitute an error that “is clear and obvious, rather than subject to reasonable dispute,” let alone one that “seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Wagner-Dano, 679 F.3d at 94.