Computer Restrictions on Supervised Sex Offenders

Last week I wrote about the North Carolina law that makes it a crime for any registered sex offender to use a commercial social network, G.S. 14-202.5. In that post I noted that similar laws in other states have been overturned or limited on First Amendment grounds, and that litigation on the constitutionality of our law is pending before the court of appeals. Today’s post considers the related issue of what computer restrictions can apply to sex offenders who are on probation or post-release supervision. Those offenders are subject to different statutes and, ultimately, a more limited version of certain fundamental constitutional rights. Those rights can be diminished during the offender’s period of supervision as long as the limits are “designed to meet the ends of rehabilitation and protection of the public” and “reasonably related to such ends.” See State v. Strickland, 169 N.C. App. 193 (2005) (upholding against a due process challenge the statutory probation condition prohibiting a sex offender, convicted of an offense involving sexual abuse of a minor, from living with his own minor child during his period of supervision). In North Carolina, a person on probation for a reportable crime or a crime that involved the physical, mental, or sexual abuse of a minor is subject to additional special conditions of probation. G.S. 15A-1343(b2). One of those conditions requires the probationer to submit to warrantless searches reasonably related to the probation supervision, expressly providing that “warrantless searches of the probationer’s computer or other electronic mechanism which may [...]