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ACLU Sues Penn Prosecutor For Empty Threat of Child Porn
TechDirt is reporting that the ACLU has stepped in on behalf of several teens facing the threat of child pornography charges in Pennsylvania for sharing nude pics of themselves. Unfortunately for a girl in New Jersey, she is facing much more than just a threat, as she was arrested yesterday for posting almost 30 explicit pictures of herself on MySpace for her boyfriend to see. "...the ACLU has sued the prosecutor on the girls' behalf, saying he shouldn't have threatened them with baseless charges — which haven't yet been filed — if they wouldn't agree to probation and a counseling program. The prosecutor says he was being 'proactive' in offering them a choice, but the ACLU says he shouldn't be using 'heavy artillery' to make the threats. As its attorney points out, teaching kids that this sort of behavior can bring all sorts of unwanted and unforeseen ramifications is a good idea, but threatening them with child-porn charges isn't the best way to do it."
The girl yesterday was apart from her distribution charges was also charged with possession of child porn. So any child may not have pictures of themselves naked. Hope everyone has burned all their photo albums with the pictures of themselves or children in the tub as infants. Because if you have not, then you are next.
... so you don't miss the part about the 14 year old girl in New Jersey who has been charged with possesion of pictures of herself.
IANAL, esp. a constitutional one: However, this seems to get into 5th Amendment territory. You can't be underage, post pictures of yourself on the internet, and be charged with child pornography distribution as a minor. The act of distributing lewd material inherently assumes that you are not a party in the material itself, or at LEAST, that you are not the ONLY party in the material. If anything, you could charge the minor with public nudity or something, but not a pornography charge. That's ludicrous.
Only today can someone be sent to jail and put on a sex offender's registry for sexually abusing themselves. Clearly, she is a danger to children and shouldn't be allowed to live within 2000 ft of a school building or daycare for the rest of her life. And certainly, every time she applies for a job this should come up on her background check. Oh, and don't forget to force her to notify her neighbors that she's a sex offender.
I am so tired of the "let's make an example of them" mentality that is used to justify this crap.
the ACLU has sued the prosecutor on the girls' behalf, saying he shouldn't have threatened them with baseless charges -- which haven't yet been filed -- if they wouldn't agree to probation and a counseling program
Probation? That's still an admission that she did something illegal. If you don't own your own likeness, that's a problem. It would not be the first time the ACLU completely missed the point. (Yes, I'm still glad they exist, on the balance.) Counseling is only really an admission that she did something not socially acceptable... which is therefore an acceptable statement to make. But even probation is an obscene punishment for distribution of your own likeness.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Really? Teenagers having sex and taking naked pictures of themselves is now a nationwide problem?!
No. Millions of people losing their jobs is a nationwide problem. Teenagers taking naked pictures of themselves is a non-issue. These aren't exploited kids being molested or stripped against their will. And I guarantee you at least one of these prosecutors streaked, went skinny-dipping, etc. in their youth. This is just ridiculous. Don't we as a nation have better things to be worried about than a teenager getting naked for another teenager?!
Personally, since "my body, my choice" (abortion) law applies to teenagers, I'd personally say that the same should apply to this situation. If they want to take or distribute nude photos of *themselves*, then there shouldn't ANY "way to do it", best or not. The government should butt the heck out of the situation.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
What kind of world do we live in when the children won't think of the children?!
Noone under 18 is supposed to think sexually about anyone else. Didn't you get the memo? Neither did the world's teens...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Following this same logic, if a teenager masturbates they should be charged with sexually molesting a minor...
'Cause that's what the law says. Let them out on bail, and set their trials as far into the future as possible. Then, once there's plenty of ammo for the media, pressure the government to amend the patently absurd law to retroactively legalize the childrens' photo-sharing. Once such photo-sharing is no longer illegal, drop the charges and reverse any convictions that have been obtained.
No, it's not very nice to use the kids as pawns in this manner. But laws should not be selectively enforced, and the public outrage that this could generate might be the only way to persuade those in power to fix this absurdity. Besides, it might actually make the politicians think before criminalizing more victimless actions in the future.
The consequences of what? Being sexually mature but living in a society that pretends you aren't?
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
A meeting with the girl, the guy, both sets of parents the DA, a teen counselor, and ideally a judge. Make it mandatory for all. Although it's technically a crime by the letter of the statute, it is probably not by the intent of the legislation writers. An explanation that it could be considered a crime; how the pictures could be misused, how they're not private (anything in the internet can get out), and how the future might not look favorably on what they consider a prank or what a 14 yo thinks is harmless fun.
Really, the legislature should address this in a sound fashion by identifying it as a different class of offense - ideally only for digital transmission (since polariods have always been around, and hard copies generally aren't forever) - and as a very low level misdemeanor that includes the potential for a fine and/or community service only, and drops of your record when you hit 18. This isn't life or death here, and it's not exploitation, but it does carry some inherent risks. Treat is as the foolishness of youth that it is.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
When I was a child and growing up, seems like everybody had pictures of the kids in the tub or whatever, and it was fairly common to see a neighbor's 2-year-old running around naked. There was absolutely nothing sexual about it and nobody even thought twice about it.
I think the real perverts are the people who have turned this into something naughty and sick.
Yeah, I agree with you in that charging these kids with a crime is a pretty terrible way of dealing with it. I mean, I can see it (the threat of being charged with a crime) working most of the time on some kids in the "Scared Straight"-style, but it really does seem to be overkill. And, of course, if they're actually charged and jailed/registered that is WAY out of line.
That said, these actions can have consequences and, these days, they could turn into long term/permanent consequences. I'd draw a comparison to getting a tattoo on an exposed body part (face, hand, etc.). It's perfectly fine if you know what you're getting into, but teenage behavior generally isn't characterized by its foresight. Especially in instances like photo sharing where the expectation will be that it remains private, but whether or not it actually STAYS private is completely out of your hands. And with the longevity of data on the internet, the consequences can live on for a long time.
My question is simply what would be a good way to inform teens of the consequences of these actions without forcing them to live through the possible mistake. That's the whole point of education after all. Good parenting, obviously, is the best answer, but somehow that doesn't seem sufficient (this is a whole other discussion). Should the government really just be completely hands free in this? Would a school sponsored D.A.R.E. like program work? (probably not). I don't know the answer, but I think it's worthy of some thought.
My children will not and would not do such a thing with their phone or facebook because I monitor what they are doing daily as well as other parents and kids. Any real parent would not let this happen.
Teens have been having sex since time immemorial, it's built into us as a species and it's why we are all here. Parents have only been trying to stop it since the onslaught of religion. The parents will inevitably lose in the long run. The sex drive is second only the hunger drive so if the teen has a full stomach then what do you think the next priority is?
Of course children need to be protected but they also need to be respected as fellow humans. Teach your kids birth control and responsibility but also realize that when they mature sexually they are sexual creatures just like everyone else. Let them grow up for chrissake.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
Good God, reading that made me think of those kids in 1984. That's kind of scary. Anywho, doesn't matter how much you foster your kids, they'll do some things in private away from you. Sure, it may not be like smoking pot in a friends garage or some such, but no kid tells their parent _everything_, even the ones that are close to their family.
Actually, some kids do tell their parents everything, and it can be very dangerous as there is such as thing as "too much trust". I'm no child psychologist, but in my limited acquaintances, those who were the closest to their parents were also the ones most likely to be dangerously gullible and taken advantage of by others, because they have not learned the risk inherent in (careless) honesty.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
All I can say is good luck with that. I commend you for trying and I'm sure doing a very good job, but there can/will always be things your children are doing that you will not be aware of. I had two very involved parents who did a fabulous job of raising me; they were very involved with my life, knew all of my friends, attended the same church, knew many of my teachers, I was excited to share my life with them, etc.
However, there were still many things that I did that they never found out about that would have gotten me in MAJOR trouble had they discovered them. And it wasn't that they were bad parents or I was a bad kid; rather, I was a kid and needed time grow up. Part of that maturation process is doing stupid things and discovering exactly who you are. Hopefully along the way you also discover that you are not a stupid person who enjoys doing stupid things, which I definitely discovered about myself. But if you never have the opportunity to do stupid things, you might not be able to discover that you don't like them until you are out of the developmental period and you are expected to not do stupid things.
At least half of all high schoolers are sexually active (along with a larger proportion of college students, some also teenagers). When I was in high school, I remember most of my sexually active peers had digital pictures of themselves or their partners. This was true of males and females, gay, hetero, and bisexual. The number has probably increased recently now that everyone (middle class and above) has a camera phone.
I think young people need to fight back for their right to love each other and express themselves. These should be basic human rights. In the west we decry female genital mutilation because we believe that it is a basic human right to experience pleasure and to have full control of our own bodies. We need to apply the same standard to all of our post-pubescent population. As someone in their mid twenties, I can tell you that plenty of my peers in high school were more responsible in their sexual activity than my peers now. Maturity has more to do with individual personality than age.
Sexual images are a form of expression like any other. There is no reason that free speech should not apply to it as much as anything else.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Your understanding is incorrect but very understandable. The problem is that what is and isn't pornographic is highly subjective. Generally, as far as child pornography is concerned, it is merely enough that the pictures are of someone under 18 years of age and "intended to arouse sexual desire". Which does seems appallingly vague. In this case though, it seems pretty clear that the pictures were intended to excite her boyfriend.
The questions here are:
1) Can a person sexually abuse his/her self?
2) Is the purpose of child pornography laws to punish for the harming of the particular child in the photographs or to shut down the child porn network itself? I can imagine an argument that although she wasn't harmed in the taking of these pictures, these pictures do harm society by supplying material to a network of people that do harm children.
3) If she's to young to consent to the pictures because she can't make rational decisions regarding her sexuality, why can she be charged for making a poor decision regarding her sexuality?
It's because the digital pics don't need to be developed. Zero cost, and no jollies for the perv (or censorship/reporting to authorities by the prude) at the photo store.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The most retarded part of the ruling:
Second, the teens had no reasonable expectations that these pictures would never be shown to a third party, whether by accident or because of bragging rights because they are young and naive.
The kids claimed that they thought they had an expectation of privacy.
The state decided that they could not have an expectation of privacy because they were naive...
So if you don't have a complete understanding of social norms, statistics on average teenage activity, privacy and security of cell networks, email, image sharing sites, and social networks, you are incapable of having a reasonable expectation of privacy?!?
And some how, magically, you gain all of that knowledge on your 18th birthday?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
A girl, 14, did the deed with her boyfriend, 13. Due to the state's laws, the girl was classified as a victim of sexual abuse. However, as she was the one who initiated the act with another minor, she was also classified as a sexual predator.
There's nothing to figure out there: morons were writing the law. For one, having sex with within a few years of your age someone should't count (with consent of course).
Also, having a law that allows a girl to be classified as both victim and predator for the same act is seriously fucked up. Someone didn't think of the children.
Best possible way to get this law stuck down - get a high school student to go nude in front of the city hall security camera, and then file child pornogrpahy charges against city hall, and a lawsuit.
Are you a complete moron? WTF did the parents do? I assure you, at that age if all the kids are doing is sending nude pictures to their boyfriends they're practically saints. Also the only reason the kids would be "messed up now" is all this BS "think of the children" legal posturing. People need to wake up to the fact that once a child hits puberty they're going to start experimenting with sexual things, it's damn near the definition of "puberty".
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Your handle suits you well (maybe just not in the way you think it does).
Nothing should be done about this, because nothing wrong was done (at least by the defendants).
The issue against child pornography is that it damages the minor (psychologically or physically, or both). People in their later teens posting nude pictures voluntary isn't and shouldn't be any sort of issue.
The government response to this, as usual, is totally whacked.
You are both ignorant and stupid. A being is sexually mature when he or she can perform their part to procreate.
Being married and pregnant at 14 was very common before (Western) society decided sex was a sin.
Still trying to figure out that one.
Easy. Rule 1 of sex crime laws: the woman is always a victim.
Thanks for asking the question. Most people just assume that child porn has always been illegal and never give a thought to the basis for those laws.
I'm old and I've viewed porn since long before videotape existed as a consumer product. I'm also from the U.S., so my experience is limited to the laws in my country. I'll take a stab at answering your question because it's a very important one.
For most of the history of the U.S., child porn was legal. (Some will argue that child porn has always been illegal because obscenity has always been illegal and child porn is obscene. They have a point but not a practical one. There was negligible prosecution for obscenity in child porn cases in the past because they were hard cases to make and you couldn't be sure of a conviction. Thus,) Until the 1970s, child porn magazines and 8mm films were easily available in any large adult book store in any large city.
This bothered people for good reason. In those days, there was no amateur child porn. Film photography (no digital back then, remember) is expensive and developing film isn't easy. Almost no one took pictures of child porn unless they were doing it as a business. Further, there was no (essentially) cost-free distribution medium in those pre-internet days.
The bottom line is that back in those days, child porn was a business. If you possessed child porn, you had to have bought it. If you bought it, you were giving money to adults who were in the business of molesting children.
That's not a good thing.
In fact, it's such a bad thing that when we started making child porn illegal, the few objections on free-speech grounds (and there were some) were easily dismissed. The value of free speech, in these narrow circumstances, is not enough to overcome the legitimate interest of the state in protecting children. Remember, in this case, we're talking about the REAL protection of children. The act of buying child porn back then was functionally equivalent to paying a group of adults to rape kids. No court had a problem with outlawing it.
From that perfectly reasonable beginning, weirdness soon began to grow.
Simple possession was outlawed and nobody raised a fuss because, well, who cares, really? The few pervs who collected large amounts of the stuff were also the people most likely to buy more, so making their lives more difficult wasn't seen as a problem.
Remember, at that time child porn laws came into existence because child porn consisted of adults being paid to rape children. Child porn prohibition had a positive effect on reducing that problem and everybody was happy - except the pedos. In the immediate pre-consumer-internet period, child porn had ceased to exist as a commercial product. Essentially no one in the U.S. was selling it except for the U.S. Postal Service as a part of sting operations. About the only place to get it was alt.sex.pedophilia (and related groups); most of what was available there was simply scans of old nudist magazines. Child porn, for a while, was essentially dead.
Then, the consumer-level internet and ubiquitous digital media technologies came into existence. EVERYTHING changed. Comparing then to now:
Then, child porn was expensive to produce. Now, it's cheap.
Then, child porn was a business. Now, it's amateur hour, all the time.
Then, child porn exclusively involved adults molesting kids. Now, the most common forms of child porn involve children molesting themselves.
Then, child porn only saw the light of day because an adult sold it. Now, most child porn involves no adults at any stage of production or distribution.
Then, child porn was rare because it was difficult to physically distribute the magazines and films in quanti
thats slightly MORE fucked up. Laws should not be made to encourage people to NOT report crimes.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
The judge is about as smart as a fireman not stopping a fire in a burning building because of a "no trespassing" sign.
Liars, telling them that all drugs are the same, and all drugs are dangerous.
"Predators" apparently seeking to rape them (according to the media, anyway).
Cops trying to assault and jail them for self expression, sex crimes against themselves, underage drinking, and curfew violation.
School administrators making them pass through metal detectors, move at the sound of a bell, search them and their lockers, and threaten them at every available moment.
Parents praying that they don't explore what nature tells them to explore.
TV telling them the world's about to end, and that they should drink Coke and eat McDonalds, that intellectual pursuits are lame, and that sports rule everything.
Bullies pushing them around, and occasionally shooting up schools.
Busybodies telling them to stop playing, and stay indoors, so they don't get hurt.
We are a truly screwed society in 20 years.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Should the government really just be completely hands free in this?
Yes. Nudity should never be a crime.
If you don't come down hard on a teenage girls sending nude pictures of themselves to their boyfriend, they could possibly eventually hypothetically in the future end up having problems because of it, somehow.
Instead, let's throw them in jail and brand them as sex offenders.
Better not leave it to chance.
Isn't that what school is for? ^^
On a more serious note, you and GP are right. I am somewhat experienced in psychology, and small (and sometimes big) lies are an essential part of a working society. Take away the lies, and it completely breaks down. It is a kind of flexibility. To cope with the imperfection of humans.
Same thing with parents and children. Or with any other relationship.
Small lies -- as you may know -- can even save a relationship for a very long and happy time. (Or destroy it. ^^)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Err, in other "primitive" (I get to wonder these days about that) cultures, sex was often in public. A phallus was a "lucky charm" and often sculpted or carved above house doors. In fact in some of these cultures, during the "consummation" of (equivalent of) a wedding, the young couple would do it in the centre of the village, to the cheers of merry onlookers, some of these onlookers held in the arms of their mothers because they could not walk yet.
So the argument that seeing other young/old/middle-aged people naked, never you mind having sex, is some new phenomenon is as phony as it gets. As to old-young, it was not uncommon for, say, 40 year olds to marry 14 year olds, or so the anthropologists and historians tell us.
So as someone else pointed out, this all has changed with the spread of religion, or more precisely a particularly repressed, bigoted and hypocritical one, i.e. Judeo-Christian flavour, which deems all sex as evil and human body as grotesque, shamefully inciting to "sin". This became the dominant philosophy during the European Dark Ages (not surprise there). And is has ever since been the dominant neurotic societal psychosis in the Western society, which these societies have now exported along with their military dominion and economic power to places where it did not exist until recently, such as Far East.
I personally think that the West is too far gone down this rabbit hole of authoritarian self-hatred and religious mind-control to undo easily. Since the mental state of the people making these "laws" is pretty much certifiable, I should expect the excesses of stupidity to multiply as rapidly as new technologies expose the depths of this lunacy. But as it is with all lunacies, the lunacy will survive until the lunatics obsessed by it die out or are made powerless, which with religious lunacies is, as history teaches us, usually only possible via violence. And so I expect great many kids with ruined lives and a vast number of victims of witch-hunts (some of the "think of the children" crusaders "estimate" that 60% of men are child molesters) to be sacrificed on the altar of religion-induced mental disease disguised as "law" for many, many years to come.
"Think of the children" indeed!
TFA: "When lawyers for the parents asked for a copy of the photos that would be used to charge their children, Skumanick reportedly refused on grounds that he would be committing a crime by sharing child porn."
Let's assume that this can be generalized -- the kid's lawyers in a child porn case can't have the pictures because that would still be distribution by the DA. Also, let's assume that we're going to be showing them to the jury, so that they can determine if the picture in question is actually child porn.
The 6th amendment, abridged for brevity's sake: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to...be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation"
In a case like this, the pictures are at the heart of both the nature and the cause of the accusation -- and actually seeing the pictures is necessary to determine if it is pornography.
Seems to me child porn laws are illegal, given at least one of the statements in the two posits above is true.
but IANAL.
Well, it's a bit harder than that because the consensus view is that people under 14 can't give consent. Personally, I don't think it makes sense to have a universal age limit for that, but most people disagree with me.
Why do you think these people started selling drugs in the first place? Because that $90K Oracle DBA Manager job was so unfulfilling?
What makes you think they were selling? Maybe some DBA liked bolivian marching powder on the weekends.
Have you tried to find a job with a felony conviction on your record lately?
Yeah, I remember when a felony meant something. Now it could mean you played a DVD on linux.
But don't think that closing the War on Drugs is going to be the end of the problem. All that's going to do is stop whitewashing over the rot and decay. Once we quit hiding behind this silly "War," the real work is going to begin.
True, but it will reduce the impact of the problem. It will also defund the drug cartels pretty much overnight.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
No I agree with you, the current law is very unjust. Part of the problem nobody wants to deal with is that children become sexualized quite gradually starting at a very young age.
Having said that, wanting to have sex is not the same as being able to give valid consent to have sex. These are two separate issues. To give valid consent (so the theory goes) you have to be able to assess the likely consequences of an action in light of an understanding of your true desires and intentions. The orthodox view is that 13-year-olds don't know what's good for them.
To give valid consent (so the theory goes) you have to be able to assess the likely consequences of an action in light of an understanding of your true desires and intentions.
My two basic desires and intentions are survival and reproduction. Everything else is just the framework to make that happen.
Part of the problem nobody wants to deal with is that children become sexualized quite gradually starting at a very young age.
I think the problem is more likely the adults. They're embarrassed about it. They think the TV will teach the kids. By the time they want to give The Speech about bees and flowers, they could very well ask them for advice.
It's okay for gay teens to have sex then :)
Essential to a working society? I doubt it. Maybe to society in its current form, but essential to ANY working form I very much doubt. Lies are a lazy (and/or capacity limited) coping mechanism. It really depends a lot on the people and relationships involved. My wife knows I don't pander or offer false compliments. That doesn't make me insensitive, mainly because I'm responsible enough not to say everything that rises to consciousness, and really sensitivity should be perceived as blunting negative truths with perspective rather than trying to paint them as completely unreal things. When I do have positive things they carry more weight, because the people around me know I'm sincere all the time and not just BSing them to be polite.
Quite frankly, on the rare occasions where I lie, it's to people I think are beneath contempt. If I place any value on a relationship, I will expect the value of the person to be equal to the task of integrating any truth from perception to conception. Those that cannot do that for want of some intellectual or emotional deficiency, aren't worth the time of inventing pleasing unrealities to pander to their problems.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Being married and pregnant at 14 was very common before (Western) society decided sex was a sin.
So was dying of childbirth at 16, or dying in general before 40.
Being married and pregnant at 14 was common when the father was 10-20 years older and wealthy, or a few years older and able to provide a living. Not when the father is 12 years old in ANY case, and not when the mother and father require 100% financial (and emotional) support from THEIR parents to survive.
This is not about prudish religions, it's about basic practicality. I don't understand why people can't get the basic parental concept of "my house, my rules". And "don't go having children when you are living here and can't support them yourself" is a perfectly reasonable rule.
thats slightly MORE fucked up. Laws should not be made to encourage people to NOT report crimes.
You're right, but for the most part these aren't crimes. And actually, for a particularly aggressive father, a law like this may encourage him to report it for a harsher punishment. It's a terrible law.
What I don't understand is why sex between consenting kids is made illegal in our society, while it's basically mandatory and perverted for those above the age of consent, and yet stories like Romeo and Juliet(2 kids in love) is praised by it. The constant bombardment of sex in advertising, the increasing punishments as an attempt to control their desires, etc. It's no wonder they seem to be engaging in it more often when society's fed into those desires by putting them up on a pedestal.
It's probably why when I was in highschool, not too long ago, something like 50-75% of the girls were having consentual sex with males, usually older ones. I talked with a 13yo girl who told me she had a few boyfriends aged over 18 and couldn't wait to have sex with them. In fact, she felt pressured to(everyone else was rapidly losing their virginity). My ex confessed that she lost her virginity at age 12 to a guy in his 30's. She didn't seem to come away from it feeling abused or hurt, I still felt a bit disgusted, and I couldn't blame her when I'd have done the same in a second with a hot older woman at that age. For example, I remember fantasizing about my substitute teacher in the 5th grade, where me and the other guys took turns feigning frustration with our work so we could check out her amazing rack.
Maybe it's the pedestal, or maybe it's just natural. Either way, these laws need to be reworked or perhaps even dismantled if they serve to harm the children instead of protect them.