California Family Fights For Privacy, Relief From Cyber-Harassment

theodp writes "Just days after his daughter Nikki's death in a devastating car crash, real-estate agent Christos Catsouras clicked open an e-mail that appeared to be a property listing. Onto his screen popped his daughter's bloodied face, captioned with the words 'Woohoo Daddy! Hey daddy, I'm still alive.' Now he and his wife are attempting to stop strangers from displaying the grisly images of their daughter — an effort that has transformed Nikki's death into a case about privacy, cyber-harassment and image control. The images of Nikki, including one of her nearly-decapitated head drooping out the shattered car window, were taken as a routine part of a fatal accident response and went viral after being leaked by two CHP dispatchers. 'Putting these photos on the Internet,' says the family's attorney, 'was akin to placing them in every mailbox in the world.'"

Comments

Re:You Can't Fight the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

...but your score to settle is not with the nebulous force of users that are the internet but with the Orange County Police Department.

That is correct, sir, and here are the pics you were looking for.

gross. I don't want to see it either.

[OrangeTide]

I don't want to see these photos, and the parents and family shouldn't ever have to see them either.

The officers and department should probably be punished in some way to avoid this sort of behavior again. I am almost certain there is a policy against releasing accident photos in such a casual way.

As for stopping the spread on the internet, it's too late. It's probably already in the wayback machine and google images cache. At this point the best we can do is make a firefox plug-in that detects the image and censors it. Then install the plug-in on the family's computers.

*sigh*

[crimsonshdw]

I remember this too. It was passed around last year because of how graphic the accident was, and as a cynical tale of poetic justice to the stereotypical spoiled daughter totaling daddy's Porsche (which is why it went viral, and with help from 'chan). The accident tore her family apart and everyone can sympathize with how much emotional trauma is and will be caused because of the accident. What limited a lot of the empathy from people was the fact that she was speeding in her dad's sports car and died a totally frivolous death. Sending her father crash site pictures with captions for ***** and giggles is so fundamentally flawed. * * * Anyone else read the part where they blamed the tumor on daughter doing coke? "It turned out to be benign, but 8-year-old Nikki had to undergo intensive radiation, and doctors told her parents the effects of that treatment on her young brain might show up someday--perhaps by causing changes in her judgment, or impulse control. Her family believes that's why, the summer before the accident, Nikki tried cocaine and ended up in the hospital in a cocaine-induced psychosis. She used cocaine again the night before the accident, her family says. Lesli and Christos discussed checking her into a hospital, but decided against it: she was to visit a psychiatrist the next day, a specialist on brain disorders. So they let her sleep it off, and the next day, the three of them ate lunch together."

Parent implies link to virus!

[cheftw]

-MILDLY IMPORTANT-
If you do go to that website be warned, it does contain the images mentioned but also a video. THIS VIDEO IS A VIRUS. It didn't run very well in WINE but some people have less secure nonfree operating systems.

tl;dr
If you go to her name dot net the video is a virus.