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

[ultranova]

How so? The problem is not the pictures being out there its sick fucks from anonymous and 4chan emailing them to the family with captions.

No, the problem is the pictures shouldn't be out there in the first place. The Internet is such a large place that it has plenty of sick fucks who'll do this kind of shit; the police should know this and act accordingly.

The police snafu, helps increase awareness that taking cocaine then driving can lead to horrible consequences, but anonymous harassing the family of a dead girl just offends.

Everyone is already perfectly aware of the consequences, it's simply that some people refuse to acknowledge that it might happen to them. I've never quite understood why; I have no problem understanding that if I have trouble walking then driving might not be such a good idea, but apparently some people do.