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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.'"
The family filed a formal complaint about the photos' release, and three months later, they received a letter of apology from the California Highway Patrol. An investigation had revealed that the images, taken as a routine part of a fatal accident response, had been leaked by two CHP dispatchers: Thomas O'Donnell, 39, and Aaron Reich, 30. O'Donnell, a 19-year CHP veteran, had been suspended for 25 days without pay. Reich quit soon after -- for unrelated reasons, says his lawyer. Both men declined requests for comment, but Jon Schlueter, Reich's attorney, says his client sent the images to relatives and friends to warn them of the dangers of the road. "It was a cautionary tale," Schlueter says. "Any young person that sees these photos and is goaded into driving more cautiously or less recklessly -- that's a public service."
If that does not satisfy you, I'm not sure what will. Sue your police department for large sums of money but it won't take the pictures off the internet.
Today the entire family is in therapy, and they've taken out a second mortgage to cover the costs of their legal battle.
Your life up until this accident has sounded fairly idyllic and easy. Apparently this has been a very rude wake up call. Your daughter took your hundred thousand dollar car for a 100mph tirade through town with cocaine in her system. We all do stupid things, some more stupid than others. She made a series of very serious mistakes and luckily no one else was killed or badly hurt.
If you do not put this behind you, it will consume you and your lives and her mistakes will end up ruining not just her life but yours. Mourn her, celebrate her life, remember her but in the end move on.
In my opinion, it would be more heroic of you not to spend a second mortgage suing your police department but instead using that money to create awareness of hazardous driving, starting a college fund in her name, donating that money to charity in her name or doing something less destructive with it in her name. Right now, the public's memory of your daughter is for the wrong reasons and you're just exacerbating the situation. Be above that. Change things for the better and remember her fondly, not as a never ending court case.
My work here is dung.
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.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And that's just the start.
Not to be callous or anything, but I wouldn't call her "unlucky". Tragic? Yes. Unlucky? Getting hit by a drunk driver is "unlucky". Driving a car at 100 MPH while on cocaine is incredibly poor judgment. I agree with your point, though - I hadn't heard of her either. Sadly, three of the top four Google results contain pictures of the accident.
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."
-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.
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
Long live Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky!
Is it not a little ironic that they are all long dead?
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
She wasn't mentally ill. It stated "doctors told her parents the effects of that treatment on her young brain might show up somedayâ"perhaps by causing changes in her judgment, or impulse control"
Acting like she was some kind of mental handicap is a bit silly. There is no guarantee that had anything to do with this and it'd be my opinion that it would more likely be plain old peer pressure that caused her to try cocaine.
While this may have started off for those reasons. Their fight only makes things worse because people go through this same sort of thing all the time and they don't have rich parents wanting to make a scene and change their law for their child.
It's no surprise they're all in therapy if they're basically putting themselves in the poor house over this.
I personally rather run the risk of seeing pictures of dead family members online rather do something that could lead to the hindrance of free speech because as it's been said this isn't a problem with free speech. It's a problem with some clowns not taking their job seriously and it's rather common as I knew a volunteer fireman who kept a photo album of accident pictures and he had shown them to people like it was his pride and joy.
People have always been like this and always will and you can't stop it by passing a law. You only end up ruining life for those with decency.
this has nothing to do with free speech. One of the OBLIGATIONS of law enforcement is that privacy of certain records is maintained because it's "abusive" for information they obtain in investigations to be used without going through the proper lawyers. Law enforcement ALREADY knows the images taken can hurt people if misused and has rules their employees chose to ignore.
They all know these rules when they sign up, it's very clear, and in this case chose not to follow them.