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Family Has Right of Privacy In Decapitation Photos
big6joe sends in an update to a morbid story we discussed last year: a California appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling, granting the family of an 18-year-old woman who was killed in a traffic accident in 2006 privacy rights and recourse against the California Highway Patrol. "In a case that highlights how the ease of online communication can overthrow both common sense and basic decency, a California appeals court has ruled that families have a right of privacy in the death images of their loved ones. In 2006, an eighteen-year-old woman was decapitated in a traffic accident. Two of the police officers who reported to the scene emailed photos of the woman's body to their friends and family one Halloween."
http://www.nikkicatsouras.net/
Surprisingly, the ODPS videos are still available.
I still don't see how this is the officers' fault. If they violated their department's policy by emailing these photos, then that is the extent of their guilt. There is a penalty for that I'm sure. If the family experienced pain and suffering as a result of some idiots emailing or calling them, then those idiots are responsible for that and the family has every right to sue them. Was there no way to track down and expose any of them?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Sounds like they have a problem with immature police officers as well. Hopefully the officers got reprimanded for doing that.
One was suspended 25 days (w/o pay), the other resigned (but says it was for reasons unrelated to the accusation).
One thing nags at me: family says they did not have a legal right to prevent websites from carrying the photos. However, the photos should still be copyright CHP.
I wonder how the case would have stood if it had been an unrelated bystander who took the photos and intentionally displayed them to the world?
From http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/nikkicatsouras.net (McAfee Site Advisor, makers of McAfee Anti Virus)
Also, it's hosted on a Russian server.
From: http://www.tech-linkblog.com/nikki-catsouras-being-used-to-spread-malware
"Nikki Catsouras being used to spread Malware"
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
How would one make the police force (or the military for that matter) a no go area for character dwarfes, while attracting people where, uhm, you don't have to wash your soul after each time you had contact with them, or heard about them in the news? I wonder.
It's called civilian oversight police review boards. Any police force not kept in check by one will eventually become a fascist gang, if it doesn't just start that way. Positions of power attract those who will abuse it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Moderators can't delete posts. Posts don't really get removed in general. It has happened exactly once in Slashdot's history, and only as a result of litigious bastards (namely, Scientology) making threats. This comment also didn't only have a mere link, but directly included copyrighted text. And when they did take it down, they made an article explaining what got taken down, why, and pointed out other places the same document could be found on the Internet. And if you go whining to the FBI about how the big meanies at Slashdot made a big meanie post and it got modded up a bit, they'll laugh at you, hang up, and then laugh at you some more for good measure, and absolutely nothing else will happen.