Hundreds of Nude Photos Jolt Colorado School
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
If use of a phone app causes interruptions in class, you respond by setting rules in class such as "put your phones away". Otherwise, it's COMPLETELY outside the boundaries of the school.
The police shouldn't be involved unless a charge has been levied by someone (e.g. "this person took pictures without my permission"). Bringing them in did nothing to help the children, it only further increased exposure. Oh, great: the police are going to "try to identify" the children in the naked pictures; well, how, exactly, without making the situation far worse for everyone?
Parents need to be parents. Train children about the risks of trading pictures or anything else of a personal nature (pictures are not guaranteed to be seen only by the person you send them to, pictures can be used as blackmail, etc.). Show kids why they should think twice before doing these things. And yes, commend them for the sensible steps that were taken, e.g. guarding things behind a password instead of leaving them completely in the open.
We don't know that. We don't whether some pictures were taken or traded inside the school. And if that's the case, the school administrator are responsible.
But I'm more concerned about the destinations of these photos which may likely end up in child-porn sites on the internet.
edit: ok it seems some pictures were actually taken in the school.
> The photo-sharing, some of which took place in school,
And the school was the only thing that all those children shared. The culture of the school is obviously a factor.
You can support and educate your child about nude images, but if s/he's spending 30 hours a week among people pressuring her/him for nude photos s/he is going to need to do a lot of resisting. (Which, in this case, may have increased the "point value" (if that bit's true) and thus increase the numbers of people trying to get pictures.)
> The police shouldn't be involved unless a charge has been levied by someone (e.g. "this person took pictures without my permission")
Children can't consent to sexual activity. Law makers decided that nude images of children is sexual activity. Thus, children can't consent to making nude images of themselves.
EDIT: Also, Bob may not care that Ann has the image. But if Ann's phone images get hacked and Bob's nude image ends up on the Internet Bob may feel considerable distress. We know that some / many people who were photographed during their child sexual abuse will experience trauma from the existence of those images.
We're talking about teenagers engaging in sexual activity with other teenagers.
That's the argument you're up against.
The person distributing that image, unless they are the person in that image.
The person taking the image, unless they are the person in that image.
The person causing that image to be taken whether by normal persuasion, or by coercion, or financial incentive, or violence. (Unless they are the person in that image).
I'm not keen on using that bit of criminal law on children. It doesn't feel like justice, and it doesn't seem to be working.
The only thing different today is the technology creates new opportunities for those bad things. When I was a kid it was things like smoking, bullying, vandalism etc. As an ex-kid :) and a parent let me tell you, without constant feedback kids just do the dumbest things.
(Not saying anything like that happened here though).
But even ignoring the child sexual abuse images aspect: It's a pretty unhealthy culture where children assign point values to naked photographs of other children. That's not normal exploration of childhood sexuality.
In cultures that have much more open sexuality we see reduced sexual activity in children (eg, less sexually transmitted infection; fewer unplanned pregnancies).
The UK / US seem to have a problem with this and just telling children to stop doing it doesn't seem to be working.
(Fully agree that prosecuting a child for taking an image of themself is a bad idea)
I agree, and I think the problem stems exactly from the culture that vilifies sex. If you treat sex as something natural and normal, I think teenagers will be much less likely to treat it as something to "collect".
It gets even worse when absolute age is considered. It's insane that two 17-year-olds can meet and date and want to have sex, yet people come with pitchforks to prosecute the first one unfortunate enough to turn 18!?
But in the end I dropped it because it struck me that while the legal ramifications of this situation may be considered stupid, the far overriding worry to me is how unhealthy this situation is: for those involved, for their community, and their culture.
The focus should be on the far more difficult problem of changing that. While legislation may be a part of that, I doubt if that alone is the solution. How do we fix this?
The fact that it was taken by the "subject" , send to another minor makes no difference. Some porn has been produced and may very well end up on a child porn site.
The problem is the absurd harsh penalty risked by these minors if they get caught. Like becoming a registered sex offender and stuff like that. That's where the problem is.
But you can't deny that this is underage porn content. Sexting doesn't mean anything new. There should be however some leniency because of the intent and that's not always the case. The justice system has to catch up. no question.
You need to also consider that it looked like a well organized system if more than a 100 people were participating. Is it still just sexting when content is traded among students ?
What? No. Child porn isn't illegal because its consumption hurts electrons, it's because its production hurts children. If nobody has been hurt while making this "child porn", and it was taken voluntarily (by someone who may even be able of legally consenting to sex, no less!) I don't see what the problem is.
Not saying I necessarily agree with the reasoning, but the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 includes "picture or computer-generated image or picture" which "is, or, appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct" in its definition of child pornography.
The reasoning was that even simulated child pornography fosters the market for, and encourages the consumption of, the kind that hurts children. Consumers won't necessarily know or care about the provenance of any particular piece of material, so all are banned regardless of the means of production.
These provisions were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2002, on the reasoning that the ban was too broad -- "Without a significantly stronger, more direct connection, the Government may not prohibit speech on the ground that it may encourage pedophiles to engage in illegal conduct."
So, Congress responded by more specifically criminalizing the advertisement, sale, or promotion of material that "reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe" that it is of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
So these images are still illegal on the simple fact that they are explicit; but even if one tried to ban only the non-voluntary or non-first-party images, it'd be illegal to pass them off otherwise.
This topic is so radioactive that I'm reluctant even to write about it, but it really is interesting constitutionally.
Too bad this topic is too controversial to touch. Too bad there are such topics, really.
i remember in high school when you turned 18 they met with you and explained all your additional rights and privileges, like calling yourself out of class and leaving campus without a pass/during lunch. they also were not allowed to tell your parents about any disciplinary action, like in college/university. my memory might be a little fuzzy here but that's the general gist of it.
if an student > 18 was involved here it's going to be a very different kind of situation than the minors.
I also heard a couple of stories of adult students who didn't live with their parents being tricked into signing "affidavits of residency" that actually took away their rights and gave them a guardian until their graduation. If this is true, then I have no clue how it could possibly be legal. I've found nothing online about that kind of thing.
And all of this while we have a law on the books requiring adult students to exercise parental rights for themselves: http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/ED/htm/ED.26.htm#...
Whether or not we reform sexual education, the legal system needs to figure out a better way of handling sexual activity among minors. Filing child porn charges on minors exchanging nude pictures is ridiculous. I'd support an exception to current child porn statues to protect minors from being falsely labeled "sex-offenders", sort of like the Romeo and Juliet clauses in most statutory rape statues. That would be a good step towards actually recognizing that people don't wait until they are 18 before developing sexuality. (Although they really should, because as soon as you turn 18, all the reasoning and maturity that makes you an adult comes in at once...)
It will be interesting to see how it fares against the rhetoric about child porn (and child safety generally) that characterizes the current political climate.
Look at the article's treatment of the parent who went to the school counselor about a photo she found on her daughter's phone. All it says is she was "heartbroken" by the school's response and eventually decided to home-school her child.
Did the parent take away her daughter's cell phone? Where there other reasons for pulling her daughter out of the school (perhaps the toxic culture in which a majority of students are trading nude photos of themselves)? What did she expect the school to do anyway?
We will not learn the answers to these questions, only that in some way, the school failed, not the parents.
The fact that parents are continually ceding responsibility for raising their own children to whoever will take it, is not at issue here. That point is taken for granted whenever one of these cases comes up.
I wonder what would happen if schools started banning cellphones entirely. Why do kids need them anyway--they can always make a phone call from the principal's office. I suspect parents would complain about their heavy-handed tactics (but in reality the problem is that it makes their job harder).
It seems like our culture is continually interested in passing the buck to someone else, until something goes wrong, at which point "something" must be done. Rinse and repeat.
I don't understand how you read that and say that she was giving all responsibility to the school. (And the school acts in loco parentis - they're supposed to be responsible for the child for the 6 hours a day the child is there.)
It's great that you trust the person you're sending the pictures to not to share them, but you also have to trust:
1) That same person with that same responsibility even after you break up, including when they're at their most angry with you.
2) That nobody (your school, your ISP, your government) is eavesdropping on your communication method.
3) The software that's being used to both send and receive the photo.
4) That the recipient will keep their phone or PC physically secure so that random people can't just click "Photos" and view them.
5) That the recipient won't get "hacked" and have your photos uploaded online somewhere without their knowledge.
There's a lot of parallels with DRM and copyright - once you've converted something into an easily-copyable form and sent it across a network, it's very, very hard to make sure that it never gets copied again. We should be telling teenagers (and maybe some older people too...) the truth - that if they sext, no matter how much they trust the other person, they're taking a risk that their photos might end up shared more widely.
Here's a canadian thing talking about it, and about the difficulties of abstinence only approaches: http://www.macleans.ca/society/how-safe-is-sexting/
> For Lauren Dobson-Hughes, president of Planned Parenthood Ottawa, it’s important to teach teens about the criminality of sexting alongside the topic of consent, and offer guidance, should they choose to do it anyway. “If you tell youth not to do it, simply that it’s illegal, they hear, ‘Don’t get caught,’ and it doesn’t help them understand the actual risks involved in sexting,” she says. That’s why her organization is taking a risk-reduction approach to sexting in the sex education workshops it provides to young students in local schools upon request. This means accepting that sexting is part of teenage life. “There’s an upside to this, or they wouldn’t be doing it,” says Dobson-Hughes. “We would rather youth talk about consent in an age-appropriate way, throughout their lives, so they understand that sharing a picture without someone’s consent isn’t right.”
And we've had years and years of abstinence only approaches to reducing teenage unplanned pregnancy, or to reduce HIV/AIDS, and we know it just doesn't work.
I support what you said about teaching the risks and safer alternatives. If that's what "safe sexting" initiatives are teaching, great! However, that wasn't the impression I got from reading the article you linked - it talked a lot about the legal risks, a bit about trust and consent and a bit about taking "safe" sexy pictures that people won't be able to identify you in. My point in the comment above was that even if you do all of that, a lot of the risk is simply outside of your control. That's fine - people do risky things all the time, it's part of life. I just don't like taking an approach that's essentially harm reduction and calling it "safe".
Sorry! It's a bit late here. I think we agree.
1. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/microsoft-launches-free-cloud-versi...
"To get the thing you want, you have to say Yes. Will you say yes?" - How many people honestly choose the "no" option?
Nudity recognition is going to be really hard to detect.
Since these children were using "vault apps" those vault apps would probably start to include bypass techniques.
And this ignores the sexual health stuff that children can validly search for. You don't want to block images of how to check your testicles for cancer, for example. (Although photographs are probably not helpful blocking the images would be counterproductive.)