
Hundreds of Nude Photos Jolt Colorado School - DanielBMarkham
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/us/colorado-students-caught-trading-nude-photos-by-the-hundreds.html
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makecheck
I never understand why parents push so much responsibility to school
administrators. When something is not happening _at_ school, during school
hours, related to education, why is the school expected to do anything at all?

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.

~~~
aikah
> When something is not happening at school

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.

~~~
lmitchell
The article does imply that we know that.

> The photo-sharing, some of which took place in school,

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StavrosK
Isn't it clear that this is not child porn, and that the law is wrong, when
teenagers are sexting? It's just almost-adults discovering their sexuality,
how can they be prosecuted without anyone in that process thinking that
something is wrong?

~~~
DanBC
It depends a bit on the ages and intent of the teenagers. A 17 year old who
has no sexual interest in other 17 year olds but who does have sexual interest
in 13 year olds is possibly worrying, especially if they've managed to gather
nude photographs of 13 year olds.

(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)

~~~
makecheck
Although laws seem to only consider age, this makes little sense given the
wide variety in puberty. Some 19-year-olds look 15, and some 13-year-olds not
only look 17 but they have probably matured over their peers to the point of
being _physically_ closer to the average 17-year-old than the average 13-year-
old. It is certainly possible for a 17-year-old and 13-year-old to seem
physically similar and be attracted normally to one another. Society shouldn't
be able to auto-condemn a relationship at one point in time, and magically
become OK with it 5 years later (when the two people may not even look that
different).

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!?

~~~
StavrosK
I actually think Greece got this pretty right, the age of consent is 15 and if
the people involved are within 3 years of age from each other, it's legal. The
one dark spot here is that the age of consent for homosexual relationships
between men is 18 for both participants, but here's hoping that will go away
soon too.

~~~
anotherevan
I had half written a post about how the laws in Australia are similar to what
you outlined for Greece. I certainly agree that they make a lot more sense
than no (legal) consent being considered possible for adolescents.

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?

------
Others
I'm torn about whether or not sexting is a legitimate problem... Very many
teens do it with mutual consent, and for older teens it really shouldn't be
illegal at all. But I do think that, to some extent, younger teenagers need to
protected against themselves. They just don't have the maturity to recognize
the consequences of their actions. I think that really, what really is
important is fixing sexual education. America doesn't have rigorous guidelines
for sex-education, and that means schools often take a DARE like approach to
it. I think that the federal government might need to implement a national
standard for sex-education, focusing more on the reality of sexual activity
and the risks involved. I'm not sure that is ever going to happen though, it
is probably far to left wing for social-conservatives in Congress.

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...)

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jMyles
There will be a movement to "decriminalize sexting," or perhaps even
"decriminalize youth," which will grow rapidly in the coming years.

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.

------
triangleman
As always, the underlying problem of parents' sheepish deference to authority
(be it school administrators in this case, but also police, government, and
"experts") will not be questioned by the New York Times.

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.

~~~
DanBC
This parent found a nude image (and so was checking the phone?) and took
action - she told the school and was told the school wasn't going to do
anything; she pulled her child out of school and homeschooled.

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.)

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tomku
The article talks about "safe sexting" education as a solution, but I'd like
to suggest that such a thing does not and perhaps will never exist.

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.

~~~
DanBC
You assume that "safe sexting" doesn't teach 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 as reasons to
avoid sexting? And that safe sexting doesn't try to move children to posting
clothed instead of unclothed images but with sexual text instead of sexual
images?

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/](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.

~~~
tomku
I think you've severely misread my comment. I'm absolute NOT proposing any
kind of "abstinence only education" regarding sexting.

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".

~~~
DanBC
> I think you've severely misread my comment.

Sorry! It's a bit late here. I think we agree.

------
intrasight
This is a technology problem, and I expect that we'll find a technology
solution. I bet there are dozens of bright young things working on image
processing algorithms to detect various undesirable states of undress and the
exposure of sexual organs, and that these algorithms will be baked into the
terms of service of the Internet as we know it, and that said Internet will be
a much more user friendly place without such images.

~~~
maxmcd
This is a solved technology problem[1]. A technical solution has not changed
the fact that people do not want all of their pictures scanned by a third
party.

1\. [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/microsoft-launches-free-cloud-
versi...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/microsoft-launches-free-cloud-version-
photodna-help-detect-child-pornography-1511390)

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superplussed
Wouldn't it be relatively easy to have each owner of a phone enter their
birthdate upon setting up the phone, and then do image-detection so the phone
would just block the saving of any photo that contained nudity until the owner
was over 18? Of course, technology can be circumvented but this would be a
start.

~~~
DanBC
We have facial recognition technology that recognises black people as
gorillas, and other face recognition technology that ignores black people.

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.)

~~~
SolarNet
The last one at least wouldn't apply. Only pictures the phone _takes_ would be
blocked. Assuming this is some sort of OS/Administrative app, I doubt the
vault apps could get around anything preventing the camera service from
returning an image without, basically, rooting the phone. Other than that, the
facial recognition stuff is a fair point.

