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Teen photos & a policemans story |
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Wednesday, 25 January 2006 |
The other day I heard from Det. Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill, Conn., Police Department about a tragic teen-blogging (and cell phone photo-sharing) case he wants parents to know about. "This case is one of my few that did not get media coverage," he wrote me. "We tried to keep it low-profile, since both the victim and suspect are minors (under 16). We also didn’t want to bring the incident to the attention of students who may not have known about it. My fear was that this could have some people looking for the photos." Heres what Frank emailed me:
"I am a police detective in Connecticut who has been doing Internet safety education programs since the late 90s. Boy, have things changed since then! I do Internet safety talks throughout Connecticut to students, parents, school staff, and law enforcement. I have also worked in an undercover capacity to detect online predators who travel to meet teens. That was truly an eye-opening experience….
"I recently began to see more and more incidents involving blog sites. Last year I predicted to parents that cell phones, especially cell phone cams [picture phones], were going to be the next big problem. Cell phones are now becoming mini PCs with portability. What a new challenge for parental supervision!
"At the start of this school year I investigated a case that … started my investigation into blog sites as the new threat to teen privacy issues. Last spring, a 13-year-old girl emailed explicit nude photos of herself by cell phone cam to her boyfriend. When I say explicit photos I mean explicit! An acquaintance of this boy had the boys password for his email account. If theres one thing I tell students, its: never give your passwords to anyone!
"The boyfriend never deleted the girlfriends explicit pictures from his inbox. The acquaintance found the photos of the girlfriend, downloaded them and in turn showed them to another boy. This boy knew the girl but did not like the boyfriend. As an act of vengeance, he took the photos - 13 of them - and created a free Web site and posted them. The heading of the Web site announced that these photos were of ______ and actually named the boy.
"Some of the girls photos had her face showing, so identifying her would not be impossible. To make matters worse, the boy went on his MySpace site and posted the link for the Web site with the explicit, and illegal [because theyre child pornography], photos. It was not long before word spread to other students in our local high school that the Web site existed. Fortunately, a friend of the girls saw the photos and notified our police department. The website was taken down very quickly, but not before the photos were out there for several days.
"The girl in question was devastated and knows that the photos may be in the hands of someone who may resurface them at a later date. The persons responsible for this incident were all subsequently identified. I don’t think that those involved truly knew the implications for this young girl. In investigating that case, I found evidence of another girl, slightly older, doing the same type of thing. I’m just finishing up on that case.
"From that point on," he continued, referring to the first case, "I was truly amazed at the widespread use of blog sites among teens and the power, and danger, that these types of sites potentially have. I am now getting many calls from parents as they discover the abuse the sites may lead to. We have a large group of young teens and preteens lying about their ages to establish their own blog sites.
"It was interesting to see Amandas answer to your interview question [last week]: How much do you share - pretty private stuff? Do you use privacy features in the sites? Her answer – I put a lot in them. When I am angry with someone, that goes in – does not surprise me. I dont think teens truly understand the privacy issues.
"When I was doing the undercover assignment, predators would spend weeks talking to me online [believing Detective Dannahey to be teen] to understand my likes and dislikes. The goal in the grooming process is for the predator to fully understand the child. The more information the predator has, the easier it is to get into that childs world. Todays blog sites must be a predators wildest dream. What took weeks or months [in a grooming process] can now be done in 15 minutes. By that I mean, a predator can now read a teens blog site or sites and know literally everything about him or her. As a police detective, I could go on most blog sites and get all the information I need to determine where that child lives. And that is with sites that dont list the teens full name. That scares me.
"I will certainly be using this [13-year-olds] case as a teaching tool in my [Net safety] programs," Detective Dannahey added, "and I am rapidly developing new programs focused just on teen blogging."
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