Three degrees of YOU’RE A PREDATOR!
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This has to be filed under the “what the f*ck is wrong with people today” category.
It’s the digital age and more importantly, it is the social networking age. If you don’t have a MySpace or Facebook account, you’re nobody. Especially teens. Everyone has them and then some. So when middle school resource officer John Nohejl in Florida decided to set up a MySpace account so he could communicate with students in ways they do (with the blessing of the school), it seemed like a brilliant idea.
Too bad he didn’t know Julie Amero. Or remember that in the age of Chris Hansen, people are fucking idiots.
In the goofiest waste of law enforcement time we’ve seen in weeks, an on-campus police officer for a Florida middle school is facing a criminal investigation over his MySpace account. Why? It turns out one of the people on his friends list had a link on his or her profile to an internet porn site.
Or, as the St. Peterburg Times puts it, “kids could navigate from Officer John’s page on the social networking site to ‘Amateur Match Free Sex’ in just three clicks.”
You’re reading correctly. Gulf Middle School resource officer John Nohejl didn’t have porn on his MySpace profile, and he didn’t link to porn. But one of the 170-odd people on his friends list, which seems mostly populated by students at his school, had a link to a legal adult site. Now the New Port Richey Police Department and the Florida attorney general’s elite cyber crimes unit are investigating him for making adult content available to underage children.
The AG apparently thinks inadvertently doing something is the same as intentionally doing something:
Cybersafety “is the attorney general’s highest priority,” said Sandy Copes, the attorney general’s spokeswoman. “I am sure the attorney general would be extremely concerned if a member of the trusted law enforcement community was either inadvertently or directly placing students at risk to being exposed to inappropriate content.”
Yep. You’re now responsible for other people. On the interweb.
So all of you reading out there. If I link to say, CollegeHumor, YOU’RE ALL PERVERTS AND PREDATORS AND ARE CORRUPTING TEH MORALS OF A CHILD !1!1one1!11!1!!!
(Seriously, if you’re at work or if kids are around, don’t Google CollegeHumor. You have been warned. It’s not porn, but there’s adult content.)
The kicker? The school’s website itself linked to some clipart websites which linked to g4y pr0n. Thank you, Chris Hansen, for making the world a crazier place.
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Actually, one of the sites linked to by the school’s page is zooish.com. Presumably, it used to be something appropriate for a school to link to.
But that must have gone out of business because it’s now one of those weird fake portal sites that’s been put together based on its search-engine hits. It now consists entirely of links to gay porn and animal sounds.
Of course, the principal is outraged and is making noises about “legal recourse.” Well, yeah: By the argument that got Nohejl in trouble, the principal should be investigated for the same thing.
(Or they could all just act like grownups, if they wanted to, you know, try something different.)
That’s exactly right.
And what’s this business about an “anonymous caller”? Another parent who can’t deal with the fact that their kid is on myspace and is of porn-viewing age (which, if they remembered back to their own childhood is, like, 13)?
Hoist, meet petard. I swear, this puts a whole new spin on something I read at work recently: “Using my police department computer, I created a MySpace account and posed as a 15-year-old goth girl…” Let’s be careful out there, coppers!
I’m confused. If I have a friend A on facebook who’s friends with B, I can’t see B’s profile unless B is in my network. And if B is in my network, I can see B’s profile whenever I want without A’s involvement. So either these kids couldn’t see the link at all, or they could have accessed it whenever.
The fact that the cyber security group doesn’t seem to understand how facebook works is rather troubling.
Maggie - it would be even worse if it were Facebook, but this was on MySpace, where you can see whatever you want unless it is set to private unless you’re a friend.
For more yuks, check out the NYTimes City Room blog piece on NY State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol’s misspeakage, combining MySpace and Facebook into “Spacebook.” He added, “Old geezers like me have no clue about the Internet and all of its intricacies.” At least he can admit it.
City Room
Heh. Spacebook. Maybe social networking for stoners?
But one of the 170-odd people on his friends list, which seems mostly populated by students at his school, had a link to a legal adult site.
Just wondering by what law was the sear
But one of the 170-odd people on his friends list, which seems mostly populated by students at his school, had a link to a legal adult site.
Just wondering by what law was the search of some 170 computer granted? If I were a link on his computer and it contained an adult web site, how would that police department get hold of that address?
There’s no law. It’s MySpace. Some parent caught their kid looking at it and figured out how he/she got there. Anyone can look at friends’ pages and see what they have linked to.
In a world with any sense, whatever body controls the pursestrings of the AG should come to the conclusion that they are obviously overbudgeted. Things like that tend to send a message.
The real problem with this, other than the fact that an innocent person is dragged through the ringer, is that finite resources are being wasted, resources that can be used to prevent real victimization. Good grief.
The best part is the school website linked to a p*rn site. Classic.
Ironic