San Diego Police About to Teach Local Teens How Awful Authorities Are in Sexting Case

Taking naked selfies on your smartphone and then sending them out through texts can lead to personal and professional problems. The police in San Diego want to make sure teenagers understand this. So, in order to 'teach' minors not to sext naked photos to each other, they're going to reach out and destroy some lives. NBC's San Diego affiliate reports:

San Diego police say criminal charges will be filed in a sexting ring involving dozens of students from several high schools and one middle school.

According to investigators, it started with a dozen girls sending nude photos of themselves to their boyfriends. Then, the boyfriends passed the pictures on to their friends, creating a web of photo sharing.

"They are fully nude shots, sexually explicit of some of our high school students," San Diego Police Lt. Chuck Kaye said.

While the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) is not releasing the names of the schools involved, investigators say they have identified 30 students from six high schools and one middle school they believe were involved in the sexting ring.

These pictures are considered child pornography, so imagine what might happen to whomever the police arrests. Furthermore, according to the NBC report, there's no hacking or coercion going on here. The girls sent out the naked pics themselves.

I was going to provide a link to all Reason blogging about sexting, but the search is dominated by Anthony Weiner mocking. Instead, here's a post by Jacob Sullum back from 2011 about how teen sexting isn't as common as people fear.

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Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

These pictures are considered child pornography, so imagine what might happen to whomever the police arrests. Furthermore, according to the NBC report, there's no hacking or coercion going on here. The girls sent out the naked pics themselves.

It doesn't matter. These girls created child pornography. Throw the book at them.

For the children.

[Episiarch]

They have to destroy their lives to save them.

[SugarFree]

After carefully studying the "evidence" for weeks, of course. So many smartphones and tablets got dropped into toilets those weeks and that smell of salty bleach never really went away.

[RandomJackass]

Ruining lives to prove a point. That's the government way.

[Rasilio]

I hope they do, because then the soccer moms might just realize how overbearing and ridiculous the child porn laws are and get them changed

[Robert]

I don't know if that'll be possible. The only way might be to get this into federal court, where the controlling precedent is that the only reason non-obscene child porn isn't protected expression is that it involves coercion of the child. That's how they struck down applicability to non-obscene virtual child porn.

[Fist of Etiquette]

"They are fully nude shots, sexually explicit of some of our high school students," San Diego Police Lt. Chuck Kaye said.

San Diego Police investigators have thoroughly gone over the evidence, spending long hours working the evidence on these so-called sexting rings so that you can sleep easy at night.

[Kyfho Myoba]

"Our"? spoken like an owner

[sloopyinca]

I? The "Royal" our. You know, the editorial...

[Hyperion]

Yes, let's teach these children a valuable lesson by getting them on a registered sex offender list for life, so that their lives are completely ruined and they can never function normally in society.

What a great use of tax payer money, keep that spending train rolling, for the children!

[Eduard van Haalen]

Would they actually have to register as sex offenders?

[jesse.in.mb]

I believe it depends heavily on what will get you onto a sex offender registry in any given state, and how hard the prosecution wants to drive it.

I know that some teenagers have been put on sex offender lists for sexting, but I don't recall the specifics of those cases (it was a big issue in 2009-2010).

[jesse.in.mb]

According to an article on the ACLU-WA:

Under current Washington law, even any minor involved simply in consensual sexting with a person his or her own age faces felony charges, up to five years in prison, and mandatory sex offender registration. One cannot understate the severity of these penalties when applied to the very minors the law was intended to protect from exploitation.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Thank you - very distressing info.

[Ted S.]

Is Bob Filner on a registered sex offender list?

[Dave Krueger]

Hey, this is going to be just like the drug war. "Drugs will ruin your life and to prove it, we're going to ruin your life if we catch you with them."

Of course, sexting is actually even worse than drugs because the penalty could include being forced to register as a sex offender which is like being branded for life as being lower than dog shit.

Thankfully, it's being done to "save the children", so it's ok.

[Ketogenic Paleo]

This is the same problem that happens with whores in America. Margo St-James, the first sex worker's rights activist plead guilty to a bogus prostitution charge for time already served, but no one told her that like gays in the days of old, she'd become a registered sex offender. So she had to resort to prostitution to make a living.

[Finrod]

Even better: you don't have to be in contact with a drug dealer, or even anyone else who was; all you need is a cellphone camera, and who doesn't have one of those nowadays?

[Hrar]

According to investigators, it started with a dozen girls sending nude photos of themselves to their boyfriends. Then, the boyfriends passed the pictures on to their friends, creating a web of photo sharing.

Chicks dig jerks. And you have to clean up the mess. Welcome to Obama's America!

[Dave Krueger]

No doubt. This is all Obama's fault. If only McCain had been elected. LOL!

[Hrar]

It is not all Obama's fault, and it would have happened whether Obama was elected or not. Neither was everything that happened in the Soviet Union the fault of Khrushchev. But he is the symbol of it all.

[Henry the Twooth]

Ah, yes, the old "Save 'em by screwing 'em" technique. Kind of like "Give a kid a fish, and feed him for one day; toss him the water tied to a rock, and you drown him forever."

[jesse.in.mb]

Saddest alt-text ever?

[SweatingGin]

Scott is about to get the scariest sexts ever.

[jesse.in.mb]

Photos of Warty posed and photographed by SugarFree?

[Dave Krueger]

It's hard to imagine anything worse happening to a child than being seen naked or being psychologically scarred for life by seeing someone else naked. Can you even imagine what it's like to know that some pervert (commonly defined as anyone who masturbates) might actually be secretly jerking off to a naked picture of you? I mean, how can someone go on living under those conditions?

[Henry the Twooth]

I am praying that you are being sarcastic. I think you are, but I am afraid you aren't.

[Dave Krueger]

I am. 🙂

[Episiarch]

I swear, every time I see one of these sadistically malicious prosecutions of teens for doing teen sexual shit, I just assume that the investigators are all reliving high school and hating on the teens who seems to be getting some (because they did not). I mean, it's just so absurd and nasty, there has to be something more to it beyond the usual CONTROL and making kids into sheep.

[Hrar]

Nah. That's what the feminists would say. Really, it is about enabling the girls to do this kind of stuff without any consequences.

[Episiarch]

Uh...what?

[Hillary's Clitdong]

If the charges are all against the guys, it kind of is. "These girls didn't do something dumb, they were noble ladies who were criminally abused by Teh Menz."

[Episiarch]

I thought the charges were against all of them.

[jesse.in.mb]

At least in previous cases girls have been charged as child pornographers because they took and distributed pictures of under-aged girls (themselves).

[Cyto]

And in those previous cases the prosecutor specifically stated that the girls were being prosecuted to protect them from their mistakes. No lie - This is how they really think!

[Dave Krueger]

We didn't have cell phones when I was a kid. We had to make out at the drive-in (now referred to as sexual assault).

[SugarFree]

Any underage girl who creates child pornography of herself should be charged as an adult.

[Henry the Twooth]

And her parents will probably make her stand on a street corner holding a giant print out of the picture.

[DWC]

makes sense to me.

[LarryA]

Any underage girl who creates child pornography of herself should be charged as an adult.

But if she's an adult it isn't child pornography.

"You're mature enough to be incarcerated for pictures you aren't mature enough to take."

[sarcasmic]

You can bet that these investigators are keeping copies of the evidence. Just in case.

[DWC]

So we are different from those hysterical fundamentalist middle eastern types with respect to the human body how, exactly.

[Hillary's Clitdong]

WE'RE PROTECTING THE CHIRRUN

[Hyperion]

Because, they don't oppress people and ruin their lives, to save the children. They do it because they hate our freedoms. Duh!

[Rasilio]

We didn't stone the girls to death and are punishing the boys.

While this prosecution is idiotic lets not try to pretend there is no difference between us and Islamists who are still basically living in the 14th century

[sloopyinca]

I wonder where the Jezzies fall on this? Are they pissed because the girls aren't empowered and rightfully proud of their bodies but are instead objectified by the patriarchy? Or are they pissed that the girls are being sexualized by the patriarchy that passes their pics around?

Either way, they're almost certainly butthurt.

[Hrar]

Are they pissed because the girls aren't empowered and rightfully proud of their bodies but are instead objectified by the patriarchy?

They can't be pissed at the girls, so the second option. We see the same kind of thing with the "revenge porn" issue. It is the goal to empower them to date jerks and not suffer any consequences from how the jerks treat them.

[playa manhattan]

One of the main reasons that child pornography is illegal is because minors cannot legally consent, as they are not mature enough to appreciate the consequences of their actions.

So, if a minor is taking a "selfie" and sharing it with his friends, how can he be held criminally accountable?

The same reasoning should hold: if the minor isn't mature enough to legally consent to an activity, he also isn't mature enough to be held criminally accountable or charged as an adult.

[prolefeed]

There's your problem -- thinking government courts are about justice and laws and reason, against all the evidence.

[Cyto]

There are countless self-contradictory areas of law. The law don't care... that's just how the law rolls.

Get too drunk to think clearly and hop in your car for a drive? You just committed a crime! Hit someone? Felony vehicular homicide, baby!

Get too drunk to think clearly and hop in the sack with a girl? If she's as drunk as you are, you just committed rape! Because she's too drunk to think clearly, so she can't form the mens rea to consent to sex. But she could have formed the mens rea to commit felony vehicular homicide.

And if somebody has too much to drink at your party and heads out and hurts themselves - you are liable... why? Because you are a super-breathalyzer by the nature of your position of authority, having provided drinks and what-not.

Congress shall make no law..... abridging the freedom of speech. Highest law of the land, right? Cannot be overridden without a constitutional amendment, right? Well, except "no law" doesn't apply to obscenity. Why? Because they said so, that's why. And political speech. Yeah, you can't have free speech in politics, especially around election time. That would be bad, so congress made a law. A bunch of them in fact.

They keep saying "we are a nation of laws, not men", but I do not think those words mean think what they think they mean.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Look, I can see the school suspending the kids, I can even see a judge saying, "ok, stay out of trouble for 6 months and ill clear record." But prison and sex offendrr registry? Wtf dude?

[Pope Jimbo]

I thought Obama said if your girlfriend sent you a nudie of herself that you liked you could keep it? Was that a lie too?

Why hasn't some intrepid reporter done a long series on this? Sympathetic victims, salacious pictures, how much easier can it get to win a Pullitzer?

[JidaKida]

I dont think Jack Frapp is gonna like that.

http://www.PlanetAnon.tk

[wingnutx]

TV news said that only the males are going to be charged.

[Vincent Milburn]

Putting out nudie pictures of yourself is one of the dumbest things a young girl can do. Those WILL get around.

[Robert]

Why is it dumb? Nude girls are pretty. Why shouldn't you share your prettiness with the world?