8 ms·

Because of the potential for selective or punitive prosecution I'm in favour of legalising teen sexting. Obviously the law needs to be carefully drafted to avoi

Because of the potential for selective or punitive prosecution I'm in favour of legalising teen sexting. Obviously the law needs to be carefully drafted to avoid allowing child exploitation, but it should absolutely not be possible to prosecute normal sexually-active teens under child pornography statutes. “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.

bsder 9y ago
So, child porn is legal as long as both parties are involved? That doesn't work either. All you will wind up doing is having people magically always have only two people involved. And "teen sexting" isn't even uniform: a 10-year-old sexting a 16-year-old is generally a problem while a 17-year-old sexting an 18-year-old likely isn't. Your opponents in kiddie porn are two different sets of people: 1) the egregiously stupid, generally teenagers, who may or may not be malicious about it and 2) the horrifically competent and malicious who WILL find a way to exploit any loophole. Group 2 is what makes child pornography laws so problematic. Anything you do to strengthen your ability to get Group 2 generally increases the collateral damage in Group 1. This is exactly what "prosecutorial discretion" is supposed to be used for. Unfortunately, it seems that "prosecutorial discretion" is now mostly "scoring poltical points for election."
- mediocrejoker 9y ago
  Which is better, to have a few horrifically competent go free or have a few innocent teenagers on the sex offender registry?
  - glogla 9y ago
    It seem that nowadays, people want to err on the side of needlessly ruining lives instead of risking the possibility of life unruined.
  - jliptzin 9y ago
    To have a few horrifically competent go free.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      This is the obvious answer, no?
      - jliptzin 9y ago
        I thought so
  - bsder 9y ago
    That's a really interesting question. I'm always on the side of "convicting innocents is wrong" because I consider it a pure civil liberty issue subject to abuse. However, you are going to have to defend against people doing a "damage amount" calculation. The malicious individuals are so vile and cause so much damage and exploitation while teenage sexting cases are generally sufficiently rare that the calculus probably doesn't come up in your favor. In addition, I have see firsthand from a bystander position that prosecutors are generally pretty good about teen sexting. I watched as a prosecutor patiently explained to an idiot mother that if he managed to convict the boy in the sexting case, he was also paving the way to convict her daughter of exactly the same thing. So, she could go along, and both of the involved parties would get some relatively innocuous conviction that would go away for both when they became 18, or she could make a big fuss and both of them would be sex offender registrees (the DA was clearly going to uncover evidence of statutory rape along the way--the boy and girl were obviously having sex with each other). The DA really didn't want the case to go very far. Of course, the DA involved didn't have to bow to religious nutcases to get elected. The relatives of the mother finally browbeat her into submission, but it was unclear which way it was going to go for quite a while and it could have gone very badly for all parties involved.
    - lovich 9y ago
      Are adults actively seeking child pornography more common than teens experimenting? If that is true it would be a little disgusting/terrifying
      - bsder 9y ago
        While lots of teens are sending pictures, the number of cases that actually get involved in the legal system tends to be low. Generally something stupid has to happen--posted to Facebook, being shared around at school, comes up in a divorce proceeding, found on phone while being searched, etc.--before a DA is going to bother getting involved.
        mirimir 9y ago
        OK, but that just makes it a horrible precedent that's arbitrarily enforced.
  - bsder 9y ago
    You are framing the problem wrongly. The FIRST problem is the existence of the "sex offender registry" AT ALL. If you get rid of the sex offender registry then the problems around the child pornography laws become far less acute.
  - astral303 9y ago
    Sex offender registry ruins lives far far far beyond what is morally "right." Google it.
- nv-vn 9y ago
  I wouldn't call anyone egregiously stupid for engaging in normal sexual activity. If the vast majority of teens doing so have gone unprosecuted, why should someone assume that something might happen to them for the same action? A risk/reward analysis will not make it seem like such a bad idea, so I can't see what part makes the teen particularly stupid here.
  - astral303 9y ago
    Religious-based prohibitionism of premarital sex is a real problem in America. It's one of the frontiers of the culture war. So, please, donate to your local Planned Parenthood.
    - Larrikin 9y ago
      Why are you trying to imply that planned parenthood promotes sex between minors and a donation will encourage that?
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  But you have a very easy way to differentiate group 2 from 1. Age...
rothbardrand 9y ago
No victim means no crime. (Morally, I'm using the word "crime" here to refer to a moral crime.) But it also means that the prosecution of such non-crimes is itself a crime, meaning the "guilty" party here is the victim and everyone involved in their prosecution, up to and including the supreme court, is criminal.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  This is hard to do in practice. I've heard someone vehemently defend a relationship they had at 14 with an older fellow. They categorized it as a positive experience that helped them discover themselves. It may have even been 13; I forget. Was it a crime? It might. be tempting to say no, but laws do exist as a deterrent.
  - Iv 9y ago
    The idea that informed consent is a characteristic that magically appears in full at 18 or 20 is ridiculous. Obviously some people acquire it earlier. Some much later. Problem is, judges and police have yet to design an objective maturity test, so instead they use an age threshold, easy to test, objective but arbitrary. Like the map is not the territory, the law is not a perfect match to our moral landscape. It works with constraints of fairness, neutrality and enforceability. It is clear that there are couples for which some illegal relationships are actually harmless or even positive and done with mutual consent. It is also clear that some relationships are abusive and extremely dangerous. The balancing between protection of the abused and individual freedom is easy to make: on one hand, you have children being raped, on the other hand, you have young lovers that may have to wait a few years before fucking. I would say the first goal has priority. If we open the pandora box of consent under 18, we will have to tread very carefully.
    - BigJono 9y ago
      > The balancing between protection of the abused and individual freedom is easy to make: on one hand, you have children being raped, on the other hand, you have young lovers that may have to wait a few years before fucking. I would say the first goal has priority. You can't just assume teenagers will wait because they're told to. I don't think that's even remotely realistic. The law (any law) has to be written in a way that protects those who break it with no ill intent. There's nothing "easy" about child sex laws.
mythrwy 9y ago
I'm not in favor of that at all. Neither I am favor of throwing the adult book meant for serious predators at kids messing around (which happens now in other areas and it really shouldn't). What I am in favor of is a different set of rules for minors self distributing. Possibly deferred adjudication and counseling first offense, ramping up from there. It is behavior that could cause trouble for the kid and possibly for others, can't just say "have at it!". But neither should it make one a registered sex offender with all that baggage.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  Why should a girl who sends a picture of her breasts to a highschool boyfriend have to deal with the law at all?
Chathamization 9y ago
> “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough. Especially because it's been so horribly abused in the past. Take this case in Manassas, Virginia. 17 year old texts a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. The police find out, charge the 17 year old with distributing child pornography, and take pictures of his penis saying they need it for evidence[1]. They then get a warrant from the courts demanding that the 17 year old send them a picture of his erect penis[2]. And if he didn't comply: > If he doesn't cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster toldThe Washington Post. Eventually they backed off when it received widespread attention in the press. Later it turned out that the detective in charge of the case was a pedophile[3]: > A Manassas City police detective, who was the lead investigator in a controversial teen “sexting” case last year, shot and killed himself outside his home Tuesday morning as police tried to arrest him for allegedly molesting two boys he met while coaching youth hockey in Prince William County. When I read stories like this, I'm at a loss for words. No one in the justice system realized how terrible this is? Not only does this show the problem with giving law enforcement this kind of power, but I think it shows that we really need some sort of public advocacy department to monitor and go after this sort of abuse (someone to watch the watchmen). The kid in the case got probation, by the way. [1] http://time.com/2971033/virginia-police-search-warrant-photos-sexting-teen-genitals/ http://time.com/2971033/virginia-police-search-warrant-photo... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virginia-teen-sexting-cops-penis-photo/12434813/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virgin... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/manassas-city-police-detective-in-teen-sexting-case-commits-suicide/2015/12/15/de88f7c4-a356-11e5-9c4e-be37f66848bb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/manassas-...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- astral303 9y ago
  This case is such atrocious abuse of power. The fallout from this case did not affect nearly enough people. Think of all the enablers of this behavior at the various stages. The patriarchy has much of America in their clutch at various levels of so-called "public" service. Why was this man never reported? Everyone covered up for him. Standard operating procedure for America.
aiyodev 9y ago
Also, there's the possibility of poor children with Android phones getting convicted while rich children with locked iPhones go free because they're more costly to investigate.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  Modern androids are pretty much impossible to unlock without the correct pattern/fingerprint. You can wipe them clean, but forget recovering any data.
Sir_Substance 9y ago
>“Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough. The correct answer to this is always "Since legislation is freeform and you're writing it now anyway, maybe you should write that it should never be used that way into the legislation".

bsder 9y ago

So, child porn is legal as long as both parties are involved? That doesn't work either. All you will wind up doing is having people magically always have only two people involved. And "teen sexting" isn't even uniform: a 10-year-old sexting a 16-year-old is generally a problem while a 17-year-old sexting an 18-year-old likely isn't. Your opponents in kiddie porn are two different sets of people: 1) the egregiously stupid, generally teenagers, who may or may not be malicious about it and 2) the horrifically competent and malicious who WILL find a way to exploit any loophole. Group 2 is what makes child pornography laws so problematic. Anything you do to strengthen your ability to get Group 2 generally increases the collateral damage in Group 1. This is exactly what "prosecutorial discretion" is supposed to be used for. Unfortunately, it seems that "prosecutorial discretion" is now mostly "scoring poltical points for election."

mediocrejoker 9y ago
Which is better, to have a few horrifically competent go free or have a few innocent teenagers on the sex offender registry?
- glogla 9y ago
  It seem that nowadays, people want to err on the side of needlessly ruining lives instead of risking the possibility of life unruined.
- jliptzin 9y ago
  To have a few horrifically competent go free.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    This is the obvious answer, no?
    - jliptzin 9y ago
      I thought so
- bsder 9y ago
  That's a really interesting question. I'm always on the side of "convicting innocents is wrong" because I consider it a pure civil liberty issue subject to abuse. However, you are going to have to defend against people doing a "damage amount" calculation. The malicious individuals are so vile and cause so much damage and exploitation while teenage sexting cases are generally sufficiently rare that the calculus probably doesn't come up in your favor. In addition, I have see firsthand from a bystander position that prosecutors are generally pretty good about teen sexting. I watched as a prosecutor patiently explained to an idiot mother that if he managed to convict the boy in the sexting case, he was also paving the way to convict her daughter of exactly the same thing. So, she could go along, and both of the involved parties would get some relatively innocuous conviction that would go away for both when they became 18, or she could make a big fuss and both of them would be sex offender registrees (the DA was clearly going to uncover evidence of statutory rape along the way--the boy and girl were obviously having sex with each other). The DA really didn't want the case to go very far. Of course, the DA involved didn't have to bow to religious nutcases to get elected. The relatives of the mother finally browbeat her into submission, but it was unclear which way it was going to go for quite a while and it could have gone very badly for all parties involved.
  - lovich 9y ago
    Are adults actively seeking child pornography more common than teens experimenting? If that is true it would be a little disgusting/terrifying
    - bsder 9y ago
      While lots of teens are sending pictures, the number of cases that actually get involved in the legal system tends to be low. Generally something stupid has to happen--posted to Facebook, being shared around at school, comes up in a divorce proceeding, found on phone while being searched, etc.--before a DA is going to bother getting involved.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        OK, but that just makes it a horrible precedent that's arbitrarily enforced.
- bsder 9y ago
  You are framing the problem wrongly. The FIRST problem is the existence of the "sex offender registry" AT ALL. If you get rid of the sex offender registry then the problems around the child pornography laws become far less acute.
- astral303 9y ago
  Sex offender registry ruins lives far far far beyond what is morally "right." Google it.
nv-vn 9y ago
I wouldn't call anyone egregiously stupid for engaging in normal sexual activity. If the vast majority of teens doing so have gone unprosecuted, why should someone assume that something might happen to them for the same action? A risk/reward analysis will not make it seem like such a bad idea, so I can't see what part makes the teen particularly stupid here.
- astral303 9y ago
  Religious-based prohibitionism of premarital sex is a real problem in America. It's one of the frontiers of the culture war. So, please, donate to your local Planned Parenthood.
  - Larrikin 9y ago
    Why are you trying to imply that planned parenthood promotes sex between minors and a donation will encourage that?
JamesBarney 9y ago
But you have a very easy way to differentiate group 2 from 1. Age...

rothbardrand 9y ago

No victim means no crime. (Morally, I'm using the word "crime" here to refer to a moral crime.) But it also means that the prosecution of such non-crimes is itself a crime, meaning the "guilty" party here is the victim and everyone involved in their prosecution, up to and including the supreme court, is criminal.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
This is hard to do in practice. I've heard someone vehemently defend a relationship they had at 14 with an older fellow. They categorized it as a positive experience that helped them discover themselves. It may have even been 13; I forget. Was it a crime? It might. be tempting to say no, but laws do exist as a deterrent.
- Iv 9y ago
  The idea that informed consent is a characteristic that magically appears in full at 18 or 20 is ridiculous. Obviously some people acquire it earlier. Some much later. Problem is, judges and police have yet to design an objective maturity test, so instead they use an age threshold, easy to test, objective but arbitrary. Like the map is not the territory, the law is not a perfect match to our moral landscape. It works with constraints of fairness, neutrality and enforceability. It is clear that there are couples for which some illegal relationships are actually harmless or even positive and done with mutual consent. It is also clear that some relationships are abusive and extremely dangerous. The balancing between protection of the abused and individual freedom is easy to make: on one hand, you have children being raped, on the other hand, you have young lovers that may have to wait a few years before fucking. I would say the first goal has priority. If we open the pandora box of consent under 18, we will have to tread very carefully.
  - BigJono 9y ago
    > The balancing between protection of the abused and individual freedom is easy to make: on one hand, you have children being raped, on the other hand, you have young lovers that may have to wait a few years before fucking. I would say the first goal has priority. You can't just assume teenagers will wait because they're told to. I don't think that's even remotely realistic. The law (any law) has to be written in a way that protects those who break it with no ill intent. There's nothing "easy" about child sex laws.

mythrwy 9y ago

I'm not in favor of that at all. Neither I am favor of throwing the adult book meant for serious predators at kids messing around (which happens now in other areas and it really shouldn't). What I am in favor of is a different set of rules for minors self distributing. Possibly deferred adjudication and counseling first offense, ramping up from there. It is behavior that could cause trouble for the kid and possibly for others, can't just say "have at it!". But neither should it make one a registered sex offender with all that baggage.

JamesBarney 9y ago
Why should a girl who sends a picture of her breasts to a highschool boyfriend have to deal with the law at all?

Chathamization 9y ago

> “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough. Especially because it's been so horribly abused in the past. Take this case in Manassas, Virginia. 17 year old texts a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. The police find out, charge the 17 year old with distributing child pornography, and take pictures of his penis saying they need it for evidence[1]. They then get a warrant from the courts demanding that the 17 year old send them a picture of his erect penis[2]. And if he didn't comply: > If he doesn't cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster toldThe Washington Post. Eventually they backed off when it received widespread attention in the press. Later it turned out that the detective in charge of the case was a pedophile[3]: > A Manassas City police detective, who was the lead investigator in a controversial teen “sexting” case last year, shot and killed himself outside his home Tuesday morning as police tried to arrest him for allegedly molesting two boys he met while coaching youth hockey in Prince William County. When I read stories like this, I'm at a loss for words. No one in the justice system realized how terrible this is? Not only does this show the problem with giving law enforcement this kind of power, but I think it shows that we really need some sort of public advocacy department to monitor and go after this sort of abuse (someone to watch the watchmen). The kid in the case got probation, by the way. [1] http://time.com/2971033/virginia-police-search-warrant-photos-sexting-teen-genitals/ http://time.com/2971033/virginia-police-search-warrant-photo... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virginia-teen-sexting-cops-penis-photo/12434813/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virgin... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/manassas-city-police-detective-in-teen-sexting-case-commits-suicide/2015/12/15/de88f7c4-a356-11e5-9c4e-be37f66848bb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/manassas-...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
astral303 9y ago
This case is such atrocious abuse of power. The fallout from this case did not affect nearly enough people. Think of all the enablers of this behavior at the various stages. The patriarchy has much of America in their clutch at various levels of so-called "public" service. Why was this man never reported? Everyone covered up for him. Standard operating procedure for America.

aiyodev 9y ago

Also, there's the possibility of poor children with Android phones getting convicted while rich children with locked iPhones go free because they're more costly to investigate.

dingo_bat 9y ago
Modern androids are pretty much impossible to unlock without the correct pattern/fingerprint. You can wipe them clean, but forget recovering any data.

Sir_Substance 9y ago

>“Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough. The correct answer to this is always "Since legislation is freeform and you're writing it now anyway, maybe you should write that it should never be used that way into the legislation".