7 ms·

She was accused of faking incriminating video of cheerleaders. Nothing was fake

92 points by isomorph 2y ago

nickdothutton 2y ago
Truly a brave new world.
floydnoel 2y ago
it is amazing to me how the police weaponize themselves against the innocent. they took her husband's work computer, daughter's xbox, and every tv in the house. for what? just pure harassment. based on what a teenage girl made up, how can they be so credulous? oh this cheerleader says she never vaped, yeah let's just believe that. i find it hard to swallow that anyone could be that much of a dullard.
- thyrsus 2y ago
  Once we learn that one of the investigating officers, Reiss, was convicted of possession of child pornography, it becomes understandable - enraging, but understandable.
  - P_I_Staker 2y ago
    Big problem in the psychiatric industry as well, which is largely run by pedophilic entities.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    I had to go back and read the article properly instead of skimming through it, "These would be the last public comments Reiss made about the case. On 26 May 2021 he was arrested on suspicion of possessing images of child sexual abuse. Two images had been uploaded to his Gmail account, and detectives had traced them to his IP address. When they raided his home and seized his electronic devices, they found more than 1,700 images and videos depicting children, including 84 of toddlers and infants. Reiss pleaded guilty in March 2022, and was later sentenced to 11 and a half to 23 months in jail. To use Weintraub’s language, if anyone was “preying on juveniles”, it was the police officer who led the investigation." Damn! It's usually the case that the most mentally insane people are the ones who try to hold others to unreasonable high standards of made-up "morality". Anyone who has been given a prison sentence where this officer was involved should have their case reviewed, whether they request it or not. The odds of this asshole ruining people's live throughout his career are very high.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    I don't get it. How does it become understandable?
    - playingalong 2y ago
      I think they imply that the officer had access to private photos stored on seized media. And some of the photos might be intimate and thus of interest of the said officer.
throwaway290 2y ago
Title doesn't do it justice. It's such a tangled clusterduck of judicial/police incompetence, AI effects on society making it impossible to believe anything, at the same time adults feeling comfortable sending death threats without having any reliable facts, obsessive parenting, weird US school culture and even CSAM rears its ugly head, all in one
LocalH 2y ago
[flagged]
- nightowl_games 2y ago
  This is so hyperbolic and inflammatory that it serves only as an emotional expression, not as a practical statement of how to move forward. Ironic, because hyperbolic reactions like this are at the core of the story your reacting to.
  - norwalkbear 2y ago
    People are human not robots
    - nightowl_games 2y ago
      Humans are capable of very impressive acts.
- norwalkbear 2y ago
  Puts believe all women in new light.
r8533292 2y ago
the substance of the actual allegations that were brought against spone is that she was sending harassing messages to parents, children and to coach. she admitted to sending some of those messages, but denied sending other messages. she was doing that anonymously either from a burner number or from random accounts. she gets convicted of that specifically. but then when interviewed by the op's journalist she denies sending any kind of messages at all. Spone may not manipulate videos and images, but she definitely collects them. Still, she says she never sent them. “The charges were that she directly sent messages to the minors,” Birch adds. “That never happened. That’s the point.” But did she send messages to the gym and the parents? There is a long pause. “No,” Spone eventually says. I’m surprised to hear her say this, given Birch told the Washington Post Spone messaged the parents out of concern for what their daughters had put online. When I point this out, there’s another long pause. “If I said that, I said it,” Birch says, with a shrug. “It is what it is.” Even if Spone is guilty of sending the five messages, she is innocent of the claims that made her notorious. Sending anonymous and unwelcome text messages is not the same as digitally manipulating images of minors. in my opinion this is the core of the article. the charges of digitally manipulating images were never brought against her, but she got victimized as a result of police incompetence and a public witch hunt. the article thought tries to paint her entirely as a victim. birch is her lawyer, spone gets convincted on harassment of minors charges, birch claims that such harassment never took place, meanwhile birch and stone can't agree on which messages were sent even when talking to a sympathetic journalist. shouldn't the question of harassment be handled by appeal? instead of the appeal though, they are bring various pain and suffering suits against the county, which is entirely reasonable, but not quite what the article tries to imply. in my read of the article a nasty busybody harasses people, happens in this kind of communities all the time, but this time the whole thing gets caught in a national witch hunt. the witch hunt is awful, but it lets the nasty busybody play victim across the board.
- amateur_dev 2y ago
  Right! Although everything was turned to enormous proportions, she did f* up in the first place.
  - 2y ago
mrbluecoat 2y ago
> sentenced to three years’ probation and 70 hours of community service; she had to undergo a mental heath assessment and wear an ankle monitor for three months While I respect our justice system, as imperfect as it is, extreme outlier failures are heartbreaking. Reminds me of reading Bryan Stevenson's book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
- MissTake 2y ago
  That wasn’t for the initial charges. That was what she got after being found guilty (although it again sounds like it was a massive overreach) of sending threatening text messages.
  - meowster 2y ago
    It doesn't sound threatening to me: > “She was convicted of sending five text messages,” Birch sighs. “There wasn’t one threat in any of them. All the messages said was, ‘You should be aware of what your daughters are posting.’” He claims that a fair trial was impossible, after all the publicity his client had received, saying,“Any jury would be poisoned.”
    - MissTake 2y ago
      That’s why I said it sounded like massive overreach.
araes 2y ago
This article was such a confusing read. I got to the end and could still barely tell what the result was. Had to search back just to find out the officer was really collecting troves of child porn. Apparently the woman also collected that imagery, just didn't create it? And then sent it to everyone in town? And at the end, it all felt like pretty girl's desirable (and obviously not virgin pure), perp is fat and ugly, cops are really evil pedos who abuse their information access, and all America really gives a ** about is watching the whole thing tailspin. And like @floydnoel noted below, it seems like all anybody did was maximize torture for everyone involved all around. Sims watching sims, and we still just wanna watch people get tortured on TV. Scratchy: [to Bart and Lisa] Why are you laughing? Itchy: [to Scratchy] Hey, they're laughing at your pain. Scratchy: [reattaches his head to his body] That's mean. Itchy: Let's teach'em a lesson. [shaking Scratchy's hand]
- CRConrad 2y ago
  > Had to search back just to find out the officer was really collecting troves of child porn. Apparently the woman also collected that imagery, just didn't create it? What, the porn? No she didn't. Where on Earth did you get that from??? > And then sent it to everyone in town? No. She sent videos of kids vaping -- presumably fully clothed and not engaging in sex at the same time, or that would probably have been mentioned -- and nothing else, to their parents and nobody else. > And at the end, it all felt like pretty girl's desirable (and obviously not virgin pure), perp is fat and ugly... Yadda yadda yadda... The "perp's" cheerleader daughter was/is presumably about as "cute" as her (ex-)teammates, so fuck knows what you are on about. Were you drunk when you read the article, or WTF?
  - CRConrad 2y ago
    > She sent videos of kids vaping [...] to their parents and nobody else. Correction: Should be "to their parents and the coach(es?)." But still, coaches are in loco parentis, so pretty much the same thing.
- Hard_Space 2y ago
  Yes, this was 'Atlantic-ized' and generally storified in a very unfortunate way.
ano-ther 2y ago
None of the adults in this behaved appropriately. 1 The mother of the child telling about what the other kids did - instead of talking to the other parents found it right to send anonymous messages. 2 The other parents found it right to go into full-denial + legal mode. 3 Police and prosecutor instead of talking sense into the adults, went into misinterpretation of evidence for re-election gain. 4 Global media who just repeated and sensationalized the claims without further investigation. 5 A global social media audience amplifying the outrage. 6 Cameras everywhere and a society which doesn’t allow teenagers to be teenagers and try themselves out - and therefore can be blackmailed.
- maeil 2y ago
  I think that's a dangerous way to phrase things. Not because it's technically wrong, but because of its implications. It doesn't make sense to compare things on a purely "above 0" standard when the orders of magnitude are completely different. Pointing out their "above 0" commonality them makes them sound much more similar than they are in reality. Edit: In hindsight, I probably overreacted due to the many instances of this exact comment I've seen on a whole range of topics that were more egregious than this one, but I'll leave it as-is to reflect on.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  7 Widespread misuse of AI for deepfaking.
wnc3141 2y ago
more than the effect of deepfakes, I fear the accusation of deepfakes / plausible deniability from claiming deepfakery rocking being a substantial issue. Like politicians screaming "fake news" media
- anonbanker 2y ago
  "Fake News" is an interesting front in a psychological war. It was coined initially during Barack Obama's administration, shortly after Wikileaks released the Podesta emails. The first public use of the term was by Obama himself, warning people to be wary of non-mainstream or non-state-endorsed media outlets. Within weeks, Donald Trump had begun using the term with almost the exact opposite definition, successfully twisting the meaning to be yet another name for MSM outlets, to the point that society at large now credits the term with the Republican/MAGA political machine. Since then, we've seen many terms lose their original meaning and intent. "Woke" was once a term championed amongst the far-left until it too was co-opted into derogation. Are we seeing the begining of a similar trend for "deepfake"?
anonbanker 2y ago
The narrative of "Ignore this, it's a Deepfake" is very strong, and it's now clear that we as a society are being conditioned to react accordingly. What happens if the 1TB "Insurance" folder on Anthony Weiner's laptop, the one that allegedly made seasoned NYPD officers vomit when they viewed the contents, is inevitably released? Would we all be told "Ignore this, it's a Deepfake"?
incompatible 2y ago
Discussed in 2021, but the possibility that the material wasn't fake didn't appear to be considered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26447471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26447471

92 points by isomorph 2y ago

Truly a brave new world.

it is amazing to me how the police weaponize themselves against the innocent. they took her husband's work computer, daughter's xbox, and every tv in the house. for what? just pure harassment. based on what a teenage girl made up, how can they be so credulous? oh this cheerleader says she never vaped, yeah let's just believe that. i find it hard to swallow that anyone could be that much of a dullard.

thyrsus 2y ago
Once we learn that one of the investigating officers, Reiss, was convicted of possession of child pornography, it becomes understandable - enraging, but understandable.
- P_I_Staker 2y ago
  Big problem in the psychiatric industry as well, which is largely run by pedophilic entities.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  I had to go back and read the article properly instead of skimming through it, "These would be the last public comments Reiss made about the case. On 26 May 2021 he was arrested on suspicion of possessing images of child sexual abuse. Two images had been uploaded to his Gmail account, and detectives had traced them to his IP address. When they raided his home and seized his electronic devices, they found more than 1,700 images and videos depicting children, including 84 of toddlers and infants. Reiss pleaded guilty in March 2022, and was later sentenced to 11 and a half to 23 months in jail. To use Weintraub’s language, if anyone was “preying on juveniles”, it was the police officer who led the investigation." Damn! It's usually the case that the most mentally insane people are the ones who try to hold others to unreasonable high standards of made-up "morality". Anyone who has been given a prison sentence where this officer was involved should have their case reviewed, whether they request it or not. The odds of this asshole ruining people's live throughout his career are very high.
- baobabKoodaa 2y ago
  I don't get it. How does it become understandable?
  - playingalong 2y ago
    I think they imply that the officer had access to private photos stored on seized media. And some of the photos might be intimate and thus of interest of the said officer.

throwaway290 2y ago

Title doesn't do it justice. It's such a tangled clusterduck of judicial/police incompetence, AI effects on society making it impossible to believe anything, at the same time adults feeling comfortable sending death threats without having any reliable facts, obsessive parenting, weird US school culture and even CSAM rears its ugly head, all in one

LocalH 2y ago

[flagged]

nightowl_games 2y ago
This is so hyperbolic and inflammatory that it serves only as an emotional expression, not as a practical statement of how to move forward. Ironic, because hyperbolic reactions like this are at the core of the story your reacting to.
- norwalkbear 2y ago
  People are human not robots
  - nightowl_games 2y ago
    Humans are capable of very impressive acts.
norwalkbear 2y ago
Puts believe all women in new light.

r8533292 2y ago

the substance of the actual allegations that were brought against spone is that she was sending harassing messages to parents, children and to coach. she admitted to sending some of those messages, but denied sending other messages. she was doing that anonymously either from a burner number or from random accounts. she gets convicted of that specifically. but then when interviewed by the op's journalist she denies sending any kind of messages at all. Spone may not manipulate videos and images, but she definitely collects them. Still, she says she never sent them. “The charges were that she directly sent messages to the minors,” Birch adds. “That never happened. That’s the point.” But did she send messages to the gym and the parents? There is a long pause. “No,” Spone eventually says. I’m surprised to hear her say this, given Birch told the Washington Post Spone messaged the parents out of concern for what their daughters had put online. When I point this out, there’s another long pause. “If I said that, I said it,” Birch says, with a shrug. “It is what it is.” Even if Spone is guilty of sending the five messages, she is innocent of the claims that made her notorious. Sending anonymous and unwelcome text messages is not the same as digitally manipulating images of minors. in my opinion this is the core of the article. the charges of digitally manipulating images were never brought against her, but she got victimized as a result of police incompetence and a public witch hunt. the article thought tries to paint her entirely as a victim. birch is her lawyer, spone gets convincted on harassment of minors charges, birch claims that such harassment never took place, meanwhile birch and stone can't agree on which messages were sent even when talking to a sympathetic journalist. shouldn't the question of harassment be handled by appeal? instead of the appeal though, they are bring various pain and suffering suits against the county, which is entirely reasonable, but not quite what the article tries to imply. in my read of the article a nasty busybody harasses people, happens in this kind of communities all the time, but this time the whole thing gets caught in a national witch hunt. the witch hunt is awful, but it lets the nasty busybody play victim across the board.

amateur_dev 2y ago
Right! Although everything was turned to enormous proportions, she did f* up in the first place.
- 2y ago

mrbluecoat 2y ago

> sentenced to three years’ probation and 70 hours of community service; she had to undergo a mental heath assessment and wear an ankle monitor for three months While I respect our justice system, as imperfect as it is, extreme outlier failures are heartbreaking. Reminds me of reading Bryan Stevenson's book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

MissTake 2y ago
That wasn’t for the initial charges. That was what she got after being found guilty (although it again sounds like it was a massive overreach) of sending threatening text messages.
- meowster 2y ago
  It doesn't sound threatening to me: > “She was convicted of sending five text messages,” Birch sighs. “There wasn’t one threat in any of them. All the messages said was, ‘You should be aware of what your daughters are posting.’” He claims that a fair trial was impossible, after all the publicity his client had received, saying,“Any jury would be poisoned.”
  - MissTake 2y ago
    That’s why I said it sounded like massive overreach.

araes 2y ago

This article was such a confusing read. I got to the end and could still barely tell what the result was. Had to search back just to find out the officer was really collecting troves of child porn. Apparently the woman also collected that imagery, just didn't create it? And then sent it to everyone in town? And at the end, it all felt like pretty girl's desirable (and obviously not virgin pure), perp is fat and ugly, cops are really evil pedos who abuse their information access, and all America really gives a ** about is watching the whole thing tailspin. And like @floydnoel noted below, it seems like all anybody did was maximize torture for everyone involved all around. Sims watching sims, and we still just wanna watch people get tortured on TV. Scratchy: [to Bart and Lisa] Why are you laughing? Itchy: [to Scratchy] Hey, they're laughing at your pain. Scratchy: [reattaches his head to his body] That's mean. Itchy: Let's teach'em a lesson. [shaking Scratchy's hand]

CRConrad 2y ago
> Had to search back just to find out the officer was really collecting troves of child porn. Apparently the woman also collected that imagery, just didn't create it? What, the porn? No she didn't. Where on Earth did you get that from??? > And then sent it to everyone in town? No. She sent videos of kids vaping -- presumably fully clothed and not engaging in sex at the same time, or that would probably have been mentioned -- and nothing else, to their parents and nobody else. > And at the end, it all felt like pretty girl's desirable (and obviously not virgin pure), perp is fat and ugly... Yadda yadda yadda... The "perp's" cheerleader daughter was/is presumably about as "cute" as her (ex-)teammates, so fuck knows what you are on about. Were you drunk when you read the article, or WTF?
- CRConrad 2y ago
  > She sent videos of kids vaping [...] to their parents and nobody else. Correction: Should be "to their parents and the coach(es?)." But still, coaches are in loco parentis, so pretty much the same thing.
Hard_Space 2y ago
Yes, this was 'Atlantic-ized' and generally storified in a very unfortunate way.

ano-ther 2y ago

None of the adults in this behaved appropriately. 1 The mother of the child telling about what the other kids did - instead of talking to the other parents found it right to send anonymous messages. 2 The other parents found it right to go into full-denial + legal mode. 3 Police and prosecutor instead of talking sense into the adults, went into misinterpretation of evidence for re-election gain. 4 Global media who just repeated and sensationalized the claims without further investigation. 5 A global social media audience amplifying the outrage. 6 Cameras everywhere and a society which doesn’t allow teenagers to be teenagers and try themselves out - and therefore can be blackmailed.

maeil 2y ago
I think that's a dangerous way to phrase things. Not because it's technically wrong, but because of its implications. It doesn't make sense to compare things on a purely "above 0" standard when the orders of magnitude are completely different. Pointing out their "above 0" commonality them makes them sound much more similar than they are in reality. Edit: In hindsight, I probably overreacted due to the many instances of this exact comment I've seen on a whole range of topics that were more egregious than this one, but I'll leave it as-is to reflect on.
throwaway290 2y ago
7 Widespread misuse of AI for deepfaking.

wnc3141 2y ago

more than the effect of deepfakes, I fear the accusation of deepfakes / plausible deniability from claiming deepfakery rocking being a substantial issue. Like politicians screaming "fake news" media

anonbanker 2y ago
"Fake News" is an interesting front in a psychological war. It was coined initially during Barack Obama's administration, shortly after Wikileaks released the Podesta emails. The first public use of the term was by Obama himself, warning people to be wary of non-mainstream or non-state-endorsed media outlets. Within weeks, Donald Trump had begun using the term with almost the exact opposite definition, successfully twisting the meaning to be yet another name for MSM outlets, to the point that society at large now credits the term with the Republican/MAGA political machine. Since then, we've seen many terms lose their original meaning and intent. "Woke" was once a term championed amongst the far-left until it too was co-opted into derogation. Are we seeing the begining of a similar trend for "deepfake"?

anonbanker 2y ago

The narrative of "Ignore this, it's a Deepfake" is very strong, and it's now clear that we as a society are being conditioned to react accordingly. What happens if the 1TB "Insurance" folder on Anthony Weiner's laptop, the one that allegedly made seasoned NYPD officers vomit when they viewed the contents, is inevitably released? Would we all be told "Ignore this, it's a Deepfake"?

incompatible 2y ago

Discussed in 2021, but the possibility that the material wasn't fake didn't appear to be considered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26447471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26447471