Oh. Sextortionist as in sex extortionist. Not the fun kind where it’s short for sex and contortionist.
Isn’t this pretty much what that principal from the Lower Merion School District did? Well, the part before the blackmail.
No, it really isn’t. Lower Merion is an awful story, but they weren’t just crusin for titties. The official story is they were looking for drugs and alcohol, because War on Drugs.
The interesting part is that among the many thousands of photos taken in Lower Merion, no kids were ever getting laid, or even changing clothes - because no child pornography charges were ever filed, and we all know that’s a horrible crime nobody can ever get away with. Right?
Although it would never happen, this is the kind of crime I think screams out for a pilloried, public-humiliation type of punishment.
Okay, “so many feelings” rant over. As you were.
No level of tech here beats a piece of post-it note over your camera when you are not using it.
Yep. Been using that one ever since cameras came standard on imacs.
“Another of his victims was Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf, who turned him into the FBI.”
What kind of sorcery is this?
It’s rape, and I hope the courts view it that way. I can’t imagine knowing that someone was using technology to violate you long distance for an extended period of time would be much less traumatic than an act of physical rape. Can’t speak from experience, bu I think it would leave me pretty fucking paranoid.
You’re right in a moral sense, but this crime doesn’t fit the legal definition of rape at all. I’m not sure what charge fits, but I bet the FBI knows.
Given the general ridiculousness of our judicial system, I’m surprised we don’t yet have castration as a penalty for sexual predators.
It seems like blackmail/extortion ought to be the place to start here, with a side helping of child pornography in the cases of underage victims. But maybe someone here with more legal knowledge would know: What would the charge be if this was a non-web-based offense, i.e., he used a telephoto lens to take pictures of her undressing through her window and threatened to publish them unless she performed sexual acts for him? I agree that the law needs to catch up with what one can do using the interwebs, but it seems like there has to be something already on the books to cover this.
My thought exactly. We keep inventing new crimes - cyber-bullying, cyber-theft, cyber-whatever - when the criminal code already covered the issue, but wasn’t cool.
I was beginning to worry that I was the only person to do that.
“Teen Wolf Transmogrifies Cyberpervert”
Unfortunately, hacking charges probably command longer sentences than rape, so the result may not be the desired one…
Another script kiddy bites the dust. Geez he had robots phoning home with the lowest of low grade porn. How dumb can you be?
What will eventually happen once enough teenagers and former teenagers have sext selfies floating around somewhere in the ether is that society’s mores will loosen somewhat, at least to the point where a topless screenshot is not embarrassing enough to be the object of blackmail. Much as admitting to past marijuana use is no longer an automatic disqualification for elected office.
A kid with negligible technical skills and normal computing equipment can do this. On the other hand, with virtually unlimited resources and training, the NSA is only collecting metadata.
I agree, but that’s very different from having someone spy on you in your bedroom.
Speaking from a position with a fair bit of experience, NOTHING really commands more punishment than child pornography under our current legal framework. Creation of child pornography, if the victim is under certain age limits (which vary by state) almost universally means mandatory time, and given the way the law is written, you can technically charge one count PER IMAGE. The bad news is that police forensic software generates one image for each frame of a video. Of course, he probably has backups of his data as well, and god help him if he traded any of it online.
