Check out this story:

A Tennessee man is facing charges of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor for what authorities say are three pictures — none of them featuring an actual child's body.

Instead, according to testimony presented at Michael Wayne Campbell's preliminary hearing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Wednesday, the photos feature the faces of three young girls placed on the nude bodies of adult females, CNN affiliate WDEF reported.

The supreme court has already ruled that when no child is actually harmed, it's not a crime and I agree with that ruling. As distasteful as I may think it is, what someone does in their own home that harms absolutely no one and has no potential for harming anyone isn't really any of my business.

If this kind of thing continues should we start prosecuting people who look at other types of extreme porn even if there's no victim? Should anyone looking at porn who's married be prosecuted for adultery? There is an argument that sometimes it's hard to tell the age of the participants and in extreme porn whether or not someone is actually getting hurt (ala the film 8mm), but there have even been cases of people getting in trouble for cartoon and computer generated porn where there's no possibility of a live person being hurt. I won't say that I'm completely decided on this issue, but right now I think that this trend is going just a little too far into the "thought police" arena.

A student tipped off the school administrators that a girl had some kind of drugs on her so they stripped her to her undies and told her to shake out her underwear. Some people defend this:

That leaves school administrators with the choice of embarrassing a child through a search or possibly having other children die while in their care, Justice David Souter said. "With those stakes in mind, why isn't that reasonable?" Souter said.

But there are several problems with this argument. First, the "reasonableness" depends entirely upon two conditions, that she possessed drugs and that those drugs would have caused harm to another student, both of which were not met.

The event in question is now about 3 years old, but the rulings and hearings are just getting started.

(H/T to Privacy.org for the link)

It looks like there are more dumb sex offenders than I thought. Keep in mind that for Myspace to detect and remove them, they have to be using their real name.

Either way, Myspace is clearly still a fertile ground for sex offenders looking to make connections.

It seems that online predators are getting tired of savvy kids that know better than to be lured (or they're just getting lazy/impatient). Either way, one police group is warning that predators are shifting to a strategy of blackmail instead.

As always, be aware of what your kids are doing online and know who their friends are. Make sure they know what to do when threatened by someone online.

Funny that I was just talking about this with someone yesterday, but today there's an article on Lifehacker about saving money on textbooks. I have used their first suggestion, Bigwords.com many times myself though I've often found even better deals by simply looking for a previous edition book. For example, if your class is using the 5th edition, look for the 4th for big savings.

Anyway, if you or someone you know is looking for textbooks, perhaps you should give it a try.

If you've been caught by surprise doing web searches with your kids and found something you really didn't want to explain, maybe Ask.com's new kid-safe search is worth checking out.

Privacy nuts like me have been warning people for years that tracking and tagging of all people will start with the kids. It's easy to teach people to accept personal tracking devices by giving it to them when they're young. But how do you do that? Even easier! Use parents' practically fanatical protective instinct to protect their kids against a largely imaginary threat.

Companies that use scare tactics, especially when inflaming peoples fears of extreme and rare issues, are complete and utter scum.

At least one person was able to challenge a foreclosure because the bank that tried to foreclose didn't actually have the legal right to do so.

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

They sent out mailings that had the SSNs on the outside envelope. But don't worry! They're offering a free year of credit monitoring!

Whee.

Instead, do something useful and take advantage of Maryland's Credit Freeze law to actually protect yourself rather than get ripped off by credit monitoring

Now they have lego block candies and some people aren't too happy about it.

I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like ****ing strawberries

Is this a joke? I sure hope so.

Apparently all the focus and attention that schools are now providing to "low-achieving" students is resulting in less attention and care to the high-achievers.

“This is like sports,?? said Chester E. Finn Jr., the institute’s president, who served in the Education Department under President Ronald Reagan. “If the only goal of a sports program is to get people over a three-foot hurdle, why would anybody be coached to get over a four-foot hurdle? They wouldn’t. So those who can already sail over a three-foot hurdle have no incentive to do anything except to sleep late.??

Every single person I knew related to the education field knew that the No Child Left Behind act was going to be trouble.

Child gets foot stuck in escalator due to the Croc brand shoes she was wearing. Most disturbing is this:

CPSC is aware of 77 entrapment incidents since January 2006, with about half resulting in injury. All but two of the incidents involved popular soft-sided flexible clogs and slides.

What the hell is the Consumer Product and Safety Commission doing if they know about this problem and aren't doing anything about it?

Of course, if the current head of the CPSC is as bad as the one Bush nominated last time, this is hardly a shock.

Today there was a talk about Cyberbullying that revealed some really fascinating information. Elizabeth Englander from MARC (the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center) game a very spirited talk with some good statistics from her group's studies.

• Grappling is the name for either staging a fight or ambushing someone and recording it to upload to Youtube later. There has been at least one suicide as a result of these attacks where a girl was attacked, stripped, and violated with the entire episode uploaded to Youtube.
• When asked what the motivation was for being a cyberbully, kids (ranging from middleschool to college) listed mostly either "because it was fun" or "because I was angry". The most interesting thing about this statistic is that it broke down almost perfectly along gender lines. Can you guess which is which? Boys did it for fun and girls because they were angry.
• There's at least one school district where the teachers have threatened to strike unless they are allowed to collect cellphones at the door. This comes out of situations like the one where the students provoked their teacher on purpose and recorded his angy reaction for upload to Youtube.

Another very interesting thing that Elizabeth said due to a question about the effectiveness of Public Service Announcements about cyberbullying was that, in her state at least, they held a contest for teens to create public service announcements that would get the message out to people of their own age. That's brilliant! As the commenter in the audience said, the "This is your brain on drugs" and "I learned it by watching you" PSAs from our youth were really more of a joke than anything. Teens are probably best equipped to create something that their peers will pay attention to.

You can find out more about MARC at their website.

Some very interesting facts from the Crimes Against Children Research Center:

In the vast majority of Internet sex crimes against young people, offenders did not actually deceive youth about the fact that they were adults who had sexual intentions. Acknowledging that they were older, the offenders seduced youth by being understanding, sympathetic, flattering, and by appealing to young people’s interest in romance, sex and adventure.

Although cases of abduction, forcible rape and murder have occurred, they are very rare. According to research looking at crimes ending in arrest, violence occurred in only 5% of cases. In most encounters, victims meet offenders voluntarily and expect sexual activity, because they feel love or affection for the person they have been corresponding with. Typically they have sex with the adult on multiple occasions. Most of these crimes are statutory rather than forcible rapes.

Virtually all cases of Internet sex crimes involve youth 12 and up. Most victims are ages 13 – 15. Younger children have much less interest than teens in interacting with and going to meet unknown persons they have encountered online. Avoid implying that the typical youngster vulnerable to online offenders is a young child.

Research has shown that simply posting or sending some personal information online does not put youth at risk. The reason is that most young people (like most adults) do give out personal information. It is hard to be online without doing so. A warning ("Never give out personal information online") that is so broad and runs counter to such common practices is not likely to make young people trust the source of such advice.

And a set of consolidated advice:

1 ) Be smart about what you post on the Web and what you say to others. The Web is a lot more public and permanent than it seems.
2 ) Provocative and sexy names and pictures can draw attention from people you don't want in your
life.
3 ) Sexy pictures can get you into trouble with the law. If you are underage, they may be considered
child pornography, a serious crime.
4 ) Be careful what you download or look at, even for a laugh. Some of the images on the Internet are
extreme, and you can’t “unsee?? something.
5 ) Going to sex chat rooms and other sex sites may connect you with people who can harass you in
ways you don't anticipate.
6 ) Free downloads and file-sharing can put pornography on your computer that you may not want and
can be hard to get rid of . Any pornography that shows children or teens under 18 is illegal child
pornography and can get you in big trouble.
7 ) Adults who talk to you about sex online are committing a crime. So are adults who meet underage
teens for sex. Some teens think it might be fun, harmless or romantic, but it means serious trouble
for everyone. It’s best to report it.
8 ) Don't play along with people on the Web who are acting badly, taking risks and being weird. Even
if you think it's harmless and feel like you can handle it, it only encourages them and may endanger
other young people.
9 ) Report it when other people are acting weird and inappropriately or harassing you or others. It's less
trouble just to log off, but these people may be dangerous. Save the communication. Contact the site
management, your service provider, the CyberTipline or even the police.
10 ) Don't let friends influence your better judgment. If you are surfing with other kids, don't let them
pressure you to do things you ordinarily wouldn't.
11 ) Be careful if you ever go to meet someone you have gotten to know through the Internet. You may think you know them well, but they may fool you. Go with a friend. Tell your parents. Meet in a
public place. Make sure your have your cell phone and an exit plan.
12 ) Don’t harass others. People may retaliate in ways you don’t expect.
13 ) You can overestimate your ability to handle things. It may feel like you are careful, savvy, aware of dangers, and able to manage the risks you take, but there are always unknowns. Don’t risk disasters.

The above is documented in this PDF.

I just got this e-mail describing how different situations might be handled in 1967 versus 2007. If you've had similar experience, post them in the comments.

There are some cases where you might want to download software, movies, etc and it would be morally correct, but perhaps not strictly legal to do so.

For example, your son plays with your only copy of a rare movie and scratches it beyond recognition. I doubt any reasonable person would disagree with you downloading and burning a replacement (if you hadn't made a backup copy already).

Anyway, I'm not going to argue the ethics of downloading here. It's up to you to decide whether what you do online is correct and that's why this article about protecting you downloading privacy is important. Use the tips provided to make sure that the only person making a judgement call about your online activity is you.

Even if you did everything right to keep you private photos and information private, a Facebook security flaw allows people to access it anyway.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened and I'd bet that it's far from being the last.

Much love to my UK bretheren, but how the hell did you end up with such bad leadership?! (I know, pot, keddle and all that)…

Currently they're planning to add children to the DNA database:

Home Office officials said plans to include primary school children on the DNA record would be kept 'under review'. The DNA database includes 4.5 million samples of genetic material, many taken from people who have been arrested but never charged with a crime.

By next year, it is expected that 1.5 million of the samples will be from youngsters aged between ten and 18.

Bloody hell.

Here's some information suggesting that fear of sexual predators online might be out of hand. According to them, it's not that random or unavoidable.