Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

The days of passing notes in class are long gone.
Teens now primarily use their cell phones to communicate with one another, frequently sending text messages. Read the rest of this entry »

Sex offenders continue to pose challenges to parents, police and legislators as the digital age allows for new methods to commit sex-related offenses.
In recent years, Internet chat rooms and social networking sites have created forums for sexual predators to search for young victims.
A Record-Courier comparison of the 35 registered sex offenders currently living in Kent to account names on the networking site Facebook.com revealed 11 profiles with names matching those of the sexual offenders. The comparison also showed one active account with the name and photograph matching that of a man convicted of raping a female child in 2001.
In 2007, a Record-Courier comparison showed at least 17 of the then 142 registered sex offenders in Portage County had profiles on MySpace.com.
Some states have introduced legislation to block a sex offender’s access to such sites, and the sites themselves do police their members to an extent.
But cell phones and “sexting” are proving to be the latest front in the war on sex-related crimes.
In May, Brimfield police arrested two men from the Akron-Canton area who were accused of using a cell phone and computer to solicit sex from girls under the age of 18.
“My belief is that it goes on everywhere,” Brimfield Police Chief David Blough said. “It’s indicative of the times we live in with technology being where it is. Just because a person texts you and tells you they are 17, or you meet them on Facebook and they tell you they’re 16 or 17, doesn’t mean that’s true.”
Now, members of Blough’s department advise parents to aggressively monitor their childrens’ cell phones.
Brimfield has become part of a national trend.
About one in five teens nationwide have engaged in “sexting” by sending sexually suggestive text messages or e-mails with nude or nearly nude photos, according to a survey released last week by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And more than one-third of the 655 teens surveyed said they know of a friend who has sent or received “sext” messages with one in 10 senders reporting they have sent these messages to people they don’t even know.
One of the men arrested for soliciting a Brimfield teen was very explicit in his phone texts, Blough said.
“He was sending some really inappropriate stuff to her, being really descript about what he wanted to do to her sexually,” Blough said.
The proliferation of digital media could be making teens more vulnerable to sex-related crimes, as the NCMEC survey found 90 percent of teens have an e-mail address, 73 percent have a cell phone and 72 percent have a social networking profile.
The two solicitations within weeks of each other in Brimfield have officials there on alert.
David Brobeck, superintendent of Field Local Schools, said school administrators are aware “sexting” can occur among students, and the district will take action if a case is confirmed.
“Particularly if they’re sending images, which is illegal,” Brobeck said. “We have a society that’s more aware now than it used to be, but we’ve always had people who will try to prey on kids. So our best bet is to try and make sure our kids know how to protect themselves, how to run (and) how to get help.”

Some of us got to talking about privacy the other day, wondering how much of it we have today compared to a half century or more ago, and whether privacy is as valued today as it used to be. When you hear about kids sending nude photos of themselves to their friends on cell phones, you have to wonder whether they have any concept at all of discretion, let alone privacy. And it does seem that some people are willing to put all kinds of videos of themselves on an Internet site called YouTube.
A cautionary tale of one unintended consequence of all this was reported on Yahoo News recently. An American visitor to Prague in the Czech Republic passed a store window and was surprised to see a huge photo of a family he knew in Missouri. What was their photo doing there? He took a photo of the photo and sent it to the people back home. It turns out that this was the Christmas photo the family sent out last year and they also put it on their blog and on a few “social networking sites.”
Once something gets on the Internet, I guess, you never know where it will end up or what use someone will make of it. The storeowner in Prague said he thought it was just a computer generated image when he took it off of the Internet and had no idea it was an image of a real family. Meanwhile the Missouri folks said next time they post a photo online, they’ll do something to make it hard to reproduce the image.
Obviously, technology has moved faster than our ability to adapt to it. Our former habits of mind just don’t always take into account all of the possibilities that exist these days.
Even those of us who do think about protecting our privacy may not realize how quickly we agree to give it up.
For instance, when I shop at a supermarket and use that “club member” discount card, a computer is keeping track of what I buy and how often I come to the store. The store owners probably use such information for their own marketing purposes. The receipt prints out my name so the cashier can use it in wishing me a nice day, so if I happen to lose the receipt in the parking lot, somebody finding it will know what food and beverages I buy, what ailments I may be trying to cure with over the counter medicines, and how many more sandwiches I have to buy to get a free one.
The concern about identity theft and invasion of privacy can lead some enterprising people to capitalize on this worry. Last week I got some mail from a catalog I’ve ordered things from occasionally. The mail was a check for $7.75. A refund? Did I overpay for an order? I was curious so I looked at it carefully. I saw the statement, “By cashing or depositing this check you are purchasing a membership in ‘PrivacyGuard.’ Read important details on reverse.” On the reverse was a notice that by endorsing the check I would be signing up for this service, whatever it is, and that my credit card would be charged $159.99 for the first year’s service unless I called to cancel it. I decided to guard my privacy by tearing up the check.
When it comes to balancing privacy and technology, I guess it all comes down to using common sense and being aware of the age we live in, an age when an image or statement you think was uttered in privacy can circle the globe in moments. I don’t want to be paranoid about it, but I want to be sensible. Personally, I like privacy. Sometimes I keep my thoughts private. And sometimes I don’t. Like today.