Child Safety : ISTTF report

Its funny how many links one has to jump to get to the original report. A link from Slashdot to Nytimes to search on google lands one on Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies. It is an interesting report that shed's light on real problems than the hysteria that "Internet is dangerous" and one has to protect the children.

I ain't saying that there aren't any dangers. The dangers are real and the victims are real. The dangers being any of the following

1) Stolen identities.
2) Personal pics leaked on the web and morphed.
3) Cyber Stalking/Bulling
4) Fake personalities.
5) Harassment.
6) Sexual solicitation/harassment.
7) Gossip.
8) Fraud (419 scams)

In the case of minors, the bogey man is the pic of some creepy sick old "man" trying to get to children and is the predator. The media presents the same picture as well. According to the report, while this threat exists there are other threats that are more important and profound.

The findings of the report are contrary to the public perception of problems of the internet. Minors face the same kind of problems that face in real life in the cyberspace. A large number of sexual abuse comes from someone in the family or someone known to the minor in real life (stats from different reports) and cyberworld doesn't really exacerbate it. A significant contributors to the problem are minors themselves. That is, minors bulling, soliciting sex, spreading gossip, they being victims and the perpetrator themselves.

An easy example is say 2 15 yr olds, who are bf and gf exchanged naked/sexual pics of each other. According to laws in some states they are both victims and both perpetrators. Perpetrators since they are distributing child pornography. Well that is what prosecuting attorney is going consider as the basis of filing a case if these pics were found. The supreme court of US has ruled that teenagers can be tried as sex offenders.

The registration of a teenager as a sex offender has life long impact on the teenagers. The only group that makes me sad is the group of teenagers who do dumb stuff not realizing the future consequences and end up getting charged in court and convicted and registered as sex offenders. I can't help but wonder if the society is punishing them way too hard, punishing them for life. I wonder what is adequate punishment for stupidity, actions becoz of lack of proper guidance, I don't have an answer.

One should read "Future of Online Reputation" to get an idea of the scope of audience and how reputation gets tarnished or built.