From the “unintended consequences” file comes this story from TCPalm:
Under Florida law, each image is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The charge — typically possession of sexual performance by a child — is intended to snare pedophiles and other sexual predators. But teens who are sexting are caught in a loophole that could have life-changing repercussions.
And here’s the kicker: Both the sender and receiver are equally culpable under the law.
While it seems that this has not yet been used as a weapon, the law is apparently written so that if Person A sends kiddie porn to Person B… then Person B will *also* go to jail, regardless of whether Person B actually sought out the illegal materials.
Times like this I’m glad I’ve got me one of them “dumb” featureless cell phones.
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“Times like this I’m glad I’ve got me one of them “dumb” featureless cell phones.”
Agreed
“Under Floriduh law. . .” need we say more?
I can’t recall the specific incident or date at the moment, (consult with the wife-net guru tonight) but a similar law is in several other states because “sexting” teens have been arrested (both sender and reciever) over the last 6 months or so. As well there was an incident where a couple was arrested and their computers seized, house and business searched and their lives pretty much made hell-on-earth because there was an unsolicited batch of kiddie-porn pictures in the husbands down-load que on thier internet provider server!
Recollections seem to recall that the couple was confronted at their business when they were preparing to open on a day following a long weekend and arrested even though the ‘porn’ was NOT on any of their computers!
(There was also a major ‘blow’ over the fact the police “knew” about the packet because THEY had sent it!)
The legal technicality that boggled my mind was that since the couple had their computers set for automatica downloading of ‘archived’ mail from their ISP that constituted “willing-download-of-child-pornagraphy” even though they never actually managed to download the packet!
I never heard what happened in the case though.
Randy