JW (Jeremy Wilson) “All across America, privacy campaigners are gleefully hailing the recent signing into law of a Californian bill designed to end “revenge porn”, the grim practice of posting nude photos and videos of former romantic partners on the internet.”

LILA: Gleeful isn’t the word I’d use to describe how victims are talking about this.  It sounds more like extraordinary relief. Also, one doesn’t have to have been the victim of revenge porn to greet some public discussion of the matter with gratitude. Cyberstalking of women with salacious and false accusations/innuendo is quite as harmful. For that, no selfies need exist. Indeed, no photos need exist at all. Just demented minds and evil imaginations.

JW: The bill criminalises the distribution “with the intent to harass or annoy” of nude images that were taken with the understanding that they were to remain private. It’s the first of a raft of similar proposals that are sweeping the country; New York will soon have a similar law if the proposals of legislators are adopted.

LILA: Actually, if the pictures were taken with the understanding they were to remain private, they are already illegal, under current law. Probably copyright law might address the issue.  The issue is not that there aren’t laws already on the books. The issue is they can’t always be used effectively to address revenge porn; the issue is that prosecution is futile against the perps who often have no money (exactly the kind of person who would have the time to do this stuff).

There is also the fact that computers can be accessed remotely and cameras and recording devices turned on remotely, without the knowledge of the target.

JW: “But the campaigners are wrong, and lawmakers out of their depth. Revenge porn isn’t going anywhere.

Lila: Incorrect. While I support the petitioners on the merits, I’m also aware that the powers that be have their own interest in the matter. Revenge porn laws will be written, rest assured.

The question is will they be written to help prevent crimes, or will they be written to enable a political pay-off and allow certain people to game the system? Also, could they be used as pretext for more government surveillance of the net?

That’s why any law has to be vetted very carefully or it will go the way of SOPA, also needed, but also ultimately ruined by the way it was written.

JW:

What’s the difference between someone posting private pictures online to hurt someone and someone who is simply ambivalent about the hurt they might cause? That’s just the first problem the lawmakers have made for themselves in their attempts to negotiate the first amendment.

Lila: Exactly right. That’s why intention shouldn’t be made an issue. The criminality should extend to the posting of nude content across the board, if done without consent.

JW:

Let’s be clear: the “revenge porn” authorities are trying to regulate isn’t hidden camera, stolen or underage content. There’s plenty of legal recourse against that sort of material already and the authorities should pay serious attention to the increasing amounts of it.

Lila: As a matter of fact, those crimes are hard to prosecute, as well, simply because of the complexity of technology and the difficulty of proving who uploaded what.

Again, that argues for a broader, simpler approach that removes discretion from the investigators and police and prevents the government gaming the whole thing.

JW:

What they are trying to do instead is regulate the consequences of stupid decisions made by adults: i.e., allowing yourself to be filmed performing sex acts, somehow imagining that the footage or photos won’t ever see the light of day.

Lila: Many of these girls didn’t consent to being photographed by anyone. Others had photos stolen. Some apparently did  it at the demand of boyfriends whom they trusted.

Very foolish, but among young women in this pornographic culture, it’s quite wide-spread.

Why not put some blame on the boyfriends who upload it and the porn culture which no one dares to criticize because so much corporate profit rides on it?

JW:

Well, I’m sorry, but the law’s not here to scrub your life clean of your own bad choices.

Lila: Do I note a hint of glee in your language? Are you sure you’re not making this into pay-back for all the women you dated?

The women made bad choices, yes.

So did US tax-payers in hiring Goldman Sachs to service government contracts.

It doesn’t mean Goldman Sach should get off, or is that your position?

JW:

As has been widely discussed, another gaping hole in the the Californian law is that it doesn’t cover pictures taken by the victim – i.e., selfies, the mainstay of revenge porn. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the author of the law, Sen. Anthony Cannella, excluded selfies from the bill as the already overcrowded Californian prison population wouldn’t be able to cope with the convictions that would be generated.

No, really.

Lila: There can be a punishment not involving prison. Perhaps a few candid shots of their morning ablutions will cure them of their nasty voyeurism.

FW:

A survey by the Florida-based Cyber Civil Rights Initiative found that 80 per cent of revenge porn victims had taken the photos or videos themselves. This is the crux of the issue: the vast majority of revenge porn is self-taken content.

Lila: That may be true of revenge porn. But as I said revenge porn is only one aspect of a huge social problem. I mentioned medical information/photos hacked from computers. I could also mention bank information posted, hacked and photo-shopped images, spoofed emails, recorded conversations with lawyers or accountants. All of them could be hugely embarrassing and/or damaging to a person’s livelihood.

Do you remember Prince Charles’ taped conversations with Camilla Parker-Bowles? Or the photo-stalking of celebrities like Paris Hilton or Kate Middleton?

All that personal stuff, including random candid camera shots intended to humiliate, are also things that need to be considered.

I am not talking about  political material or of public figures. Anything to do with serious public interest would naturally be excepted.

JW:

Hunter Moore, who once ran the most notorious revenge porn site on the web, has characterised the law as something designed to “help stupid people feel better”. He’s right.

Lila: Hunter Moore, a professional pornographer, is talking about inventory he doesn’t have to pay for for his business. He’s hardly disinterested.

JW:

Flash your tits or wap out your wang on camera, share it with someone else and you have no excuses when those photos turn up online. Or, to put it in legalese, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Lila: Actually, you’re wrong, even though you’re flashing legalese like you know something about it.

You can indeed photograph yourself and have an expectation of privacy.

Think about an athlete photographing muscle development of the leg or chest, or a patient recording the progress of an operation? Or a ballet dancer trying to analyze a posture. There are scores of reasons why someone might have a private picture they needed for quite non-sexual reasons.

You even have an expectation of privacy in email, I should tell you, since so much business is conducted that way.  It’s pornographers who will have to catch up with the law.

JW:

Persecuting someone for sharing images you took of yourself and sent to them is itself a kind of petty revenge, often resulting simply from embarrassment. But the embarrassment is most likely your own doing.

Lila: Word games aren’t going to persuade the best legal minds in the country.  Actually,  human rights law disagrees with you. Embarrassment of some kinds is not considered “simple” but quite complex and traumatic enough to be regarded as a form of torture. Humiliation, especially sexual humiliation, is considered a form of torture. Go look it up.

I think most countries get this. In the US, however, raunch culture and its gurus have taken over and brainwashed a significant section of the population.

But just as American criticism of acid-throwing and forced begging in India is accurate, so also criticism of this horrible social evil is accurate.

JW:

Yes, that person betrayed your trust. But refusing to accept any responsibility and whining at the state to step in to help you punish him has more chilling effects than just producing laws so useless they’re offensive. In fact, it’s almost immoral.

Lila: Nice try, but the women didn’t agree to let their personal photos be used publicly. Which part of that do you not get? Whining is a loaded word and could just as easily be used to describe your piece.

As for political speech being chilled, the biggest reason political speech is chilled is not censorship or government oppression, it’s the cowardice, corruption, and complicity of journalists.  Prurient pictures are not needed to do good journalism.

What wonderful thought of yours will we miss because of revenge porn laws? Do tell, and I’ll  be sure to book-mark it.

JW

Images can’t be removed from the internet

Lila: Oh yes they can.  Get a legal notice and see how fast they come down.  Not too many people link child porn or replicate it or Google it, now, do they? I’m not suggesting child porn laws as a model, because they are based on the consumption or even possession of porn, which, in this context would be an approach that’s over-broad.

But the replication or re-posting of images can be curtailed, for sure.

JW:

and trampling over freedom of expression in the attempt to do so is crazy.

Lila: Your crazy is my sane.

JW:

I’m not being facetious: if a law had prevented us from meeting Carlos Danger, the New York Mayoral race might have looked quite different.

Lila: Oh dear. So your right to see Anthony Weiner’s private parts trumps someone else’s right to be free of being stalked and threatened? I think not. The information about Weiner didn’t entail an illustration, you know.

JW:

We are all going to have to get used to this new social landscape in which anything we take and share can pop up in unexpected places.

Lila: Ah. The normalization of the surveillance state. I was wondering when that would come. So do you also think it’s fine for the TSA to grope you and for the NSA to stalk you?

JW:

Don’t like how you look under public scrutiny? Then get to the gym.

Lila:  My. So women should work out just in case they might one day be spreadeagled across the internet to meet your demanding standards. Perhaps we should check you out.  Unfortunately, a work-out might not help there. Just fyi, many people do not care to become pornography, not matter how they look. Even if they were in perfect shape, they wouldn’t want it. Or does that thought baffle you?

JW:

We don’t need the law to catch up with technology on this issue: it’s people who need to be doing the catching up.

Lila: Actually, the law does need to catch up and so do people. But thanks to the blast of publicity around this, more people are going to.

If the law doesn’t address it, people will take matters into their hand, and retaliate with cameras, as vigilantes.  Then the security state will take an even more  grotesque turn. No man will be able to date a woman, without worrying if she’s recording him in the bathroom, because that will be the next arena.

The upshot will be a nation where no one will interact with anyone else without a detailed contract and frisking for electronic bugging.

There is no easy solution to this problem. These women might have been foolish, but many people who have been careful, who have used encryption, and who are guilty of nothing more than being truthful and following their own research, are going also being victimized.