http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39290437/deck/home.mobile.msn.com/m/videos/

A Pennsylvania teen who stored intimate photos of herself on her cell phone — but never e-mailed or shared them with anyone other than her longtime boyfriend — settled her federal privacy case against high school officials who had seized the phone without a warrant and turned it over to prosecutors. According to the U.K. Daily Mail, the school agreed to pay the teen and her attorneys $33,000.

One of the girls caught “sexting” is suing Wyoming County authorities and school officials, accusing them of violating several constitutional rights when they seized her cell phone and looked through its contents at the start of the sexting controversy, according the Intelligencer. The plaintiff, now 19, and her legal team at Cozen and the ACLU claim school officials had the right to seize the girl’s phone but not to look at the photos inside.

Note also the comments about the conduct of the lead detective in the case:

She also accuses the lead detective investigating the sexting case of saying during questioning that “it was a shame” the girl had not waited until her eighteeth birthday to take the photos, since, had she been old enough, “she could have submitted the photographs directly to Playboy magazine.”

http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2010/05/sexting.html

Perhaps the focus on the fanatic is so sharp because the fanatic still sits in a position of authority threatening to ruin teenager’s lives by coercing them into the fanatics idea of morality, to follow his will or face a lifetime on a registry of sex offenders.

All for what is a common teenaged indiscretion.

We used to play Spin the bottle and truth or dare, these normal teen activities have now become digitized. And Skumanic’s discretionary authority says he needs to brand them with the Scarlet letter for life.

Bravo for the intervention and such, but the intervention should never have been necessary to begin with, if not for Skumanic the Fanatic.

“Are there no officials with poor judgment in Australia?”

Of course there are. Recently an Australian court found a man guilty of possessing child pornography, nude cartoons of characters from the TV cartoon series “The Simpsons”. This is world class stupidity.

“What ingredients make a good prosecutor or judge in the United States of Moral Panic sometimes referred to as the USA.”

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I find it interesting that you focus on the acts of the fanatic rather than the judge who intervened to alleviate the problem. Are there no officials with poor judgment in Australia?

A goodly amount of righteous hate and of the fierce joy at wrecking the lives of evil doers as early as possible. Membership of the Ku Kux Klan probably does no harm either.

Skumanik sounds perfect.

No, my 1950s/60s polaroid prints faded many, many years ago…

have any stock picks?

Like it or not, young teenage girls legally wear thong swimsuits in public that expose almost all of their bodies. As a father, I would prefer the 1950s dressing styles for young girls, especially. However, I just knew that the #1 1960 hit song “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” by Brian Hyland would lead to string thongs and then sexting, but no one would listen to me back then.

As a parent, I don’t understand why children are given this type of technology and it isn’t expected they would do something stupid. When I was a kid I wasn’t allowed to answer the phone let alone have one. The reaction of the school is no suprise. Over reaction is the norm. Remember when a 13 yo girl was strip searched for possessing an Ibuprophen? http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/16/teen.strip.search/index.html

From an article on the five week re-education course that this prosecutor personally devised in exchange for dropping felony charges:

“… an outline for the five-week course says the program would help the girls to understand why their conduct was wrong as well as ‘what it means to be a girl in today’s society.’ “