PSA: Don't Kill Yourself, Literally, Over BS Ransomware

from the tragic-lies dept

We've talked about ransomware in the past, the process by which criminals pose as either rights holders or law enforcement to convince people that they must pay large sums of money for transgressions in order to avoid serious jail time. Copyright infringers have frequently been targets of these kinds of lies and, more recently, NSA-themed ransomware has begun to appear. While the more savvy internet user may realize that these threats are great big steaming piles of crap that can be cleansed with an antivirus program, more naive folks can understandably have the hell scared out of them and find themselves devulging credit card information.

But we've reached a new level of tragedy when it comes to this kind of criminal endeavor, with one Romanian man reacting to ransomware in the extreme, killing himself and his young son as a result of his machine's infection.

The report of the tragic incident comes from the small Romanian commune of Movila Miresii which is made up of three small villages and located in Brăila County in the east of the country. Local paper Braila24 reports that Marcel Datcu, 36, hanged himself in the living room of his home along with his four-year-old son Nicusor. The report claims a suicide note left to his wife explained that the reason for taking his own life was:

"I received a warning [on my computer] that said I have to pay 70.000 lei [£13,000] or go to prison for 11 years."

Just so we're clear, there is obviously something else going on with this man other than his simply receiving a ransomware infection. To kill yourself is horrific enough, but to take the life of a young child over any amount of money or years in jail is tragic on a level that defies scale. I imagine there is likely a serious mental health issue at hand here, otherwise I'm completely at a loss.

With that said, nobody should pretend for a moment that the acts of malware distributors should be completely absolved in this case. The impersonation of law enforcement and threats of jail time deserve reprecussions on their own, but to have contributed to the mental breakdown of this man, which tangentially contributed to a suicide and a murder, must not go unnoticed. Many of us wave these kinds of attacks off as the cost of doing business when it comes to internet browsing. That isn't enough.

Instead, serious educational efforts should be taken on to inform the public of these kinds of threats. The silence from those that "legitimately" engage in these threats (law enforcement, copyright trolls, etc.) is deafening. Were they smart, they'd be out in front of this story, letting everyone know that they would never engage in such malware infection as a threat tactic. Unfortunately for them, so many stories of their underhanded actions have come out that I'm not entirely sure how many people would trust them.

Still, people need to know the farce that this kind of malware is, lest we let similar tragedies like this one continue to occur.

Filed Under: overreaction, ransomware

To Catch A Meaningless Leaker, Microsoft Made It Clear It Has No Concern For Your Privacy

from the cost-benefit dept

Yesterday, we wrote about the bizarre decision by Microsoft to search through a reporter's Microsoft Hotmail email account, in an attempt to catch the Microsoft employee who had leaked that reporter a copy of Windows 8. While most of the initial stories about this had focused on the arrest of the employee, Alex Kibkalo, and had pushed the email snooping issue to the bottom of the story, it appears that the email snooping is quickly becoming the story. After all, the leak itself was basically meaningless. Some early screenshots of Windows 8 were never a big deal, and Microsoft has struggled to get adoption of Windows 8 not because of any leak, but because a variety of other issues. So capturing the leaker does little of benefit for Microsoft.

However, at the same time, revealing that the company has no problem snooping through users' email accounts if it feels it is beneficial to Microsoft is hugely damaging to the company. People need to trust their email providers. A well-known venture capitalist I know has spoken repeatedly about how so many people use Gmail, even when doing things like negotiating deals with Google (or competitors!) because they actually trust Google not to abuse their privacy and snoop on those emails. In part, they do this because they know if Google was exposed for snooping on emails that way there would be a mass exodus from Gmail to alternative providers. Yet, Microsoft doesn't seem to have considered just how astoundingly damaging it is to violate its own users privacy -- whether permitted by Microsoft's terms of service or not.

On a basic cost-benefit analysis it's difficult to see how anyone at Microsoft thought this was a wise move. Absolutely wipe out any possible trust and privacy for all email users to track down one meaningless leaker? Instead, what this shows is how "piracy obsession" blinds companies. They seem to forget all about cost-benefit analysis and assume that "something must be done" at all costs, even if it basically destroys an entire business line for the company.

Microsoft is now desperately trying to minimize the damage as it's realizing just how it's wiped out all of its bogus talk about protecting your privacy. They've announced new policies concerning how and when they'll violate your privacy, but this seems quite clearly to be a case of too little, too late.

Filed Under: copyright, cost benefit, email, leaks, overreaction, privacy, trust
Companies: microsoft

Viral Satire Over Student Suspended For Saying 'Merry Christmas' Leads To Real Problems For Elementary School

from the forward-this-to-everyone dept

I used to think a news item going "viral", where everyone forwards it or shares it with roughly everyone else, was kind of a cool thing. What a neat little way the internet can facilitate the spreading of important of interesting information, I thought. Then I discovered that many of my fellow American internet denizens apparently suffer from a combination of being exceptionally gullible and not knowing what Snopes.com is. That combination results in too many people (read: any people) believing that a combination of soda and Mentos will kill you, that our government is building million dollar housing complexes for illegal immigrants with my Social Security money, and that Muslims are getting cities to ban Christmas lights for reasons unknown to anyone. Every single one of those stories is false, but it went viral so the idiotic masses were outraged.

Mix a bit of satire -- designed to fool just enough of the people -- into that viral explosive mix, and things can get weird.

Take the following, for example, where a satirical news story about a student in San Francisco being suspended for wishing an atheist teacher "merry Christmas" spread far and wide and resulted in the taxpayers having to foot the bill for the immensely stupid backlash. The story appeared in the National Report, a satirical news site, and claimed that the above suspension had occurred at Argon Elementary. There is no Argon Elementary in San Francisco. But there sure is an Argonne Elementary, and those parents were pissed.

But an Internet hoax had people across the country believing it did, resulting in e-mail tirades and more than 75 phone complaints and veiled threats of violence against the fictitious teacher or the actual principal. And taxpayers picked up the tab for beefed-up security and staff time to deal with the phony story.

Because of the threats, Argonne elementary school administrators called an emergency teacher meeting to review security procedures and district officials assigned an extra security officer to the campus. In addition, police have increased patrols around the school this week, said district Assistant Superintendent Leticia Salinas.

Okay, a couple of things. To start off with, if you're the type of person who spreads these kind of "War on Christmas!!!" stories and theories around, I'd like you to do me a quick favor: walk outside. You don't have to go anywhere in particular, just walk outside. Since it's December, assuming you live at least somewhere near other human beings, and I promise you that you won't be able to walk five minutes in any direction without seeing the sickly glow of multi-colored lights, a whole lot of red and green, or that insufferable torture you guys call Christmas music. If there was ever a war on Christmas, which there wasn't, you guys won, mmkay?

Next, if you're of the Christian flavor of homosapien, and a slight to one of your holidays causes you to threaten violence against other people in general, you're doing Christianity wrong. It's "turn the other cheek", not "turn the other cheek, grab your guns, and rain hellfire down upon the infidels." That's your guys' rule, not mine. I'm just asking you to follow it.

But the wider lesson is that the internet has progressed to the point where you should be immediately suspicious of any sensational viral news item, because chances are it's bullshit. But it didn't stop eager people, including a radio reverend, Craig Donofrio, from jumping into the fray:

"Thank you for your monumental blunder, it will provide me weeks of material on my show," he wrote to Argonne's real principal, Cami Okubo. "Keep up the terrible work. It makes my job so much easier! MERRY CHRISTMAS! Craig."

Only later did Donofrio realize he had been duped.

"It is sad that people make up such stories and agitate others into outrage in such a way," he said in an e-mail to The Chronicle on Tuesday, adding that he had apologized to the principal. "I was very happy that I did fact-checking before going on air with this story, and it has not been discussed on-air."

Donofrio doesn't seem to get that it's satire. It wasn't designed to "agitate people into outrage," but to be funny -- and, having people overreact to it is part of how satire works, highlighting how easily some people can be fooled. Hell, even those of us that should know better can be fooled. In the end, if something is so insane as to get your ire up, there's a half-decent chance that it's too insane to be real. Invest some time in verifying whether a story is real before threatening the kind of holy violence that apparently Jesus was a huge fan of. I mean, I know Die Hard is a Christmas movie, but it isn't meant to be a template, okay?

Filed Under: merry christmas, overreaction, satire, viral

School Threatens Child With Expulsion For Halloween Drawings

from the fear-itself dept

There is an epidemic coursing its way through our school systems that puts our children's lives in danger. For some reason, this epidemic appears to be on the rise, resulting in fear, oppression, and a demoralizing experience for our kids in schools that almost certainly effects the educational experience, if not the psychological well-being of millions of young Americans. As I'm sure you have already guessed, I'm obviously talking about the stupid adults that run everything and have put in place a nearly-institutionalized overreaction to some very real but rare tragedies of recent note. That overreaction is how you get terrified kids during school shooting drills. It's how you get seven year olds suspended for novelty pens, which I guess is mightier than the high-powered rifle.

And it's how you end up with a grade school child being threatened with expulsion for drawing some pictures of what he'd like to dress as on Halloween.

The three images in question depict a soldier, a ninja and a Star Wars character - possibilities for the 8-year-old's Halloween costume. Each of the drawings show the character holding either a gun or a knife.

"I think we really send our children the wrong message when we show that, as adults, we're so afraid of our shadow that an innocent picture - that any 8-year-old might've drawn - is cause for this kind of concern." [Comment from a local citizen]

The report also notes that the student engaged in creative writing which was likewise deemed to be dangerous, but which ultimately turned out to be a fictional story about the school being attacked by zombies, otherwise known as the kind of thing every single young boy thinks about at some point. For these crimes, the principal of the school informed the parents that they have a zero tolerance policy for images depicting guns and violence, that the child's creativity resulted in every other child in the school being in danger, and that they were grounds for expulsion.

And, in case you haven't decided yet, this is stupid. The images of school shootings in our media are powerful ones, but they don't necessarily need to result in everyone over the age of eighteen completely losing their minds and institutionalizing a culture of fear of our own children. You want to create a mythos around violence and guns amongst children? Outlaw discussion about them. You want to ostricize children? Limit creativity. You want to make children trust adults even less than they already do? Try to put them in some iron-grip of zero tolerance during the very time when they are learning to be most expressive, curious, and creative.

Can we please just go back to trusting our children to be relatively decent again? Because each and every one of these stories is dumb.

Filed Under: costumes, drawing, halloween, overreaction, students

Educational Exercises Aimed At School Shootings, Drug Abuse Result In Terrorized Students And K-9 Attacks

from the administrators-and-cops:-both-woefully-underqualified-to-educateq dept

In what seems to be a continuance of the questionable "scared straight" programs (questioned by no less that the DOJ), schools are involving kids in drills ostensibly aimed at educating them about how to react in extremely rare situations. Recently, we covered a so-called "drill" that involved a hijacked bus full of kids, which was "defused" in front of an audience comprised mainly of educators and people holding the local PD's purse strings. It was a rousing success, if your measurement standard starts at "everyone dies" and tops out at "no one was injured." This was portrayed as an essential bit of "anti-terrorism" training and an educational experience for bus drivers and students, but considering it all played out in front of town officials, the ultimate purpose seemed to be nothing more than a chance for the cops to play dress-up and get all duded up in some underused tactical gear.

Scott Greenfield covers another bit of "education" aimed at, well, who knows what exactly. The new concern is the "active shooter," and several schools are performing drills onsite in order to train staff (and children) how to react in case of school shooting.

Today, schools are engaging in active shooter drills. Trying to impute the best of faith to those who came up with the idea, it’s because this is perceived as the most likely tragedy that a school can face. It may not be likely, but it does happen. So why not be prepared?

"If you missed last week’s 'mad gunman terrorizes American schoolchildren' news story,this time out of North Carolina, don’t feel bad; these days they’re common enough that it’s not reasonable to expect any one person can keep up with them all.

Still, last week’s story was notable for two reasons: One, nobody actually got shot; and two, the gunman was on the school’s payroll. Seriously: Administrators at Eastern Wayne Middle School later sent parents a letter explaining that they sent a masked gunman to various sixth-grade classrooms as an 'enrichment lesson on exhibiting good citizenship and observing your surroundings.'"

The explanation letter, reducing a basic concept of disaster preparedness to the idiocy of “exhibiting good citizenship” (a good citizen does not get shot?) can be forgiven. To the extent school administrators were ever capable of using comprehensible language to explain something clearly and accurately, they are now paid by the jargon phrase used and can’t be expected to forget the entirety of their education and experience. Just ignore it.

There's more stupidity here, including the fact that children aren't being informed that these are, in fact, drills.

A suburban Chicago high school ran a “code red” drill with the gunmen shooting blanks in January. Last month, an Indiana school ran a shooting drill replete with blood and a body count.

Last year, an El Paso, Tex., school set up a shocking surprise lockdown simulation that enraged parents like Stephanie Belcher, whose son sent her a panicked text message.

“He said, ‘I’m not kidding. There’s gunshots and people screaming and we were locked in a storage closet,’ ” Belcher told KFOX-TV. “These kids thought that their classmates were being killed and that they could be next. There’s no excuse for that.”

The potential for harm, either physical or emotional, is high. "Preparing" students for a highly unlikely event by terrorizing them teaches them nothing more than "this situation is terrifying." It's highly doubtful anyone from the administration side is learning anything either. If they were, they might realize how counterproductive it is to prepare for an event you can't control by inducing a uninformed state of panic in the student body. No amount of tying "try not to die" to citizenship ideals is going to change that.

But cops and admins like drills, especially when it gives law enforcement a chance to show off their "tools" (often just guns and tactical gear). Cops and admins also like teaching kids that any policy- or law-violating act is sure to result in swift and zealous punishment.

In Brazil, Indiana, Judge J. Blaine Akers decided to kick off a weeklong "Red Ribbon Awareness" event at the courthouse by grabbing some local elementary school students and subjecting them to a simulated drug search. Things went predictably bad.

According to the report, the officer and his K-9 partner, Max, as well as another K-9 team were requested by Clay County Superior Court Judge J. Blaine Akers to carry out a simulated raid of a party with actors in place to help "educate the Clay County fifth-graders on drug awareness."

He added the juveniles in the scenario met with officers prior to the start and were asked to remain still when the dogs searched for narcotics.

McQueen said a very small amount of illegal drugs were hidden on one of the juveniles to show how the dogs can find even the smallest trace of an illegal substance. He added all this was done "under exclusive control and supervision of members of the court and law enforcement." Four scenarios were carried out that day with the incident occurring during the third scenario.

"As I got closer to the actors, Max began searching the juveniles," according to the officer's report. "The first male juvenile began moving his legs around as Max searched him. When the male began moving his legs, (this is what) I believe prompted Max's action to bite the male juvenile on the left calf."

In appreciation for his participation in this bizarre "simulation," the fifth grader was gifted with a free trip to the hospital to treat puncture wounds. There's a lot that's impossibly stupid about this judge's ill-advised "demonstration," but there apparently wasn't a single cop who thought this might be a bad idea -- certainly not beforehand and, judging from the post-incident comments, not in hindsight, either.

"It was an unfortunate accident," said Brazil Police Chief Clint McQueen. "Wish it hadn't happened like that but it did. We are trying to evaluate (the incident) to make sure nothing like this happens again."

Easy. Don't subject people, whether they're elementary student or adults, to fake drug sweeps, especially if you're going to plant drugs on them and send a dog trained to react aggressively to drugs and sudden movements out to give them a nasal patdown.

There's also this, as was pointed out by criminal defense lawyer Robert Fickman:

What's important to note within this story beyond the obvious, is the unstated ease in which the cops planted dope on the child.

That's comforting news for anyone who's had a law enforcement officer touch their person or belongings. Also comforting? The fact that the officers pursued statements from other children to corroborate their story.

The other K-9 officer met with Walters after the incident and said that several other children involved in the scenario saw the young man shake his legs when Max approached.

McQueen said the incident was not anything "out of control," but just a quick reaction by the dog to the young man's sudden movement.

Kids move. Kids get nervous or bored or uncomfortable and move. Even adults, innocent adults, get nervous when engaging with law enforcement and will move inadvertently. These officers put kids in the path of an animal that's been trained to be half-investigator, half-weapon and expected everything to go well.

And all of this was, according to the judge who set it up, an "educational" experience meant to raise "drug awareness." But in practice, it's little more than Scared Straight Lite. Instead of spending time with criminals, kids are spending more and more time in the presence of armed officers -- people they believe are supposed to be their protectors but whose actual mileage may vary after being bitten by an attack dog or locked in a closet listening to gunshots and screaming.

On the other hand, perhaps some sort of educational growth is being obtained, although it certainly isn't what those ordering this drills and exercises would hope to be the outcome. Kids may be learning that law enforcement officers are inscrutable and possibly dangerous. They may be learning that inadvertent movements, if viewed as "threatening" or "sudden" by officers (and their dogs), are instantly punishable by the application of pain... or worse. They may also be learning that those in power entertain themselves by performing a whole lot of dubious "somethings" that toy with the emotional health of those under their control, solely in order to show constituents that they're on top of the problem -- whether it's school shootings, drug use or plain old disobedience.

Filed Under: dogs, law enforcement, overreaction, school shootings

Internal Investigation Into Pursuit And Shooting Results In The Suspension Of 63 Cleveland Police Officers

from the most-massive-wrist-slap-to-date dept

A year-long review of a police shooting in Cleveland has finally concluded. The investigation stems from a police pursuit late last year that resulted in the deaths of both suspects in the vehicle, who were at the receiving end of 137 bullets fired by Cleveland police officers.

This is only one of several investigations into the chase/shooting, as Reason points out.

A state investigation previously concluded there was a systemic problem of an attitude of "refusal to look at the facts," and handed the case over the prosecutors. In August, East Cleveland's mayor said prosecutors were considering filing charges against the cops involved in the shooting, but as of this month the shooting is still being investigated.

The city of Cleveland asked the Department of Justice to review police policies following the chase and shooting, and the DOJ obliged by opening a civil rights investigation into misconduct and the possible systematic excessive use of force in March. The investigation could take up to a year and a half.

Both suspects were killed by the barrage of gunfire. The driver, Timothy Russell, was shot 23 times. His passenger, Malissa Williams, was shot 24 times. No weapons or casings were found inside the vehicle.

The chase began when an officer thought he heard gunfire coming from the Russell's car. Another witness on the scene thought it may have just been the vehicle backfiring. Either way, it led to a 23-minute chase involving five dozen police vehicles and nearly 100 officers and supervisors. Both suspects had criminal records, which may have influenced their decision to flee.

The pursuing police were ordered to stop by their supervisors but overrode this decision because they thought a police officer had been wounded. In order to right this perceived wrong, officers chased Russell at speeds of up to 120 mph before stopping him in a middle school parking lot. Thirteen officers then fired 137 shots, a majority of them in just over 20 seconds.


Those thirteen officers are facing an additional investigation (a memo from the state prosecutor suggests charging 12 of the 13 shooters with negligent homicide), but the other officers involved (including supervisors) have received their punishment from the PD.

An initial review of the chase found 75 patrol officers violated orders, but the disciplinary hearings reduced that number to 64 officers. All but one received a suspension, with the longest being 10 days, McGrath said.

None of the violations was so serious it warranted termination. Some of the officers received a written warning.

Police previously announced punishments for 12 supervisors stemming from the chase. One sergeant was fired. A captain and lieutenant were demoted, and nine sergeants were suspended.

Additional charges most likely await the thirteen officers who fired 137 shots into a single vehicle, including one officer who managed to squeeze off 49 rounds in less than 20 seconds. The DOJ's investigation also hangs overhead, but it could be another year or two before it reaches any conclusions. What's been handed down so far barely amounts to a slap on the wrist for the 63 officers being punished. The maximum suspension is only 10 days. Their supervisors appear to have fared worse, with one firing and two demotions.

The police officers' union has (of course) defended the actions of the thirteen shooters.

The union has said the shootings were justified because the driver tried to ram an officer.

One wonders if the union feels every bullet fired was "justified" or just the 47 kill shots. One also wonders how many stray shots (with only about a third of the shots hitting the targets) went wandering into the nearby neighborhood. The state AG's animated reconstruction (above) indicates some remedial gun safety training might be wise, as the officers form (more than once) a semi-circle, firing shots in the direction of each other. (That this hail of gunfire took place at night made it even more dangerous for everyone involved.)

For the rank-and-file, the punishments being handed down are too light to discourage insubordination and unsafe pursuits in the future. For some cops, ignoring supervisors' orders in order to "avenge" one of their own is always justified and any resulting punishments are worn as badges of honor. But make no mistake, this pursuit wasn't about justice or any higher duty. It was a squad of officers looking to extract revenge as self-appointed judges, jurors and executioners. Nothing else explains the massive number of shots fired or the dozens of officers facing (minimal) suspensions for directly disobeying orders.

Filed Under: cleveland, overreaction, police, police shooting

15 Year Old Student Commits Suicide One Week After Arrest For Streaking During Football Game

from the the-law-is-sometimes-wielded-by-the-most-frightening-bullies dept

We've seen the terrible results of various anti-bullying laws, most of them written in haste and named after the victim. The tragedies are real. The resulting laws are a mess. We've seen it with "Grace's Law," Maryland's anti-bullying law written after a teen was (as it is often stated) bullied into committing suicide by online aggressors. Thanks to the overreaction, Maryland now has a direct line to Facebook to escalate takedown actions aimed at posts deemed to be "without societal value" by school administrators.

What happens when a teen is "bullied to death" by school administrators?

Christian Adamek, 15, hanged himself Wednesday and died this morning from his injuries, Madison County Coroner Craig Whisenant said today. Adamek's death came less than a week after he was arrested for streaking across the Sparkman High football field during the Senators' Sept. 27 football game against Grissom High School.

Though Sparkman High Principal Michael Campbell declined to comment on Adamek's death today, he told AL.com/Huntsville's news partner, WHNT News 19, on Tuesday that the incident Adamek was accused of could bring the teen major repercussions.

Adamek had been disciplined by the school district, though details of that discipline were not made public, and he faced legal charges. Sparkman High administrators recommended that Adamek have a hearing in the Madison County court system to determine if formal charges would be filed, WHNT reported.

WHNT has memory-holed its coverage, possibly due to the fact that Sparkman High's principal openly discussed Adamek's case during a brief interview. He dodges specifics, but he does drop the names of a few possible charges. (Video available here - also saved from the memory hole.)

Campbell explains minor crime can be a major ordeal. While the principal was not at liberty to discuss the specific disciplinary actions taken by the school, he did confirm the student was not at school Tuesday.

“There’s the legal complications,” says Campbell, “public lewdness and court consequences outside of school with the legal system as well as school consequences that the school system has set up.”

While he was not at liberty to divulge details that lead to the indecent display, Campbell says the incident was much more than a mere prank.

“This situation was totally different, something not related to that at all.”

Now, Principal Campbell's words are unclear. but he hints that there's something more to this than just the streaking event. Or, given the fact that he really shouldn't be talking about a case that covered both by school privacy policies and the shelter of juvenile crime laws, he may just be trying to muddy the water a bit.

Other details have emerged. Adamek was facing expulsion according to his sister. He was arrested and was potentially facing charges for public lewdness and indecent exposure, the latter of which is tied to Alabama's sex offender laws. Long story short, Adamek could have found himself registered as a sex offender as a result of his streaking.

We don't know what other factors played into Adamek's decision to take his own life, but being faced with a future as a "sex offender" couldn't have been pleasant, even if the odds of that happening were extremely slim.

Scott Greenfield asks the obvious question: how will legislators honor Adamek?

When a teenager commits suicide because he felt bullied by others who said mean things about him, there is invariably a law passed to make sure it never happens again. In the pursuit of a perfect world, no child should ever feel so badly as to do himself harm. What law will they pass for Christian Adamek?

There are many things that can be said about the streak, that it was immature and stupid. No doubt someone will cry that it created a sexually hostile environment, as seems to be the cry with all things involving nudity. In response to those who call this a juvenile prank, someone will passionately explain the grave harm this does to the moral fabric of society...

And so the Sparkman High School powers of saving grace decided to drop every bomb they had on Christian Adamek. They’ll show him. He’ll never do anything like that again. And indeed, he won’t.

His fellow students called him a "legend" on Twitter. His school ensured he would greatly regret his childish act. In between, there are many, many unanswered questions, but given the general inability of most school administrators to see immature behavior as anything more than punishable violations, it's completely conceivable that Adamek had the book thrown at him. That he was arrested is indication enough that the school wished to reestablish its power through a show of force.

Did this lead directly to Adamek's suicide? There's no way to know for sure, but it probably was a factor. It's never as simple as it appears. Any suicide tied to social media bullying is more complex than the ultra-thin media coverage that often accompanies it. Suicide is usually related to a culmination of events, not one single incident, but a sudden sense of hopelessness can greatly contribute to the unfortunate decision.

And for those who might point out that Adamek had only a slim chance of being charged with two misdemeanors and placed on Alabama's sex offender registry, let me just point out that the reality of the situation isn't immediately apparent to those trapped inside, not while the machinery is still in motion.

Was Aaron Schwartz really going to go to jail for dozens of years? The odds are that his sentence would have been much lighter than what was being presented by the government's prosecutors. Any amount of prison time is hell to face for most people, but staring into a chasm that has suddenly opened up under your feet and seeing nothing but blackness staring back is seriously debilitating, even for otherwise healthy, happy people.

Adamek was likely being presented with the worst case scenario this early in the process. He would have expected some repercussions, but it's unlikely he considered that he'd be arrested, much less facing a possible sex offender status. During that week following his arrest, the worst case scenario would have replayed repeatedly in his mind.

How will the school spin this one? Will Sparkman's administration feel justified that it stood up to one teen and his childish action and saved the school from an unimaginable fate?

So did you show him, Principal Campbell? Are you pleased that your rules served their purpose? When you decided that the “legend,” the laughter, the applause would destroy the decorum of your school, did you consider that the price would be one young man’s life?

Chances are it won't spend much time defending itself. Why should it? It has school policy and criminal law on its side. It did the "right" thing. And either directly or indirectly as a result of the principal's decision to make one student "aware of the consequences," a 15-year-old student is no longer alive.

Filed Under: infractions, overreaction, schools, suicide, throwing the book

PA School Being Sued For Suspending 7-Year-Old Student 'Armed' With A Novelty Buzzing Pen

from the there's-no-stupid-quite-like-'broad,-inflexible-policies'-stupid dept

Let's forgo the usual preamble running down previous clashes between common sense and school weapons policies and get right to it. Here's another example of zero tolerance and the damage done, involving a seven-year-old and his dangerous gag gift/pen.

A lawsuit filed against Hershey Elementary School (along with the Derry Township School District and Principal Joy MacKenzie) details the events that led up to seven-year-old G.B.'s four-day suspension.

On January 15, 2013, G boarded his bus "armed" with a novelty pen that emitted a small buzz when touched, and showed it to some friends. At some point during the trip to school, the bus driver noticed the pen, asked to see it and then confiscated it from G.

Three days later, the principal of Hershey Elementary, Joy MacKenzie, called G's parents and told them their son had violated the school weapons policy. They were asked to remove him from the school immediately and then handed down a four-day suspension for his violation. At no point were G's parents allowed to contest the decision.

Here's the school's extremely broad definition of "weapon."

Weapon - the term shall include by way of example and not limitation, any poison gas, knife, cutting instrument, cutting tools, nunchaku stick, firearm, shotgun, rifle, and any other tool, instrument or implement capable of inflicting bodily injury or property damage, and shall include any item that is represented to be a weapon, that is threatened to be used as a weapon, or that has the appearance or characteristics of a weapon, such as a toy gun or water pistol.

Unless you consider a very mild shock to be "bodily injury," there's no way a novelty buzzing pen falls under any part of this weapons policy. I suppose it could be argued that someone could be stabbed with the pen, but that would mean the removal of every pen and pencil in the school (along with every child).

Principal MacKenzie apparently viewed the pen as a weapon and based solely on that, she has now, by virtue of this suspension, placed a seven-year-old pen wielder into the same category as actually dangerous students carrying actual weapons. The policy states that the following mandatory actions are carried out for any violations.

Violation of this policy by any student shall result in the following:

1. Immediate exclusion from class or activity.
2. Notification of the Derry Township Police Department.
3. Contact of custodial parent.
4. Immediate exclusion from the school for a ten (10) day out-of-school suspension will be imposed, whereupon a minimum of one (1) year expulsion will be recommended to the superintendent and School Board for ratification. At the discretion of the superintendent, the determination of discipline, including the immediate ten (10) day out-of-school suspension and the one (1) year expulsion, may be modified on a case-by-case basis.

Such expulsion shall be given in conformance with formal due process proceedings required by law.

Presumably, this "incident" was also reported to local law enforcement (per policy), although there seems to be no documentation included of the responding officer's hearty laughter accompanying the sound of a phone being placed back on the cradle. (Or, failing that, the officer's immediate visit to Hershey Elementary to detain the dangerous thug using all available [but appropriate -- always appropriate] restraint methods.)

Considering the policy provides for a minimum 10-day suspension, it appears the superintendent (Joseph McFarland) overrode the minimum at his discretion, dropping it to four days. Unfortunately, his discretionary skills failed to remove the suspension entirely and ask that administration not bother him again until a student brings a real weapon to school, or at least, something resembling a real weapon.

It should be noted that the policy provides for "formal due process proceedings as required by law," but apparently that sentence is just boilerplate the district forgot to delete before publication. According to the lawsuit, the parents were given no avenue of recourse or protest, which poses a problem for the school.

The District has arbitrarily deprived G of his state-created property interest in public schooling without due process of law on the basis of nothing but hysterical and overly-zealous application of a constitutionally-deficient school policy.

Beyond that, the lawsuit states that the policy itself is unconstitutionally vague and contrary to Pennsylvania state law.

The Weapons Policy is facially unconstitutional for vagueness under the First Amendment because it fails to define with specificity the kind of activity that is proscribed so that a student can conform his or her conduct to the Policy's requirements. Pennsylvania criminal law requires that any potential bodily harm from an item alleged to be a weapon be "serious" as an appropriate limiting condition--a condition absent from the School District's policy...

[T]he district applies the weapons policy to items which are incapable of inflicting bodily harm or even creating a reasonable fear in any person that such items might cause bodily harm…

The lawsuit is also seeking a permanent injunction against the district's enforcement of this policy as well as the expungement of the violation from G's record.

Could the school have known that this ridiculous abuse of its weapons policy would have resulted in a lawsuit? Well, anything's possible, but I would imagine that was the furthest thing from the minds of MacKenzie and McFarland when they put their heads together and suspended a student for four days for possession of a novelty pen. Instead, the administrators pursued the "overzealous application" of an already exceedingly-broad policy. Trimming the suspension down from 10 days was likely supposed to implicitly signal that G's offense was minor, but the reality of the situation is that it should never have gotten to this point. The school may defend its actions by stating it erred on the side of caution, but that's a lousy, worn-out excuse. These policies are in place but there's no reason they can't be applied using some common sense filtering.

It's unlikely the court will grant the permanent injunction, but maybe the dust the suit's kicked up will push the school towards narrowing the scope of the policy and generally encouraging the administration to remember the human minds on its staff are perfectly capable of making reasonable decisions when not hampered by inflexible policies that greatly discourage discretionary decisions.

Filed Under: buzzing pen, kids, overreaction, schools, weapons

School Suspends Students For Playing With Airsoft Guns In Their Own Yard

from the a-new-high-in-low dept

How did we get to the point where activities conducted on someone's private property can somehow fall under the jurisdiction of a public school? The short version is this: concerns about actual criminal activity on school grounds led to tighter controls being built into policies. A few school shootings upped the ante and provoked disproportionate reactions from several legislators. And just in case no one felt the new weapon and violence policies erected to prevent the unpreventable weren't being taken seriously enough, the government "helpfully" tied these new rules to federal funding.

"Playing it safe" just isn't good enough anymore. Every administrator is compelled to err on the (uber-ridiculous) side of caution because to do otherwise might result in angry parents, or worse, the loss of federal funding. Anything that bears a slight resemblance to a gun is treated as the real thing -- a weapon powerful enough to kill someone -- even if that "weapon" is a Pop Tart, four fingers and a thumb or drawn on a piece of paper.

The illogical extremes seen in these earlier incidents has been surpassed by Larkspur Middle School of the Virginia Beach School District. Apparently, you don't even have to bring your "weapon" onto school property to be suspended for "possession, handling and use of an Airsoft gun."

Three Virginia Beach seventh graders learned their fates Tuesday morning when they were suspended for shooting airsoft guns on private property.

During a hearing with a disciplinary committee Tuesday morning, Aidan Clark, Khalid Caraballo and a third friend were given long-term suspensions in a unanimous vote. The suspensions will last until June, but a hearing will be held January 27 to determine if they will be allowed back in school sooner.

Here's a little backstory:

Like thousands of others in Hampton Roads, Caraballo and Clark play with airsoft guns. The boys were suspended because they shot two other friends who were with them while playing with the guns as they waited for the school bus September 12.

The two seventh graders say they never went to the bus stop with the guns; they fired the airsoft guns while on Caraballo's private property.

The bus stop in question is 70 yards away. Three days before the above incident (Sep. 9), a parent of one these students' friends placed a 911 call to report her concern about Caraballo's use of a fake gun on his own property.

A neighbor saw Khalid shooting the airsoft gun in his front yard. She told the dispatcher, "He is pointing the gun, and it looks like there's a target in a tree in his front yard". [The "target" the caller referred to is an actual target that comes with the Airsoft gun -- not a "target" as in "the person being shot at."]

The caller also knew the gun wasn't real and said so, "This is not a real one, but it makes people uncomfortable. I know that it makes me (uncomfortable), as a mom, to see a boy pointing a gun," she told the 911 dispatcher.

Issue #1: Who the fuck calls 911 to report being "uncomfortable?" Everyone knows, even children, that 911 is for emergencies only and not for reporting that you strongly feel a neighbor's kid shouldn't be playing with a fake gun on his own property. What's even worse about this busy-bodied, overweening "concern" is that her personal Neighborhood Watch & Comfortability Patrol didn't even keep her own child from playing with the (fake) gun-toting neighbor neighbors.

Ironically, that 911 caller's son was playing with Khalid and Aidan in the Caraballo front yard on September 12. There were six children playing in an airsoft gun war. "We see the bus come. We put the gun down. We did not take the airsoft gun to the bus stop. We did not take the gun to school," Khalid explained.

Aidan admits shooting the caller's son in the arm, and Khalid admits shooting another friend in the back.   "He knew we had the airsoft gun. He knew we were playing. He knew people were getting shot. We were shooting at the tree, but he still came and even after he was shot he still played," referring to the son of the 911 caller.

This 911 caller seems better suited to parenting other people's children, seeing as her son wandered into the "war zone" unattended.

Despite her call to 911, the police department found there was nothing much to get excited about, according to this statement from Virginia Beach police sergeant Adam Bernstein:

We understand that a number of juveniles possess air soft guns and have “airsoft gun” wars with each other, but as it relates to the city code referenced above, they are in violation of the code if the juveniles are not exercising “reasonable care”. Also keep in mind that this is not something that we proactively seek out to enforce. If we receive a complaint (such as in the case for which you are doing the story on), we will investigate the call for service and enforce it appropriately, i.e. warning or prosecution…

However, a few days later (Sep. 12), a "passing motorist" called the police to report a child with a gun chasing another child down the street "near a Larkspur bus stop." This call confirms that at least one of the students (Khalid Caraballo) did not leave his yard while playing with his airsoft gun.

" ... the white child appeared to have a gun, and he was chasing the other child ... when he saw me he kind of stuck it in his pants. I don't know if it was a toy or if they were playing," said the 911 caller in the Sept. 12 call.

The caller was speaking about 12-year-old Aidan Clark, who admits he ran off Caraballo's property into the street in front of Khalid's house.

"I ran and chased him. I aimed to shoot, and I saw a car on the right," Clark said.

"He looked directly at me and the black child kept on running," the 911 caller said.

Aidan was chasing a third child, who is African American and who was also suspended. Aidan says Khalid never left his property and none of the boys shot the guns while in the street.

Despite this being clearly out of its jurisdiction, the administration at Larkspur Middle School leapt into action, according to a letter sent to parents by principal Matthew Delaney.

In the course of the investigation, conducted in concert with a police officer and the school division Office of Safety and Loss Control, we identified the children who were firing pellet guns at each other and at people near the bus stop. Several students verified that they had been hit by pellets and had the marks to support their claims. In one instance, a child was only 10 feet from the bus stop and ran from the shots being fired but was still hit. Another student claimed to be shot in the back while running away during a previous incident Wednesday, Sept. 11. This child was also shot in the arm and head during Thursday’s incident. I contacted the school division’s Office of Student Leadership and School Board Legal Counsel for guidance. Because students were on their way to or at a school bus stop when they were struck by pellets, the school division has jurisdiction to take disciplinary actions against those students responsible for the disruption. There is an expectation that all students should be able to travel to and from school in the safest environment possible.

This statement leaves out a whole lot of details and relies heavily on Delaney's punishment-n-seriousness depiction of the events. According to the students, they were playing together. Delaney's wording makes it appear as though students were ambushed on their way to school. Either if they were, what happens outside of school isn't the school's jurisdiction, no matter what the legal counsel for the school board thinks. A school cannot assure that children are able to travel back and forth to school safely. The only environment it can even possibly control is the school bus.

Is the school actually taking the position that it's responsible for students' safe transit at any point between school and home? If so, then every parent whose kid is injured in any way while walking or biking to school has a valid claim against the school. That surely can't be what Delaney or his legal counsel want.

This should have been left where it was originally -- with the police if they felt like following up on the situation. The public streets are theirs to police. If it happened entirely in someone's yard, this should have been left up to the parents/property owners. Instead, administration decided to extend its territory solely for the purpose of enforcing its own stupid policies.

More from Delaney:

As the principal of Larkspur Middle School, I am responsible for the safety of students and will take all appropriate actions to ensure that the students using the pellet guns are appropriately disciplined and held responsible for their conduct. It is my sincere hope that they will learn important life lessons; the most important being that there will be consequences when they do things that can result in harm to another person.

This isn't the lesson you're teaching, Mark. You're teaching that every action a students takes, whether truly harmful or not, has the possibility of being severely punished by self-appointed, state-sponsored "saviors" like yourself, people who think nothing of damaging children's futures in order to assert and extend their authority.

Khalid and two other students have been suspended for possibly an entire year for shooting pellets at other students -- students that may have been actively and voluntarily playing with the suspended "shooters." Does adding a damaging long-term suspension to their transcripts seems like a fair tradeoff for some ultimately harmless pellet gunplay that occurred entirely off-campus (and on private property)? If so, your sense of proportion is severely out of whack, Mark.

Even more:

This was a dangerous situation that involved the intervention of law enforcement, the Office of Safety and Loss Control and our school administration.

Bullshit, Matthew. You're lying. Nothing was "dangerous." No one "intervened." Someone reported something to the police who reported it to you. The incident was over. It occurred before school, off school grounds and was entirely over by the time you decided to teach these students some "life lessons." This is you adding some spin in order to make it sound as though you've somehow averted a future tragedy with your swift, harsh overreaction. But the only thing you've done is shown everyone that you have no fear of extending your reach and expanding your jurisdiction.

The school board has issued a statement backing Principal Delaney's decision while going out of its way to take a swing at the press and detail Khalid Caraballo's disciplinary record (and has been "helpfully" provided in jpeg format).

We live and work in an era when school safety is foremost in everyone's mind. Yet somehow student safety has taken a back seat in the intense media coverage of this case. This is not an example of a public educator overreaching. This was not zero tolerance at all. This was a measured response to a student safety threat. A school principal took firm steps to ensure weapons didn't make their way into his school and that children didn't have to endure being shot at with a pellet gun as they walked to their bus stop...

All of that might be considered to be true if the final decision from the school board didn't state that the students were being suspended for "possession, handling and use of an Airsoft gun" -- something that did not occur on school property. So, it was definitely overreach, and the possibility of being suspended for an entire year for something that occurred outside of school sure sounds like an overreaction.

The school board's letter continues, detailing Khalid Caraballo's disciplinary record (which includes "increasingly aggressive behavior including harassment, bullying and fighting that resulted in injuries") in order to justify its decision to claim public streets and private yards as its jurisdiction. While this lends more credence to the suggestion that these kids were ambushing students on their way to the bus stop, it doesn't change the fact that the location where these events occurred is the jurisdiction of local law enforcement -- and ultimately, a problem to be handled by the police and parents of the children.

Daniel Edwards, chairman of the school board, states that he can discuss Caraballo's previous discipline problems because his parents signed a waiver. (None of the other students are mentioned by name in this report.) But his parents maintain they never gave him the permission to do so.

His parents told 10 On Your Side they are upset by that and said they signed a waiver for the school system to talk to WAVY about the airsoft incident only.

Edwards wraps up the letter by bemoaning the press and its "sensational" coverage of the incident.

Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt in this latest incident, but they could have been. Had a child been injured either by a weapon or as a result of fleeing the scene, the school may have been the subject of a different kind of news story; one that included accusations of turning a blind eye toward student safety. We hope that people will look beyond the sensational media reports and recognize that fact.

If you think you're going to be roasted no matter what decision you make, maybe you should make fewer lousy decisions. Kicking these students out of school doesn't change the fact that they live close to the bus stop and could easily return to attacking other students (if that's what actually happened). All this decision has done is made these three kids "not your problem," at least not until next January. And all that means is they're right back where they started -- in public streets and private property -- not your problem. If the media chooses to excoriate you because someone got injured on private property or public walkways, that says more about the media than anything else. But their overreaction doesn't justify one of your own.

Filed Under: overreaction, private property, schools, suspension

Student Arrested And Charged With 'Terrorizing' For Shooting Classmates... With An iPhone App

from the reportedly,-assailant-also-made-'pew-pew-pew'-noises-with-his-mouth dept

Much like non-terroristic threats are now the new terroristic threats, in today's climate of zero tolerance policies, fake weapons have become the new real weapons. Pop tart bitten into a vaguely gun-ish shape? That's a weapon. Fingers clasped together in a gun-like fashion? That's a weapon. Drawing of a gun? That's a weapon. And now, virtual, video-game, only-appear-on-a-powered-up-iPhone guns? Those are weapons.

In a story that sounds as absolutely made-up and ridiculous as the name of the high school at which it occurred (which I would love to believe is a mashup of H.L. Mencken and the upper middle class twits he would have tweaked bitterly and mercilessly), a student has been arrested for "shooting" his classmates with an augmented reality app. NO. I AM SERIOUS.

A student at H. L. Bourgeois High School accused of using a mobile phone app to simulate shooting his classmates was booked and jailed in Terrebonne Parish.

There's no part of that preceding sentence that isn't mind-flayingly ridiculous. Want to see how lifelike this "simulation" is? Here's some "exciting" video of the app (Real Strike) in action.

If you'll note, the other mall patrons don't seem the least bit alarmed that someone is firing off round after virtual round at them with an iPhone. In fact, everyone looks completely unaware, not to mention unscathed. I suppose it might be a bit more unsettling if this were uploaded and publicly viewable [oh wait...], but the emphasis is on "a bit." Unless you're Major Malcolm Wolfe of the Terrebonne Sheriff's Department.

[Major Malcolm] Wolfe's office says a 15-year-old was arrested after posting a video on YouTube using the Real Strike app to shoot other kids at school, “He said it was a result of him being frustrated and tired of being bullied. He said that he had no intentions of hurting anybody. We have to take all threats seriously and we have no way of knowing that without investigating and getting to the bottom of it.”

He says the student was arrested for terrorizing and interference of the operation of a school.

Wolfe says "investigating," but nothing else in his statements indicates any sort of investigation has taken place. As for the charges, they seem disproportionate, to say the least. No one was terrorized or interfered with while the video was being recorded. After the video was uploaded, there still wasn't much "terrorizing" or "interfering" occurring. People were being not being physically shot by an arsenal of fake weapons contained entirely within a kid's cell phone, nor were they being threatened in any specific sense. Just because it was (temporarily) uploaded to YouTube doesn't suddenly make the "shooting" more "real."

Here's the actual wording for Louisiana's "terrorizing" statute, not much of which seems to fit the student's actions.

§40.1. Terrorizing

A. Terrorizing is the intentional communication of information that the commission of a crime of violence is imminent or in progress or that a circumstance dangerous to human life exists or is about to exist, with the intent of causing members of the general public to be in sustained fear for their safety; or causing evacuation of a building, a public structure, or a facility of transportation; or causing other serious disruption to the general public.

B. It shall be an affirmative defense that the person communicating the information provided for in Subsection A of this Section was not involved in the commission of a crime of violence or creation of a circumstance dangerous to human life and reasonably believed his actions were necessary to protect the welfare of the public.

C. Whoever commits the offense of terrorizing shall be fined not more than fifteen thousand dollars or imprisoned with or without hard labor for not more than fifteen years, or both.

That's a whole lot of time served and a hefty fine for playing an iPhone game. It's going to be pretty hard for a prosecutor to make this stick as none of the above really applies to the teen's actions. Some concerned parents contacted the authorities after viewing the video, but it's hard to believe the student's actions resulted in creating "sustained fear" or a "serious disruption." The school wasn't evacuated or put on lock down so other than someone in administration overreacting (and there's no details suggesting anyone has), there's really no "interference" there.

But I guess this all depends on whether the prosecutor is as easily moved to overreaction as the Sheriff's Department is. Wolfe sounds overly worried. Let's hope that's not contagious.

“You can’t ignore it,” says Major Malcolm Wolfe. “We don’t know at what time that game becomes reality.”

I don't know, Maj. Wolfe, but I'll try to guess. It becomes reality when the student has access to 25 military-grade weapons? Or access to any weapons? The willingness and ability to actually gun down his classmates with real weapons? His parents stated their son didn't have access to any guns. But still: safety.

Here's the money quote, the one that indicates that "safety" means overreacting.

“With all the school shooting (sic) we’ve had in the United States, it’s just not a very good game to be playing at this time,” according to Wolfe.

With all the school shootings? As a member of law enforcement, it might do Wolfe some good to exchange his hysteria for facts. The number of mass shootings (school or otherwise) isn't rising. Just because something happened recently doesn't mean it's increasing and just because you want to arrest a kid for exercising a little non-violent catharsis doesn't make this belief any more true.

And for all the tough talk by school districts and other authority figures about fighting bullying, it's the bullied kid who ends up in cuffs. Nice one, Team Safety First.

Filed Under: arrests, augmented reality, kids, overreaction, police, terror