Birds Aren't Real, And Kids Are Not So Susceptible To Conspiracy Theories (Their Parents On The Other Hand...)

from the birds-aren't-real dept

Back in high school, I read Robert Anton Wilson/Robert Shea's Illuminatus! Trilogy back-to-back with Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and ended up being amused and fascinated at the intersection of conspiracy theories and pranksters. If you're unaware, both books satirize the nature of conspiracy theories. Soon after I picked up a copy of Re/Search's Pranks! book, which, to this day, is on my book shelf between a copy of the Mondo 2000 book and The Book of the SubGenius (with a copy of the tiny Loompanics yellow version of Principia Discordia sitting next to them). Soon after reading those, I got to college, and thanks to the wonders of the internet (and Usenet in particular) discovered a group of somewhat merry internet pranksters who dubbed themselves "The Flat Earth Society" -- as a purely ironic group who enjoyed the mixture of absurdity, satire, pranking, with an appreciation for the occasional conspiracy theory worth mocking (I'm still in touch with some people from that group decades later, again, thanks to the internet).

That's all preamble to note that I not only recognize, but really appreciate what's going on with a group of Gen Z pranksters, who cooked up a rather brilliant satirical conspiracy theory, better known as "Birds Aren't Real," which has been making the rounds for a while now, and only was officially "exposed" as a prank in a thoroughly delightful NY Times article last week.

The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits that birds don’t exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans. Hundreds of thousands of young people have joined the movement, wearing Birds Aren’t Real T-shirts, swarming rallies and spreading the slogan.

It might smack of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by an elite cabal of child-trafficking Democrats. Except that the creator of Birds Aren’t Real and the movement’s followers are in on a joke: They know that birds are, in fact, real and that their theory is made up.

What Birds Aren’t Real truly is, they say, is a parody social movement with a purpose. In a post-truth world dominated by online conspiracy theories, young people have coalesced around the effort to thumb their nose at, fight and poke fun at misinformation. It’s Gen Z’s attempt to upend the rabbit hole with absurdism.

It seems that every generation needs this kind of thing -- and it's often driven by young folks (correctly) mocking older folks for various moral panics about different conspiracy theories. We see it again, and again. The Stuff You Should Know podcast just recently had an episode all about SINA, the "Society for Indecency to Naked Animals" which was a very similar style prank in the late 1950s, early 1960s.

In each case, these tend to be efforts by younger folks mocking this or that moral panic by older folks -- who always cloak the moral panic in a desire to "protect the children," even as the moral panics themselves seem frequently to come out of conspiracy theories or nonsense that the older folks fall for, and many of the younger folks see through. It's hard not to identify with this kind of thinking:

Most Birds Aren’t Real members, many of whom are part of an on-the-ground activism network called the Bird Brigade, grew up in a world overrun with misinformation. Some have relatives who have fallen victim to conspiracy theories. So for members of Gen Z, the movement has become a way to collectively grapple with those experiences. By cosplaying conspiracy theorists, they have found community and kinship, Mr. McIndoe said.

“Birds Aren’t Real is not a shallow satire of conspiracies from the outside. It is from the deep inside,” he said. “A lot of people in our generation feel the lunacy in all this, and Birds Aren’t Real has been a way for people to process that.”

Or as someone notes later in the article:

Mr. Gaydos added, “If anyone believes birds aren’t real, we’re the last of their concerns, because then there’s probably no conspiracy they don’t believe.”

To me, though the clear take away from this is that, yet again, the kids are alright, and will continue to be alright. And for all of the "but think of the children" moral panics we will experience over and over again, the kids will figure out ways to process and deal with those moral panics in the best way possible for them, figuring out the best ways to deal with the impossibilities of the world, and making the best of what may seem like a bad situation.

Count me as all in as saying "birds aren't real."

Filed Under: birds aren't real, conspiracy theories, pranks, protect the children, satire, social media

Forget 'The Kids These Days'; It's The Adults And Their Moral Panics To Worry About

from the truly-devious-licks dept

A recent episode of the Reply All podcast, Absolutely Devious Lick, touched on a bunch of interesting points regarding the never-ending debates about social media, content moderation, and how it's supposedly damaging the kids these days. It's worth listening to the entire episode, but it begins by talking about a very slightly viral TikTok "challenge" which became known as Devious Licks -- lick being slang for something you stole. It started with a kid putting up a TikTok video of him holding a box of disposable masks, suggesting that he had stolen it from the school. Because school kids sometimes do stupid things to copy their stupid friends, a few others posted similar videos, including one early one of a kid taking a soap dispenser. And then there were some stories of it spreading and people going more extreme, because, you know, kids. But it didn't seem to spread that far initially.

But, of course, the thing became a lot more viral after mainstream media jumped on it with their typical "OMG, the kids these days" kind of coverage, starting with the New York Times, CNN, USA Today and then like every random local news jumping on the trend to tsk tsk about the kids these days.

Prominent grandstanding Senator, Richard Blumenthal called on TikTok execs to testify over all of this, which turned into another ridiculous Senate hearing in which old men yell at social media execs about how they're harming kids.

But, scratch the surface a little, and beyond a few dumb kids, this seems a lot more like adults over-reacting and freaking out, and making the story go much, much, much more viral than it did in reality. Indeed, the only news organization I've seen that recognized that most of this was a moral panic by adults was Curbed, which noted that, yes, there was some actual vandalism done by kids, but a lot of it seemed to be kids mocking the trend as well:

For all the real-life vandalism, what is also very real is that some of these teen punks might be punking us all too. One student, Gavino, a 17-year-old high schooler in Minnesota, uploaded a video showing a classroom sink gushing water, describing it as a “Devious Lick” gone wrong. When I contacted him over Snapchat, however, he told me he wasn’t actually trying to poach the faucet. It was broken, so he made a video about it. When I reached out to another student, a 14-year-old, who posted a TikTok stuffing Chromebooks into his backpack, he told me he didn’t even take them out of the building.

“Seeing people do it, others think they can ‘one-up’ the last person and get something better without getting caught,” Gavino said, adding, “It’s just being funny, trying to get five seconds of fame on a big platform.” Said a 17-year-old girl in L.A., who posted a video “stealing” a microscope from her science lab (she actually owned it, and she filmed the TikTok at home), “I made the video because obviously it was trending. Mostly, it’s for internet clout. And to be funny. It’s not a ‘fitting in’ type of thing. It’s literally just for clout, to show off or … whatever.”

Meanwhile, pretty damn early in all of this, TikTok banned the "Devious Lick" tag and told people searching for it to knock it off:

Also, as far as I can tell, none of the media orgs that covered the whole moral panic freak-out noted that a bunch of kids started to counterprogram whatever vandalism occurred in the opposite direction, posting the opposite of "devious licks": angelic yields, where they would show themselves adding new items to schools (often school bathrooms, since so many of the devious licks stories were about soap and toilet paper being taken from bathrooms).

And that brings us back around to the Reply All episode, which followed a secondary freak-out, after the Devious Licks challenge, in which a document was being passed around claiming to have pre-planned a bunch of other "challenges" for kids in school throughout the rest of the school year. Each month, the posting suggested, kids were planning to do crazy stupid shit (I mean, more crazy and more stupid than any normal teenager) in schools... for TikTok. But, as Reply All's Anna Foley noted, everything about the story just seemed weird -- including (1) teenagers actually planning shit out for an entire school year, and (2) the language on the document didn't sound at all like kids ("slap a teacher on the backside"?!?!?).

Foley started investigating and... basically tracked it down to adults freaking out. She found a School Resource Officer (SRO) who had been early posting the list to Facebook, who didn't seem particularly concerned at all whether or not it was accurate or not -- taking the typical "better safe than sorry" kind of approach. And from there, she traced it back to a school superintendent who claimed she had gotten it from students, though wouldn't say who. But what becomes pretty clear is that almost no kids were passing it around or seriously considering it.

Indeed, there's a hilarious moment in the podcast in which Foley quotes posts from kids laughing and mocking all the adults falling for this nonsense.

It's hard not to look at this like any other moral panic by adults who somehow have forgotten what it's like to be a teenager. Are there teenagers doing stupid stuff -- including some theft and vandalism? Yes, of course. Because that's something teenagers do. I mean, I did stupid shit as a teenager too. But, the idea that this is something new, or is caused by social media doesn't really get much support in reality. It does seem like the real "disinformation" came from the adults, not the kids, and the people who bought into it were the adults, not the kids -- and the leading vector of it being sent around was the mainstream media, not social media.

But I don't see Senator Blumenthal calling the head of CNN, the NY Times, and USA Today to come testify about their role in spreading "devious lick" news to gullible adults. Because then he'd have to admit that he, too, is a silly gullible adult.

Filed Under: adults, devious licks, kids, moral panic, pranks, social media
Companies: facebook, tiktok

High School Responds To Student's Prank By Asking Local Law Enforcement To Step In And Investigate

from the now-who's-acting-like-a-child? dept

I see we're still handling things stupidly when it comes to school disciplinary problems. For years now, many schools have been steadily abdicating their responsibilities, allowing in-school law enforcement (commonly called "School Resource Officers") to hand out discipline that school administrators used to handle themselves.

This hasn't worked out well for students. It has turned standard discipline problems into police matters and given students a head start on having their futures ruined for juvenile (in all senses of the word) mistakes.

Recently, a high school in Glastonbury, Connecticut was horrified to find it had been pranked. The Hartford Courant's first pass at the breaking news opened with this:

An inappropriate quote has halted distribution of Glastonbury High School’s 2021 yearbooks and police have been called to investigate, the principal confirmed Monday.

How does an "inappropriate quote" become the subject of a police investigation? The rest of the reporting didn't explain. Neither did school administrators. But they did hint it had something to do with bullying.

A student using a false name submitted the quote printed in the yearbook, which was being distributed, Principal Nancy Bean wrote to students and parents on Friday.

Bean would not describe the quote, but she wrote, “We are saddened and distressed by what happened. Acts of bias, bullying and cruelty are not acceptable at our school. We are committed to ensuring all Glastonbury High School students feel safe and supported.”

While it may have been possible some sort of stalking or harassment was taking place that might have merited a law enforcement response, the principal's explanation that the quote had been "submitted" by a student using a fake name suggested nothing more than a bored student taking the high school for a ride.

Later reporting filled in more details. But it still didn't explain why the school felt compelled to involve the police. Nor did it explain why the police felt compelled to remain involved.

A quote by Adolf Hitler inserted into Glastonbury High School’s 2021 yearbooks has halted distribution of the yearbook and police have been called to investigate.

A student using a false name submitted the quote printed in the yearbook, which was being distributed, Principal Nancy Bean wrote to students and parents on Friday. The quote under a student’s photo was attributed to George Floyd, the Black man killed by police one year ago in Minnesota, a photo of the yearbook entry sent to The Courant Monday afternoon showed.

That it involved George Floyd's name and Adolph Hitler's words still doesn't make it a crime. And, again, the principal said a student "submitted" the quote. Those vetting the yearbook before publication failed to catch it. A prank isn't a crime, no matter how terrible it made administrators feel once they realized they'd been tricked into publishing (and distributing) a Hitler quote.

Since the original reporting, a few more details have come to light. And there's still nothing that suggests a criminal act has occurred. It only suggests the school needs better editors and/or a more tightly-controlled submission system.

In an email to the school community, Glastonbury High School’s principal and the district’s superintendent said the quote — which appeared under a student’s photo — was submitted by a different student using a false name. They said they also uncovered an offensive quote glorifying war and an entry, which referenced the “Boston Bomber.” The district’s priority is supporting the students, who were victimized by this act.

Fast forward to a couple of days past the point of the original reporting and a new narrative is being developed, possibly to justify the involvement of law enforcement.

A letter released by the Glastonbury school superintendent said the student gained access to a computer system and submitted a quote from Adolf Hitler, but falsely attributed the message to George Floyd.

"Gained access." That's incredibly vague. If a student had hacked a secure system or accessed administrative systems they had no authority to access, it might be a crime. But only "might." And only if prosecutors are willing to abuse badly-written laws to convert a prank into criminal charges.

The Glastonbury Police were a little more direct in the statement given to Newsweek:

"Although we find the quote to be disturbing, our criminal investigation is not focused on the content of the quote itself, but instead we are focused on investigating the unauthorized access of a computer system through which students submitted their quotes to be published in the yearbook."

This still doesn't explain anything. The official statement from the school superintendent makes no mention of unauthorized access. It also notes the student has already been punished by the school for this prank. All the letter says is the student used a fake name to submit fake quotes. That's not illegal, no matter how embarrassed school officials feel. And this never would have been the end result if schools hadn't become increasingly comfortable outsourcing their disciplinary problems.

Filed Under: cfaa, connecticut, glastonbury, hacking, kids, police, pranks, school resource officers, schools, students, unauthorized access

School Can't Take A Joke; Turns Student Over To Cops For Listing The School For Sale On Craigslist

from the adminstrators-stripped-of-human-traits-during-hiring-process dept

Recent school shootings have led to heightened reactions from school officials and law enforcement. An over-correction of sorts -- thanks to the shooter in Florida having been brought to law enforcement's attention several times prior to the shooting -- has resulted in the arrest of hundreds of students across the nation.

The problem isn't so much treating potential threats as credible until proven otherwise. The problem is there's so very little subtlety applied. Things that should not be perceived as threats are, and even when they're determined to be either unfounded or not actually a threat, some schools decide their misperceptions are more important than the reality of the situation. (h/t Reason)

The graduating class of Truman High School in Independence, Missouri brainstormed senior pranks. Kylan Scheele came up with a pretty decent idea. He posted his school for sale on Craigslist.

The ad read:

Truman High School - $12725

Huge 20+ room facility.
Newly build football field.
Baseball Field to the SE.
Newly added 4 modern day rooms.
Has: Centralized air, heating, plumbing.
Next to Walmart for convenience
Huge parking lot, great for partygoers looking for somewhere to park
Bigger than normal dinning room.
Multi stove, oven, fridge and other appliances in the kitchen.
Reason for sale is due to the loss of students coming up.
Named after hometown resident U.S. President Harry S. Truman and his family.

About as innocuous of a prank anyone could have played on the school, one would think. But one would probably not be Truman High School administration. They turned it over to law enforcement.

Detectives with the Independence Police Department investigated the incident and found no probable cause or reason to pursue criminal charges. The had Scheele delete the post and advised him to talk to school adminstrators.

“They [detectives] didn’t see a credible threat,” Clark said. “They all kind of had a little chuckle about it but they wanted him to understand you could see how other people could see it as a threat.”

And how could people see this as a threat? Well, the school seized on one line of the faux ad: "loss of students coming up." Obviously, this referred to the pending graduation. The school, however, somehow read this to mean Scheele planned on harming the student body. That prompted the handover to police. And when it was handed back, the school doubled down on its "seriousness."

We take student safety very seriously and appreciate the students and parents who brought this to our attention. Out of an abundance of caution, administrators and police investigated and determined there was not a credible threat. A student who makes a real or implied threat, whether it is deemed credible or not, will face discipline. Due to the heightened concern nationally with school violence, we have extra police officers for the remainder of the school year and will have additional officers at graduations for all of our high schools.

Good lord. So, the non-threat the police considered non-threatening has resulted in Scheele's suspension and his ban from the graduation ceremony. The "implied threat" the school somehow read into a statement about graduating seniors is keeping one student from getting his diploma with his classmates.

It's also resulted in a lawsuit [PDF]. The ACLU represented Scheele in his demand for a restraining order blocking the school from blocking him from picking up his diploma at the graduation ceremony. Filed May 25th, the court has already ruled in favor of the school.

The school has also refused to back down, claiming the bogus ad caused "substantial disruption" and resulted in multiple parents retrieving their kids from school. (Wonder how much of that was due to the school informing parents it had turned over a "credible" threat to law enforcement?) As the lawsuit pointed out, there's no way the student intended to cause a disruption and no "reasonable" person could have imagined the outcome would have been school officials attempting to turn a satirical "for sale" ad into a criminal offense. The disruption was of the school's own making, but the punishment will be borne solely by the student who posted the ad.

Filed Under: humor, jokes, kyle scheele, missouri, police, pranks, threats, truman high school
Companies: craigslist

TV Station Falls For Pranksters; Sues Them For Fraud

from the oh...-so-you-want-your-dumbassery-to-be-part-of-the-public-record? dept

Playing pranks on local newscasters is a proud tradition that dates back to the days when people actually watched local newscasts for news. All it takes is willing pranksters, segment producers looking for filler, and staffers unwilling to perform even the most basic due diligence.

Enter Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, most famous for buying up flea market VHS recordings and dubbing comedic commentary over the top of them. Their current catalog covers everything from retailer-produced sexual harassment videos to jazzercise to a variety of self-appointed experts opining on subject matter in which they clearly have no expertise.

Prueher and Pickett also developed a few alter egos and sent out press releases to a number of local TV stations, hoping to have them booked. WEAU in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, fell for one these press releases and invited strongmen "Chop & Steele" to perform on its morning show, "Hello Wisconsin." The two comedians showed up in full "Chop & Steele" garb and wowed newscasters by crushing baskets with their feet and breaking sticks with their bare hands.

WEAU wasn't the only victim of "Chop & Steele" and other Prueher/Pickett alter egos. But WEAU -- through its parent company, Gray Television -- is the only one to make a federal case out of it.

Gray Television filed a lawsuit against the pair, alleging fraud, conspiracy, and copyright infringement. Pickett and Prueher -- now represented by attorney Anderson Duff -- were first notified of the lawsuit by a New York Post article. At this point, the lawsuit is still waiting for a judge to take a look at it, but hopefully it will be tossed out shortly after this. Just in case it isn't, the duo have set up a crowdfunding campaign for legal fees. (h/t Daniel Nazer)

The lawsuit [PDF] from Gray Television is inadvertently hilarious. Considering its arguments about being "defrauded" by pranksters its staff would have sniffed out by performing a little pre-show fact-checking, it's pretty rich for Gray to make the following claims:

Gray Television owns television station WEAU in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

For more than sixty years, WEAU has served as the trusted and respected news source in Western Wisconsin.

[...]

As part of its continuing commitment to bringing accurate information to its viewers and remaining an industry leader, in 1979 WEAU became the first television station in the market to have its own Doppler weather radar.

Trust and respect are earned. They can also be lost. When you don't vet your morning show guests, guess what happens. The fraud and conspiracy allegations in the lawsuit attempt to bridge the statutory gap that cruelly leaves butthurt unremedied. The complaint begins with Gray admitting the station did fuck-all to verify the claims made in Chop & Steele's press release.

The press release identified Joe Picket by the fake name “Joe ‘Chop’ Shopsin” and Nick Prueher by the fake name “Nicholas ‘Steele’ Stelling.” It stated that the duo would perform “a series of free live events in Black River Falls, LaCrosse, Eau Claire, and Winona the week of November 28, using their muscles to entertain and educate” on unity, inner strength, and ways to prevent bullying “through humor, courage and self-respect.” The press release further claimed that “Chop & Steele” were “fan favorites from season three of America’s Got Talent,” and were also featured on Steve Harvey, the Hallmark Channel’s Marie, and Disneyland’s 60th Anniversary Celebration.

The information in the press release was entirely false. Prueher and Pickett were not on a “Give Thanks 4 Strengths” tour. They did not have any events scheduled in Wisconsin or elsewhere. They had not appeared on America’s Got Talent, Steve Harvey, the Hallmark Chanel or in Disneyland.

Believing the information provided in the email and press release, a WEAU anchor enthusiastically responded the same day to “Jerry Chubb” stating that “Hello Wisconsin would LOVE to have Chop and Steele” on the program and asked for more details to prepare for their interview and demonstration.

Based on its own failures, WEAU was duped. Rather than accept this and move on, Gray Television is trying to portray it as fraud. The problem is, none of it really satisfies the statutory requirements for fraud. While the statements made in the press release were demonstrably false, the duo's appearance on the show didn't deprive the station of anything other than its production costs for that segment, if even that. If viewers watched the entire segment -- along with any advertising -- it's hard to believe the station lost anything.

On top of that, its assertions about the station's long-running trustworthiness make it clear the two comedians didn't intentionally exploit WEAU because it was inherently exploitable, as explained by The Legal Dictionary:

Reliance on a patently absurd false statement generally will not give rise to fraud; however, people who are especially gullible, superstitious, or ignorant or who are illiterate may recover damages for fraud if the defendant knew and took advantage of their condition.

A TV morning show with decades of asserted trustworthiness does not fit this description. Perhaps this is why Gray Television's complaint offers nothing more than boilerplate allegations of loss.

As a direct result of Defendants’ fraudulent conduct set forth herein, Gray Television has been damaged and is entitled to recover compensatory damages in an amount which shall be proved at trial.

But "damaged" how? If the segment was watched and the station didn't lose viewers after the fact, there's not much there to work with. The complaint makes no mention of other possible damages -- like decreased guest/ad bookings or even a vaguer "reputational damage." It appears to believe it should get paid because its lax fact-checking processes resulted in it being embarrassed.

Gray Television also alleges copyright infringement because the duo used clips of the morning show to promote their Found Footage Film Festival. This appears to have been thrown into the lawsuit just in case the judge has no sympathy for WEAU being a victim of its own carelessness. Again, the use of the clips -- even in promotional videos -- is likely fair use, as it's part of a much longer clip showing the range of the comedians' artistic endeavors.

Whichever angle you take, the lawsuit is ridiculous. Chances are the station would have been fine with use of the clips if it didn't make it look like the morning show was more interested in filling open segments than providing quality broadcasting. The copyright infringement allegation might be the strongest, but that doesn't mean it's the "rightest." It just means our copyright laws are so screwed up, pranksters can still be sued for using a brief clip of a morning show appearance on their own website or YouTube channel.

Filed Under: chop & steele, joe pickett, nick prueher, pranks
Companies: gray television, weau

Student Hit With 70 Criminal Charges After Exposing Himself During Yearbook Photo Shoot

from the another-school-outsources-its-disciplinary-processes dept

When will schools tire of involving law enforcement in routine disciplinary matters? Not soon enough, apparently.

Hunter Osborn, a senior at Red Mountain High School in Mesa, AZ, did a "teen" thing. Prompted by other teens who enjoy a good bit of teen lowbrow comedy, Osborn slipped the tip of his penis over his waistband during the football team's photo shoot. Osborn and his crotch-level co-star went unnoticed as yearbooks and game programs containing his exposed penis were published and handed out.

The school, of course, was furious. Instead of handling its own problems, it decided to turn it over to law enforcement -- for reasons only completely understood by school administrators who believe "school discipline" is pronounced "police matter." Perhaps this overreaction was fueled by the school's own editorial lapse, as it only noticed the exposed penis in the photograph after Osborn bragged about it on "social media."

Insanity ensued.

[Osborn] faces 69 counts of indecent exposure, based on the students and staff who were present when the photograph was taken, and one count of furnishing harmful items to minors, according to Mesa Police Department spokesman Steve Berry. He said the investigation is ongoing.

One penis. (And not even a whole one.) 70 criminal charges. And that includes a felony that rubs elbows with producing and distributing child pornography. Never mind the fact that his "victims" (the 69 misdemeanor counts cover the teammates and staff involved in the photo shoot) included the same teammates who dared him to expose himself. And who also "exposed" themselves to him on repeated occasions with no complaints, as one particularly astute AZ Central reader pointed out.

As reader Jim McManus wrote, “This young man is being charged for exposing himself to his teammates during the picture taking, which no one noticed at the time. Approximately 15 minutes later he and all the people he ‘abused’ went back to the locker room and all took off their (clothes) exposing themselves to each other.”

Yes, there's a difference between expected penis exposure and surprise penis exposure, but the bottom line here is that many of Osborn's "victims" had seen his penis repeatedly. No one expects a penis in a group photo, but hey, peer pressure and stupidity can all be found in large quantities on the average high school campus. That the photo was published unaltered is unfortunate, but there's absolutely no reason law enforcement should have been brought in. And if law enforcement was summoned, officers should have told administrators to handle their own problems, rather than amuse themselves by tallying up 69 + 1 criminal charges.

Fortunately, after allowing insanity to have the run of the yard for a few days, rational thought was allowed to cautiously make its way back onto the propety. First, prosecutors dropped the ridiculous "furnishing harmful items to minors" felony charge.

In announcing that his office would not prosecute the felony charge against Hunter Osborn, Montgomery issued a statement reading: “An assessment of the available evidence for the felony charge of Furnishing Harmful Items to Minors, ARS 13-3506.A., leads us to conclude that the evidence does not establish a violation of the statute. MCAO has furthered review of remaining misdemeanor charges submitted by the Mesa Police Department for possible submittal to the Mesa City Prosecutor's Office.”

Shortly thereafter, prosecutors decided the 69 misdemeanor counts weren't worth pursuing either.

A Mesa police spokesman said Wednesday that the case against Hunter Osborn, 19, was returned to police for further investigation but that the case would be closed.

A good thing, too. A strict reading of the state's statute behind the single felony charge suggests Osborn could not have possibly violated it. Indecent exposure, maybe. But not furnishing harmful material to minors.

It is unlawful for any person, with knowledge of the character of the item involved, to recklessly furnish, present, provide, make available, give, lend, show, advertise or distribute to minors any item that is harmful to minors.

The only entities who performed any of the actions were the school and its photographer -- and neither of those did so knowingly.

Even though this ended relatively well, the sad fact is that if it had been handled with any sort of common sense, we never would have heard about it at all.

Filed Under: arizona, criminal charges, high school, hunter osborn, kids, mesa, pranks, red mountain high school

DailyDirt: Drifting Around In A Car For Fun

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

April Fool's day is fun for some people -- and annoying for others. John Oliver thinks pranks are terrible, and he's gotten some people to make a no-pranks pledge. But for folks who like to waste time and smirk at the discomfort at others, here are a couple videos to watch featuring cars and some crazy driving.

• Driving instructors probably have more than their share of scary moments in a car, so why not prank them on their first day on the job? Professional driver Leona Chin pretended to be an incompetent driver for a bit, then pulled into a closed parking lot and took the car for a real spin. [url]
• Here's another prank -- get some guys to go on a blind date, but don't tell them that their date is a professional driver before she starts driving like a maniac. BTW, this prank is supposed to sell more Ford Mustangs, too. [url]
• Drifting seems like the cool thing for drivers to do nowadays, so there's also an autonomous car that can drift. The robot car cheats a little bit because it needs wet pavement, but do you really want an autonomous car that can drift on any road at any time? Imagine the reactions if cars had an autonomous insane mode for drifting.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: april fool, autonomous cars, drifting, leona chin, mustang, pranks
Companies: ford

Maybe The Best Way To Stop All This Swatting Is To Have Fewer SWAT Teams?

from the just-a-suggestion dept

As you may have heard, last week, a 13-year-old boy admitted to calling in three separate swattings. This came about a month and a half after another person accused of a swatting incident was arrested in Las Vegas. Swatting -- the act of calling in a bogus "hostage situation" (or something similar) to a 911 line -- has been around for a while, but has really taken off recently, especially in connection to online gamers who live stream their games. Some gamers seem to think that it's somehow a fun thing to see a SWAT team raid someone via a livestream video. The excellent podcast "Reply All" recently had a really great episode all about swatting.

For years, there have been different questions raised about how to stop such things. Educating police about the practice of swatting is a big one -- so that, at the very least, they have some basic realization that not every such call is a real situation. But, of course, people are always looking for a "complete" solution to the problem, not recognizing that sometimes there are no perfect solutions. Swatting is a monumentally stupid practice. It puts completely innocent people (often including small children) in very serious danger of being killed. And it's happening enough that rather than being some totally rare occurrence there are semi-regular news stories on it happening. It has all the ingredients of a moral panic, in which people will freak out and demand that "something must be done" and that "something" will likely be some sort of regulation that will have all sorts of unintended consequences.

But there does seem to be one solution that isn't even on the table: maybe have fewer SWAT teams and stop arming police like they're in a war zone. Radley Balko has been talking about this stuff for ages, including in his excellent book, Rise of the Warrior Cop. But this idea that arming police ever more heavily as a way to deter or prevent crime doesn't have much support at all. There are very rare instances where the level of militarization of police would ever be necessary (if ever). Yet, when police have such equipment, they inevitably use it whenever an opportunity presents itself.

And now, all too often, that "opportunity" is when some teenager makes a prank phone call for laughs, and succeeds in putting real lives in danger. So rather than trying to pass stringent new laws that won't do a damn thing in stopping teenagers from being teenagers, how about we take a step back and perhaps pull back on the idea that we need to arm police to this level in the first place?

Filed Under: militarized police, pranks, swat teams, swatting

Harmless High School Prank That Occurred Completely Off Campus Turned Over To School Police Officer

from the he-who-laughs-last-is-probably-someone-with-more-power dept

Because no form of school-related misbehavior can be allowed to escape law enforcement's attention these days, a Prior Lake, Minnesota school has turned a recent prank over to its "liaison officer" for investigation.

To be sure, the prank is ill-mannered, tasteless, offensive and sexist -- something that will only narrow down the list of suspects to male high school students. (I've buried the photo of the prank letter below the fold -- sort of NSFWish.)

Some student or students mocked up an official looking letter (using the school district's logo no less) informing female students (and their parents) that a "mandatory vagina inspection" would need to be completed in order to be eligible to graduate. The letter cites "Minnesota Health Code 69" as the impetus for the impromptu inspection, and requests the removal of any piercings.

It goes on from there, using the same sort of stilted language deployed by many official school announcements, only with many more appearances by the word "vagina." The whole thing is crass on every level, and there's no way anyone would believe it originated from a school official.

Despite the fact the school can't find any evidence it was created on campus, it has still decided to move forward with an investigation.

After the school’s police liaison officer saw a tweet about it on Tuesday, Principal Dave Lund sent out an e-mail to parents explaining that administrators “are aware of this letter, and we are addressing the issue internally.”

[Kristi] Mussman [school district spokeswoman] said the prank was “done in extremely poor taste” and administrators were “disappointed.”

Determining who wrote the letter is a police matter. The liaison officer has “some strong leads,” she said.

All well and good, if you're the sort of person who believes that no bad joke should go unpunished. Obviously, the lack of on-campus misbehavior ties the district's hands. This explains its decision to hand it to the liaison officer, who can move freely between these two worlds and use the combined force of school policy and criminal statutes to nail the dastardly perpetrators who amused mostly themselves with this effort.

I'm sure the situation was slightly embarrassing for the school, but it had to be at least as embarrassing for any parent who got their huff on and rang the school, demanding to speak to "Barry McCockiner," the "director of vaginal corrections."

If anything, the prank runs afoul of federal law, which states that you're only allowed to cram unwelcome letters into mailboxes if you've paid the proper postage… and allow a uniformed postal employee to do the actual cramming. As horrifying as the phrase "violated federal law" sounds, the most likely outcome would be a small fine on par with paying the postage for the number of letters hand-delivered by the letter's author(s).

What may be worse is the imaginative reading of other, non-applicable laws performed by the liaison officer, who may be encouraged to make an example of high school boys acting exactly like high school boys. As this investigation continues, the school is attempting to finish the year out on a positive note.

Lund said that with only weeks of school left, staff members and students are trying not to dwell on the prank. “We are moving forward to finish our year strong,” he said. “We have a very good student body … and we are not going to let this prank diminish the positive performance of our students.”

Well, "not dwelling" on the prank would be a whole lot easier if you'd rein in the officer. The last thing you want as summer approaches is a bunch of negative press should this prank result in arrests, prosecution, or even in the best case scenario, the declaration that it violated school policy despite occurring completely off-campus. Your student body will move on more quickly if you actually just let it go. You can't harm the positive performance of your students, but you still have the power to deliver a ton of self-inflicted wounds.

Filed Under: high school, minnesota, police, pranks, prior lake

Lost An Email? Just Call The NSA!

from the backup-and-disaster-recovery-for-idiots dept

Throughout all the reporting on the NSA's massive surveillance programs, both international and domestic, you'll occasionally hear an increasingly common response: let's just all troll the hell out of them. The idea, of course, is that the NSA's collection of everything ever simply sets up a massive problem of extrapolating the number and size of haystacks in which they must find the terrorism needle. Anyone pissed off about how the American government is treating them via spying on their activities might suggest that they surreptitiously insert a bunch of likely flagged words into normal communications just to make things a bit tougher on the agency. And, despite the fact that these suggestions are usually made half-seriously, often accompanied by nervous laughter and a quick review of surroundings to ensure no black vans are present, the NSA has acknowledged the problem and has said it is prepared for the trolls. This is in response to entire websites devoted to online antics and shenanigans, all designed to make the job of the NSA just a tad bit more difficult.

But not all such antics need take place online, as evidenced by my new personal hero, a man in Holland who called the NSA to retrieve and an email he said he'd accidentally deleted. This is what brilliance looks like. The logic is as flawless as the hapless NSA receptionist is flummoxed. In case you can't see the embedded video, this wonderful man called the NSA's general number and claimed he accidentally deleted a Gmail email and that his local computer repair tech had suggested calling the federal agency, since they obviously have a copy. What follows is a lengthy conversation with a woman, who is likely just trying to do her job, that should probably be up for some kind of comedy award.

But take note, people: this doesn't work. While the NSA certainly may have your email, but they won't serve as your backup provider. Which is just as well, since that'd take a significant revenue stream away from me, personally. Thanks for not intruding everywhere, NSA.

Filed Under: backup, email, nsa, nsa surveillance, pranks