The presence of a nude photo shouldn't matter. America has lost sight of intent as a critical component in crime. The administrators of this system intentionally photographed minors in their bedrooms without their knowledge and without any consent. What the photos show is irrelevant. The obsession about the act over the intent is why we have highschool kids getting booked on child pornography charges for receiving naked pictures of their classmates while something like this hangs in the balance. This is a clear case of criminal privacy violation and misconduct towards minors, regardless what the pictures show.
"The presence of a nude photo shouldn't matter. America has lost sight of intent as a critical component in crime."
Absolutely. The intent was to photograph kids in their own homes and without their knowledge. That is absolutely criminal. If there were no nude photos taken, it's just by chance. They should be prosecuted just as if there were.
If you put a gun to somebody's head and pull the trigger, whether the gun jams or fires shouldn't matter, legally. You acted with murderous intent.
This is incorrect, because incentives are important. If we don't hold people responsible for their actions, even when their actions are due to negligence or incompetence, then we build a society that is intentionally negligent and incompetent.
When (hypothetically) some teenage girl's nude photos wind up on the web, I don't think that a "sorry, that was an accident" is going to make her feel much better. When people are injured due to the actions of others, the injured parties are owed some redress.
We don't want incompetents running things, so we need to make sure that they are weeded out. Now, it may be that "oops" is a mitigating factor, but it is in no way an excuse.
A friend of mine was doing a tax protest many years ago, handing out fliers in front of the post office. He was arrested for this. He later sued the town and the police officers for violating his civil rights. He won several thousand dollars from the town, but the police officers got off. The explanation was that it wasn't their fault because they hadn't been trained for this scenario. Now, knowing that this is a viable excuse, our police officers have every incentive to avoid training. If they get trained, they're liable for their behavior, but staying ignorant is a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Edit: I may have misunderstood you. I first read this to say that a hypothetical nude photo wouldn't be a big deal, because the school didn't mean to do that. Maybe you're saying the opposite, that it doesn't matter if there is NO such photo, because it should be obvious that it could easily happen.
> Edit: I may have misunderstood you. I first read this to say that a hypothetical nude photo wouldn't be a big deal, because the school didn't mean to do that. Maybe you're saying the opposite, that it doesn't matter if there is NO such photo, because it should be obvious that it could easily happen.
I took it that GP is stating that we shouldn't only consider this to be a big deal if nude photos show up. We shouldn't have to hope that the 'child porn' card is played to have people suffer real consequences for what they did at that school.
Nevertheless, I am torn in how to response to CWuestefeld's point. I want to say that it would be just as bad to obsess over intent without worrying about act, but I'm not sure that's true.
Even in the cases presented (accidentally posting a nude photo and arresting someone who had not committed a crime), the crime is still not just in the act itself. The crime is also in the negligence involved. A negligent police officer should be punished even if no one is mistakenly arrested. If someone negligently handles nude photos (I'm not sure why you'd have them in the first place, but let's leave that aside for now), they should be punished even if the photos don't get leaked.
If social security numbers are leaked on a public website, those responsible should be punished even if no one loaded the page. If, however, a company is absolutely devoted to security but someone still breaks in and steals social security numbers, the company's punishment should be less, even though the act (social security numbers falling into the wrong hands) is less bad than the negligent company's act (social security numbers being mishandled but never falling into the wrong hands). I'd rather my social security number wasn't leaked, but I'd place greater trust in a company which handled it correctly and still got broken into than one that handled it recklessly but got lucky.
Really, I think that's the point I want to make above all: Luck should have no bearing on the law.
I guess it boils down to people needing to act responsibly. We must each fulfill those responsibilities that are incumbent upon us. If I'm entrusted with those SS#s, I'd better take care of them. If I took reasonable measures to do so but they're lost, I'm less bad then if I was irresponsible and just lucked out.
