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Irregular News for 04.13.06
Coon Rapids, MN -- Students at Coon Rapids Middle School allegedly created a MySpace account that was meant to damage the reputation of a teacher at the school by misrepresenting itself as the teacher's MySpace page, according to law enforcement officers familiar with the investigation.
The page on the popular social networking site included pornography and demeaning references to religious heritage and sexual orientation, the officers said.
Police would not speak about the case in detail because it still is under investigation, said Capt. Cary Parks of the Coon Rapids Police Department.
"The victim is a teacher at Coon Rapids Middle School, and apparently some students, what the investigation is leading to, is some students are upset with him and created a phony MySpace website and put things about him that were incorrect," Parks said.
The situation is being investigated by the Anoka County Sheriff's Office, he said.
Capt. Rob Bredsten of the Sheriff's Office said, "We're in the process of trying to identify potential subjects. To say anything at this point would be something that wouldn't be in the best interest of trying to get the case solved."
Asked whether it was being investigated as possible harassment, he said, "Absolutely it could be construed as harassment, which is a felony."
Asked whether the Sheriff's Office had ever investigated a potential crime quite like it, he said, "This is fairly unusual. ... This is very malicious and harmful to a person's reputation. ... You put a person's name on a very controversial website with pornographic images and that sort of thing ... There are other people on the Internet who are watching this and who are under the belief that this person in fact did do it himself, and that directs a lot of ire and anger at that individual -- when he in fact didn't do it."
School officials were told about the Web page by other students. Michelle Langenfeld, the school's principal, said the school reported it to the resident police liaison officer immediately. Students cannot access MySpace on the district's computers, she said, because it is a banned site.
There have always been things written on bathroom walls about authority figures at the school, she said, but the broad reach of MySpace brings such statements to a scary new level.
"The potential for this is so dangerous, from my perspective," she said. "Because it could take any single person, single you out, create a website under your name that makes you into a very evil person. And you have no control over that. And that's a very scary thought for anybody who works with children -- for anybody, actually. Think of the potential. Think of the damage it could do to innocent people."
MySpace is a social networking website with somewhere between 64 million and to 68 million users. Last year, News Corp. paid $580 million to buy its parent company.
A problem with security on the site is that it's easy to set up an account by using false data, under a false name. And while the site has a policy that users must be 14, it requires only that a user enter a birthdate -- any birthdate -- to set up an account.
Parry Aftab, an Internet safety advocate and lawyer, said such abuses are "very, very common."
"That's so common, you can't imagine," she said. "It's probably second to creating a fake profile when you're cyber-bullying another kid."
One problem, she said, is that MySpace and other large, free networking sites must balance accessibility with security.
"Authentication on the Internet is essentially impossible on a free site, and you don't want to put a barrier between people who are legitimately going to be using sites and the site -- if it's free. You don't want to require that they prove who they are, use a credit card or make some charge or something else. It's not fair to the people who are using it properly," she said.
Aftab said MySpace could, like many free-registration websites, require new users to use an e-mail address that would require authentication. However, she said, most Internet service providers block the site's e-mail as spam.
She praised MySpace for recently implementing a "report abuse" button on all its pages and for being responsive to such reports. She said more parental policing of the site, and more education about its possibility for misuse, is needed.
MySpace has grown too large, she argued, to police itself, and parents need to do more themselves.
"You can't have enough employees to deal with 64 million users. I want schools and parents to start sitting on their kids. Kids are doing outrageous things because they can. And now you have cell phone access to social networking, which means there is even less between the kid's impulse and control. You're going to have more and more kids doing stuff because they can, because they want to, because they think they can't be caught."
source
Coon Rapids, MN -- Students at Coon Rapids Middle School allegedly created a MySpace account that was meant to damage the reputation of a teacher at the school by misrepresenting itself as the teacher's MySpace page, according to law enforcement officers familiar with the investigation.
The page on the popular social networking site included pornography and demeaning references to religious heritage and sexual orientation, the officers said.
Police would not speak about the case in detail because it still is under investigation, said Capt. Cary Parks of the Coon Rapids Police Department.
"The victim is a teacher at Coon Rapids Middle School, and apparently some students, what the investigation is leading to, is some students are upset with him and created a phony MySpace website and put things about him that were incorrect," Parks said.
The situation is being investigated by the Anoka County Sheriff's Office, he said.
Capt. Rob Bredsten of the Sheriff's Office said, "We're in the process of trying to identify potential subjects. To say anything at this point would be something that wouldn't be in the best interest of trying to get the case solved."
Asked whether it was being investigated as possible harassment, he said, "Absolutely it could be construed as harassment, which is a felony."
Asked whether the Sheriff's Office had ever investigated a potential crime quite like it, he said, "This is fairly unusual. ... This is very malicious and harmful to a person's reputation. ... You put a person's name on a very controversial website with pornographic images and that sort of thing ... There are other people on the Internet who are watching this and who are under the belief that this person in fact did do it himself, and that directs a lot of ire and anger at that individual -- when he in fact didn't do it."
School officials were told about the Web page by other students. Michelle Langenfeld, the school's principal, said the school reported it to the resident police liaison officer immediately. Students cannot access MySpace on the district's computers, she said, because it is a banned site.
There have always been things written on bathroom walls about authority figures at the school, she said, but the broad reach of MySpace brings such statements to a scary new level.
"The potential for this is so dangerous, from my perspective," she said. "Because it could take any single person, single you out, create a website under your name that makes you into a very evil person. And you have no control over that. And that's a very scary thought for anybody who works with children -- for anybody, actually. Think of the potential. Think of the damage it could do to innocent people."
MySpace is a social networking website with somewhere between 64 million and to 68 million users. Last year, News Corp. paid $580 million to buy its parent company.
A problem with security on the site is that it's easy to set up an account by using false data, under a false name. And while the site has a policy that users must be 14, it requires only that a user enter a birthdate -- any birthdate -- to set up an account.
Parry Aftab, an Internet safety advocate and lawyer, said such abuses are "very, very common."
"That's so common, you can't imagine," she said. "It's probably second to creating a fake profile when you're cyber-bullying another kid."
One problem, she said, is that MySpace and other large, free networking sites must balance accessibility with security.
"Authentication on the Internet is essentially impossible on a free site, and you don't want to put a barrier between people who are legitimately going to be using sites and the site -- if it's free. You don't want to require that they prove who they are, use a credit card or make some charge or something else. It's not fair to the people who are using it properly," she said.
Aftab said MySpace could, like many free-registration websites, require new users to use an e-mail address that would require authentication. However, she said, most Internet service providers block the site's e-mail as spam.
She praised MySpace for recently implementing a "report abuse" button on all its pages and for being responsive to such reports. She said more parental policing of the site, and more education about its possibility for misuse, is needed.
MySpace has grown too large, she argued, to police itself, and parents need to do more themselves.
"You can't have enough employees to deal with 64 million users. I want schools and parents to start sitting on their kids. Kids are doing outrageous things because they can. And now you have cell phone access to social networking, which means there is even less between the kid's impulse and control. You're going to have more and more kids doing stuff because they can, because they want to, because they think they can't be caught."
source