Strange history of former teacher Eric Toth when on the lam; can you do good after a terrible crime? A real paradox

The story of former (Beauvoir school) teacher Eric Toth, who lived on the lam for five years under different identities, pretending to be a tech writer and speaker and even drug counselor, after fleeing Washington DC in 2008 when a report  surfaced of his filming child pornography, does present a certain odd paradox.
     

Justin Jouvenal ran a detailed account (:The Alias Artist") about his life on the run int eh Washington Post today, link here.   What seems so odd is that, for a time, he (alias David Bussone) had agreed to live in poverty in Phoenix in a homeless shelter, and actually was an effective volunteer working with the “downtrodden”. 

  

Willingness to do so often lives at the heart of religious (especially Roman Catholic) teaching (look at the values of the new Pope Francis).  However, there seems to be an odd psychological twist.  Toth seemed to eschew intimate relationships with other young adults (male or female) who could take care of themselves,  could perform productively in society on their own, and who could accept or reject him as another “equal” adult.

   

I’ve written about “upward affiliation” and “radical hospitality” on other blogs, with a certain degree of self-criticism.  Focusing on relationships with adults who can actually judge and criticize you sounds like a healthy thing, important for psychological growth as one moves into adulthood.  It’s gotten seen to be selfish, self-contained, and too unable to sustain other people in a way that keeps a free culture going. 

It seems as though Toth wanted relations with people over whom he could wield power in one direction.  It’s hard to believe he could have, under this masquerade, actually helped people – yet apparently he did for a while.  That would be relevant eventually in his sentencing and rehabilitation.   My experience has been that people who can’t talk back and make their own decisions in life, once they’re adults, never can go anywhere and be effectively helped.  I know this statement sounds smug, but that’s what I’ve experienced. 

Toth eventually wound up on the FBI’s “most wanted” (replacing Osama bin Laden) and was arrested in Nicaragua when recognized.  

"Self-censored" text to my DADT 1997 book restored online (was a COPA issue)

I have finally taken the step to restore a few instances of “coarse language” at a few specific points in the online copy of my 1997 book, “Do Ask Do Tell: A Gay Conservative Lashes Back”, in Chapters 1, 2, and 3, accessible here. I have left the replacement text intact following each instance (1 in Chapter 1, 4 each in 2 and 3) in parentheses, delimited by double "++" signs.  

  

I had been a plaintiff (sponsored by Electronic Frontier Foundation) in opposing the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 which, after a protracted series of litigation events (and two trips to the Supreme Court) was finally overturned in a “trial on merits” by a federal judge in Philadelphia, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, with the opinion rendered on March 22, 2007 (explained that date on this blog).

  

I think it is useful to give again the link of my affidavit in the case, as filed (with EFF and the ACLU)  in December, 1998, from Minneapolis where I was living at the time.  Points 18-20 cover the “self-censorship” that I had felt needed to be done at the time in order to be safe under COPA. The link is here. 

This has become a "forgotten" issue.  But I think it's useful to bring things up to date.  

"Sexting" cases with teens grow more troubling for prosecutors in VA, MD

A teen “sexting” case goes to trial in Fairfax County, VA, according to a Washington Post story Thursday morning by Justin Jouvenal.  In another case, in Franklin County VA, a 15 year old teen with Asperger’s goes on trial.  In many of these cases, teens were not aware of the possible legal consequences of their actions.  The link for the story is here. 

  

When teens are tried as adults, there is little that can be done to avoid prison terms and sex offender registry.  The juvenile system has more options. 

Attempts in both Virginia and Maryland to provide lesser offenses when data is shared only among “willing” teens haven’t gotten far yet.   

Dr. Phil has often remarked that cases like these show the physiological immaturity of the teen brain, which cannot “see around corners” and imagine the possible consequences in the adult world.

Prosecutors say that sexted images and videos wind up on the Internet or in the hands of criminals and can tarnish (usually)  females depicted for life.  But it would be almost impossible for most younger teens to grasp such consequences. 

  

For what it’s worth, the AP has described another “Lorena Bobbitt” case (1993) in southern California recently.  

Instagram contests for tweens might violate COPPA, or at least its spirit

Cecilia Kang has a front page article in the Washington Post Saturday, April 6, about “Instagram” beauty contests that seem to entice pre-teen girls, and which might be in violation of new interpretations of COPPA, story here. 

  

The article described a contest where girls find their online photo presence marked up in red (with an X) the way a teacher might grade an algebra test – with red ink. 

Anyone (complete strangers) can vote, and parents have found young girls entered into "contests" without their knowledge from pictures posted by others (which feeds the concern about photos of people in public, which is generally considered legally protected).  

The article notes that teens and tweens seem a lot more concerned about numerical measures of their popularity, as with counts of “likes”, than are many adults.  Someone of my generation hardly thinks that way at all.

   

Again, going to the Intagram site I see the invitation to put it on the smart phone.
  

I also see how far behind the times I am in learning to use all the features of my own phone.  Is it because I don’t think I’m pretty enough?  

The Times of India has another typical story in Instagram concerns by parents, here. 

Implicit Content Problem: A statement about my own brush with it in 2005

I wanted to make another statement about the “implicit content” problem as I have come to understand it.  The reader may wish to view the account of the issue I had when I was substitute teaching as described on the “BillBoushka” blog  July 27, 2007.

  

In that incident, the school system (or at least the high school principal) used a “chilling effect” technique, hinting that, while I had a First Amendment right to post non-obscene content on my own website provocative to others, I might be vulnerable to prosecution under Virginia or other state laws for using an electronic communication for the “purpose” of providing enticement or temptation to minors.

  

In other words, a screenplay in which a character like me was shown as vulnerable to temptation to an unusually precocious minor (the “ephebophilia problem”) had no apparent “purpose” for its being posted (such as actual compensation from some other party or potential commercial profitability, ironically speaking).  Therefore, someone could reason that it had been posted for the “purpose” of tempting someone to make an approach, and that would be a criminally illegal “purpose”.

  

However, the First Amendment, as normally implies, that someone can make a public posting about something for “no reason” (although not an "illegal reason").  This is a bit analogous to the “employment at will” doctrine that says an employee can be dismissed for “no reason” but not for an “illegal reason”.

  

The illegal purpose concept comes into play only when there is a separate primary precipitating event.  That is, the author of the questionable web posting (me)  actually tries to contact a specific (or believed but possibly fictitious) minor directly, possibly now by Facebook or Twitter  (although some of  these tools did not exist in late 2005 when this incident happened), email, or even a phone text message.  It could be a normally simple and innocuous message, but inappropriate on its face because of the ages involved or a teacher-student relation.  But once such contact occurs, then the presence of such a posting becomes legally significant and possibly  illegal on its own; and I believe Virginia’s statute presuming “purpose” could apply and add to a prosecution’s case.  But I in fact never initiated any such primary contact of any kind. 

I was present at the COPA trial in Philadelphia in October 2006 when the judge made a  verbal comment about the hidden dangers of “implicit content”.  

The PROTECT Act of 2003 deserves discussion

I wanted to point out another detail from Mike Young’s book (post yesterday) that needs to be mentioned specifically on this blog.

  

This matter would be the PROTECT Act of 2003, or the ”Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act” of 2003. The simplest source for imparting an understanding of the provisions of the law is simply the entry on Wikipedia, here. 

Young notes that the Supreme Court had at one time rules that computer-generated images (stills or videos) that simulate child pornography and that didn’t use actual minors in their creation, are protected from prosecution by the First Amendment.  (I’m not sure what case this was – might have been CDA.) The 2003 law specifically punishes the user of computer generated images that look exactly like minors, inasmuch as animation technology is so good now that this can be done.  An interesting question could arise if a real actor were “made up” to look under 18 and then used in explicit images, but that sounds legal.  I wouldn’t do it! Wikipedia notes that non-obscene fictional beings under 18 do not, in the language of the law, trigger prosecution.  That makes it sound as if the person simulated in an image must exist to trigger prosecution, but that could be a very dangerous assumption for a website to make.

  

The law also prohibits drawings of minors that meet the “Miller Test" of obscenity, and has some age relationships as explained on Wikipedia. 

  

The United States Department of Justice has a Fact Sheet on the Act here. 

   

The full text of the law can be viewed on Thomas here.

   

Public Resource has a one-hour video on “Protect Act: The Statement of Reasons” (2010) on YouTube. 

   

I recall the libertarian opposition to this law back in 2003.
 
There is another law, the Child Protection and Sexual Predator Punishment Act of 1998, which requires ISP’s to report suspected child pornography detected on customer’s sites, although ISP’s do not monitor sites for them.  Their responsibility (as far as future liability) is a bit like DMCA Safe Harbor; it usually ends when they report and cooperate with authorities.  Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have a page for it.  

"RTALabel" looks like a promising voluntary content labeling "opportunity"

Soon, I will review a book “Internet Laws” by Mike Young, but I wanted to mention, in advance, a point that he makes about another opportunity to put adult-oriented websites behind verification filters.

The service is call “RTLALabel” (link here).  The facility has considerable capability to label entire sites, individual pages in different formats, mobile sites, and Wordpress (it doesn’t mention Blogger).   The FAQ page on the site is well-worth reading. It hints that Congress could try to pass COPA-like laws in the future (even though COPA was overturned in 2007, as documented here).

RTA (“Restricted to Adults”)  is set up by the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, ASACP, link.

   

There is some material about RTA on YouTube:

As Young hints, there is also a Guide to sites that use AVS, or “Adult Verification Systems”, here. There are commission arrangements for AVS sign-ups which some might see as seedy or unethical.

  

Previously on this blog, I have covered the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSA) and the ICRA product, which discovered had been discontinued and last wrote about on Feb. 10, 2011. I don’t know why it was discontinued or has any connection to RTALabel now.  

It us unclear how these products could affect the constitutional or legal issues surrounding any future attempts to require adult verification to web sites.  

One other problem comes to mind right now with COPPA (not COPA);  a regular site could inadvertently collect personal information from minors without parental consent.  I talked about this last on January 1, 2013, but the matter still seems a bit unclear still, and Young mentions it in his book.