[Clips] A Teenager's Tale

Mon Apr 10 15:14:24 PDT 2006

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  Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 18:13:25 -0400
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  From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
  Subject: [Clips] A Teenager's Tale
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  <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB114434417735419002.html>

  The Wall Street Journal

  April 10, 2006

  REAL TIME

  By JASON FRY

  A Teenager's Tale
  The Net Makes It Harder to Know
  Where Your Children Really Are

  April 10, 2006

  Last week a House subcommittee listened to the tale of Justin Berry, the
  19-year-old whose five years as a "camwhore" were chronicled by the New
  York Times, offering a window into a frightening world in which Webcams,
  IM, online-payment services and e-commerce wish lists are the tools online
  sexual predators use to lure impressionable teens and younger children into
  child porn.

  Mr. Berry and Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald testified, as did a number of
  experts in protecting kids online -- and even for those familiar with Mr.
  Eichenwald's scarifying story, it was headline-making stuff. The sexual
  exploitation of children online was estimated as a $20 billion industry,
  and Mr. Berry said in his prepared remarks that "[w]ithin each of your
  Congressional districts I guarantee there are children who have used their
  Webcams to appear naked, and I guarantee you there are also children in
  your district on the Internet right now being contacted and seduced online
  by sexual predators."

  Frightening enough, but there was an undercurrent to the stories told by
  Mr. Berry and the other witnesses that was spookier still: the fact that
  the teens could be exploited in their own homes, and despite having
  involved, caring parents. "I was an honor student, I was class president,"
  Mr. Berry said. "My mom used all the latest child protective software. She
  checked what was happening in my room."

  She did -- and yet in some ways she didn't. Because she couldn't. And
  that's the dark side of the Net, a fundamental disconnect in our experience
  that we will have grave trouble getting used to, if we ever can: You can no
  longer tell who's in the room with your child, with your spouse, with your
  employee -- or where that person is.

  It wasn't so long ago that people doing things they shouldn't do needed
  privacy to go astray -- if you were in the same room as your child or
  spouse or employee, you could see what they were doing, could hear one side
  of any conversations, could expect to know if something were amiss.
  Husbands didn't call their mistresses in the living room while their wives
  balanced the checkbook, employees didn't hand company secrets to rivals who
  blithely dropped by their desk, and children certainly didn't have
  mysterious talks with a stranger on the phone or at the door. Repeated
  absences had to explained, not to mention strange things on bank and
  credit-card statements.

  Now, things are different. Sure, that person -- he or she needn't be a
  child -- is sitting right there in the room with you. But are they really
  there, the way you assume they are? In a very real way they may not be.
  Email and instant messaging can let that person have a secret conversation
  right under your nose, with no trace but the anonymous tap-tap of keys.
  Meanwhile, where has the screen they're looking at so intently taken them?

  Nearly everyone has found something unsettling or repellent on their
  computer screen after clicking on a Web link sent by someone who shouldn't
  have shared it, following a bizarre search result out of curiosity, or
  receiving strange spam. Pressing the Delete key or closing the browser will
  usually put things right, but a queasy sense of violation remains: Those
  thoughts/pictures/sounds were right here, in my living room or bedroom or
  workplace, where I normally feel safe.

  But for most of us, such experiences are exceptions. And our usual feeling
  of safety, of being in control, can get us to lower our defenses. It can
  keep us from worrying about what the person across the room at the computer
  is doing -- and leave kids susceptible to online predators with practice at
  role-playing and social engineering. As Mr. Eichenwald put it, kids "are
  not being approached by a predator in the park. Rather, they are in their
  own homes, feeling safe. They feel comfortable on the Internet, in ways we
  may not recognize. 
 There is no one else there, just a small, silent
  device nearby. There is a level of unreality about it, a simple lack of
  comprehension."

  Throw in Webcams, and you have a potentially toxic mix. (Here's hoping Mr.
  Berry's testimony has led to a tidal wave of parents tearing Webcams out of
  kids' rooms.) There are undoubtedly other factors that leave children like
  Mr. Berry vulnerable -- a pop culture that applauds calculated displays of
  toughness, vulgarity and exhibitionism; a reality-show-fueled belief that
  seeking attention can make you a star; changing mores among teens who are
  sexually precocious without the necessary emotional underpinnings; and of
  course the age-old desire to shock one's parents while basking in the
  invulnerability of youth.

  But that said, the level of unreality Mr. Eichenwald describes is one many
  of us share, to one degree or another -- we simply haven't had time to
  accustom ourselves to the Internet's mix of anonymity and its ability to
  erase distance, or to the fact that the tool we love in one context can be
  put to frightening use in another. We marvel at how the Net lets small,
  far-flung groups get together -- but what works for woodworkers, toy
  collectors or parents of children with disabilities also works for
  terrorists and child predators.

  It's important, when we're scared and wondering whether it might not be
  better just to pull the plug, to remember that the Internet isn't all
  darkness: As Parry Aftab of WiredSafety.org told the subcommittee, "[t]oo
  often blamed for everything from the Black Plague to the sinking of the
  Titanic, the Internet is a wonderful tool for learning, communication and
  entertainment. It levels the playing field between the haves and the
  have-nots. All children look alike online. No one is classified by their
  race, ethnic origin, religion, accent or physical ability. Online they are
  all just children."

  But of course they're not all just children -- some of them are just
  pretending. As Mr. Berry noted, when he was 13 he set up his Webcam (sent
  free for signing up with EarthLink) in hopes that it "would help me meet
  other teenagers online, maybe even find a few girls my age. That never
  happened. No teenager outside of those in the Webcam pornography business
  ever contacted me. But, I did hear from many child predators."

  Ms. Aftab's reminder of the Internet's marvels shouldn't be forgotten. But
  it isn't the whole story -- her testimony went on to discuss the mix of
  good advice, education and technical solutions needed to let kids take
  advantage of the Net's wonders without falling prey to its dangers. It's a
  struggle that's new to us, but one that from now on will always be with us.
  Online, the good and the bad are inextricably bound together; to put an
  ugly twist on the old joke, on the Internet nobody knows you're a child
  molester -- and the dark places of the world are only a mouse click away.

  Drop me a line at realtime at wsj.com7 -- comments will be posted periodically
  in Real Time. If you don't want your comments considered for Real Time,
  please make that clear.

  --
  -----------------
  R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
  The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
  44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
  "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
  [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
  experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'