Slow Progress

Despite the appearance that nothing is going on, our volunteers are busy behind the scenes working on some basic needs the group has to create a working relationship and a professional delivery system.

Aside from that we have once again identified some patterns of use and abuse that we will begin to invite all of you to participate in exploring to one degree or another. Some of the detective work will always need to be private.

But some of it is a democratic conversation that only citizens can remediate.

Something all of you can begin to think about is the question of what constitutes fair punishment for a given crime? Julie Amero captured the world's attention by being found guilty of involuntarily exposing students to inappropriate content and potentially being sentenced to forty years in jail (the prosecutor - playing devil's advocate and enjoying the kill - whispered to Julie eighteen years). A teacher put in this position could in some places plea bargain down to a charge of murder and get a lighter sentence. In fact local newspapers described murder cases with far lighter sentences concurrent to Julie's ordeal.

Some of us believe the justice system is broken and absurd when it has to deal with disruptive technologies. For example, pornographers are the first adopters of artificially generated computer behaviors that make machines misbehave in the eyes of the law. Yet the authorities are charging the person closest to the misbehaving machine with the crime.

A teacher exposed to the irresponsibilities of students commandeering computers are easy, unsuspecting targets. Are pornographic pictures suddenly found on infected computers indicative of rampant criminal intent by middle-aged, married, middle-school teachers or is there a more sensible conclusion we can come to?

We'd like you all to think about this and let the world know your thoughts and ideas on fixing these legal issues. We'll attempt to feature the best ideas in later entries.

Word of mouth is often the best educational process we can invest in.