Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced that a Miami man is in custody on charges of sexual battery on a child. Acting on a tip received from a Clay County student at one of the Attorney General’s CyberSafety presentations, deputies from Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler’s Office arrested Anthony Alexander Caldara, a mechanic serving active duty in the U.S. Navy, for sexually abusing a young girl. The tip was reported by the victim’s older sister to an investigator with the Attorney General’s CyberCrime Unit.

The older sister, a student at a local Clay County junior high school, approached the CyberCrime investigator after attending the Attorney General’s CyberSafety presentation. She reported to the investigator that she and her younger sister had been communicating with Caldara, 21, via cell phone and text messaging and Caldara had sent the children pornography. The two children eventually met Caldara in real life and a subsequent investigation revealed Caldara sexually abused the younger sister.

I’m not aware of any federal Internet safety commissions that met during the Bush administration. From what I can tell, that administration paid very little attention to Internet safety other than to add to the exaggerations and fear-mongering about so-called Internet predators. So is there any point in taking yet another look at Internet safety? Yes, if only because things have changed dramatically over the past few months. To begin with, we have a new administration led by a president who actually understands the Internet as well as the constitutional issues that arise whenever government tries to control online speech, access or even safety.

When the new working group convened Thursday, our first speaker was Susan Crawford, who works at the White House as special assistant to the president for science, technology and innovation policy. A law professor and founder of OneWebDay, Crawford brings a refreshing understanding of the government’s need to balance safety and security with civil liberties, privacy and even the First Amendment rights of minors. Her opening remarks helped set the tone for the group by admonishing us to “avoid overheated rhetoric about risks to kids online,” pointing out that “risks kids face online may not be significantly different than the risks they face offline.”

In a move aimed at cracking down on cyerbullying, Texas lawmakers passed a new bill that makes it a crime to impersonate people online. The new "online harassment" statute makes it a felony to create phony profiles on social networking sites with the intent to "harm, defraud, intimidate, or threaten" others. The statute defines commercial social networking sites broadly, saying they include any sites that allow people to register to communicate with others or create Web pages or profiles. (Email programs and message boards are excluded from the definition.)

When Oregon resident Cecilia Barnes broke up with her boyfriend, he responded by posting a fake profile of her on Yahoo -- and a particularly nasty one at that. He included nude photos of Barnes as well as her name, address and phone number.

Most college-bound males, regardless of race/ethnicity, have a positive opinion of computing and computer science as a career or a possible major. College-bound females are significantly less interested than boys are in computing; girls associate computing with typing, math, and boredom. College-bound African American and Hispanic teens, regardless of gender, are more likely than their white peers to be interested in computing, although for girls the overall interest is extremely low. Teens interested in studying computer science associate computing with words like "video games," "design," "electronics," "solving problems," and "interesting." The strongest positive driver towards computer science or an openness to a career in computing is "having the power to create and discover new things.