Coming up in September is the Annual TDCAA Criminal and Civil Law Update in South Padre Island. At a recent meeting to plan that conference, I was asked to consider doing a presentation on the recent development of MySpace.com as a frequent place for crooks and victims to intersect.

In preparation for such a presentation, I would like to hear about how you have seen that website pop up in your cases. Let me hear about how it has changed how we do business. This is a great chance for some of you lurkers to become posters. Get in the game.

And, by the way, did you know that this might be the last year for the annual to be at South Padre Island? Galveston may become a permanent replacement for the sandy alternate year spot for rejuvenating your legal spirits. I'd also like to hear who has the best memories of SPI and has been going for the longest time?

May 14, 2006

ROCKVILLE, Md.(AP) - Two teenagers were charged with setting fires in suburban Washington after they bragged about the blazes on MySpace.com, authorities said.

The 17-year-old schoolmates were involved in 17 fires in Montgomery County, fire officials said Friday. The teens face 22 charges, including two counts each of first-degree arson and four counts of second-degree arson.

Their names were not released because they were charged as juveniles.

Stores, vehicles, a bowling alley and two school buses were set on fire between Jan. 20 and April 16. Investigators got a tip to check out the online social networking site MySpace.com, where they found photos and descriptions.

"The significant thing is they posted on the Internet, and bragged about the fires, and that certainly allowed us to break the case," county Fire Chief Thomas W. Carr Jr. said. "They posted photos of these fires."

The teens are being held at a juvenile detention center.

"Whatever their motive is, they took the opportunity to set numerous fires," Carr said. "The neighbors were very much concerned about the terror in their neighborhood. They were freaked out."

This last Saturday, on SNL there was a skit of a classroom showing "kids" how to use MySpace.com. All the "kids" were adults, trying to pretend to be kids. Anyone happen to record the show?

I bet Grant Sparks or Angela Goodwin at the AG's cyber division, or some of their ace investigators, have some MY SPACE stories.

I wish I had seen the SNL skit. Do you think it has already been recorded and placed on youtube?

Whenever I see the defendants in the AG's traveler cases, I have to wonder. Often times, the middle aged offender is pretending to be much younger on the computer. Does he not expect the child to freak out when they see it is someone old enough to be their grandpa?

Ditto what Greg said.

I know the AG's office can help on that issue.

And don't forget jenga and the other similar sites. As soon as one site gets main stream and the kids know that their parents know about it, they switch to some thing "hipper".

We have even seen some teachers in our cases with "interesting" sites on MySpace. Sad but true.

Teens' online postings are new tool for police
By Wendy Davis, Globe Correspondent | May 15, 2006

NEW YORK -- When Judge Brian Boatright of Jefferson County, Colo., found a 16-year-old Evergreen High School student standing before him guilty of a weapons charge last month, the strongest evidence hadn't come from a police search, a neighbor's tip, or even a wiretap. The evidence had been supplied by the teen, who this year had posted pictures of himself surrounded by guns on his page of the social networking website MySpace.com.

MySpace and its cousins, Xanga and Facebook, have, in little more than two years, attracted more than 100 million users, most of them young people creating their own pages to show off to friends. Law enforcement officials, however, have another use for them: They are fast becoming a crucial source of evidence in crimes involving young people ranging from pornography to drugs to terrorist threats.

Last month, Kansas police thwarted a plot for a Columbine-style school shooting involving five boys, based on a MySpace posting citing the planned violence. It was at least the fourth Columbine-style plot this year revealed through MySpace or Xanga.

But the rapid increase in law enforcement use of MySpace, including security officers who routinely monitor the sites in high schools across the country, has caught the attention of civil libertarians and Internet advocates, who worry that in some cases students whose behavior would otherwise pass unnoticed are being subjected to extra scrutiny.

The civil libertarians say most young people don't realize that posting something on a social-networking site is akin to shouting it in a public square: The intimacy of the medium creates a false sense of privacy when, if anything, the Internet is even more open than most public communication.

The potential consequences of youngsters' posts on MySpace came to light again this month, when a 27-year-old man in Connecticut was arrested on charges that he had sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl he met through the site. That same day, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly called on the site to raise the minimum age required to become a member from 14 to 18.

Longtime Internet researcher Danah Michele Boyd described information on the Web as ''super public" -- remaining available indefinitely, searchable at any time, and accessible by anyone.

While conversations in public spaces might be overheard by passersby, the potential pool of listeners is limited and the conversation itself is ephemeral, explained Boyd, who studies teens and social networking at the University of California, Berkeley.

But the very qualities of the Internet that make it a powerful and democratic communications tool -- its openness and availability to everybody -- put teens under a level of scrutiny normally devoted to paparazzi-hounded celebrities, Boyd said.

''We're looking at all this online stuff with a strictness we never did offline," she said. Most teenagers, she addPage 2 of 3 --''You go online to gloat to your friends about the stupid things you've done -- or to embarrass the heck out of them," Boyd said. ''The number of teens who worry about their image with adults is very small." That nonchalance is landing teens across the country in legal trouble. Seventeen-year-old Ryan Zylstra of Michigan is facing three counts relating to child pornography and up to 20 years in prison based on a prank gone wrong.

He allegedly posted a photo of two friends having sex -- a 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy -- on his Xanga page; distributing sexually explicit images of minors under 18 is illegal under Michigan's child pornography laws.

The prosecutor has offered Zylstra a chance to plead guilty to one of the charges, which carries a possible seven-year term; he has so far rejected the deal, his lawyer said.

Zylstra is not the only teen facing prison time for material posted on the Internet. Three people in Rhode Island, two 16-year-old girls and one 19-year-old woman, face child pornography charges for allegedly posting sexually explicit pictures of themselves on MySpace.

Last week, two youths were charged with setting 17 fires in suburban Washington, D.C., after they bragged about the blazes on MySpace, authorities said. They face 22 charges, including multiple counts of first- and second-degree arson.

Many youths don't try to cover their tracks online, but when they do their efforts often fail.

''They are stupidly believing that they're somehow anonymous because they created a fake Yahoo address when they post on MySpace," said Parry Aftab, a New Jersey lawyer and Internet specialist.

MySpace often aids in investigations to uncover posters' real identities. Though the company's official stance is that it is not an arm of law enforcement, it takes allegations of crime on the site seriously enough that, last month, it announced the hire of Hemanshu Nigam to serve as chief security officer.

Nigam, previously the director of consumer security outreach and child safe computing at Microsoft, formerly worked as a federal prosecutor and was an adviser to the White House on cyberstalking.

MySpace also issues a guide for law enforcement, advising agencies about such issues as how to subpoena information to uncover the real identity of users, said spokesman Matthew Grossman.

MySpace maintains a team of about 20 people, led by vice president of operations Jason Feffer, who work with police on as many as 150 investigations a month, targeting adults and children.

Even though the material that sparks investigations might be phony, police and schools tend to take what they see online very seriously.

Last month, on the seven-year anniversary of the Columbine school shootings, five Kansas students were arrested after a message about a plot to carry out a similar massacre at their school surfaced on MySpace.
ed, assume that their audience on the Web is their peers -- and not parents, school officials, or the policPage 3 of 3 --Some of the defense lawyers in that case have said the charges were overblown -- a defense that comes up frequently when threats originate online, where there is little context for potentially threatening messages. While authorities in Kansas allegedly have found additional evidence, Internet specialists say that some other cases involving threats aren't always as alarming as they first appear. ''Kids have always pulled fire alarms to get out of tests," Aftab said, adding that now, they post bomb threats online.

Although they do not quarrel with the use of MySpace evidence in major criminal cases, civil liberties groups say that schools go too far when they try to discipline students for policy violations that occur off school grounds.

In one recent Massachusetts incident, school authorities demanded that a group of students be tested for drugs after a school security officer saw a MySpace photo showing the students passing around what appeared to be a pipe.

The ACLU of Massachusetts intervened and persuaded the school to drop the demand.

''We got involved in that and said, 'No way can they do that,' " said ACLU lawyer Sarah Wunsch, who declined to name the high school. ''The mere fact that they go to your school doesn't give you the right to demand they submit to drug testing."

In other parts of the country, schools have suspended or disciplined students after MySpace photos surfaced that appeared to show them drinking.

Earlier this year, East Grand Rapids High School in Michigan temporarily prohibited about 20 students from participating in extracurricular activities after seeing an online photo of the teens drinking. Principal Patrick Cwayna said he took the action in accordance with a school board policy designed to deter underage drinking.

Civil rights groups are also filing lawsuits against schools that have suspended or expelled students for such offenses as making fun of teachers or expressing hostility toward classmates on sites like MySpace.

''Speech critical of government officials, which includes school officials, is protected by the First Amendment," said Wunsch.

This month, the Springfield School Board in Ohio reinstated a 14-year-old girl who, along with a friend, created phony, unflattering profiles of a school official and teacher.

The page, said Arnold Gottleib, an ACLU lawyer who represented the girl, contained statements like, ''I like young boys," and ''Michael Jackson's my hero." But, he added, the page ''was almost so over the top, and in some respects juvenile, that I can't believe that anybody with any degree of objectivity could believe it was a school administrator and teacher putting this stuff out there."

Not everyone agrees. Gerry Tirozzi, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said schools are obliged to take action when students use sites such as MySpace to post material that defames school officials.

''It could change the atmosphere of the school, the attitude of students toward that teacher, even the attitudes of parents toward that teacher," he said. ''The school should go overboard in really representing to students that this will not be condoned."

MySpace is also great to check on your favorite probationer's compliance with conditions prohibiting drug/alcohol abuse. They love to brag about their last use and the site lets them tell the world. For those in drug court programs, you may want to keep the admissions online under wraps if you want to use the intelligence to have the P.O. test them at opportune times. For others, the site should be fun to admit at a MTR hearing!

It wasn't geared towards law enforcement, but the Today Show had a piece on College Student that have personal sites with their info, etc. and they give the site to potential employers. Other sites are for students only - have to have a college email account. They went on to say that many employers will use students to access these sites for info on potential employees that have applied. Moral of the story was that you shouldnt put anything on the site that you wouldnt want your mom or a boss to see. The guy that had the picture of himself streaking (full frontal) was more that a little embarrassed.

I couldn't help but think that there would be a lot of info that could be useful against defendants IF it could be found.

I had not heard of "myspace.com" until Feb. 1, 2006 when a man found a decomposed baby's body. The mother buried the body in the her yard three weeks before - she put in "myspace.com" how she had just buried a mistake and was now going out partying.

Mr. Bradley, the really good times at South Padre are probably ones no one will claim they remember.

nice to see that fred is warming up to the use of the word pimp in common parlance. he's turning into a regular huggy bear.

quote:

---

Originally posted by David Newell:
nice to see that fred is warming up to the use of the word pimp in common parlance. he's turning into a regular huggy bear.

---

I quote Fred quite often in Bastrop. He is a learned man. And you'll not find another career prosecutor more knowledgeable about lead guitar players and rock&roll in the rest of the Great State of Texas.

I have no specific recollections of any seminars in South Padre Island, or the alleged associated festivities therewith.

Does anyone remember the mosquito festival the year at SPI that the party was held at the Schlitterbahn water park?

Absolutely!!! As I recall, I only survived Mosquito Fest because I was able to bum some insect repellent from a member of the band.

I have a very brutal sexual assault of an intoxicated college student by another student, who claimed that he thought "some girls liked it like that". "Like that" included biting her genitals and yelling "Shut up, bitch!", while sodomizing her. I have a picture of him from his Facebook page with a napkin wrapped around his face like a mask. The caption reads: "Mexican Bandit, rape, rob and leave." He can explain that at punishment.

I am currently high on my anti-myspace.com soapbox. I see lots of naive high school kids who see no problem with posting pretty specific details of their lives, along with pictures. I have spent a lot of time lately talking to high school students and explaining that while the cute picture of them at the lake in their bikinis is totally innocent, the predator who is viewing those photos doesn't care. And since they have told very descriptive details of their life, the predator should have no trouble contacting them. In some ways I'm glad that these kids have made it this far in live retaining some of their innnocence, but many of them will be leaving for college in a few months, and some commom sense will come in handy.

As far as SPI, I'm going to take the advice of Kenny Rodgers, the retired chief investigator from Harris County, and lie, deny, and make cross accusations. :-)

Here's a website that might pop up in a case recently filed in Bell County:

Ramonce Taylor's page

On a related note ... I've never been on MySpace until someone sent me this link. How depressing. I weep for the future.

I had a girl who had a MySpace account with the typical punishment information...drug use, admissions to guilty feelings about the offense she was charged with, along with all the corresponding court dates, and just in case we weren't really sure it was her, her mugshot as her front page photo. It was greatness (too bad she just went open to the judge instead of having a full-out jury trial; but I think part of the reason for that was her MySpace 404(b) material that was duly disclosed to her attorney).

This was the myspace page for an intox manslaughter defendant who had killed his best friend and was given probation at the victim's mother's request. His PO in College Station stumbled upon it and we took great interest in reading on his profile about his plans for his next tattoo, the size of which would depend on how much money he spent partying on 6th street during his upcoming trip to Austin. The posts were great too, since he apparently was known to party with and buy drinks for friends when he went out. The Court brought him in for an administrative review and was reading the defendant's myspace page when he came into the courtroom. The defendant's response to the Court's treatment sanction was to shut down his myspace page and abscond.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Shannon Edmonds:
Here's a website that might pop up in a case recently filed in Bell County:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=25432468

---

UUuhhhh...this page has been shut down for some reason. Go figure.

I saw it before it shut down, as I am sure many others here did. The kids of today, I just don't understand them...