Please take the time to do a simple five-part exercise; it should take less than a few minutes.
1. Please picture in your head a loved one. Could be a son, daughter, mother, father, wife, husband, etc.
2. Picture in your head that your loved one dies in a horrific car accident (stay with me here).
3. Picture an accident investigator at the local police department takes photos of your dead loved one hanging out of what is left of the car and then sends those horrible photos to their friends for some sick reason.
Are you outraged yet?
4. Now picture in your head that the photos keep getting forwarded around the Internet and some random jerk builds a website solely to post the photos of your dead loved for everyone to see.
Are you outraged yet?
5. Finally, picture that a judge rules that the website in question does not legally have to be taken down. In other words, you have no recourse to take those photos down from a website that has no reason for existing except for sick voyeurs who want to see a dead person (your loved one) in a car accident.
Are you fist-throwing, wall-punching, screaming-at-top-of-your-lungs outraged yet?
If you think this type of thing only happens in the movies or some far away place, think again. Read this heart-breaking story from Newsweek about the plight of a family from California.
Columnists and bloggers can write all day and night about privacy laws on the World Wide Web and about the ethical debate around what rights the deceased should or should not have. Unfortunately nothing screams injustice and the need to alter local and federal laws than a story like above – a story that could easily happen to anyone in this country. Everyone – and I mean everyone – should be outraged by the story above. Outraged enough to write a simple email to your elected representatives that privacy laws must be altered so jerk-offs don’t get to ogle your dead loved ones for nothing more than their amusement.
According to the Newsweek story, the family had no legal recourse to have the photos removed from the Web; moreover, they couldn’t even sue the California Highway Patrol for gross violation of privacy. This is what happens when law and legal precedence do not keep up with technology. The Seeking Relevance blog is a staunch defender of the First Amendment and takes a wide scope concerning citizens’ rights to express themselves. But a website dedicated to nothing more than photos of a car crash has no inherent First Amendment value – in fact it has no inherent value at all. It is merely a sick decision by an unfeeling A-hole. And the fact that the law gives this family no recourse is even more disgusting.
So, as this case continues to work its way through the court system and various scholars and lawyers debate the fine points, this story has not spurred the outrage it should. If the people of this country could muster the kind of passion they show for following celebrity shenanigans or voting for the next American Idol and direct it toward a real cause then we could wipe out this sort of nonsensical injustice.
What would you do if the daughter in the Newsweek story was your child, your spouse, your parent?
Are you outraged yet?
