Bloggers debate subway flasher case
The value of cell phones as a public safety tool was called into question since the case of a Nebraska couple who died in a snowstorm last winter after several 911 calls from their car failed to get through. One relative said she would crusade for better technology in the local 911 system.
But mobile phones--specifically those that can take photos--are redeeming themselves in the public safety realm this week in, of all places, New York City. A posting on Flickr, alleged to depict a man exposing himself on a Manhattan subway car has made national news, including front-page publication of the photo in question by the New York Daily News. Sources have even named a suspect based on the picture.
End of story, right? Hardly--nothing is so simple in the blogosphere. Although most support the original poster's actions, other reactions have ranged from legal concerns over due process to alternative views of public exposure.
Blog community response:
"I thought the flasher story I posted yesterday was a bi-partisan, 'you go, girl' kind of situation, where we can all agree that flashing is bad. Reading through the comments the picture-taker is getting, I can see I was wrong. My personal favorites are the 'you stupid Americans, we Europeans frequently grope ourselves on the metro.'"
--Alarming News
"It turns out that the woman who took a camera-phone pic of her subway flasher is the girl who had my apartment before me. This helps quell some of my apprehensions about the case and its reportage. It would be really easy in the future to look at this coverage, get out a copy of photoshop and create a lynch mob against someone you don't like. That's unsettling."
--Make angry love to the fish!
"Apart the obvious evidentiary value of such photographs to the police--especially with an offender who remains at large--is victim-initiated public shaming through the internet good policy that should be encouraged?"
--PrawfsBlawg
"It's a stupid thing to do but is it really the behavior of a sicko? I mean, it's clearly not within our moral norms, but the reaction...Speaking (frankly) as one who has had similar experience (from males) directed at myself I always took it as a curiousity, as strange, as perhaps rude, but never thought it sick...just strange. Not that i am inviting all of you to flash me."
--AlexQ's Journal
