01-31-2008, 05:12 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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People in masks cannot be trusted
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Another Julie Amero type case
Article
Quote:
NEW PORT RICHEY - The Gulf Middle School Web site was shut down Friday after a link to a gay-pornography Internet site was discovered, school officials reported.
Initially, school district officials feared someone had hacked into the Web site. Later in the day, they determined that the reason, while still troublesome, was not so sinister.
The link at one time led to a legitimate educational site, said Summer Romagnoli, a spokeswoman for the district. Recently, the company that operated the site was bought out and the Internet domain name was picked up by the more objectionable site.
"We reminded all of our people to go in and check their links," Romagnoli said.
Assistant Superintendent Tina Tiede said she checked links Friday on some of the other school Web sites, and she didn't find any problems.
Stan Trapp, the Gulf Middle principal, planned to send an automated telephone message to parents to let them know the Web site was being taken down.
The discovery happened just a few days after it was discovered that Gulf Middle students who went to the school resource officer's MySpace page could link to a sexually explicit dating Web site.
The link was through one of Officer John Nohejl's MySpace "friends"; that is, other people who link to his page.
The Florida attorney general's office cyber-crime unit is looking into whether any crime was committed when the "friend" linked Nohejl's MySpace Web page to the sexually explicit site, New Port Richey police Lt. Jeffrey Harrington said Friday.
"We made the attorney general's office aware of it," Harrington said. "We're waiting to see what they come up with."
Both Nohejl's supervisor and the principal knew the patrolman had a MySpace page, Harrington said. School resource officers routinely set up such Web pages to provide students an additional route to reach them, he said.
Nohejl would have screened all of his friends' pages before accepting them and linking them to his page, said Bonnie Lang, president of the Florida chapter of Kids Come First.
She said, however, that any of those friends can change their pages "at any time and we're not gonna know" without constant rechecks.
"Why should he be responsible for what someone else puts on his page?" Lang said of Nohejl. "He had nothing to do with it, I can tell you that right now."
Sandi Copes, spokeswoman for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, said there was no formal investigation under way Friday.
The agency learned about the situation with Nohejl's MySpace page through news reports, she said. The cyber-crime unit was subsequently in contact with New Port Richey police, Copes said.
Florida law prohibits disclosure of actual criminal investigations, she said.
It is not unusual for unwanted links to pop up on personal pages posted on sites such as MySpace, Copes said. Children often have links to thousands of so-called "friends" and "there is no way" a child actually knows that many people, she said.
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Another shocking case, as Julie Amero was, thankfully no trial that was a farce. It totally amazes me, and makes me wonder about the skills of some people in law enforcement. Hopefully with the media coverage that is happening now maybe they will back off and take some basic classes on the internet and how it works.
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