What is it about text messaging that makes people stupid?
Published Sun, Nov 19 2006 8:26 PM
Technorati Tags: Computers and Internet, News and Politics
We all remember what happened to Rep. Mark Foley. People in Washington remember Spokane Mayor Jim West. Now a top level Lewis County administrator has been caught up in a similar scandal and fired for it. This time it has resulted in a few law enforcement careers going down the tubes and at least one divorce, with a few police wives investigating their husbands too.
From the Seattle Times comes this article...
A recently fired top-level administrator in Lewis County, Patti Prouty, has gone from anonymity to infamy. As central-services director, she was in charge of hooking up police cruisers with mobile data computers. She then used that technology to send naughty instant messages to at least 10 police officers while they were on patrol.
The cops played along with Prouty, replying with their own racy messages. "Are You Nakie?" is the immortalization of a message from Napavine's police chief to Prouty.
...
Assistant professor Gregory Gilbertson, director of a vocational criminal-justice program at Centralia College, is discussing the scandal in class with students who aspire to work in public safety. The lesson focuses on ethics.
"The message to be learned is if you take public money as your salary, then the public holds you to a higher standard of conduct," he said.
"It reinforces the point that public officials must avoid any type of unprofessional behavior because it disgraces the profession and it erodes public confidence."
This leaves me wondering. Does today's technology that allows for instant communications make people stupid? Who in their right mind would sent this type of message while on the job, using company equipment?
Most instant messaging software I've seen gives you the opportunity to save all of your conversations with a contact. Email is just about forever too, especially if it's on servers that belong to your employer. I keep a record of all of my instant messaging conversations and all of the email I send or receive.
Over the years we've seen email communications used in courts as evidence. A notable example of this is when Microsoft was sued by the Justice Department and internal emails were used to present a pattern of behavior.
It should be obvious by now that everything we do in modern society leaves a trail. Sure, there's a certain degree of anonymity on the Internet but the old adage that on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog is no longer true. This is especially the case when you use servers supplied by your employer, or servers that belong to a government agency.
Sure, this all happened this summer for Prouty, before the Mark Foley scandal broke. But it happened after the Jim West scandal broke.
What is it about the Internet that makes people stupid anyway?
Cross Posted at NWBloggers.com.
Linked at DragonLady's World, Leaning Straight Up.
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