Verizon staff arrested for stealing customer's nude pics Two Verizon staffers are under indictment for allegedly stealing nude photographs from an attractive female customer's phone and passing them around. According to the gendarmes, the two men worked at a Verizon store in Bartow, Florida, where one, Joshua Stuart, 24, helped a nubile local waitress transfer her data from her old …
Lets be realistic here, great looking woman puts photos on her phone, hands phone to red blooded males and asks to have data transferred.
Whilst copying the pictures was illegal it is not uncommon for someone to check over the data and hey look what I found.
Imagine if they were minors, under 16 on a Saturday job?
Would she be prosecuted for the dissemination of pornography?
Oh the temptation.
"Why would you have nuddy pics of yourself on your phone?"
Oddly enough, not everyone has a computer. It's not uncommon for people to carry all their digital photos "forever" on their phone or camera, having the odd one or three printed at the local ASDA/Walmart.
Some of those who do have a laptop/netbook/desktop PC still don't know or care enough to learn how, to copy the photos over from the phone/camera. A friend of my wife was recently devastated by the loss of her phone because it had all of her holiday photos/baby photos/etc on it. There was a story recently (here?) about a phone dredged up from some bay, the SD card dried out and photos of holidays from a two year period used to help identify the owner.
Sometimes, I wonder about the people posting here and how much they know about the whole of the "real" world rather than their own little bit of it. We're all guilty of that to some extent.
"The Verizon pair are simply doing the same thing digitally."
Not quite. The potential damage to the victim is far greater in this case - a shoebox full of physical photos won't end up splashed across the entire internets. And you know there's no way in hell any guy who would do this in the first place isn't posting them on every forum he frequents.
So, there's a much bigger chance of the victim's manager / potential employer / new boyfriend / etc ending up seeing them. Not a huge chance, but much bigger, and IMO that potential harm makes this a significantly more serious offense.
And just to head off the posters who I'm fairly sure are at this moment furiously typing, "She deserved it for being dumb enough to have the pictures on her phone!" - why? You have a reasonable expectation of the privacy of your data just as you do the stuff you keep in your desk drawers at home. If you wouldn't want a cable tv tech to rifle through your filing cabinet, there's no reason to condemn anyone for having what is essentially the same thing done to them.
I also find it interesting that El Reg notes that the woman is 'nubile' and 'attractive' - this seems like a bit of an assumption given that I doubt that any photos of the victim were released (by those reporting the story, anyway).
I mean, really, maybe the guy is into women with terrible teeth or hunchbacks. Either way, it really doesn't have much bearing on the story at hand, and I'm guessing that if it was a man whose photos were purloined, Reg wouldn't be describing him as "a handsome male customer" who is a "beefcake local waiter" . I mean, it would be pretty funny, but I don't think it would happen...
Further, "this El Reg hack" remembers his local Boots taking copies and appears to be condoning the practise, suggesting the public should expect it as part of the service. I'm sure he'll feel differently when he's subjected to some form of rip-off when using a service somewhere. Perhaps his broadband will be stolen, or his car used for errands while in the garage for a service, or many other "misdemeanours".
These staff deserve jail, not just for stealing the pictures, but for the stupidity of trying to distribute them.
" I'm sure he'll feel differently when he's subjected to some form of rip-off when..."
It's all fun and games till it happens to you. I couldn't sit back knowing some that did that sort of thing. But then the BBC have showen they keep quiet about all sorts.
Just think, keep quiet and it could be your sister or your daughter next.
I was just short of ripping the wind pipe out of a co worker's throat, this weekend,after he started molesting one of our young secretaries on a night out. I would hope some one does it for my sister when I'm not around.
"I also find it interesting that El Reg notes that the woman is 'nubile' and 'attractive' - this seems like a bit of an assumption".
A safe assumption as the pictures were passed around. And they were referred to as "banging pictures" . It's a new usage of "banging" to me, but its meaning is clear.
"And just to head off the posters who I'm fairly sure are at this moment furiously typing, "She deserved it for being dumb enough to have the pictures on her phone!" - why? You have a reasonable expectation of the privacy of your data just as you do the stuff you keep in your desk drawers at home. If you wouldn't want a cable tv tech to rifle through your filing cabinet, there's no reason to condemn anyone for having what is essentially the same thing done to them."
Yep, she was dumb. In fact taking nude pictures of yourself on a whole is dumb. The TV cable guy shouldn't go through your drawers but what if he does? What if your ex boyfriend gets pissed off with you? What if your computer gets a zombie virus? House broken into. Computer techs and on and on.
Anyone taking nude photos of themselves and/or sex tapes risks themselves. Don't be so god damn stupid.
If you think you have a reasonable expectation of privacy for pics on a phone, think again. You may have a legal right to it, but not a practical right. If your phone is lost and turned in somewhere, chances are good that at least one person has flipped through the photos, looking for nudies, whether of the owner or the owner's girlfriend(s) [yes, the culprits are usually male]. After that they may look to see if there's a phone for mom, dad, or spouse and call them. Especially if you don't have some sort of screensaver on the device.
Same thing happens with your data file transfers on a PC. Back in the bad old days when you could actually watch the lines scrolling by as they'd copy, techs always knew who the pervs were when the IE cache got copied.
It might not be fair, it might not be right. But it is, and you're a damned fool if you don't take measures to protect yourself.
It never ceases to amaze me how people thought they could take nude pictures on film into somewhere like boots and think it wouldn't get seen \ copied etc.
Souping your own film is pretty simple, b&w is the easiest, its done at pretty much normal tap water temp so only time is really critical, colour neg (c41, or what you get when you buy standard colour film) is a little trickier as you do need to control the temp closely as well as the time, slide film is probably the trickiest as it is very sensitive to temp and time AND to do it properly its a 6-7 stop process as compared to 3 step for b&w and c41. Anybody who has ever seen a minilab in action knows that pretty much everything is seen, the fact you used to get prints back with helpful 'overexposed' stickers on them tells you they are all looked at.
A tiny little bit of paranoia can be useful at times!
FWIW theres nothing wrong with having nude pictures, but if you are concerned about their propagation it is wise to try and exert some control over their handling.
I used to develop my own colour slides, because it was an interesting techie thing to do (stereoscopic views using two small viewers stuck together; try it, it works). Once you start printing, that's a big step up. You're right in that it's not 'rocket science', but I'd suggest that it's beyond the immediate capabilities and interest of the majority of people.
Very true, if you are brave its not really more difficult than baking. You can even buy stuff like nova tanks or jobo processors which regulate the temp and some even pump all the chems in and out for you. It's pretty much all yr 7 chemistry stuff. These days its not needed with digital but people tended to think its some kind of voodoo when in reality it can be done in a bathtub with a fishtank heater, a processing tank (maybe ten pounds) and a few juice bottles to store them baths in to get them up to temp.
As you say printing is another ballgame, personally I preferred to scan then print via computer, a hybrid workflow :) but that was as much to save time as anything else. Wet printing is an art :) souping is a doddle.
Kudos on souping slides, I've done my fair share of velvia over the years and theres always a fear of killing it, e6 is one of the most temperamental processes. Nowhere near as nerve wracking as letting a lab process it (not because its nudes, my work was\is landscape \ events and a bit of sports) because you never know if your stuff is going to get done by the works exp kid. I got lucky and never killed a roll of my own that I had shot for work, but thats just luck.
But you can develop b/w negs in a mixture of coffee, washing soda, and vitamin C - look up the 'caffenol' process. The results can be as good as commercial developers...
Film cameras are much cooler than electric cameras: not least because you can build one for yourself with very little effort and you have absolute control over the image. A hundred and seventy years of history is not something lightly to throw away.
Don't encourage them - some of us were probably rather lucky not to cause (or suffer) serious injury. I think my parents were probably quite relieved when I lost interest in explosives and moved on to ultra fine grain developers so that my 16mm B&W film wouldn't be too grainy.
Paraphenylene diamine catecholate. Lovely names. The local pharmacist, also keen on home D&P, also encouraged me, but by the time I left university he had retired so I couldn't thank him.
I know what you mean. I still have an rz67 with a few lenses sat here. Every so often I throw some velvia in it and go play. I really want a 6x24 or 6x17 but its a lot of money to drop, film isn't getting any cheaper, emulsions are being dropped and getting chems here (on an island, most e6 and c41 chems can't fly so are near impossible to get) makes digital far more practical. I get stared at like I'm a luddite when I asked the camera store to order me in some (as they can ship via a cargo ship), yet they sell film.
I haven't tried caffenol, sounds like a riot! Films cameras are just special, like d type jags, there are faster cars, there are even slightly better looking cars, but overall it's just special and cannot be replicated.
It never ceases to amaze me how little respect some people have for others' privacy.
If you were helping a friend move house would you have a good rummage through their stuff whilst doing so? No? So would you do it to a complete stranger? Would you then tell take copies or tell other people about it?
Just because you can does *NOT* mean you should.
Where did I say I would? I wouldn't, doesn't mean I wouldn't expect others to. Do you lock you car doors? By your logic if you do you would steal someone elses car. I was simply stating that I would expect at least one staff member to take their own copies of such images and that souping your own images isn't tough and would avoid that problem and would be more respectful for the privacy of the person in the images.
>It never ceases to amaze me how people thought they could take nude pictures on film into somewhere like boots and think it wouldn't get seen \ copied etc.
It's not a bad idea to periodically take nude pictures of yourself, for the purposes of detecting skin cancer. Think of it as a 'mole map', and if any get bigger then investigate them.
as middle men go, they are some of the worst around. the majority of them are pornographers but others do worse things as well. you have to be quite a sick person to consider working for Verizon in the first place.
as an aside, the education system in the west is based on the Prussian model precisely so that we could have lots of phone shop employees (people too dumb to do anything else). so in a way its the pinical of modern achievement to have some pervert look through your shit and sell you a phone for too much money, at least it is in america where standards are quite a lot lower than they used to be...
"the majority of them are pornographers but others do worse things as well"
Your phone shops must be a whole lot more interesting than the ones around here - about the worst thing any local AT&T employees look like they might be doing is using their work computers to read Facebook.
Theft; to permanently deprive somebody of an object they lawfully own......
in this case, taking a digital copy, which in no way degrades the quality of the original, the owner still has the original...
to go a little deeper, as they were taking a copy from a backup copy that a copy of will be put on a new handset, then the owner is only ever going to have a copy of a copy of the original as the original is likely to be deleted from the original handset....
the only loss is that of dignity that the courts can fiscally compensate for, or commercial value may be watered down if there are copies in the public domain, again, this can be fiscally compensated for by the courts... ,
your definition is somewhat simplified and thus your conclusion is basically wrong as you missed a critical aspect
...or to obtain pecuniary advantage...
means that you look to have a net gain from taking the article(s). This can be a direct financial gain or it can be more nebulous such as gaining influence. This section came about from people takings things to be held to ransom and (reasonably for once) it was determined more appropriate to deal with them in theTheft Act than to lump them in with Kidnap.
You missed out simple economics. A unique thing is worth more than one of a million copies.
You take copies you devalue the original so you are permanently depriving the original owner of something so it is theft.
The music industry steals from the musicians in at the other end of the bell curve - musicians could sell 10 times what they do and get shit loads more money if the industry didnt exist.
As for film - if you illegally download a Sandler comedy you should be able to sue for mental anguish.
Yes it's theft. Anything that she has generated on her phone is recognized as her property. If someone generates a copy without permission it is recognized as theft in most regions. Even if she is still in possession of the original.
This is one area where the laws are almost up to speed with the digital age.
Your typical iDevice no longer has a removable SD card, possibly at the request of the US Dept. of Home Security and their mates abroad, who don't like the idea of gigabytes of information being stored on something smaller than a thumbnail.
And it is a nuisance having to wipe your phone completely before handing it in for servicing etc.
10 out of 12 people willing to "thumb" a post on ElReg are perfectly happy to hand over their mobile equipment, without contemplating where the data enclosed might wind up?
That is appalling. Remember back when folks around here actually had a clue?
While this is true, I would certainly balk at giving away unnecessary information, or entrust it when I don't need to. It's one thing to have to provide a bank employee a security question as a necessity for identification and authentication, and another entirely to provide access to private data to a phone store employee for convenience's sake.
Personally, the part of this story that I think isn't getting much attention is the customer that agreed to look at the pictures in question. I'm sure, before he realized that he knew the victim, he was only doing his job as a concerned citizen...
All said I find this whole story entirely and completely predictable, from all angles, and I'm surprised it's not more commonplace (and not at all convinced that it's not, by the way).
When I call my bank, it's to make an appointment with my banker, who has been my banker for thirty years. She's due to retire next year, but thankfully her daughter is there to pick up the reins at my local branch.
You've never actually been employed in a retail environment, have you?
You *always* have the choice to wipe your portable media before handing it over to a third party.
Years ago I used to know someone who worked in a photographic/camera shop in central London. Occasionally the police would bring in for development some film that they had confiscated in a raid on a porn producer.
The courts needed a copy of the prints for evidence. The police would order two copies. The shop would make three.
Always make sure you have a geek amongst your friends, preferably someone you can trust, and ask him/her to copy the data for you instead of relying on what could be very crappy service.
Still, pretty sad behaviour of those Verizon dudes. What I'm missing in the story though is if these dorks got fired or not.
Why Verizon has increasingly restricted movement of pictures to/from their "Verizon special" versions of phones that would ordinarily allow it. Everything has to go through their network, unless you re-flash the original firmware, which will violate the contract that got you the discounted price. They must have quite a trove by now.
I like the way the male friend viewed 21 of the 22 pics, bet he got a right thrill lol.
I used to know people who worked at a certain high street electrical chain (guess which one) who would have a good ferret through customers files when a machine was brought in for repair and save anything juicy to a usb stick for later perusal, so this sort of thing goes on a lot i imagine. I have a feeling it was store policy to look at customers pictures in case there was anything illegal on there (think garry glitter).
So the lesson here is never take a machine full of smutty pictures in to a repair department staffed by hot blooded, bored,underpaid single male nerds because those pics WILL be ogled and passed round.
That may be the lesson from this isolated example, yes. However, the lesson from reading El Reg over a decade or so is basically never, ever take any picture that you wouldn't be happy with your relatives finding on Google Images one day. That may be over-cautious, but I think it ought to be the starting position when we come to educate the next generation.
Perhaps El Reg, in the spirit of public service, could introduce a tag for "pics or it didn't happen", to link together every story that involves some hormonally over-charged teen ending up on Google and regretting the whole business. Then we could just point our sons and daughters at that and say "Read, Laugh, and then *Learn*".
Please stop abusing the word "vagina." While it is possible to photograph a vagina, it requires enormous cooperation on the part of the woman, and generally an instrument or two.
The writer meant "vulva," which refers to the tunnel, the gunwales and the oarsman.
Why do we Yanks have to make these corrections?
No, using your bizarre imagery, the vulva is the entrance to the tunnel, the gunwales and oars. Or what native English speakers call a 'fanny'. Anyway, what kind of boats do you sail that have tunnels?
Let's point the finger of blame at the illiterate TV executive(s) that named a programme 'Pimp my Vagina'.
"Her friend [...] was able to confirm that he had been shown 21 of the 22 pictures stolen by the Verizon staff."
So did he...
a) Have no problem whatsoever viewing intimate pictures stolen from a strangers phone and only asked them to stop when the 21st picture included her face.
b) Recognise her by picture 5 but force himself to view the rest for her sake.
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