Call it what it is

A Democrat in the Florida Senate is claiming that “someone” stole nude photos of her way back in 2000 and has been disseminating those on the Internet. She wants to pass a new law in Florida that would make it a felony to steal photos from someone’s phone, or to create fake photos of someone.

The bill sponsored by Book, a Democrat, gets its first committee hearing Tuesday. It would strengthen Florida’s revenge porn law by making it a felony to steal sexually explicit images from someone’s phone or other digital devices. It would also make disseminating altered or created sexually explicit images, known as deepfakes, a felony.

Here’s the thing: Ms. Book was 16 years old in 2000, when she claims her nude pictures were ‘stolen’ from her. It’s already a felony for people to trade in nude photos of minors. She is trying to use what happened to her to insinuate that the pictures were taken of her without her permission by her rapist. That isn’t at all what happened. She claims that she has no idea how the pictures were ‘stolen’ from her.

What really happened is that she took the pictures herself, and then freely sent them to someone else. It was that person who disseminated the pictures further. As proof, I offer this article from the Miami Herald, and a quote:

Book — whose name is redacted — complained to FDLE that she had received multiple text messages from an unknown number that included two photographs of the senator “with exposed breasts” and also threatened to “leak the photos to Fox and her career would be over.” Kamperveen also allegedly texted sexually explicit photos that included female genitalia and the portrayal of a sexual act, and asked for $5,000 in gift cards in exchange for destroying the photos. Book told agents that she recognized the pictures of her breasts as those “she had taken of herself and only shared with a close friend.”

So let’s sum up what actually happened: Ms. Book took some nude phots of herself when she was 16 years old. She sent them to a boy she was infatuated with, and that boy didn’t keep the pictures to himself. This is a story that plays out all of the time in high school.

The Internet is forever, and things like this will continue to haunt her for the rest of her life. This is why I was constantly telling my high school students that putting your entire life on social media, and taking these sorts of pictures is a bad idea. The don’t listen. Teenagers never do, because they think they know everything.

Back to Ms. Book. Ms. Book mindlessly took nude photos of herself and distributed them. It was a foolish, slutty thing to do. She now has to live with the consequences of that. That doesn’t mean that she needs to be extorted for money, but the man who tried to use that to extort money from her broke the law. He will be punished for that.

It’s already a crime to be in possession of child porn. It’s already a crime to extort money from others. That isn’t good enough for Ms. Book, who is now a powerful politician, and wants to pass laws that aren’t needed and wouldn’t have done a thing in her case.

Here is the issue that I have with this proposed law: It would make it a crime to possess any picture “showing of the human male or female genitals, pubic area, or buttocks with less than a fully opaque covering; or the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any portion thereof below the top of the nipple; or the depiction of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state.”

This law goes too far, and it will be far too easy for people to unknowingly fall afoul of this overly broad law. Think about how this picture would be made illegal by this bill:

Here are some of the bills being sponsored by Ms. Book in the 2022 session:

• A bill to allow the defacement of displays of Confederate monuments and flags.
• Add new protections for LTGBQ persons making sexual advances
• Expand Florida abortion rights
• Eliminating the statute of limitations for sex crimes if the victim was under 16 at the time of the alleged crime. This would mean that a person who is 50 years old could accuse you of a sex crime that occurred 35 years ago. (Think Justice Kavanaugh). How hard will it be to establish an alibi or find witnesses in your defense?

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In a side note, Ms. Book also famously voted against 2021’s Senate Bill 86, which requires the state to list college majors that don’t lead to employment. This has lead to degrees like women’s studies and 14th century French poetry being labelled as the waste of time and money that they are.