News
A 39-year-dilapidated man in the UK was sentenced to more than a year in penal complex on Tuesday for sending unsolicited images of his genitals to a 15-year-dilapidated woman and a woman in her 60s, according to a press release from Essex Police. The teen woman was left “overwhelmed and crying” according to the Guardian.
Teenage Cybercrime Gang LAPSUS$ Strikes Again
Nicholas Hawkes pleaded guilty to 2 counts of “sending a photograph or film of genitals to cause alarm, damage or humiliation.” Hawkes sent the images to the woman and woman on Whatsapp and Apple iMessage, although it’s now not immediately clear if he knew the victims personally.
Hawkes is the primary person in Britain to be charged beneath an unsolicited nudes provision of the brand new Online Safety Act, which was passed last year and took accomplish January 31. Hawkes was sentenced to 66 weeks in penal complex—roughly a year and three months, and was already on probation during the offenses for “exposure and sexual activity with a baby beneath 16,” according to the BBC.
The Online Safety Act has been controversial from the start for including a alternative of provisions that digital rights groups have opposed, including a new age verification requirement for patrons of online porn and new necessities that would force companies to abolish cease-to-cease encryption of messages. Apple and varied tech companies signed a letter last year urging UK legislators to re-evaluate the law since cease-to-cease encryption is a vital software for keeping messages safe among activists and journalists.
Nonetheless the points of the brand new legislation that are largely uncontroversial involve things savor the ban on unsolicited nudes, especially those being sent to adolescence. Essex Police harassed out that folks generally think they can conceal behind the internet when committing various offenses, but clearly, that’s a very naive idea.
“Perpetrators may think that by offending online, they are much less probably to be caught, nonetheless, that is now not the case. ‘Cyber-flashing’ has a detrimental impact on victims, and we are able to continue to investigate all experiences of this offense,” Detective Chief Inspector James Gray said in a statement revealed online.
“My main message right here is to the perpetrators, those that think it’s acceptable to ship these unsolicited images without permission. It’s now not and I ask those that think it’s acceptable to think on their behavior.”
U.S. laws about cyberflashing vary by state, although the potential penalties don’t include jail time. Virginia passed a law in 2022 that any unsolicited “intimate image” sent to another adult may well bring a fine of $500. California also passed a law in 2022 dubbed the Forbid Lewd Activity and Sexual Harassment, or FLASH Act, that doesn’t label the activity a crime but does allow anyone to sue for up to $30,000 in civil damages.