Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I have a friend who recently had something unpleasant happen to him. Some local police arrived at his residence and took away his personal computer. What occasioned this event?

My friend lives in the home of another friend, a gentleman I'll call Eric, who once served as a public official who is now near 60 years old. Eric was arrested not long ago and charged with soliciting, via his personal computer, a prospective sexual encounter with a correspondent who represented himself as a 15-year-old youth. The correspondent was not a 15-year-old youth but a security guard, working with police, setting up an on-line sting. During the arrest, Eric got into a scuffle with police and he was pretty badly beaten. He has forcefully denied the allegations in the arrest. When the police arrived at Eric's home, they took his computer too. I guess this is now standard police procedure.

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hy did they confiscate my friend's computer as well as Eric's? He expressed some concern as he had stored some photographs of himself being intimate with some of his male companions.

When I heard this, it gave me pause. I am 25 years older than my friend and I have always had a somewhat cautious relationship to computer culture, mostly as a result of what I regard as its invasion (perhaps even destruction) of each person's-- as well as our collective-- sphere of privacy. I then asked myself: had I ever taken photos of myself having sex with another man? I'm almost certain I had not. I asked another friend if taking sex pictures of oneself with others was unusual these days. He assured me it was not, that many people enjoy taking pictures of themselves and storing them on their hard drives and even swapping them. It's a brave new world. You have male!

In my line of business, I have sold publications which feature images of men in intimate poses. Perhaps after all these years of carrying this part of the product line, I just don't see it anymore. Product is product. And I suppose there is the ambition in many people to be their own adult model. Since I was formatted in a time when these adult publications were not widely commercially available, perhaps not available at all, there is the possibility that I still regard this phenomenon as daring and new, even though explicit erotic publications have been around for nearly 35 years, meaning a whole generation has grown up regarding them as part of the existing cultural scene.

The desktop computer and all the plug-ins, as well as the web, has democratized erotica and now everyone can be a star on their own server, even though it's not the same as older print culture. Is the thrill gone forever? Now, the local police will have the opportunity to view my friend in the most intimate of behaviors; I suspect it will not be their first time. It might get him a date, but I doubt it, even though he is a very good-looking man.

Do ethics and behaviors change with the wide acceptance of new technologies? You bet! Did letter-writing change with the introduction of the telephone? Did writing change with the adoption of the typewriter? I could make the argument, which I think has already been made, that the prose of Henry James became more prolix once he hired a typist to take his dictation. (Henry liked to talk and was one of the first in England to get a telephone. Did Oscar Wilde have a telephone? I doubt it; he was in prison at the time Henry got his horn.) Has copy-editing become a rarified skill now that anyone can publish his or her book through print-on-demand? Does anyone care? Is quality sacrificed for convenience? It is often the critique of mass culture.

Each is welcome to do what he wants. But here's what I don't get. When did it become an arrestable offense to chat on-line with someone posing as a minor? Isn't there the issue of false representation? Are there hordes of teens on-line surfing around to meet 60-year-men for sexual encounters? Or are the majority of those posing as teens on-line in fact adults employed by the constabulary? This is an area that is something worthy of an academic study. Truly, a brave new world.

What happens when your PC is taken away by a police detective? What happens when they can search your server? Can they plant evidence of "suspicious activity" on your hard drive and then have a press conference? I suspect most people have what they regard as the most personal relationship with their home PC and trust that info stored there will remain private-- yes, I know, pure foolishness, but it is what it is. A written letter can be opened, read and copied. An e-mail can be copied, posted, and blasted around the world in seconds. Communication on steroids. I've always thought and still think that gay life should have its secret compartments. Why? Because the straight world hasn't, doesn't and never will "get it."

Perhaps when the local police look at my friend's hard drive, they'll see the sex pix as ancient Greek gymnastics. I have no idea. The world is increasingly a stranger and stranger place.

Weeks later, my friend has not had his PC returned.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com