Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Father Labeled a ‘Pervert’ for Taking Pictures of Own Children in Park

Gary Crutchley, 39, was photographing his two youngest sons Cory, 7, and Miles, 5, on an inflatable slide when a woman running the slide asked that he stop. When he protested, other families waiting on the slide line also demanded he put the camera away.

One woman accused Crutchley of taking photos of children to put on the Internet and called him a pervert, he told the Mail.

So now, sex offender has become the default rather than the special case. If you have a camera at the playground taking pictures of children, you’re obviously an Internet pervert. That makes perfect sense, considering that we need such harsh laws to deal with the enormous number of pedophiles that lurk around every dark corner where children may or may not be.

Where does this paranoia end and which luckless souls get caught up in this draconian dragnet before its all over?

The accusations got so out of hand that Crutchley had to get two policemen to confirm he had done nothing wrong, the paper reported.

Rather than catch criminals, the police are there to confirm you’ve done nothing wrong. Guilty until proven innocent.

“What is the world coming to when anybody seen with a camera is assumed to be doing things that they should not?” Crutchley asked in an interview with the Daily Mail. “This parental paranoia is getting completely out of hand. I was so shocked.”

I’m not shocked at all. Had enough yet?

Without knowing a single thing that’s happening at Apple right now…

…The .Mac to MobileMe transition seems to be a bit of a debacle, as viewed from the outside. I have no clue what’s delaying them, but I would be very interested to hear the story someday. (Which I realize I never will.) As someone employed in IT, I have some concept of what’s involved in a change like this, and I know it’s hard work, and I’ll be the first to cut everyone involved a generous amount of slack, but holy cow, much of the service has been down for so long that it seems something unanticipated (or neglected) must have gone very wrong. I have a lot of suppositions about contingency plans and transition strategies, but without knowing a single fact, I’d just be spewing more pointless speculation, and there’s enough out there to go around. Besides, impugning the people who are trying to get the service working won’t make it happen any faster.

The iPhone 3G roll-out starts tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM in the US, and MobileMe is a big part of the new phone’s functionality, so let’s hope they get things ironed out soon.

A quick post to mark my sadness to see Fake Steve go. I got a special enjoyment out of the blog up to the day when the real author was revealed. Anonymity made it that much more fun to read, and when the author’s identity was revealed, I said, “Daniel who?” and it wasn’t as much fun anymore. The blog continued to be an interesting commentary about our little corner of the computing world, but it lost steam over time. Ideally, it would have concluded the day Mr. Lyons’s identity was revealed instead of sputtering out, but its continuation shouldn’t be a cause for regret. It was fun while it lasted and I wish Mr. Lyons the best of luck in return for the amusement he’s provided.