TELFORD, England – It’s never easy to determine how much weight you should give information offered about a place with which you aren’t familiar, whether the information is local escort service reviews, driving directions, the best locations for anonymous public restroom-based sex or crime statistics.
Let’s say you’re thinking about relocating to Telford, England, for instance, and you simply want to know how common it is for pornography to be displayed on the digital podiums at the Telford Shopping Centre. This seems like something that shouldn’t be too hard to determine, right?
Wrong!
Looking over the crime statistics available for Telford, I’m at a loss to figure out where such digital vandalism lands, statistically speaking, based on the categories of crime listed here.
On the one hand, you might be tempted to assume a digital billboard porn-hack would fall under “Criminal Damage and Arson,” except my understanding is there’s no actual physical damage done to digital kiosks by displaying porn on them –- unless some virulently anti-porn person comes along and bashes the screen with a hammer, of course. Even then, one would assume the court would assign the damage done to the hammer-wielding decency warrior, not the hacking prankster who decided to turn the kiosk into a miniature, open-air porn theater.
Porn vandalism could be construed by some as “Theft,” I suppose, if the content in question had been pirated. But, since there’s no information about the source or provenance of the porn at issue in the Great Telford Porn-Kiosk Kerfuffle of 2017, we can only speculate as to whether it was distributed against the wishes of the rights-holder.
Oddly enough, there doesn’t appear to be any category offered in this crime stats breakdown that explicitly and specifically addresses computer-based crimes, unlike “Bike Theft,” which gets its own category outside “Theft from the Person” and “Other Theft.” The latter presumably comes into play when you steal something from an animal or perhaps from an inanimate object of some kind.
Other statistical genres can be disposed from our consideration without further thought, including “Vehicle Crime” “Shoplifting” and “Burglary.” Eliminating these areas still leaves us with several possible categories where billboard porn-hacks could reside, however, including “Drugs” (we’re always hearing about how addictive porn is, after all), “Possession of Weapons,” “Public Order” and, of course, the greatest of catchalls, “Other Crime.”
Since there’s some disagreement as to whether porn can be considered an addictive substance without being physically consumed by its users, let’s assume the local authorities aren’t going to be pursuing this investigation as a drug crime. And, while porn is clearly very dangerous to every living person (and the occasional dead one), I still suspect the cops aren’t going to describe the porn-hacker behind this kiosk crime as “armed and dangerous.”
“Public Order” has promise, except from the heading alone it’s hard to determine what the parameters are for this kind of crime –- or, for that matter, whether the crime involves disturbing or promoting social order. (For all I know, Telford could be a hotbed of limey anarchists who resent any attempt to get them to stand in line, even if it’s to watch porn on a mall kiosk.)
This leaves us with two possibilities: the safe bet of “Other Crime,” or the equally broad designation of “Anti-Social Behaviour” –- which I assume is just like Anti-Social Behavior, except spelled with an English accent.
Adding to my confusion, it’s not clear whether Anti-Social Behaviour (or “ASB”) is a crime unto itself or a non-criminal alternative to crime. These charts, after all, are labeled as the “Crime Plus ASB Breakdown for Telford.”
Maybe ASB is just a form of civil infraction? If so, does this mean instead of doing appropriately hard time for his hardcore crime, the kiosk-hacker might be required merely to pay a fine, perhaps with a few hours of community service added on for good measure?
If that’s the case, I can’t imagine the now-outraged, disgusted (and possibly vaguely horny) residents and mall-shoppers of Telford would stand for such an insignificant slap on the wrist for this horrendous, shameful crime –- especially if they’re anti-porn anarchists.
In any event, the important thing is the local authorities aren’t taking this porn-kiosk thing lying down –- mostly because you can’t see the screen if you lie down, but also because this is the sort of Anti-Social Behaviour (and perhaps weapons possession) which cannot be taken lightly.
“We are carrying out a full investigation into this complaint and have referred it to West Mercia Police and the cyber-crime desk,” said Emily Taylor of the Telford & Wrekin Council.
Wait a minute… They have a “cyber-crime desk” in Telford?
Is there only one such desk in town, by chance? If so, there’s no big investigation needed here, folks. Clearly, the person responsible for the porn-kiosk cyber-crime was sitting at that desk.
No need to thank me, West Mercia Police –- although if you wanted to spell “behavior” correctly in the future, my copy of Word certainly would appreciate it.
