All I could think of when I read this article was -- Jesus, what a dumbass. I mean, I get that he's some kind of "journalist" I never heard of and his wife is some "administrator" and they live in Savannah and are moving to France. Well, LA DE - freakin' -DA! Too bad they're such narcissists they think they can just snap some cutie-cute (no doubt) pix of naked kids and send them off to the Eckerd's, no problem. For a "journalist", that's unbelievably stupid. Is he at all aware of the political and social climate he's living in? Now, I'm not saying the Eckerd policy is not TOTAL BULLSHIT. But -- I can't help but think that there's something a little weird about taking pictures of naked kids. That's just me. I got a couple of Polaroids (my parents were smart) of myself, 7-8 years old (1978), in a hot tub with 6 other adults, all holding drinks. I am hoisting high a glass of Chardonnay and grinning ecstatically. I call these photos "Exhibit A" and "Exibit B." Completely innocent? Well... in a way. If we were living in France or Sweden, perhaps. But NOT Dallas, Texas. My parents are Professional arty bohemian types with delusions of European sophistication, and, if it had not been "a different time" (as one of my MANY therapist's memorably called the 1970's) they would have been IN JAIL, and I would have grown up in a nice or not-so-nice foster home of decent God-fearing Christians. I can't deny there have been times I've wondered if my life would have been better if that had happened... But enough about me. I'm sure this was a traumatic experience for everyone involved, but the fact of the matter is, a lot of people with crappy low-paying jobs get their only kicks from playing COP. I'm sure the poor lab techs at the Savannah Eckerd just live for a chance to catch some upper-class pedophile. It's lucky the guy took the condom cartoon (blechh) off his refrigerator and hid the picture of his naked pregnant wife (Je-sus!)or he'd be in jail, not contemplating his navel in an idyllic French village. That might have been a more interesting story. Well, I guess it was worth the ordeal, because he got this shit on Salon.

this will likely get lost in the sound & fury here, and to some degree it's a secondary issue, but I'd like to point out that part of the problem is the matter of screening for problems with no tolerance for false negatives.

Here's a classic example; bear with me. During the early years of the HIV epidemic, there were suggestions that the old syphilis test formerly required for marriage licenses be replaced by HIV testing. This was firmly and uniformly rejected by the public health community, and the high rate of false positives was the reason.

Here're some numbers to illustrate the point: Screening tests have two main characteristics - Sensitivity is the proportion of diseased people who were correctly identified, while Specificity is the proportion of non-diseased people who were correctly identified. Suppose your HIV test has a specificity of 99.5% and a sensitivity of 99.5%, which sounds great and is pretty close to the actual case.

If you apply this test to a population of a million people where one person in 10,000 is positive, the number of true positives detected (out of a total of 1,000) will be 995. With me so far? However, in with those 995 true positives will be 4,995 false positives, who will be indistinguishable from the true positives by this test. Where did they come from? Well, you've got a million people, of whom 1,000 have the condition - leaving 999,000 who are true negatives. But our test has 99.5% specificity, so .5% of that 999,000 will test false positive, and, presto-chango, you've got 5,990 positive people, of whom only 16.6% are truly positive, while the rest get to hear the news that they've tested positive for HIV.

Now, you can change that all important one person per 10,000 number around and see what happens, but the fact is most of the diseases we screen for, and many of the things we're concerned about in this society, are much rarer than that. SO the rate of true to false postive is even worse - and two real good examples are drigstore employees looking for child pornography in family photo processing, and airport screening. I'm sure readers can come up with many more examples, but all the policies that try to minimize false negatives of rare conditions will sweep huge numbers of false positives into the net, and very rarely are the consequences of that considered or if they are, they're minimized.

"Why do you suppose the Abu Ghraib torturers got such good effect out of forcing the prisoners to be photographed in humiliating nude poses? Or that the Nazi death camp guards got such good effect out of stripping prisoners naked for public assemblies? Because they know, as apparently many of us have forgotten, that forced public nudity is a good way to dehumanize people and strip them of their dignity and autonomy."

Absolutely. And if there were forced public nudity involved anywhere in the story, you would be on to something.

But there isn't. There's voluntary private nudity. The kids weren't being forced to march up and down the block naked, they were in the woods, away from others, camping and swimming with parents.

BTW, the assumption that mothers are inherently more modest than dads? Incredibly sexist.

The most frightening part of this story concerns how the children were questioned by the state. No written/audio record of the interview, no third party observer, no report filed. This, to me, is an egregious loophole in our legal system. Of course they should not allow the parent in question, or advocates for the parents, but no record of any kind? Terrifying.

Irrespective of the circumstances of this unfortunate episode, this is a good commentary on the:

Power of the state, and how vulnerable individuals when subject to its investigatory powers.

How little we trust human judgement, and must abide by the rules, since we can be called to task for any small error that leads to grevious harm

Imcompetence by the government, can seldom, be addressed, and is inherent such that empathy, care for all parties, human kindness are seldom reflected, or rewarded.

How angry we or others, are in our current society, that we yearn for complete isolation and insignificance. How often individuals use us to further some personal agenda.

Fear easily replaces joy, and is the constant refrain in the human condition.

I doubt that the story related by Ms. Jenkins has done anything but bring abundant caution, depression, and lack of trust.

VSS