A West Springfield man is facing charges after a new law bans the sharing of images of someone who is “nude, partially nude, or engaged in sexual conduct” without their permission, even if they agreed to the creation of an image or recording.
Jason Kehoe shared explicit photos on several of his social media accounts, according to the West Springfield Police Department. The detective knew the person in the photos and told them about the social media posts.
The person in the photos was unaware of the posts and said they had never had any form of romantic or substantial relationship with Kehoe, and only knew him as an acquaintance, police said.
Additionally, the original photos and the photos Kehoe shared were not the same.
“Initial investigation quickly revealed that Mr. Kehoe had digitally altered the photo-image,” police said. “The new digitally altered image convincingly made it appear as if the victim was photographed in a state of nudity. Kehoe also captioned the altered image on two of his social media accounts with intentional derogatory and personally directed comments.”
A new law that started on Sept. 17 criminalized these types of actions.
The ban extends to images generated by artificial intelligence that purport to depict a real person in a sexually explicit manner, often referred to as “deep fakes,” MassLive previously reported.
Often, people do not know the images have been shared until after they see them online, The Boston Globe reported in 2022.
“The harms from nonconsensual image sharing can be substantial; a single act of posting sensitive images can cause lasting and ongoing reputational damage to victims,” according to a 2016 report by the Data & Society Research Institute.
