this is, Facing South Florida with Jim DeFede.
>>Good morning, I'm Jim DeFede and welcome
to Facing South Florida.
A couple weeks ago I interviewed
state Senator Lauren Book who had
private and intimate images stolen
and traded on a black market within the web.
As you will recall, she has introduced a law
making it illegal to buy, sell or trade
these types of images you know were stolen.
This week, there was a hearing in Tallahassee
on her bill and Hallandale Beach City Commissioner,
Sabrina Javellana, came forward to say
a year ago she discovered images of herself,
known as deep fakes, being spread on the internet.
>>These pictures looked so real, but they were not,
they were stolen images from my social media
essentially very strategically Photoshopped
to look like real nude images.
Sorry, this is like very hard.
And I was scared and I was confused
and I didn't know what to do.
>>She went to Tallahassee to support Book's bill
which would also make the dissemination
of deep fakes a crime.
After the hearing I spoke to her
and you will see that interview in a moment
but something else happened at that hearing.
Comments by state Senator Ileana Garcia
that were at best poorly thought out
and at worst an attempt to blame victims
like Book and Javellana for what happened to them.
But first commissioner Javellana explains
how she learned she was the victim of deep fakes.
>>Yeah, so last February, just a year ago,
just going about a normal day
and I get a message from someone on my
personal Instagram saying,
hey, someone's posting nude images of you online.
It might be someone you know, and I wanted to let you know.
And I thought this message had to be fake.
It was probably spam, you know?
I was gonna get a virus on my phone or something like that.
And then I was still engaging with the person
because I was curious and they sent me the link
to a 4chan thread that was archived.
And it was a thread of people, you know,
anonymous users posting pictures of me
that they screen-shotted
from my social media pages, you know
making vulgar comments about me.
And eventually as I went further down
there were deep fake images, you know
pictures that they took from my Instagram
and Photoshopped in a very strategic and
using different types of technology way to
make it look like they were nude images of me,
when they really weren't.
And that was, but it looked very real
and that was really shocking to me.
And I was, my immediate reaction was like
how do I get this off the internet?
Which internet is forever, unfortunately,
but it was scary.
I'm like, who is doing this?
Why, why are they fixated on me?
And is this gonna go out, is this gonna go viral?
And so I didn't know what to do.
It was, it was very confusing and stressful
and there's not really a lot
of like resources online to figure out
what to do in this situation.
I contacted somebody I trust in law enforcement
and they connected me with
Florida Department of Law Enforcement,
Cyber Crimes Division, who I met with
in their Doral office.
They printed out these photos and
looked through the thread of 4chan.
And I signed affidavits saying, you know
these are not real genuine pictures of myself.
These are deep fakes, these are Photoshops.
And then they looked into this further
because this isn't something they had
really experienced before.
This was kind of like a new situation.
And so they looked into Florida law and
they found out that, you know we don't have
anything that addresses this situation.
It wasn't technically illegal.
And so they had to stop their investigation.
They couldn't look into who was disseminating,
creating these images.
And I was just kind of left like
in a state where I have to deal with
these pictures being on the internet, unfortunately.
>>And when you first realized, what was there
what was your gut reaction?
>>I was scared.
I mean, I was really scared.
I'm just like confused.
Like, why is someone doing this to me?
Like, what pleasure is someone getting out
of like Photoshopping nude images of me?
And, you know, I'm a local elected official.
I work really hard and I was just, you know,
worried that these pictures wouldn't go,
were gonna go viral.
Like when celebrity nude images are leaked or stolen.
And it's just hard enough being like
a young woman in my position.
And I don't want that to be all people think of me as.
And so that's, that's what I was really worried about.
And I was worried about, you know, my family
and my partner and everyone
seeing all these pictures online.
>>And your future, what this could mean
in terms of potentially limiting your future.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
>>Yeah, and so at the time, the month before
I graduated from FIU, I got my bachelor's degree.
I double majored and, you know
I'm in this newly graduated phase,
figuring out what I wanna do with my life, my career
and at the time, I'm like I think
I would like to be a teacher for a few years.
We have a shortage of teachers.
I really enjoy, you know talking about history
and government and geography.
And so I wanted to teach in those subjects
and I signed up to take the Florida
teaching certification exam for May.
And I was gonna study for a few months.
But when this happened I just had to
think about, well these pictures are on the internet.
If someone looks hard enough and what if,
you know parents or students find them
and then they're sharing them among the class.
And it just, I don't know if I'd be able to
like work as a teacher, if that had happened
or if I could just mentally deal with that.
So.
>>Cause you were afraid,
In other words, you were afraid that,
you know you get a job as a teacher
and then somebody maliciously sends it to the school
sends it to parents.
>>Even that.
>>Sends it to your students,
and now you're facing even a new
level of attack.
>>Yeah, and so I didn't end up taking the exam.
And I had talked about this with FDLD,
the law enforcement cyber crimes folks.
And they were like, well, you know, we have the file here.
You did everything right.
You, you know, the investigation tells us
that these are fake images,
but people are still gonna see them, you know
and they look very real despite not being real.
And I just couldn't deal with that for now, at least.
Maybe in the future
>>You've been candid, very similar to Lauren Book.
You know, Lauren book has talked about
the sexual abuse that she faced early in her life.
You've also acknowledged that you
were raped while in college.
This, Lauren Book, in my interview with her
talked about how, in some ways this was
a new form room of abuse that she hadn't
even really understood.
And to some extent she thought was
even worse in some ways, you know?
>>Yeah.
>>How much did what happened to you in the past
suddenly get brought up all over again
when you realized there were these phony,
fake images of you being used against you?
>>You know, sexual assault takes a
very long time to heal from and
everyone deals with it in different ways.
And you know, something may trigger you
to think about it all over again
and seeing these nude images and the way,
you know people were talking about me on this thread,
it just, it didn't feel good.
I talked about this in the committee.
I. seeing those pictures, and also,
you know, at that experience I had in college,
I felt like I had no control or agency
over my own body, no matter what I did,
no matter if I wear conservative clothes
or if I don't post things online as much,
no matter what I do.
Like if I try to be the most cautious
in different situations, you know, being a woman
you're still in danger of different things.
And there's, you know, it's kind of a societal problem
rather than something you can solve
individually by taking certain actions.
>>The reason Javellana felt the need
to say she did nothing wrong was because
after she testified in Tallahassee,
the chair of the committee, state Senator
Ileana Garcia said this.
>>It had never dawned on me how bad
this situation is but it's sometimes
it's caused by us in the, I don't know,
I guess in our journey for validation
we expose too much of ourselves sometimes.
And I have seen, and the first time I
had to deal with this, was working
at the department of Homeland Security.
When we started working on the blue campaign
the human trafficking campaign,
how the very rules and laws that we have
to protect us, actually counter us.
They're against us.
Freedom of expression, the issues with,
where do you draw the line between
freedom of expression and pornography?
Social media and the things that we post on social media.
I can't begin to tell you, you know,
if you could sit down and really think twice
about the pictures of your kids that you post.
Sometimes I see parents very innocently
posing with their kids or putting pictures
of nude pics of their children on social media,
and I think to myself, wow,
they have no clue as to what they're
exposing themselves to, what they're inviting in.
Just hashtagging has long term consequences.
But I think that the responsibility
starts with us, with you and the content
that you put out there.
And then the responsibility will continue
with legislators like the ones on this committee today.
>>Was she blaming the victims?
What did she mean by those who seek validation?
After the hearing reporters asked her
what she meant and she denied she was shaming the victims
and said she supported the bill.
She then told the Miami Herald she is
sensitive to Book and Javellana being victims,
but added this.
I also think that I am constantly a victim.
I hate to play that card in this world of politics
where every single thing that I say is being questioned
and taken out of context.
I asked Javellana for her reaction
to what Garcia said in the hearing.
>>You know, she was saying that, you know
people are seeking self validation by
posting pictures of themselves online,
or pictures of their kids.
And, you know, if that's what makes people happy
or that's how they stay in touch with their loved ones,
then that's the way that it is.
Like, it doesn't matter if I wear clothes
from head to toe and I post a picture.
If I post a picture in a bikini
it's not okay to do what people are doing.
>>Did you feel that Senator Garcia was
in some ways blaming the victims here?
>>I mean, it did very much seem like that.
Like her comment started off saying
she was supportive of the bill.
And so I thought she was gonna, you know
empathize with victims of, you know, these issues.
And then she went into a tangent about like
maybe we should have done something different
and it just didn't make any sense.
And I felt like maybe she didn't fully understand
the bill or she was projecting some
other issues onto it that were unrelated.
But even if someone posted pictures online
it doesn't make it okay to Photoshop nude pictures of them.
Or if someone sent a confidential picture
to you know, someone, they trust
it doesn't make it okay for someone
to steal that or to share that without their consent.
So I think her comments were really lacking
in understanding and empathy.
And maybe she should talk to some people
who have gone through this.
Yeah.
>>Well, she says she's supportive of the bill
that she you know, know, heard it in her committee.
She, I guess she he voted for it.
>>She voted for it, yeah.
>>She voted for it,
yet it seemed as if there was
another agenda at work there too,
in certain terms of some of her comments.
>>I don't know why she said what she did,
you know, you did you could have just stopped at,
I am supportive of this bill period.
It was a very strange tangent,
and I did like, as I'm sitting there in the audience
I'm listening to it and I'm like, what is she talking about?
This is not related to the bill.
And this isn't very nice, or I don't know,
just empathetic.
>>When we come back state Senator Tina Polsky
on why she opposes Florida's new Surgeon General.