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Revision as of 18:26, 4 January 2006 by Will Beback (talk | contribs) (moved gang material to User:Tai Streets/Gang stalking)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk someone which may be a computer crime or harassment. This term is used interchangeably with online harassment and online abuse.
A cyberstalker does not present a direct physical threat to a victim, but follows the victim's online activity to gather information and make threats or other forms of verbal intimidation. The anonymity of online interaction reduces the chance of identification and makes cyberstalking more common than physical stalking. Although cyberstalking might seem relatively harmless, it can cause victims psychological and emotional harm, and occasionally leads to actual stalking.
Cyberstalking is becoming a common tactic in racism, and other expressions of bigotry and hate.
Cyberstalkers target and harass their victims via websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, open publishing websites (e.g. blogs and Indymedia) and email. The availability of free email and website space, as well as the anonymity provided by these chatrooms and forums, have contributed to the increase of cyberstalking as a form of harassment. Also contributing is that cyberstalking is as easy as doing a google search for someone's alias, real name, or email address.
The first U.S. cyberstalking law went into effect in 1999 in California. Other states include prohibition against cyberstalking in their harassment or stalking legislation. In Florida, HB 479 was introduced in 2003 to ban cyberstalking. This was signed into law on October 2003. The crime of cyberstalking is defined in Florida Statutes 784.048(1)(d) which is one of most strict of such laws in the United States. However, law enforcement has often not caught up with the times, and officials are in many cases simply telling the victims to avoid the websites where they are being harassed or having their privacy violated. Some assistance can be found by contacting the web host companies (if the material is on a website) or the ISP of the abuser. Many victims note that persistence is key. At times the seriousness of the impact of this type of violation is not comprehended and the third party facilitators of cyberstalkers tell the victim to work it out with their harasser.
The seriousness of the publishing of private persons participating in chatrooms on the Internet was brought to the forefront by the 2005 slaying of the entire family of Hossam Armanious of Jersey City, who was known for opposing certain Muslim beliefs with the suspicion that the murders were related to the publishing of private information about this family.
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Gang Stalking, Privacy Laws, & Abuse of Web Resources
The designation gang stalking was officially recognzied by the Santa Barbara Independent Media Center to denote an emerging class of collective behavior (e.g. mobs, riots, crowds) in which corporate shills and industry stakeholders collaborate to harass or defame individuals whose unconventional wisdom or criticism ruffles pride or threatens material interests (see Eleanor White's gang stalking guide for frequently asked questions).
Since the enfranchisement of the term, gang stalking has been most frequently noted in reference to cooperative networking among anonymous and technically skilled individuals within unmoderated Usenet news groups.
The keyword "gang stalking" now draws over 50,000 results in a Google Web search.
Usenet as Stalking Environment
According to Google, Usenet network of news groups is the world's largest and most decentralized collection of forums. Nearly every Internet Service Provider links to Usenet (some under their own branding); consequently, a message in these news groups bearing your name will not only rank prominently in the results of a Google/Yahoo search of your name, but also rank more highly than authoritative Web sites containing references to your name.
For this reason, Usenet is an environment attractive to individuals who want to manage how an adversary is seen through the eyes of a search engine. The most notable case of search engine vandalism is the case of Brad Jesness. The Google Web Search on his name (click here) reveals 12,200 results, over 80 percent of which are anti-Jesness dossiers, messages, and even domains registered to bear his own name for optimal search engine placement.
Usenet also supports anonymity in ways other Web-based forums do not. Not only do more than 95 percent of contributors to Usenet use aliases, but 95 percent of contributors use tools (i.e. anonymous remailers and public posting services) that conceal data identifying the location of their personal computer. This fact alone means that contributors to Usenet are not only anonymous, but also untraceable.
Sci.Psychology.Psychotherapy News Group as Illustrative Case
The unmoderated Usenet news group Sci.Psychology.Psychotherapy had been chartered for use by mental health delivery professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage/family counselors, social workers, etc.) as well as students of therapy and therapy clientele for discussion of psychological disorders (e.g., depression, eating disorder), broad approaches to treatment (e.g., psychodynamic, Rogerian), and specific interventions recognized by the academic or professional community. It is discussed here as an illustrative case, but in no way is the phenomenon of cyberstalking, a pervasive and enduring trait of Usenet, confined to this one news group. An empirical survey of its contents revealed that over 90 percent of messages in this news group not only fail to address psychotherapy or science, but that no less than 90 percent of the messages submitted over any temporal unit of analysis (i.e. month, year, 8-year period) are flames designed to incite anger in another. It is discussed here as an illustrative case because while one would expect cyberstalking to originate in news groups created to serve as flame communities (e.g. alt.flame, alt.fucknozzle, and alt.brad.jesness.die.die.die), one would not expect that perhaps the single most remarkable hotbed of cyberstalking is a psychotherapy news group to which many psychology department web sites blindly link. One would also not expect academics and practitioners to participate in the cyberstalking.
Sci.psychology.psychotherapy quickly evolved into a living laboratory of social phenomenon ranging from witless zinging to libel to severe-to-profound cyberstalking.
The forum galvanized considerable interest in collective behavior, Internet crime, and propaganda with special attention paid to the magnitude and variety of mischievous acts that are achieved when a gang of anonymous digerati use Internet services to assume control of specific individuals, from what these individuals do on the Web to how they are perceived through the eyes of a search engine.
The stalking often off-roads into the material life of the targets, disrupting business affairs, soliciting aggression against targets at disseminated residential address, and dragging associates and family into the defamation as a means of intimidating the target and estranging him or her from sources of support.
Relationship to Gang Activity
While the concept of gangs traditionally refers to low socioeconomic and minority youth, the leadership of cyberstalking gangs in Usenet may include academics, practitioners, digerati (e.g. hackers, network administrators), and corporate shills, who facilitate and inform the labor of non-degree holding supplicants and belligerents with criminal and/or psychiatric histories. For example, gang members in sci.psychology.psychotherapy include a doctoral candidate in cognitive psychology, a 61-year-old forensic psychologist who once served a term of office on his state's board of psychology examiners, an academic who resigned his position, the author of a chapter for a bestselling book about Google hacking, the director of a mental health day treatment center, and the owner of a now defunct spam blocking company.
Like traditional gangs, Usenet-based gangs are engaged in wars for the purpose of controlling turf, with "turf" in this context denoting the public reputation of a community / organization. Since Usenet is the ultimate environment for free speech (i.e. public and unmoderated with no ownership or oversight), the gang serves as a mechanism of mob rule, harassing and defaming what it cannot control through conventional moderation and censorship.
The gang in sci.psychology.psychotherapy (SPP) assumed control of SPP and often demands certain people cease contributing to the news group. The targets are usually individuals who express either (a) unconventional wisdom, (b) criticism of an institution or community in which the gangmembers claim membership (e.g. Psychology), or (c) views based on original research or single-source reflection and presented with a passionate or idiosyncratic style that appears to put the messenger at the center. Therefore, most attacks cite as justification for stalking campaigns the messenger's individuality, arrogance, or narcissism.
The gangs coordinate their abuse of search engines, domain registrars, and other organized bodies of knowledge (e.g. Amazon.com customer book review / Misplaced Pages) to assume control of the way the target is viewed on the Internet. Gang members divide labor to satisfy a full range of objectives, with some members portraying a victim in a comically false and unflattering light. The mythology of frivolous failure is invoked, with references to a victim ranging from friend-less hamburger flippers to unemployed pedophiles. By contrast, other gang members (or the same gang member on another day) portray the same victim in a controversial light, as a material threat or risk to the public interest (for the purpose of mobilizing stakeholders and service providers to harass and sanction the victim).
The image the gang in sci.psychology.psychotherapy manages for its victims and for the Usenet populace is in part reflected by the menacing nature of their aliases: Kali (Indian Death Goddess), Reaper, Just Taylor (AKA Taylor Jimenez), Hooded Man, ThePsyko, Iceman (AKA Profiler, Body Snatcher), Ghoul, Necco, Basic Fyre, Fyre & Sulphur, and Satan.
Many of these aliases were adopted by mental health practitioners or academics who had been accustomed at one time to posting under their given names, some of whom have been omitted from the list above for transient activity, including a consultant to California school districts (who abandoned the gang 7 years ago), a British psychologist, and a therapist convicted for unlawful sexual contact with his patient's 9-year-old son.
A competency model for cyberstalkers as well as a character analysis of individual stalkers and a discussion of strategic partnerships and divisions of labor are presented in reports titled Inside the Stalking Gang and Look Who's Stalking Now.
See also
External links
- www.cyberbullying.us
- The National Center for Victims of Crime US based
- CyberAngels
- State Computer Harassment or "Cyberstalking" Laws, National Conference of State Legislatures.
- Sci.psychology.psychotherapy news group
- Alt.usenet.kooks news group