Cyberstalking and Blogging

With the recent dustups this summer between bloggers, from L'Affaire Frisch to sock-puppetry a la Glenn Greenwald, the term "cyberstalking" has been tossed around a lot. This makes a Fox News story concerning cyberstalking pretty relevant, especially with kids going back to campus. It's not just sneaking around people's houses or places of work these days that qualify for stalking, but also finding their online presences and harrassing them there. Here's a good description of what we're talking about from the story: "Cyberstalkers frequently follow their targets around the Net, frequenting in chat rooms, message boards, newsgroups or mailing lists in which the target participates." If the target "fights back" by seeking out the stalker, then prosecution can be troublesome.

Especially in Frisch's case, there appears to be much that a good defense attorney can turn around on her targets, but since she operated a blog, it is not as if others were hunting her down as she moved from online place to place. Also, reposting non-private communication in more public venues does not appear to be a form of harrassment, otherwise other sources of media would face many legal challenges, when political candidates are not wise in how they choose their words at a fundraiser as opposed to a press conference.

So, in the cases of sock-puppeting or Frisch's repeated threats to write child pornography using the children of several bloggers as her characters, which is the clearer case of cyberstalking and harrassment? In all the cases of sock-puppetry, the claims of stalking come from ferreting out the identity of the sock-puppet. But is comparing timestamps of comments with the IP addresses that leave them, the same as stalking? Let's look at a couple of definitions of cyberstalking:

The Department of Justice defines cyberstalking as: "The use of Internet, e-mail or other electronic communications devices to stalk another person."

Stalking activities were described as "following a person, appearing at a person's home or place of business, making harassing phone calls, leaving threatening message or objects or vandalizing a person's property."

George Mason University in Virginia defines stalking as "any behaviors or activities occurring on more than one occasion that collectively instill fear in the victim, and or threaten his or her safety, mental health or physical health."

Clearly, identifying sock-puppets does not fall into any area of stalking. Privacy issues may intrude into these activities, but not stalking. As in the case of Frisch, can it be said that her detractors are stalking her? If the comments left at her own blog are any indication, the answer is no. Any "threats" were some very uncommon entreaties to commit suicide. Other "threats" were possibly promising to find her comments on other publicly available message boards, and repost them. However, if the accumulation of messages "instill fear...or threaten his or her... mental health or physical health," then, as I said earlier, a good defense attorney can make something of these claims.

On the other side of the issue of cyberstalking is her own behavior, which is not in doubt. Following others to new or different message boards and threatening them with writing child pornography with their children as the characters, and then asking for money in exchange for not doing it, is obviously stalking, and extortion to boot.

What can we learn from the activities in the blogosphere this summer? First, there is no such thing as privacy online. If you wish your communication to be private, use email, not message boards. If you wish to keep your own identity private, use proxy servers and anonymous email services. The anonymous email service might not protect you in criminal cases, but it is certainly a big wall for private citizens to hurdle. And finally, if you can't handle the consequences of a flame war, don't start one. There really are other people on the other side of your computer screen, and it helps to remember that.