Journalists Can't Hide News From the Internet 377
Hugh Pickens writes "Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review discusses the issues surrounding the recent tragedy involving a MySpace user. A newspaper reporting on the story didn't name the woman, citing concerns for her teen daughter. Bloggers went nuts, and soon uncovered the woman's personal information. Niles writes: 'The lessons for journalists? First, we can't restrict access to information anymore. The crowd will work together to find whatever we withhold ... Second, I wonder if that the decision to withhold the other mother's name didn't help enflame the audience, by frustrating it and provoking it to do the work of discovering her identity.'"
There should be a law against people who do this (Score:5, Insightful)
By digging up her personal information - for which no one had any real, legitimate use - much less posting it online - these bloggers have negligently put this entire family's safety at serious risk.
Yes, information wants to be free blah blah blah - wait until the media puts the unwanted spotlight on you for some minor b.s. (that most of us don't even care to read about) and some Jezebel-esque nutball digs up your personal information - including where you live - and puts it out there for any unbalanced, easily enraged headcase to come dot your forehead with a 9mm shell. Or maybe they'll stalk and kidnap your kid instead.
These bloggers ought to have their information put out there by law enforcement - as convicted criminals. Aiding and abetting, for starters, then implied terroristic threats.
Here's the kicker, folks: when you put up the personal information of one person in the house, you put everyone ELSE there, at risk. Even their neighbors.
No sympathy (Score:4, Insightful)
More like.... (Score:5, Insightful)
People love solving a mystery (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO all arrest records should be sealed until a conviction is reached, and should be erased and destroyed upon acquittal.
Whatever, stalking mods (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, of course - arrest records should be sealed until a verdict is reached, and then destroyed upon acquittal. I wonder what religious rightist or corporate statist argument that runs up against?
Re:No sympathy (Score:3, Insightful)
If new any new laws come out of this, you be SCARED SHITLESS.
You want to be guilty for murder because, for example, you break up with your psycho girlfriend and she kills herself?
Yeesh. I don't really like the idea of a society where I'm held responsible for other people's feelings.
Re:No sympathy (Score:2, Insightful)
And in the meantime she deserves to be harassed and have her safety threatened by millions of idiots on the internet? Millions of idiots who've heard one side of the story.
What do you do if we later find out the Myspace guy really did exist, and it wasn't the neighbor lady?
Besides that, there's really no way they could've known the little girl would commit suicide. Yeah, if the lady did it she's a douchebag, but the little girl couldn't have been very mentally stable either.
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:5, Insightful)
I find very little credulity in the "You can't hide the truth from us" self-righteousness espoused by many of the bloggers involved in this. They merely saw what they could gain from the situation, not what was ethically or morally right.
Cringeworthy. But sadly, amongst many niceties, what I've come to expect from the "blogosphere" (cringeworthy name, in itself). Self-righteous vitriol and hyperbole seem far too common. "We're the new journalists, your ways are outdated." Bleh. In the rush to try to be the next big thing, seems "stopping and thinking" is an impediment to "first to publish/be pinged/trackbacked/make the Top 100 on Technorati/get on as many blogrolls as possible".
jokes on them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:jokes on them (Score:5, Insightful)
A novel idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Depression (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:5, Insightful)
What a brilliant idea -- let's give the police the power to arrest people, throw them into jail pending trial, and not tell anybody.
The justice system needs transparency in a free and democratic society. What you're proposing has been done by all of the most oppressive regeimes in history as a way of making people "disappear". And while publishing an innocent persons arrest in a public manner may damage their public image, it's also a way to ensure that said person gets the best possible opportunity to defend themselves within the community. People who are secretly jailed never do.
Yaz.
Re:No sympathy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The story isn't cut and dried. RTFA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Identities are concealed, as in this case, to protect the accused from community backlash. Folks often forget that the accused have rights as well. Forgeting to protect those rights, and encouraging a community backlash before they've had their day in court... Well that's headed back to bad old days of lynching and vigilante justice.
Re:jokes on them (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a mad, mad, mad, mad world. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The story isn't cut and dried. RTFA! (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I suspect no charges were filed because of the fact most of the shenanigans were online only, and poorly understood by the officials involved. That's only speculation on my part, though.
Re:No sympathy (Score:2, Insightful)
You are not responsible for the feelings of others. However, you ARE responsible for your actions, and the consequences of those actions on the people around you. And if those actions were those of hateful jerks who manipulated the emotions of someone they KNEW to be mentally unstable, then yes, they are responsible for the death of that person.
Innocent until proven quilty (Score:3, Insightful)
My my, you sure seem eager to convict and sentence this woman, and not just the woman but her entire family.
Odd that if the RIAA wants to publish the names of people downloading, naming and shaming, people are against it, but in this case naming and shaming is a good thing. Why not bring out the tar and feathers. Hell why even bother with police at all, I got a rope right here and that tree looks sturdy enough.
This woman is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Mob mentality is a serious issue, say this womans daughter now commits suicide, and come after YOU. Do you want all your personal info out there, to be judged by the mob?
The reason the police and the press don't always publish everything is bloody simple.
First off, it is to keep a bad situation from becoming even worse.
But even more important, it is to keep information from becoming common knowledge to aid the investigation. The less details of the case are known to the general public the more likely a suspect can be pinned down on having knowledge they couldn't have unless they were involved.
By publishing for instance what was said right before the suicide, the woman in question can no longer be indentified as the person who sent it if she shows knowledge of what had been said. Before she could only have known what was in the messages if she had seen them, when they were sent. Now, she can just claim she read it somewhere.
But the most important thing here is, innocent until proven guilty. It is frightening how soon this is forgotten on slashdot just because this is a story about bloggers. IF a blogger was similarly convicted by the mob slashdot would be in a uproar.
This is a scary story (Score:5, Insightful)
Not for the details involved but for the slashdot reaction. a lot seem to be in support of the naming and shaming.
That is nice, would they be just as supportive when the RIAA deciced to publish their names for illegal filesharing and they get expelled from their schools, told to leave their jobs, asked to resign from their clubs?
There is a reason we put the law into the hands of the legal system and have deciced that lynchings are wrong. The simple problem is that of where does it end.
Say that this woman's daughter now commits suicide, is it then right for her family to publish the bloggers personal details? Publicly try them on the internet?
Innocent until proven guilty, presumption of innocence, trial by jury. My how quickly these ideals seem to be forgotten when blogging is involved. Note that when it is the other way around and some blogger gets exposed "slashdot" has shown an almost fanatical support for the sancitiy of privacy.
A few months ago slashdot had a story about internet driven vigilantism in South-Korea where this kind of naming and shaming is claimed to be far more common, the odd thing was that then the general attitude seemed to be that this was an extremely bad idea.
So how come that some slashdotters now support it? Is it the magic of the word blog? The idea that the MAN was outwitted, freedom by all means and damn the consequences?
Should the dutch teens who stole items from an online game be named and shamed? Should the blogger who published this info have every part of his private life put on the web for all to see?
Since this is a suicide where the whole community failed, why aren't they all being named and shamed. Why not print a list of all the people involved, everyone that could have talked to the girl, made friends with her, and publish them under the headline, "where were you!".
Some people seem to think that blogs are a magical something, they are not. They used to exist before, they were called pamphlets and people with enough motivation would write them and print and distribute them and say in them what they wanted in the name of "The truth".
They were back then the perfect tool to incite the mob. It is on paper, therefore it must be true, lets lynch them.
A few years ago in england a woman's house was attacked because the mob thought she was a pedofile. The evidence was clear as day, she had a sign on her door that said so "Pediatrician".
Consider this, if this woman is guilty of the suicide, then is any suicide that follows the publishing by the blogger the guilt of the blogger? What if the blogger is outed and kills himself? Where does it end?
The community taking the law in their own hand, it sounds tempting and sometimes seems to be the only solution but it never works. The law often fails us, but we should then change the law, not simply ignore it.
But think of this, do you really want there to be law that puts people to blaim if they said the wrong thing to a person who commits suicide? Better not mod me down, it might make me commit suicide.
Should society decide who needs to be punished? I would dearly love to name and shame every drunk driver out there, everyone who ever hurt someone in an "accident" that could easily have been avoided.
Before you support naming and shaming, ask yourselve wether someone else might not have you on their list.
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:3, Insightful)
That law enforcement didn't do anything is no excuse for vigilantism. If law enforcement doesn't do their job, you protest about law enforcement, not about someone you suspect of having done something wrong.
The US government puts people at risk all the time by publishing the names and addresses of people deemed to be "sex offenders" (I use this term lightly for the US, because of all the FUD and extremist politics).
Ahh... The old "someone else does it too" defense. I suppose this means you think it's ok to murder too, since some states have the death penalty.
Yes crowds can be dangerous. People can be dangerous, but keeping something that obviously has a large public interest a secret is wrong (and unrealistic). Sometimes you just got to let the chips fall where they may and find out what type of society we live in.
Lynch mobs rarely do research. There's plenty of examples where media has been directly responsible in causing attacks on people by publishing names and addresses or pictures which people could have easily found for themselves, but the kind of people who go out and do that kind of crap are not usually the same kind of people that put in the effort to find out their identities.
There IS a huge difference between making information available and making it easily accessible or pushing it in peoples faces.
Personally I don't want a society where people do the equivalent of shaking a red cloth in front of a bull regularly in the name of "public interest" - it's at best tasteless, and at worst dangerous. I strongly believe that anyone doing this should be equally responsible for any illegal act carried out as a result - hopefully that would be a deterrent.
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a large difference between the name being possible to find by going to the right places, and having it plastered all over the place. What is the purpose? The only purpose I can see of posting their identity is that people hope that "someone" is going to do something with that information.
That's at best disgusting and makes people who does it scum in my eyes.
If law enforcement isn't doing their job, then you protest against law enforcement, you don't take enforcement into your own hands.
Re:Whatever, stalking mods (Score:5, Insightful)
You're providing to me an example that you saw on the internet? Reread what I wrote: Has this happened to you or anyone you know?
As a matter of fact, yes. A family friend was named as a suspect in a well-publicized political murder case, by the media. Despite his being cleared of any possible links to the case, he was still ostracized by his neighbors as a "criminal with mafia connections". Now, do tell... what exactly was your point? You have asked me if it has happened with anyone I know, and I have given an example. So what will you do now besides calling me a "liar" and going back to your belief that is more or less "Lions don't exist because I have never seen one in real life myself"?
What was exactly your point when you asked this silly question? That it happened to "someone else", so it was not your problem? How apathetic or shallow can you get?!!
Was your brilliant argument that, it can "never happen to you"? I am pretty sure, that is what all those people thought as well, *till* it actually happened to them.
Re:No sympathy (Score:2, Insightful)
The family that took advantage of a thirteen year old girl and manipulated and emotionally tortured her and even suggested suicide to her should be held civilly liable for their actions. I don't want a bunch of stupid internet laws to come out of this, because the internet wasn't the problem here. But to suggest that the problem is just a fucked up little girl is flat out stupid.
Just like an adult must be held accountable if they manipulate a child into a sexual encounter, an adult must also be held accountable for using their advantages to manipulate (and more or less torture) a little kid into killing themselves.
Just because she didn't physically wrap the noose around the girls neck doesn't mean she isn't liable for a significant percentage of the outcome.
I don't like the idea of a society where I'm responsible for other people's feelings, either. And nobody is going to hold you accountable because your ex girlfriend flips out and goes nuts. HOWEVER, you should be held accountable if you are a full grown adult taking advantage of a little kid by exploiting their known weaknesses and presenting yourself as a fellow child to gain their confidence, build them up and then tear them down overnight and suggest to them that the world would be better off if they were dead and then a few hours later, they kill themselves.
Re:there wasn't going to be a trial (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is, there is no FUZZY issue of guilt here - the fucking shit is clear as crystal - these adults were abusive towards a 13 yr old child w/ severe mental problems.
Re:No sympathy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's probably because special needs have nothing whatsofuckever to do with depression and mental health. Indeed, suicide rates for mentally and physically challenged youths are far below those of normal youths. Congratulations on having a child who doesn't suffer from problems she doesn't have -- that's a real accomplishment in oppositeland. My child who has asthma never had problem with blood sugar levels, so obviously those diabetic kids just have shitty parents! And of course having bad parents means you deserve to die at 13 and never get a chance to remake yourself as an adult.
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:3, Insightful)
He was not proposing that the police "not tell anybody" -- only that the decision to release the information about an arrest be up to the accused at least as long as the accused had not been found guilty.
The NCIC, as just one example, is full of partial records that indicate arrest and even indictment but not acquittal.
Re:if only there were charges (Score:3, Insightful)
Because that glove fits the other way around too. If someone doesn't break the law but "wrongs" you somehow, just go and blow the horn until everyone and their dog talks about it and cries bloody murder, so the police has to dig up something to create some trial.
No, you're confusing two different things (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal is a fair and structured hearing, and punishment or acquittal based on the laws, decided by a jury & judge as impartial as possible.
With no transparency, the police can ignore the laws, and you might never see a jury at all.
With complete transparency, any "interesting" crime will be first judged by the public, based on third and fourth-hand information with no legal repercussions for errors (it's not *perjury* when the local rag prints gossip and rumors that are dead wrong), and the jury will be tainted by exposure to this mess, and the accused will be punished by the public even if acquitted by the legal system.
Think the public has no real power to exact punishment? You don't even need vigilante gunmen, though that can happen. No laws need be broken, though they might be. But "the public" includes your boss (soon-to-be former boss?), your neighbors (and their kids), the checkout person at the grocery store, your mailman, the guys at the bar, the technician from the phone company, the plumber, the teenagers at the mall, the pizza delivery guy, everyone. If your face is all over the web, if your home address and home phone are all over the web... well, first of all, they'll be all over the web for the rest of your life, because this stuff doesn't go away. Secondly, most people won't even say anything (they'll just stare after you as you leave), but you come into contact with hundreds of people... some of them will probably do something. Some people will actively seek you out to punish you, because vigilante justice is awfully tempting... I'll bet that's already happening with this family.
With the "power of the internet", now they don't just need to worry about getting snubbed by the people on their street. They have to worry what percentage of the, say, 2 million people who've seen their address and phone number will actively contact them. 0.01 percent? Mom, there's 200 people at the door. They want to talk to you and dad. Are my numbers too low?
So yeah, we need a balance.
This story is horrible and sad, and I want everyone to read it and realize that the online world is real, and in some ways it's more dangerous than the offline world. You can do things you'd never be cruel enough to do to someone's face, and cruelty has real consequences.
But I don't want to know where this family lives.
Re:No sympathy (Score:1, Insightful)
Take the time to learn about depression instead of blaming the parents, who from reading the article were doing just about all they could to help her.
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems here are that:
a. What happens when the bloggers get it wrong? Let's say they accidentally type in the neighbour's address. Some poor bastard who had nothing do with the issue gets targeted.
b. The bloggers are by and large anonymous also. It's sheer hypocrisy for them to hide behind a blog pseudonym and publish someone else's details.
c. There is a reason we don't have martial law. Vigilantism is never a good move, mistakes are made, it bypasses due process and the right to a fair trial, innocent people are hurt. That's why Western democracies have the legal system they do: sure, it ain't perfect, but I'd rather us have a legal system that let uninformed bloggers pass judgement and mete out punishment.
Re:There should be a law against people who do thi (Score:3, Insightful)
"Officer, my husband never came home from work yesterday - I want to lodge a missing person's report"
"Sorry ma'am, he's not missing."
"Then where is he?"
"Sorry ma'am, I'm not allowed to say. That information has been restricted for privacy reasons. Oh, and it looks like he never got around to consenting that you could access his private information in regards to dealing with local law enforcement."
Yeah, like that would bloody work.
Arrests are public for the good of society - so that the government can't just lock people up and not admit to it. The individual's private need is outweighed by the need to see that the government isn't abusing its authority.
Oh, wait... you're American, right?
Re:Blame Darwin or Megan's Parents (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No sympathy (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because we *can* do something... (Score:3, Insightful)
...that doesn't mean we should.
It's an old saying, but no less truthful for it. Modern technology makes communication, data storage and research into effectively free commodities. These things can be used for many constructive purposes, but a natural side effect is a loss of privacy.
The thing is, society has adopted privacy as an accepted cultural value for good reasons. Society also typically frowns on vigilantism for good reasons. No-one is perfect, and if you tend towards a system where there is some dirt to dig up on everyone and if you choose to share it then you can bring down disproportionate consequences on anyone you don't like, then no-one is ever safe from the screwed up people.
In a way, this is no different to any other criminal behaviour. You can't systematically prevent it, any more than you can systematically prevent someone from driving their car at reckless speeds and causing an accident, or from betraying the confidence of an ex-partner they no longer get on with to her friends or new partner, or from beating up a smaller kid in school when the teachers aren't looking. But these things are all the actions of someone deeply unpleasant, and society frowns on them, tries to prevent them as much as possible, and punishes them when it can.
What is different is simply that this whole context is new. A lot of people — particularly, it must be said, a lot of young people — are enjoying a kind of freedom and collective power that previous generations have not, but they don't yet understand the responsibility that comes with that freedom. Because it's so new, it's an alien concept to the adults responsible for teaching them, and mistakes are made. (There is an obvious parallel here with big businesses getting away with things because privacy laws haven't yet caught up.)
In time, I hope this will pass, and society will come to frown on invasion of privacy and sharing information without due respect in the same way that we frown on violence or blackmail today. But I'm afraid we're going to take a few years learning some hard lessons, and there are likely to be an unfortunately large number of relatively innocent victims along the way. As with any form of growing up, the road to maturity is sometimes a painful one. At least when you get there, you usually find others have walked the same path and can forgive youthful indiscretions.
Re:Whatever, stalking mods (Score:3, Insightful)
It wasn't a "disapearing online friend" at all. It was a contrived effort by a small group of adults and other teenagers, combining their intellects and talents to ruin a young girl. Mental instability or otherwise, that's horribly dispicable.
Take a pair of adults. They form a profile for a "hot" young male. They make the now deceased fall in love with him; the first boy to find her physically attractive, as it was told. This is a significant moment in any young person's life - especially someone outside of the norm. People on this site should understand that better than most.
Now these adults make the boy very convincingly friendly, the girl practically lives to see what he'll say next; it's pure infatuation for her. Hell, she's in love (or so her hormone filled brain would have her believe) and she's happier than she's ever been in her life.
From there, you get the involvement of several of her peers. Vindictive, mean teenaged girls who know every detail about this girl and her life. Now they're not only posting this vitriol from her love interest, they're also posting public polls, surveys and notes bringing to light everything that this girl is self conscious about. Bringing to light personal, intimite things she's shared with this "boy" for all her school peers to see. Mocking her every word. Now she's not only heartbroken and unable to cope with it, but she knows that she'll be mocked and insulted and stared at by her entire neighborhood and school. She doesn't understand why this boy would turn on her and bring all her peers with him. She's gone from a girl with a love interest and something to live for to a girl nobody likes who will never fit in. Nobody will love her again.
Teenage boys tend to take out their angst on one another with physical violence. Teenage girls tend towards crushing, emotionally crippling forms of psychological attack. This isn't the first time this has happened and certainly won't be the last.
The most disgusting element to all this is the parents who started this in the first place. It's one thing to create a profile and befriend your daughter's former friend in order to dig up dirt, but it's another entirely to involve several teenage girls in the neighborhood (a clique, if you will) and not only allow, but encourage them to have their way with this girl's emotions.
This goes beyond a stranger pretending to be something they're not. This was a contrived, deliberate attack on somebody by someone who had the ammunition to cause real harm. These adults should be tried and convicted of contributing to the girl's death. What they did was repugnant and should not be socially acceptable. The fact that their details leaked, largely due to their filing charges against the parents of the daughter they killed over something as trivial as a toy - a toy they had asked them to store for them?!? How low can you get? You kill peoples' daughter than ask them for favours like that? These people are sick and twisted and for what they've done to destroy another family I hope their lives are ruined. I feel no compassion for them and anybody who does is sorely misguided.
Re:there wasn't going to be a trial (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:there wasn't going to be a trial (Score:2, Insightful)
You make what they did seem pretty harmless, but this fake profile was broadcasting "Megan Meier is cruel to her friends, Megan Meier is a slut" and other such remarks not just to the little girl, but to all her friends too. Try to remember what being a teenager was like, when our worlds were as small as our high schools. Know that suffering from clinical depression makes such situations even worse. The kicker is that it was a parent of a friend of the girl that started all this, a full grown adult who should know better.
I'm not completely convinced if the neighbor should be charged with anything. I don't think they should server prison time, but having to fork over some money to the family of the deceased girl sounds like a fair reparation to me. I do feel that the unmasking of the neighboring parent's identity and the resulting national public shame they will have to deal with is definitely karmic. After all, if it isn't illegal to send someone messages over the internet calling them a cruel person and a slut, then it shouldn't be illegal for someone to send someone messages over the phone, via mail, etc, calling them murderers, evil people, neglectful parents or a shame to all of humanity.