7 ms·

The biggest problem with blackmail and extortion is no two people seem to agree on exactly what they are and are not. I use these definitions: To blackmail is

The biggest problem with blackmail and extortion is no two people seem to agree on exactly what they are and are not. I use these definitions: To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) unless you are paid. To extort is to threaten to do something otherwise illegal unless you are paid. Blackmail is one of those odd two-rights-make-a-wrong matters like prostitution or insider trading, and it's tough for a lot of people to square the corresponding laws with their own morals. Having been blackmailed before (as in 18 USC §873 Blackmail) I find most people's attitudes on the matter are heavily influenced by their personal histories with blackmail (or lack of histories) and subject to change.

ergothus 8y ago
I once was called by a collection agent for state taxes (private company contracted by the state). While I knew my taxes had been paid, I was indeed delinquent in FILING my taxes, and apparently they hadn't connected the taxes paid on my W-2s with the income on my W-2s (?!). According to the agent if I didn't give him the info from my checking account while I was on the phone, he'd hit the button and start garnishing my wages, freezing my credit, etc. He refused my every effort to say I needed to check my balances, etc and get back to him. I was living paycheck to paycheck at the time. This was a very real threat - that it would all work out was NOT the same as not being a problem. Yet - this was entirely legal (AFAIK(. He was lying - he didn't have the authority to do those things - but he could make the threats. He put me in such a panic that I was calling the Tax agency hourly, leaving messages and faxing details. By the time I got through to a manager that could tell me my status she responded to my greeting with "Oh yes, I know who you are Mr. [REDACTED]". A terrible experience all around. It was a threat to induce action, but neither extortion nor blackmail.
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  This is even worse because has the same bones as a well known telephone scam.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  > A terrible experience all around. It was a threat to induce action, but neither extortion nor blackmail. Pretty sure that would be illegal under, for example, German law (§ 240 StGB, Nötigung); delivering a threat in order to have you do something (or not do something) that, when implemented, would create an [severe] disadvantage, is punishable even if you could not actually implement the threat (like the guy in your story).
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  A private company demanded your financial info and made false threats? You might have trouble proving it in court, but there's got to be something illegal in there. Threatening to do something that they can't legally do, at the very least.
matz1 8y ago
Right, so the only thing you can do as individual is to defend your own position/moral. In the end what determine the answer to the problem of 'should x be illegal' is entirely depends on how successful are you to defend your position. There are no one "true" answer.
airstrike 8y ago
> To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) unless you are paid. I would slightly edit that to: > To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) with the intent of forcing someone to perform a certain action that they would otherwise not want to perform For instance, you can threaten to spill the beans on a perfectly benign secret about your coworker unless they pass on a great promotion they were given and that you coveted
- cortic 8y ago
  That muddies the water a bit; my boss threatened to fire me if i didn't do my job is blackmail under your definition.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > That muddies the water a bit; my boss threatened to fire me if i didn't do my job is blackmail under your definition. “I threatened to quit my job unless paid more,” fits either definition, so the problem isn't just with the revision.
    - jerf 8y ago
      I think you'd need a concept of licit and illicit threats worked in to make it work, which may be unavoidable. For example, in general, obligations legal under modern contract law would be licit. (If you counter with "what if $SPECIFIC_THING?", I'd say "you missed the 'in general'". I'm going to spare us twenty paragraphs trying to nail that down, and I suggest you run with me on that, I mean, unless you're just dying to read that....) Otherwise you end up with "if you don't make your corn flakes tastier than your competition I'm going to buy theirs" and that's clearly not what we're going for here. The problem lies in the specific conditions being laid down, not the mere conditionalization of my actions on yours. I mean, if you really think about it, it's not even clear what it would mean to try to ban conditionalizing your actions on the actions of others.
  - airstrike 8y ago
ameister14 8y ago
That's not a good definition for blackmail - if I threaten to not perform my job without pay and go home instead, it would qualify under your definition.
- mchannon 8y ago
  Thank you for making my first point: No two people agree. Unfortunately, you haven't offered a superior definition. Most people would agree a preexisting arrangement like an employment contract would make your example not fall under blackmail.
  - Retra 8y ago
    Openly disclosing the threat because it is the kind of behavior that falls within the bounds of social norms pretty much makes it ok. It is harder to blackmail people out in the open. In any case, I think the line is marginally less blurry when you consider the blackmailer's intentionally maintained ability to do harm with the unreleased information. The blackmailer must have information which is known to be harmful to reveal, and they use the threat of that harm to coerce something out of the harmed party. It's not really about secrets per se, but secrets which can be leveraged to do harm.
  - ameister14 8y ago
    Oh, cool: the 'do you have any better idea?' response. yes, I actually do. Blackmail is the attempt to coerce someone into doing something they do not desire to do by threatening with the exposure of information they do not want exposed. How is that? better than: To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) unless you are paid. By the way, if I said that genocide was the killing of another being, and you said that was a terrible definition, I probably wouldn't complain if you didn't have another definition, you know, because genocide is pretty well defined (as is blackmail)
edoo 8y ago
Say my phone catches fire in my pocket and I get some great video. 1) I contact Giant Corp. and say hey, if you don't pay me for this video I'm going to release it tomorrow. 2) I contact Giant Corp. and say hey, this video is going public tomorrow. I'm offering rights for sale to anyone who wants its. It is effectively the exact same thing but you might get dragged out of your home in the middle of the night for the first one. Those laws are likely unconstitutional. What about threatening to sue a company unless they meet the terms of their contract? That is standard affair but no one would call that blackmail. Blackmail laws seem like disturbing the peace laws. You are guilty if you piss enough people off without committing a real crime.
vkou 8y ago
> To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) unless you are paid. So, doing research on a politician, and discovering that they were a member of the KKK, and offering to keep mum for $50,000 (Because you hate them, and want to damage their career, but you have a price) is blackmail. But doing research on a politician, and discovering that they were a member of the KKK, and going public with it (Because you hate them, and you want to damage their career), is not blackmail. Why is one illegal, but the other one isn't? The personal harm (To the politician) is the same. Is there a social harm that I'm missing? Or, suppose you're a customer at a restaurant. You saw the waiter spit in your food. You ask the manager to comp you your meal, or you're going to post a nasty Yelp review. (Scale this up to any sort of business transaction that you want, including multi-million dollar disputes.) Is this blackmail? Or, suppose you're working in unsafe conditions, and you tell your boss that unless conditions improve, you're going to call OSHA. Is this blackmail? What if you'll not call OSHA if he fixes the unsafe conditions, and also gives you next Monday off? Is that now blackmail? Or, suppose you're doing research on a company you want to invest in. You discover that their prospects are crap, and you short them, and make money. That's not blackmail. But, apparently, threatening to tell the public that their prospects are crap, and that everyone should short them, is. There are no straight answers to the problem... Which is why I think people only view blackmail poorly when they feel something unfair happens because of it. Getting a promotion because you blackmailed your boss? People find this incredibly offensive. Promotions should be fair! Getting money, because you're blackmailing a politician? People also find this incredibly offensive. Why are you getting money for 'nothing'. Getting a safe working environment, because you threatened to report your boss to a regulator? Oh, that's perfectly fine! The reaction people have to blackmail has little to do with the act of blackmail itself - and everything to do with the 'unfair' nature of the payoff.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > The personal harm (To the politician) is the same. Strictly less in the case of blackmail, since otherwise they'd turn down the blackmail. > Is there a social harm that I'm missing? Yes, concealing adverse information about public figures, particularly public officials, is a social harm promoted by legalized blackmail. (For non-public figures and non-public-interest adverse facts, the tort of invasion of privacy or publication of private information applies even with blackmail being illegal, and provides a stronger backstop against the individual harms than the privilege of having to pay off those who would otherwise drag your name through the mud.)
maximilianroos 8y ago
There's lots of misinformation here about the definition of blackmail Blackmail is the threat of an action _unrelated to an existing right_. A good case is Autumn Jackson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Jackson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Jackson. It was not blackmail for her mother to request $2k/month in child support in exchange for silence, because she had a right to child support. But it was illegal for her to request $40M, because that was unrelated to child support. Another example: you can threaten a restaurant with a bad review unless you receive a refund for a bad meal. You can't threaten a restaurant with a bad review unless they give you $1K.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- SkyBelow 8y ago
  $40M broken into monthly payments for ~18 years isn't outside the bounds of what some really rich people pay for child support. A quick google check found child support in the range of 100k/month for some rich individuals, which works out to a little over $20M for 18 years. Of by a factor of 2 doesn't seem that bad. Given Cosby was making money in the range of millions a year, $100k child support does not seem too extreme a reach. It seems weird that a demand for money per month for as long as their was under 18 could potentially be blackmail if the one the demand is made of is too poor. What if someone demands $2k/month child support for someone who, per the formula the court would currently use for child support, only owes $200 a month. Is asking for 10 times the required child support considered unrelated? Going to the other example, that would be like asking for $1K when your bill (and thus refund) was $100. I think this is just another case of what law really comes down to for most people is how good a lawyer you can afford. The more expensive lawyers generally can make better arguments and get you out of more trouble (or at least get a much lighter sentence). Also, there is a difference between what is legally blackmail (depends upon location), what is morally blackmail (depends upon moral system), and what we linguistically call blackmail (probably more complicated than the previous two combined).
  - maximilianroos 8y ago

ergothus 8y ago

I once was called by a collection agent for state taxes (private company contracted by the state). While I knew my taxes had been paid, I was indeed delinquent in FILING my taxes, and apparently they hadn't connected the taxes paid on my W-2s with the income on my W-2s (?!). According to the agent if I didn't give him the info from my checking account while I was on the phone, he'd hit the button and start garnishing my wages, freezing my credit, etc. He refused my every effort to say I needed to check my balances, etc and get back to him. I was living paycheck to paycheck at the time. This was a very real threat - that it would all work out was NOT the same as not being a problem. Yet - this was entirely legal (AFAIK(. He was lying - he didn't have the authority to do those things - but he could make the threats. He put me in such a panic that I was calling the Tax agency hourly, leaving messages and faxing details. By the time I got through to a manager that could tell me my status she responded to my greeting with "Oh yes, I know who you are Mr. [REDACTED]". A terrible experience all around. It was a threat to induce action, but neither extortion nor blackmail.

GlenTheMachine 8y ago
This is even worse because has the same bones as a well known telephone scam.
blattimwind 8y ago
> A terrible experience all around. It was a threat to induce action, but neither extortion nor blackmail. Pretty sure that would be illegal under, for example, German law (§ 240 StGB, Nötigung); delivering a threat in order to have you do something (or not do something) that, when implemented, would create an [severe] disadvantage, is punishable even if you could not actually implement the threat (like the guy in your story).
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
A private company demanded your financial info and made false threats? You might have trouble proving it in court, but there's got to be something illegal in there. Threatening to do something that they can't legally do, at the very least.

matz1 8y ago

Right, so the only thing you can do as individual is to defend your own position/moral. In the end what determine the answer to the problem of 'should x be illegal' is entirely depends on how successful are you to defend your position. There are no one "true" answer.

airstrike 8y ago

> To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) unless you are paid. I would slightly edit that to: > To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) with the intent of forcing someone to perform a certain action that they would otherwise not want to perform For instance, you can threaten to spill the beans on a perfectly benign secret about your coworker unless they pass on a great promotion they were given and that you coveted

cortic 8y ago
That muddies the water a bit; my boss threatened to fire me if i didn't do my job is blackmail under your definition.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > That muddies the water a bit; my boss threatened to fire me if i didn't do my job is blackmail under your definition. “I threatened to quit my job unless paid more,” fits either definition, so the problem isn't just with the revision.
  - jerf 8y ago
    I think you'd need a concept of licit and illicit threats worked in to make it work, which may be unavoidable. For example, in general, obligations legal under modern contract law would be licit. (If you counter with "what if $SPECIFIC_THING?", I'd say "you missed the 'in general'". I'm going to spare us twenty paragraphs trying to nail that down, and I suggest you run with me on that, I mean, unless you're just dying to read that....) Otherwise you end up with "if you don't make your corn flakes tastier than your competition I'm going to buy theirs" and that's clearly not what we're going for here. The problem lies in the specific conditions being laid down, not the mere conditionalization of my actions on yours. I mean, if you really think about it, it's not even clear what it would mean to try to ban conditionalizing your actions on the actions of others.
- airstrike 8y ago

ameister14 8y ago

That's not a good definition for blackmail - if I threaten to not perform my job without pay and go home instead, it would qualify under your definition.

mchannon 8y ago
Thank you for making my first point: No two people agree. Unfortunately, you haven't offered a superior definition. Most people would agree a preexisting arrangement like an employment contract would make your example not fall under blackmail.
- Retra 8y ago
  Openly disclosing the threat because it is the kind of behavior that falls within the bounds of social norms pretty much makes it ok. It is harder to blackmail people out in the open. In any case, I think the line is marginally less blurry when you consider the blackmailer's intentionally maintained ability to do harm with the unreleased information. The blackmailer must have information which is known to be harmful to reveal, and they use the threat of that harm to coerce something out of the harmed party. It's not really about secrets per se, but secrets which can be leveraged to do harm.
- ameister14 8y ago
  Oh, cool: the 'do you have any better idea?' response. yes, I actually do. Blackmail is the attempt to coerce someone into doing something they do not desire to do by threatening with the exposure of information they do not want exposed. How is that? better than: To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) unless you are paid. By the way, if I said that genocide was the killing of another being, and you said that was a terrible definition, I probably wouldn't complain if you didn't have another definition, you know, because genocide is pretty well defined (as is blackmail)

edoo 8y ago

Say my phone catches fire in my pocket and I get some great video. 1) I contact Giant Corp. and say hey, if you don't pay me for this video I'm going to release it tomorrow. 2) I contact Giant Corp. and say hey, this video is going public tomorrow. I'm offering rights for sale to anyone who wants its. It is effectively the exact same thing but you might get dragged out of your home in the middle of the night for the first one. Those laws are likely unconstitutional. What about threatening to sue a company unless they meet the terms of their contract? That is standard affair but no one would call that blackmail. Blackmail laws seem like disturbing the peace laws. You are guilty if you piss enough people off without committing a real crime.

vkou 8y ago

> To blackmail is to threaten to do something otherwise legal (usually divulge information) unless you are paid. So, doing research on a politician, and discovering that they were a member of the KKK, and offering to keep mum for $50,000 (Because you hate them, and want to damage their career, but you have a price) is blackmail. But doing research on a politician, and discovering that they were a member of the KKK, and going public with it (Because you hate them, and you want to damage their career), is not blackmail. Why is one illegal, but the other one isn't? The personal harm (To the politician) is the same. Is there a social harm that I'm missing? Or, suppose you're a customer at a restaurant. You saw the waiter spit in your food. You ask the manager to comp you your meal, or you're going to post a nasty Yelp review. (Scale this up to any sort of business transaction that you want, including multi-million dollar disputes.) Is this blackmail? Or, suppose you're working in unsafe conditions, and you tell your boss that unless conditions improve, you're going to call OSHA. Is this blackmail? What if you'll not call OSHA if he fixes the unsafe conditions, and also gives you next Monday off? Is that now blackmail? Or, suppose you're doing research on a company you want to invest in. You discover that their prospects are crap, and you short them, and make money. That's not blackmail. But, apparently, threatening to tell the public that their prospects are crap, and that everyone should short them, is. There are no straight answers to the problem... Which is why I think people only view blackmail poorly when they feel something unfair happens because of it. Getting a promotion because you blackmailed your boss? People find this incredibly offensive. Promotions should be fair! Getting money, because you're blackmailing a politician? People also find this incredibly offensive. Why are you getting money for 'nothing'. Getting a safe working environment, because you threatened to report your boss to a regulator? Oh, that's perfectly fine! The reaction people have to blackmail has little to do with the act of blackmail itself - and everything to do with the 'unfair' nature of the payoff.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> The personal harm (To the politician) is the same. Strictly less in the case of blackmail, since otherwise they'd turn down the blackmail. > Is there a social harm that I'm missing? Yes, concealing adverse information about public figures, particularly public officials, is a social harm promoted by legalized blackmail. (For non-public figures and non-public-interest adverse facts, the tort of invasion of privacy or publication of private information applies even with blackmail being illegal, and provides a stronger backstop against the individual harms than the privilege of having to pay off those who would otherwise drag your name through the mud.)

maximilianroos 8y ago

There's lots of misinformation here about the definition of blackmail Blackmail is the threat of an action _unrelated to an existing right_. A good case is Autumn Jackson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Jackson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Jackson. It was not blackmail for her mother to request $2k/month in child support in exchange for silence, because she had a right to child support. But it was illegal for her to request $40M, because that was unrelated to child support. Another example: you can threaten a restaurant with a bad review unless you receive a refund for a bad meal. You can't threaten a restaurant with a bad review unless they give you $1K.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
SkyBelow 8y ago
$40M broken into monthly payments for ~18 years isn't outside the bounds of what some really rich people pay for child support. A quick google check found child support in the range of 100k/month for some rich individuals, which works out to a little over $20M for 18 years. Of by a factor of 2 doesn't seem that bad. Given Cosby was making money in the range of millions a year, $100k child support does not seem too extreme a reach. It seems weird that a demand for money per month for as long as their was under 18 could potentially be blackmail if the one the demand is made of is too poor. What if someone demands $2k/month child support for someone who, per the formula the court would currently use for child support, only owes $200 a month. Is asking for 10 times the required child support considered unrelated? Going to the other example, that would be like asking for $1K when your bill (and thus refund) was $100. I think this is just another case of what law really comes down to for most people is how good a lawyer you can afford. The more expensive lawyers generally can make better arguments and get you out of more trouble (or at least get a much lighter sentence). Also, there is a difference between what is legally blackmail (depends upon location), what is morally blackmail (depends upon moral system), and what we linguistically call blackmail (probably more complicated than the previous two combined).
- maximilianroos 8y ago