10 ms·

I am not a lawyer, but I'd like to address your legal points. Just as I don't need a warrant to view a publicly available website, he shouldn't either. What yo

by noahc 16y ago

I am not a lawyer, but I'd like to address your legal points. Just as I don't need a warrant to view a publicly available website, he shouldn't either. What you are proposing is that it should be illegal to view public pages in a certain order or time. What is the difference of me viewing 100 of my new crushes friends pages over 2 days vs 2 years? There isn't, but the first is rifling, the second is innocent curiosity. I don't believe he was cyberbullying anyone. However, to address cyberstalking and cyberharasamnet we first have to consider what a reasonable person would have felt had those actions been taken against us. Before the release of the data, and while this was going on, those on the list were unaware of what was occurring. Just as a reasonable person isn't threatened until they become aware of the stalking, threats, etc in real life. Being unaware of what he was doing would mean that no constitute cyberstalking, cyberharassment or cyberbullying took place. Barr is a private citizen accessing public information and drawing crazy conclusions. There's nothing illegal about that nor should there be.

ilamont 16y ago
Wouldn't communicating an "untrue statement of fact" that certain people are leaders of an allegedly law-breaking group to government officials or other people constitute defamation (assuming that their reputations were harmed as a result)?
- noahc 16y ago
  I think there are two issues here: 1. The first is that he did not release the report publicly, which is what would cause the defamation. Anonymous did. Thus he wouldn't be responsible for the release of the data. The issue here is really the publishing of it. He did not publish it, and selling it to a private law enforcement agency, in my mind at least is not publishing it. 2. The second issue is related to false police reports. In America, it is illegal to file a false police report. However, this is not what is happening here. He is not claiming to police that a crime was actually committed, instead he is providing information related to that crime. He is basically selling criminal leads to law enforcement. He's basically doing a crime stoppers like program, but generating the leads himself and going straight to the feds.
  - sudonim 16y ago
    2. On #2, so if you want to harass someone without putting yourself on the line, generate "evidence" about them and provide it to law enforcement, but don't file a police report. Good to know!
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Defamation and libel are civil offenses, meaning (in my lay understanding) a person can be held financially liable if sued but cannot be imprisoned or otherwise restricted except as far as he can be constrained to pay the judgment filed against him.
SwellJoe 16y ago
I agree with you up to a point. And here's that point: "Before the release of the data, and while this was going on, those on the list were unaware of what was occurring. Just as a reasonable person isn't threatened until they become aware of the stalking, threats, etc in real life." People did become aware of it before the release, which is why the exploits of his servers happened, and why Anonymous got butthurt and went on a crusade. He was dropping hints and threats in IRC, national media, and in email, that he was doing this stuff. He also "leaked" via his fake persona some of the kinds of information he was gathering to his victims so in order to drum up more publicity and to scare them into action. And, it now turns out, he planned to do a lot more than that. I don't have a problem with him idly browsing facebook or twitter, though I have to question the mental stability of someone that spends all their time voluntarily reading and logging the incoherent ramblings of teenagers all day and trying to build a conspiracy out of it. The legal issue is that he was threatening people with exposure, via major media outlets. When seeing this stuff, anyone who ever happened to drop in on the IRC channels had to think, "Crap. When is the FBI gonna show up to question me because I made a joke about Egypt on IRC?" You and I both know the government are wholly incompetent at dealing with issues on the Internet, and they try to make up for that incompetence by being extremely heavy-handed in execution of their misguided policies. I'd be scared as hell if I thought someone, apparently trusted by the government, was going to "reveal" my involvement in some wacky Internet conspiracy to the FBI.
- noahc 16y ago
  The only real legal point you have is the hints and threats issue. There isn't a good public record of what was said. From the article, it appears as though he said he wasn't going to publish names publicly. Although, it seems to suggest this was post DDOS. There isn't a clear enough public documentation of what happened to fully say one way or another. My suspicion is that those on the list did not tell him to stop, which is one way legally of measuring when harassment starts.

by noahc 16y ago

ilamont 16y ago

Wouldn't communicating an "untrue statement of fact" that certain people are leaders of an allegedly law-breaking group to government officials or other people constitute defamation (assuming that their reputations were harmed as a result)?

noahc 16y ago
I think there are two issues here: 1. The first is that he did not release the report publicly, which is what would cause the defamation. Anonymous did. Thus he wouldn't be responsible for the release of the data. The issue here is really the publishing of it. He did not publish it, and selling it to a private law enforcement agency, in my mind at least is not publishing it. 2. The second issue is related to false police reports. In America, it is illegal to file a false police report. However, this is not what is happening here. He is not claiming to police that a crime was actually committed, instead he is providing information related to that crime. He is basically selling criminal leads to law enforcement. He's basically doing a crime stoppers like program, but generating the leads himself and going straight to the feds.
- sudonim 16y ago
  2. On #2, so if you want to harass someone without putting yourself on the line, generate "evidence" about them and provide it to law enforcement, but don't file a police report. Good to know!
cookiecaper 16y ago
Defamation and libel are civil offenses, meaning (in my lay understanding) a person can be held financially liable if sued but cannot be imprisoned or otherwise restricted except as far as he can be constrained to pay the judgment filed against him.

SwellJoe 16y ago

I agree with you up to a point. And here's that point: "Before the release of the data, and while this was going on, those on the list were unaware of what was occurring. Just as a reasonable person isn't threatened until they become aware of the stalking, threats, etc in real life." People did become aware of it before the release, which is why the exploits of his servers happened, and why Anonymous got butthurt and went on a crusade. He was dropping hints and threats in IRC, national media, and in email, that he was doing this stuff. He also "leaked" via his fake persona some of the kinds of information he was gathering to his victims so in order to drum up more publicity and to scare them into action. And, it now turns out, he planned to do a lot more than that. I don't have a problem with him idly browsing facebook or twitter, though I have to question the mental stability of someone that spends all their time voluntarily reading and logging the incoherent ramblings of teenagers all day and trying to build a conspiracy out of it. The legal issue is that he was threatening people with exposure, via major media outlets. When seeing this stuff, anyone who ever happened to drop in on the IRC channels had to think, "Crap. When is the FBI gonna show up to question me because I made a joke about Egypt on IRC?" You and I both know the government are wholly incompetent at dealing with issues on the Internet, and they try to make up for that incompetence by being extremely heavy-handed in execution of their misguided policies. I'd be scared as hell if I thought someone, apparently trusted by the government, was going to "reveal" my involvement in some wacky Internet conspiracy to the FBI.

noahc 16y ago
The only real legal point you have is the hints and threats issue. There isn't a good public record of what was said. From the article, it appears as though he said he wasn't going to publish names publicly. Although, it seems to suggest this was post DDOS. There isn't a clear enough public documentation of what happened to fully say one way or another. My suspicion is that those on the list did not tell him to stop, which is one way legally of measuring when harassment starts.