4 ms·

Yeah. So there's a lot going on with harassment charges. First things first, i'm not a lawyer. I'm just a dude who cares about civics. The internet makes ha

Yeah. So there's a lot going on with harassment charges. First things first, i'm not a lawyer. I'm just a dude who cares about civics. The internet makes harassment considerably more problematic. Even setting aside constitutional defenses of speech, just trying to figure out which agency should be in charge of investigating and prosecuting harassment is confusing at best. Do you go to your local police? Do you go to a federal agency? Which one? Even when you do approach a law enforcement agency after receiving threats, do they think its worth their time to investigate? (Amanda Hess's piece on harassment is an interesting for her interactions w/ the police alone: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170/ http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-ar... ) Revenge porn is an analogous (but not identical) problem, and even in that case, where basically everyone can agree it's a bad thing, it's clear first that states don't have statutes which they can use to prosecute (until very recently at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn#U.S._laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn#U.S._laws ), and in several cases some of the laws being written are complete clusterfucks. The truth of the matter is that you can get away with a whole lot of bullshit before anybody starts trying to drop hammers on you. And harassers live in that space between what is legal and what is enforceable (a lot of other interesting stuff lives in that space too).

wpietri 12y ago
Yes, definitely. From personal experience, not with harassment but with other crimes, if you go to the FBI with some sort of computer-mediated, cross-boundary crime, their first question is "can you demonstrate at least $25,000 worth of damages?" Even getting harassment handled in a purely local case is challenging. Talk to any woman who has been stalked and I'm sure you'll here a catalog of ways police can be inadequate. But once it starts crossing state lines and requires a lot of computer forensics to run down, it gets orders of magnitude harder.

wpietri 12y ago

Yes, definitely. From personal experience, not with harassment but with other crimes, if you go to the FBI with some sort of computer-mediated, cross-boundary crime, their first question is "can you demonstrate at least $25,000 worth of damages?" Even getting harassment handled in a purely local case is challenging. Talk to any woman who has been stalked and I'm sure you'll here a catalog of ways police can be inadequate. But once it starts crossing state lines and requires a lot of computer forensics to run down, it gets orders of magnitude harder.