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Teen Suicide Tormentor Outed By Anonymous
MightyMartian writes "From the CBC: 'The tragic story of B.C. teen suicide victim Amanda Todd has taken another bizarre twist as the internet hacking and activist group Anonymous has named a man the group says was the girl's primary tormentor. Todd, 15, of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, died last Wednesday, a month after posting a haunting video on YouTube that cited the sexualized attack that set her down a path of anxiety, depression and drug and alcohol abuse.' This raises a whole nest of issues surrounding the presumption of innocence and vigilantism. Should the police and the courts be given the appropriate amount of time to determine if there is sufficient evidence, or if a crime has in fact been committed, or is Anonymous right in short-circuiting what might in fact be a lengthy process with no guarantee that anyone will face charges?"
If you're going to try to punish someone for a crime (and make no mistake, naming the man is meant to be a punishment), you'd better make damn sure you get the right person.
For all the problems of the legal system, it is decent at that -- far from perfect, but probably better than some random anonymice.
You forgot to blame Hitler, comic books, rock and roll, D&D, and video games.
Anonymous could have blood on their hands if the outrage becomes a lynch mob. I have no sympathy for the man, but the internet is a kangaroo court.
Excuse me? Since when has religion had much to do with morality? It's about peer influence. The change here is the perceived anonymity of the internet. The belief the is not god has been around long before then belief in any god. I don't know what your quip about Atheism is based on.
Atheism leads to this.
I'm pretty sure you don't need to believe in God to consider rape and murder unethical, immoral, and just wrong. In fact, plenty of people have pointed out (repeatedly) the fallacy of assuming that one needs God and/or religion to be good, so there is no reason to say more on that topic here. Go forth and Google.
The culture of consent and contraception, leads to this.
I'm not sure what the "culture of contraception" is, but I am pretty sure it does not lead to this kind of behavior, either. In fact, I strongly suspect this behavior - in general, minus the Internet - predates the widespread availability of contraception.
"No sane man will dance." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Child porn (aka the picture of Amanda's breasts) is a felony. Her death was caused by that felony. Does that make it felony murder? (Yes, I know - she was Canadian and the laws aren't the same in Canada...)
Atheism leads to this.
What does Atheism have to do with any of this? Because I don't believe there's an invisible man in the sky means I don't have any morals?
If Anonymous has material evidence that points to the guilt of a particular individual, they should turn that evidence over to the responsible law enforcement agency, not go public and taint both the investigation and public opinion. The detectives may have had the opportunity to seize evidence before the person knew he was under suspicion, or set up a sting operation. They'd also have the chance to clear the individual if he's innocent without the mess of threats of violence I presume this guy is now going to get.
Presuming this person is eventually charged and tried, Anonymous releasing this information can complicate the job of the prosecutor, having the opposite effect intended.
On the other hand, if this person is innocent, Anonymous just released a shitstorm on this poor guy that's going to be nearly impossible to get rid of until the police charge someone else.
I don't see any situations where Anonymous' action result in a more positive outcome than would have come about through other choices.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Should the police and the courts be given the appropriate amount of time to determine if there is sufficient evidence, or if a crime has in fact been committed
In theory yes, but the problem with bullying is that the legal system doesn't protect it sufficiently .. there is this double standard. The exact same behaviors that would be considered criminal just a few years later is dismissed as 'normal' (and you're told to 'ignore it') at school level. This is primarily when vigilantism becomes attractive - when the formal justice system fails to protect victims.
What should happen is that more forms of bullying should be criminalized, and the penalties should be harsher - e.g. physical assault should be treated more often as an adult crime and teens should be tried as adults for committing physical assault. And as with committing crime as an adult, there should be harsher consequences that follow you through life. Currently when leaving school, there are no negative consequences for bullies at all - not even a modicum of shame in the workplace (this is why I support more 'name and shame' efforts for even past bullies).
Unfortunately, much like battered wife syndrome, without formal recourse, desperate victims are sometimes forced and driven to either tragically commit suicide, or occasionally, take out their own tormentors in the worst cases (e.g. some school shootings). At least in the latter, if there is a silver lining, it's that there is some manner of repercussion for the perpetrators - that is what is sorely needed.
Is this serious? Is someone on /. really wondering if it is better to let the police and the judiciary sytem decide if someone committed a crime and who it was, or just let anonymous (!) people do justice on their own?
Are people really nostalgic of the good old days of lynching etc.?
What Anonymous is doing is called revenge. Revenge is not justice.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
I'd take the partially opposing perspective that Christianity and moralism are responsible for making it so that a) it's somehow "evil" to see someone's breasts, b) if a girl shows her breasts, she is a slut and a whore and should be ashamed of herself and do whatever it takes to have no one find out about it, c) if someone has a naked picture of you, they have some sort of power over you, because boobies are evil and we all should be ashamed of our beautiful bodies.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I caught a few of the threads where the apparent perp was outed, and I was very encouraged at the volume of comments that basically said 'that's enough data, now let's turn it over to the authorities.' Crowdsourcing of evidence-gathering is terribly powerful, and it's nice to see that even in a large pool of people (in a vigilante mood) the majority still have a sense that there's a line between prosecutor and jury. Sure, there are issues with naming potentially innocent people, but when the crowd refrains from attack and turns to a judicial system, it's the best we can do.
I think not...(*poof*)
This is rape and murder. Maybe not by society's definition. Maybe not by the liberalized culture that thinks tricking a 14 year old into baring her breasts on the internet is just good clean fun. Or that consent is always equivalent to permission. So as much as I consider what anonymous has done to be vigilantism; one cannot say that this man, or the teenage boy, or any of the rest of this poor girl's tormentors are innocent.
It's all tied together. Society's rejection of morality and ethics leads to this. Atheism leads to this. The culture of consent and contraception, leads to this. The only thing left to do is learn from it instead of repeating the same mistakes as the hippie generation.
Emphasis mine... you were doing so well up until this point. Straw man fallacy. Atheism does not lead to this. Amorality leads to this. It is 100% possible to be an atheist with morals. In fact, I can list thousands of amoral things organized religion has done to the world. (Inquisition, Jihad, etc.) Your argument is bullshit.
Consent and contraception leads to healthy, happy relationships without unwanted children to screw things up. Those allow you to adequately plan for your child's future, save up for their lives, and be prepared for when they actually arrive. With consent and contraception, you have the opportunity to provide a better, properly planned life instead of one that leads to divorce, single-parent homes and priests molesting children. (See? I can straw-man too!)
Remember: Treat your religion like your penis. Don't whip it out every chance you get, and please don't jam it down my throat. Because that would be gay. And we all know what you extremist religious types feel about gayness.
The anonymous dox might have the WRONG address
http://www.cknw.com/news/vancouver/story.aspx?ID=1791555
there's the danger
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
This is rape and murder [blogspot.com]. Maybe not by society's definition.
So then it's not rape and murder.* What other definition actually counts for anything?
Maybe not by the liberalized culture that thinks tricking a 14 year old into baring her breasts on the internet is just good clean fun.
Also not by any level-headed person including those who do think that tricking a 14 year old into exposing herself is a hideous thing to do.
From the page you linked to:
Thus, homosexuality is rape. Thus, one night heterosexual stands are rape. Thus, premarital sex, even with "consent", is rape.
Confirmed: you are an idiot. Doubly so if you actually wrote that and don't just agree with it.
Society's rejection of morality and ethics leads to this. Atheism leads to this. The culture of consent and contraception, leads to this.
No, no, and no. You know what leads to this? Humans. We are all (including the Pope, no matter what the Catholics are told to believe) fallible. We do some shitty things sometimes, and just as many of those things have been in the name of a god as not. Grow out of talking to your imaginary friend and take some collective responsibility along with the rest of us soul-less animals.
Also, find a friend to get laid with. It's awesome!
*Disclaimer: I do think that what happened to this poor girl is terrible and those responsible should face the full force of the law, such as it is. I just decided to focus more on this poster for being a cock-womble.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
So if Anonymous makes a mistake and outs the wrong person and that person becomes harassed by the public backlash to the point of committing suicide... Will Anonymous out their outer?
According to the following website, the suspected person appeared in court yesterday:
http://www.dailydot.com/news/amanda-todd-kody-maxson/
I'm pretty sure you don't need to believe in God to consider rape and murder unethical, immoral, and just wrong.
Pretty much. If fear of God is all that keep you you from doing bad things then you are not a good person.
(Judges 21:10-24 NLT)
So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. "This is what you are to do," they said. "Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin." Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.
(Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)
They attacked Midian just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed all the men. All five of the Midianite kings â" Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba â" died in the battle. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. Then the Israelite army captured the Midianite women and children and seized their cattle and flocks and all their wealth as plunder. They burned all the towns and villages where the Midianites had lived. After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals, they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.
Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. "Why have you let all the women live?" he demanded. "These are the very ones who followed Balaam's advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.
(Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.
---
Oh yea.... religion is really against rape except for young women who are untouched by man.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it's been a while since you've been a teenage girl. At that age peer/parental/community pressure can seem like the most crushing, overwhelming burden to ever exist in the history of the planet. This is what makes what this guy (allegedly) did so repellent-- taking advantage of those who are more emotionally vulnerable, impulsive, and irrational than they ever will be in their lives.
Sure, "you own your own actions", etc, but for some of these kids the internet is their entire community or peer group, it is much more difficult to shrug off.
It's amazing what a few years out of high school will do to restore one's perspective-- don't kill yourselves, kids, it really does get better!
That's not Christianity; that's Puritanism, which is (or was) a distinct sect within Christianity, heavily influenced by asceticism, which is a non-religious philosophy. Americans probably have a higher correlation between Christianity and Puritansim, as many of their initial settlers were Puritans getting the hell out of England, but it's still a false equivalency. It's like saying that all atheists believe life came about due to extra-terrestrial contact, just because Erich von Däniken is an atheist.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
b) if a girl shows her breasts, she is a slut and a whore and should be ashamed of herself and do whatever it takes to have no one find out about it,
More generally, I'm also perplexed by the social double-standard where men who have (had) multiple sex-partners (or are sexually aggressive, for lack of a better word) are "studs", but women are "sluts". Seems like a bunch of misogynistic bullshit from insecure men to make women feel second-rate. (I'm a guy, by the way.)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
More generally, I'm also perplexed by the social double-standard where men who have (had) multiple sex-partners (or are sexually aggressive, for lack of a better word) are "studs", but women are "sluts".
Women call women who sleep around sluts. Men just call them.
"His name was James Damore."
I wonder how people would feel if they realized that, agnostic to the possibility of a deity existing, their "god" likely isn't much more than a warped internalization of their parents ... kind of the adult version of an imaginary friend.
Thus making religion a manifestation of something along the lines of the sense of security of the family, the anxieties of growing up, and the fear of encountering dangers outside of the family, etc...
Basically, people like the sense of familiarity and try to maintain some semblance of it into adulthood so they feel more secure and sure of themselves. It gets spooky when you realize that that sense of familiarity is frequently not the positive kind.
This is usually where I get accused of being atheistic...
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
My 2yo and 3yo sons regularly bite/scratch/beat on each other. In adults this would be assault and battery (possibly even aggravated assault). Are you proposing that they should go to jail?
A key that opens many locks is a master key. A lock that can be opened by many keys is a shitty lock.
Not saying I agree with it, but the analogy fits fairly well.
/. Dating Tip #67: Don't use that analogy with a date / girlfriend - ever.
[ And I would avoid using the phrase "master key" in most dating situations. ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
No... because without his invisible man in the sky, he would have no morals.
That kind of person scares me. What happens if they ever lose their faith? They'll turn into raping, murdering lunatics since God was the only thing keeping them decent.
"Anything done out of fear has no moral value"
I do advocate total freedom to everyone regarding their bodies and I will be the first one defending that idea, but the labels you were talking about are not laws or any kind of denial of rights. Women do have the right in most modern cultures of having as many partners they want, as they should.
But what we are talking about here is perception, how humans see individuals of both sexes that engage in "promiscuity", for lack of a better word. That has not only social roots as biological roots. Men do not and will probably never see a promiscuous woman as a desired partner, because instinctively we want them to carry our genes and not somebody else's. Women on the other hand will always carry their own genes, and so they instinctively look for other things in their partners, usually strength and dominance, which are usually traits of men disputed by many women, thus making male promiscuity actually instinctively attractive.
They're not calling the women sluts because they had sex. They're calling the women sluts because they disagree with them, want to silence them, and character assassination often works.
Aspersions about their sex habits are the tool, the motive is power.
being raped is no longer shameful but something for women to take pride in
i'm supposed to behave and be diplomatic in my responses, but for anyone to form the thought you just wrote requires a special combination of being a fucking moron and a sick douchebag all in one neat steaming pile
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From TFA:
A national child anti-exploitation group, cybertip.ca, says it received a tip almost a year ago about Todd.
A concerned citizen contacted the organization last November to report that images of Todd were being circulated online, said spokeswoman Signy Arnason.
"We did receive one report, and that was passed along to law enforcement as well as child welfare," Arnason said Monday. "It was not a report from her, but it was a report from a concerned citizen."
So ... the girl was tormented by an adult who posted her topless images on seedy sites and that so-called "national child anti-exploitation group" got a tip and what they did?
The spoke-woman claimed that they have passed that tip to the "law enforcement" as well as "child welfare".
That was when that little girl was still being tormented by that sick adult, and what happened?
Nothing !
Neither the police nor the child welfare nor that "national child anti-exploitation group" did anything to protect the girl.
She was so tormented, so helpless that she chose to end her life.
Whose fault was it?
The society !
All of us have turned into zombies.
When someone got tormented, we just did what we do - passing the buck.
Like what that "national child anti-exploitation group" did.
All they did was passing the buck to the police and then ... nothing.
What's the use of having a "national child anti-exploitation group" when they don't do nothing??
I'm not in any shape or form related to the anonymous but I do applaud what they have done in this case.
They have done what the police, the child welfare system and the national child anti-exploitation group have all failed to do - to flush that sick motherfucker out in the open.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You do understand that the whole concept of anonymity is to have no identity? Anonymous isn't a group of individuals because you can't be certain who is or isn't a member because they are all anonymous. The moment they get an individual identity, they are no longer anonymous.
Last weekend, a video was posted threathening dutch ISP and the dutch content mafia with a cyber attack by Anonymous, it turned out to be a kid who had no relation with them but there was no way to know this because you can't call up anon and ask them if anon, no the other anon, not that anon, you know the anon who knowns anon is really an anon. Well you could but the poor sap you end up calling randomly probably will hang up on you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.