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As Domestic Abuse Goes Digital, Shelters Turn To Counter-surveillance With Tor
An anonymous reader writes "Almost every modern abusive relationship has a digital component, from cyberstalking to hacking phones, emails, and social media accounts, but women's shelters increasingly have found themselves on the defensive, ill-equipped to manage and protect their clients from increasingly sophisticated threats. Recently the Tor Project stepped in to help change that. Andrew Lewman, executive director of the project, 'thinks of the digital abuse epidemic like a doctor might consider a biological outbreak. "Step one, do not infect yourself. Step two, do not infect others, especially your co-workers. Step three, help others," he said. In the case of digital infections, like any other, skipping those first two steps can quickly turn caretakers into infected liabilities. For domestic violence prevention organizations that means ensuring their communication lines stay uncompromised. And that means establishing a base level of technology education for staff with generally little to no tech chops who might not understand the gravity of clean communication lines until faced with a situation where their own phone or email gets hacked.'"
I look forward to claims along the lines of, "It's not abuse unless you physically injure them," and other quasi-religious nonsense which treats the brain as a perfectly rational ideal rather than just another organ subject to external influence.
Sending a nasty email is not domestic abuse.
Stop trivializing the suffering of women that get beaten within a inch of their lives by brutal husbands.
ohh....
and no I no longer use Facebook.... have zero need now I have a wife and baby on the way.....
I know somebody in an abusive relationship. Her husband monitors the messages that she sends and receives on her cell phone. He demands to have access to her Facebook and email accounts. She has a second email account that she only accesses it from the public library. I don't really know how Tor will help in an abusive situation. It's not so much that somebody is tapping the lines, but that the abusive party tries to control what they do on the devices that they know about. She can't use her cell phone, or home computer for anything private. Trying to install Tor on the computer would just give the abuser more reason to cause problems.
Really she needs to get out of the relationship, and many of her friends tell her that, but she just won't do it.
Speaking of compromise... I remember one time a feel-good article in the newspaper about volunteers helping to build a women's shelter. Moronically, the paper included a picture that included identifying information about the shelter.
why do none of these articles ever address the bunny boilers and child killer women? there are a LOT of them out there... David Letterman had a particularly noxious lady stalker nut after him.
but these articles always just Shit on Men....
actually dipshit, I didn't look for any relationship on FB.....
i *meet* her through face book... then... guess what... met her in this thing called the *real world*, where we got to know each other....
but I'm not sure if a basement dwelling dick like yourself knows what that is....
She returned to him and its as though technology has somehow exacerbated domestic violence to the point of her present scenario. She gave her attacker passwords, usernames, cellphone access, email access, and a host of other very sensitive information based solely on the pretext that he was 'an undercover FBI agent' and at no time thought to as for some form of confirmation or conclusory evidence to prove this. She never once stopped to wonder why an undercover FBI agent would ever tell anyone about themselves.
Hillariously enough she actually still lives in the same town as her attacker/abuser. from TFA:
"No body is going to believe all of this stuff," Sarah said. "Even now I have a lot of shame. I have a lot of blaming myself."
This is a natural response to realizing you have completely rendered the hard work and assistance of teams of crisis responders and police completely null and void. We all make mistakes, however Sarah seems functionally incapable of the cognitive process by which we learn from those mistakes and grow.
Good people go to bed earlier.
see, this is exactly the sort of thing that we want to avoid. Being in a relationship with someone does not give you license to intrude upon her privacy.
Sarah was probably abused as a child - that is all the knows. As an adult, she gravitated to a partner the was like her abuser.
Human beings are not this completely rational animal. As a matter fact, most of our decisions are based on gut feelings (Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow).
And when you mix in physical trauma, people break and do stupid things like run back to their abuser or don't leave. A lot of that is also fear - fear that the abuser will punish them.
Or to put is this way, to expect rational action from someone in this predicament is completely unreasonable.
The city of Carson, California has just passed a law making it illegal to insult Justin Bieber online.
(No, seriously.)
The average worker in a violence shelter knows how to work the cursor on a computer and push the "send" button, but has a long, long way to go before beginning to understand the issues with Internet security. This problem has no technological solution. You can install the most sophisticated locks on your front door, but it won't protect you if you leave it unlocked, and it won't protect you from having your door smashed down.
There is a solution to this, and it goes "clink" with the closing of a prison cell door.
Dude - if she was cheating on you, man up and leave. You do not have the right to do anything else, and unless you're a sociopath who loves mentally beating down a woman just to feel better about yourself, your story has no relevance here.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Wow, sumthin musta happened to you to get you to be such a dick. Not all women are like that....kinda like, not all men are dicks.
seems that the uses of TOR to date have been primarily 'negatively' for hackers, those avoiding the law in a number of ways (including true terrorists) and those who share (e.g. steal) copyrighted materials. 'Positive' use include or those who live in repressive regimes. This adds another positive use. How cool.
"establishing a base level of technology education for staff with generally little to no tech chops who might not understand the gravity of clean communication lines until faced with a situation where their own phone or email gets hacked.'"
Yeah, they must really be idiots considering that it's the holy grail of what can happen. So you've got an angry ex-bf harrassing a woman and stalking her but besides gray area stuff, didn't technically do anything illegal. Oh wait, now he reset your password to your e-mail and accessed it? Go straight to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 bitch because that's against federal laws. People with assholes exes like this are just waiting for a DUI or weapons violation or recorded threat to put them in jail. Digital crimes go through court like a damn water slide if there's enough evidence. Then tada, no more problem because the asshole is in jail.
If a woman (OR MAN) is in a shelter for the purpose of protecting themselves from physical abuse the original act of which was psychologically scarring then the folks in the shelters need to be teaching those being sheltered some common sense. Stop using socal networking.
I have had multiple female friends and co-workers who have been properly traumatized by stalkers. The absolute first thing I tell them is to close their damn facebook account and wipe themselves off the internet. Social networking is the defacto #1 enabler for stalkers and pedophiles.
TOR is all well and good. But start with common sense and save people from themselves by training people not to use social networking.
In the old days shelters mainly had to worry that some douchebag would publish their address. Or one of the women at the shelter would tell an untrustworthy friend where they were.
Now you have people who nearly post their schedules online in the form of facebook posts, tweets, and foursquare checkins. I would hope the first thing they do is teach people not to enable their perpetrators. Stop using social networking.
What was the point of this? Sounds like a load of Ba'alshit to me. We need a real Ba'albuster for this case...
What about abused men? Women are violent, too. In fact, women are responsible for violence in 50% of domestic violence cases. It's quite simple: it's not only men who are abusers. Say it out loud, and then say it to anybody who will listen. Reality is a bitch.
Who chose that title? It's not just misleading, it's flat out false. They may be using TOR to counter surveillance, but they aren't using it for counter surveillance. Huge difference.
Shelters are not using TOR to spy on the abusers, they're using it to protect themselves & their clients.
Methinks someone doesn't know what 'counter surveillance' is.
"man up"
Fuck that - MAN DOWN!
bunch of fat assed broken toys with daddy issues, gold digging worn out and loose women trolling the online dating scene hoping you'll love them because they are so gosh darned special.
fuck that.
Reality is a bitch.
So are those abusive women.
yeah!
Well said. Victims want to leave but don't, whereas abusers don't want to abuse but do.
I wish I had spent more energy on putting distance between my ex and me, and less energy into calling the Police each time she assaulted me.
... and not kick her out?
It is not so much about "a nasty email". It is about hacking into computers/phones in order to track someone. To FIND where the shelter is, so the brute can go there and beat her up for running away.
The "nasty email" won't be harsh words, but a virus that log keystrokes and conversations (using the mic). The shelter may order food, through the net or the phone. And the tech-savy brute gets the delivery address. When he knows where it is and who is there, he can stalk and possibly break in.
90% of criminals are men. The criminal women are mostly non-violent, like shoplifting.
Still, there are a few really nasty women around. And they have trouble forming these truely abusive relationships, because the average man is stronger than the average woman. Also, men find it easier to run away.
So for each man-shelter, you might need 10-50 woman-shelters. Which is why the talk always is about abused women. The abused men exists, but there are so few.
Letterman is a special case - because he's a celebrity.
unfortunately the anonymity of the internet allows people to indulge in their inner sociopath. this is a direct function of people representing their lives on the internet instead of using it as a tool it is.
this is why i am working on divesting my personal life from the internet, there are too many sociopaths out there.
to anyone who feels the need to have access to their significant others digital communication, remember a secret isn't a secret if more than one person knows it, everything will eventually come out in the end.
to the OP in this thread here is what you should have done, if you felt something was up (ie sketchy behaviour, hiding screens when you walk by, etc) then ask her about it, dont get a sufficent explanation? leave, its not like digging any deeper is going to make the situation any better or the hurt any less..
i dont get how people seem to believe that being in a relationship makes them less of an individual. if you feel that you cant leave a relationship, or you need to stay in the relationship, then you should leave and shouldnt be in a relationship with that person. if you arent shure what you want and want to play the feild, then you shouldnt be in a relationship, especially if your waiting to upgrade. if you feel that you need to keep tabs on your significant other because you dont trust them, you shouldnt be in a relationship at all.
a relationship should be something where the whole is greater than the parts, but the parts are not less than they were before the relationship.