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FBI Confirms Open Investigation Into Gamergate
v3rgEz writes In a terse form letter responding to a FOIA request, the FBI has confirmed it has an open investigation into Gamergate, the loose but controversial coalition of gamers calling for ethics in gaming journalism — even as some members have harassed and sent death threats to female gaming developers and critics.
Which ones are they investigating? The drama-mongers or the drama-mongs?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Some were admitted to have been fabrication. Some have been real but police advised people threatened that they were not credible, only to have those people go to the media claiming they were serious.
And then there were probably a few real psychos.
The saddest part is that most of the actual victims appear to be people who took part in the #notyourshield tag. The folks that basically made a point that "we're those minorities you opponents of #gamergate claim to be "protecting" and we're telling you under our own names - we need no protection from you". They and their families were brutally harassed and some were actually driven out of work.
It's going to be interesting to know if FBI is going to actually look at the whole thing rather than just #gamergate and what they will find out.
This isn't even the use of weasel words. The FBI is investigating *opponents* of GamerGate for lying about threats and third party trolls for making other threats while the summery claims the investigation is about threats made by proponents. I really, really hope whoever made the threats and whoever lied about them is caught. I hope this because I know damn well GamerGate did not make these threats.
The entire case against GamerGate is built of press pushing talking points off of empty claims made by professional victims. That's the start and end of the "threats and harassment" side of the story. Meanwhile a consumer movement against, ironically, corruption in the press is being libeled to suit political agendas.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Slashdot's coverage of Gamergate has been abysmal. Every other summary has followed the template "harassment, misogyny, threats, harassment, misogyny, threats . . . oh btw Gamergate."
/. thread about the Gamergate scandal itself: the journalistic lapses, the universal news media blackout and user forum/comment censorship (including reddit and 4chan of all places), and the still-ongoing coordinated smear campaign that was launched on August 28 with the "Gamers are Dead" shotgun blast of hit pieces. All of those milestones should have gotten at least one article here each.
Sad as it is, this shitty summary is still the most "unbiased" simply because it straightforwardly mentions the movement as the topic of the discussion. The attempt to imply that the FBI said they were investigating pro-Gamergate people has already been destroyed in the comments (thank fuck users are still in control of the discussion here).
Four months later, there still hasn't been a single
Can we please stop adding gate to the end of any controversial subject? It was barely clever the first time it was done and it's gotten to be pretty much the polar opposite at this point.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Large amorphous groups like gamergate (and yes, feminist groups and organizations as well) all have a few crackpots making threats. I am sure a few will be found, but that does not alter the legitimacy of the arguments made. I wouldn't be so quick to believe what three letter agencies put out either, especially since they are beholden to political bodies with interests in specific outcomes for the sake of image.
There is no media blackout because the media does not care. How could you even condense this whole shit show down into a one minute news story? Outside of the gaming community nobody really cares.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Giving sex or blow jobs for preferential treatment is not a problem. However, a journalist not disclosing that he was receiving a blow job from the subject of his review while writing it could be considered an ethical breach.
Of course, the same goes for any other more common methods of obtaining promotional preferential treatment, such as donating copies of games, travel or hardware. The producer of the product has rarely made any commitment to limit how they encourage promotion of their products, but the journalist does implicitly make a commitment towards their readers to perform their job with a certain level of professionalism and adherence to good journalistic practices, which is where the ethical problem appears.
Whether anyones genitals are involved in any step in those chains is frankly irrelevant.
How internet fighting works:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/ind...
Gamergate is a conspiracy theory (although to be fair ethics in game journalism are non-existent). Anti-gamergate is made up mainly of those rich middle class women who think that nerds who have been picked on their entire lives for being nerds are somehow opressing them. The media sides with the media of course.
Gamergate is made up mostly of kids who fling slurs that would make a sailor bluch around on XBox live, and anti-GG seem surprised when their slurs and insults that usually shut down their opponents bounce off. Gamergate, on the other hand feels that they are each owed a personal explanation for each and every point made by any of the main anti-GG side.
I'm leaving out a lot of the more unpleasant aspects from both sides.
Dude, the entire industry is dirty. Here's a tip: if you're worried about ethics start boycotting every video game.
It's funny how when it comes out that a gaming company acted unethically Gamergaters suddenly lower their standards by a few notches rather than give up their favorite toys.
Calling something "social justice" does not immediately relegate it to obscurity. "Social justice" is just a term to mean "admit less-than-stellar behavior towards minorities or the underrepresented, and earnestly try to improve it". Unless you'd call Rosa Parks a SJW you really should stop trying to use terms like that pejoratively - it makes you look like a tiny-minded, scared child, who is worried their favorite toys aren't as awesome as they always thought, and lashes out at anyone who might point that out to them.
Excellent summary. What it boils down to is that some people were criticized, and they defended themselves by claiming these were attacks on their gender. The reason is plain and simple: They could not credibly defend themselves against the criticism itself, so they used misdirection and made it a gender-issue. Predictably, a lot of people with no clue whatsoever about what was going on then jumped on those criticizing, as apparently criticizing a person of female gender is an attack on them all...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I notice that all your links are to poorly made YouTube videos. Taking the first one, the links you claim back you up are actually just links to more YouTube videos, a document on Google Docs that is unverifiable, a seemingly unrelated WaPo editorial about a spat between journalists and bloggers, and a Gamasutra article that they clearly state was written by community member and not their own staff and which seems to be mostly irrelevant.
Your claims are built entirely on top of other unfounded claims and extremely weak evidence. That basically sums up the entire GamerGate movement, from the original lies about Zoe Quinn onwards. There are some genuine issues with games journalism, although why that surprises anyone I don't know because no aspect of entertainment journalism has much credibility, but those points are lost in a sea of bullshit now.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Just shows how crazy it is to rely on Wikipedia these days.
By the way, anyone else missing comments they recall making in this thread?
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Well, that was mostly the cynic in me writing, but on the other hand, isn't a threat made against a single individual typically handled by the police? Why would FBI feel the need to get involved? Or is this on of the "because it happened on the Internet it's different" kind of situations?
Government agencies overstepping their boundaries and getting involved in things that aren't their business is certainly a reason for concern.
Why what police force get involved when...
This is a basic, 50,000 foot view; it's not intended to cover all the details, and corrections gratefully accepted, but I believe this covers the gist of it...
It's pretty clear that the threats, particularly against the appearance of Anita Sarkeesian at Utah State University were, at a minimum, interstate.
When the threats cross a state line, the move from local police jurisdiction to federal police (FBI) jurisdiction, since police forces may only operate within their own jurisdictions. If the crime spans larger jurisdictions, such as adjacent cities within a county, or adjacent counties within a state, then it may be handled by an inter-agency task force. If it gets bigger than that, then the next larger jurisdiction encapsulating the jurisdictions involved takes ownership. The jurisdictions and agencies, are as follows:
Within a city: The city police force
Within a county: The county sheriff
Within a state: The CBI (California Bureau of Investigation - agency name varies by state)
Interstate: The FBI
International: Interpol
Within these classifications, inferior jurisdictions are often acted to cooperate/participate in the investigatory legwork, arrest operations, searches, evidence gathering, forensic work (autopsy, crime scene investigation, and so on).
Exceptions:
When a crime occurs on a federal lands or reservations, the FBI always has jurisdiction. For "indian reservations", investigator power lies in both the FBI and in the tribal police force (depending on the nature of the crime).
When a crime occurs on a military base, the investigatory power lies within the branch of the military; for most crimes, this is the MPs or Military Police. For more serious crime, or crimes involving military personnel not on base, or non-military and military personnel both, it goes by branch of service:
Navy, Marine, Coast Guard: NCIS - Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Army: USACIDC or CID - Criminal Investigation Division of the Army Provost's office
Air Force: AFOSI or OSI - Office of Special Investigations
Generally, anything involving a civilian, or occurring off base, ands up being a joint investigation with local authorities, which can include authorities in other countries (e.g. naval bases in Japan, air force bases in Germany, etc.).
For terrorist threats, USDHS - DHS - the Department of Homeland Security - gets involved. They are probably already involved in the Utah State University threat. At that pint, they can call on the capabilities and services of agencies such as the DOJ (Federal Marshals office), the NSA (which is allowed to operate domestically), the CIA (which is allowed to operate extranationally), the DIA (which is allowed to operate with regard to foreign military), and so on.
All in all, the more something escalates in terms of geographic reach, or in terms of threat level, the higher up the food chain you go, further and further into territories where you do not want to be. At some point in the escalation process, you get to the stratospheric regions where people simply "disappear" (otherwise known as "extraordinary rendition").
Does that answer your question?
Post a link to the positive review she received due to her relationship with a journalist. I dare you. I double dare you.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is an issue I truly believe socialists like myself and conservatives like yourself can come together on because NOBODY likes corruption, manipulation and hypocrisy and that IS ultimately what "Gamergate" is about.
Just don't label the SJWers as "radical left" okay? They have about as much to do with the left as Rev Al has in common with MLK, its about co-opting for the purpose of self enrichment, its about a handful of women who have figured out how to use the guise of feminism to put money in their bank accounts, see Zoe Quinn killing Fine Young Capitalists so she could push a "Women's GameJam" that went straight into her personal checking account, or how Anita Sarkeesian went from being a telemarketing shill to being the Andrea Dworkin of video games, at the end of the day its about stealing an idea, perverting it, and making bank off it.
But just as I wouldn't try to paint all conservatives with the same brush by saying all conservatives believe like Rand Paul that you should be able to discriminate against other races as long as its under the guise of private business, I would hope that you would afford those of us on the left that believe in safety nets for the poor and fairness in everything from taxes to political power and lump us in with those that say every ill of the world is because of white straight penis holders.
At the end of the day I think we can BOTH agree that political agendas don't belong in gaming, nor do we need a gaming media clic that is corrupt to the core and THAT is what BOTH sides need to be focusing on, the fact that you had 13 websites putting out the exact same story almost word for word within a few minutes of each other, that this very same media was covering up the fact they had both physical and financial interests in the games they were promoting, and that those with a political bent that both sides would rightly label extreme was using this podium to silence and blacklist those that did not support their agenda or at least pay lip service to their beliefs. This level of corruption simply cannot be tolerated and we in the gaming community and the Internet community in general should accept nothing less than the gamejournopro writers no longer being in gaming media and the websites they worked with going under because this level of collusion and corruption must NOT be allowed to spread, lest it taint and infect all those around it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.