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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.
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.
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
Agreed. Watergate had NOTHING to do with water.
Yes, the only sensible thing to do is to retrofit "Watergate" to "WatergateGate". Totally with you on this one.
The initial corruption turned out to not exist, so it's no wonder it wasn't reported on. After that the hate-train was already at top speed and it was too late to stop it.
The problem is GamerGate started with the attacks on Zoe Quinn, which turned out to be complete fabrications. The alleged positive review of her game doesn't exist, there was no conspiracy. It was all just some jilted lover's blog post and all the asshats who jumped on to the bandwagon by spreading lies and rumours about her.
When it became apparent that the whole thing was bullshit, GamerGate moved on to other targets. By that point it was too late though. The "Gamer" tag was poisoned beyond recovery, and the alleged journalistic impropriety was all just innuendo and thinly veiled outrage that women were demanding respect and fair treatment as gamers.
Look at the nonsense GamerGate spouted about Anita Sarkeesian, for example. You may not agree with her points, but that doesn't excuse endless fake accounts, fake posts about her using the Kickstarter money to buy expensive shoes, weaponized pornography etc. You could argue that it was only a few on the fringes doing all that, but that's just a No True Scotsman argument.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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?