Vigilantism & AnonymousFollow

That article is light on details but, if you have evidence that someone was an accessory to a crime, wouldn't you pass it along to the authorities?

You don't like the "power" that an anonymous group of internet users who are primarily teenage boys wields? You do realize that by impeding any of their "power" you'll be taking away basic liberties that the rest of us have that they just use to their advantage. The fact that you are NOT "anonymous" on the internet anymore is kind of their point, it's not really their fault that all of this information is readily available to them.

The day they harass the wrong person (not gonna happen, they're nerds), or seriously harass someone for something nonviolent I will be less supportive. As it stands, most of these kids are boys who put up with being bullied and abused in their real lives, so when they have the opportunity to stand up for the underdogcat or the girl who was brutally raped by jocks who were given impunity for their actions, they will. I think the whole phenomenon is kind of interesting really.

For the record, anyone "anonymous" on the internet can "dox" you, so you're afraid of boogeymen, Stubs. Guy Fawkes boogeymen.

A problem I can see arising is that Anonymous may use illegal hacking to produce evidence that will then be called inadmissible in court. Even if the police get a warrant and get that evidence themselves, it could be argued that they only had reason to search because of the prior illegal search (i.e. fruit of the poisoned tree).

I don't know if Anonymous has done anything like that in this case, but it seems like a pretty likely scenario that could happen.

I think there have been cases where evidence stemming from illegal citizen searches has been admitted, so long as that citizen was not acting as an agent of the police. But who knows how courts may interpret it in the future.

This is in reference to a random guy with 'ties' to a couple of the football players....
So, yeah, they could be messing up evidence, but they're also hacking and probably slandering. But beyond that they're not simply investigating for facts and making them public. They are presenting their story. that's cool for story time, but not very unhelpful for me or any other public jane that comes in contact with this and then feels inclined to make some sort of a judgement call.

On the one hand, the tactics that Anonymous employs are often sketchy and in a legal gray area.

On the other hand, those athletes deserve to be named and shamed. This is the "rape culture" that feminists are complaining about at its worst, and most of these morons deserve to be in jail for assault. Do not pass go, do not collect college athletic scholarships. I believe in a meritocracy, but being of good sound and moral character is part of a meritocracy as well. This behavior is anything but and their careers as athletes should (and probably will) dead end into becoming water boys.

They already hack and harass government agencies and organizations solely because they don't agree with them. There's no "justice" in hacking the RIAA or something just because you don't like the way they engage in copyright enforcement.

There is speculation that the entire thing was a set up from her ex boyfriend, whom she had broken up with a month prior, and that a date rape drug was involved which is why she was completely blacked out the entire time.

^^^
Only a 3 hour drive from Penn State University to Steubenville, OH.

An additional problem is that the targeting of such "justice" is selective and even arbitrary. It is more like a mob mentality than real justice IMO. You target what you learn about and which offends you. You then dig up more bad info about that target, increasing the anger and hatred. Then you release this on the world. But who decides which people get targeted in the first place? Who decides that this college prank gets a pass (or never gets noticed) while another one doesn't and the perpetrators are brutalized in the public eye? It's somewhat random, right?

No matter how deserving of that brutalization we may view this particular group, there are centuries of criminal justice history which show us why it's a very good reason to have things like search and seizure laws, and evidence rules, and assumption of innocence, and procedural restrictions, and a host of other things which ensure that our justice is not only fair, but also fairly applied (as much as possible). When you throw those things out the window, then justice becomes less about finding and punishing those who commit crimes, but targeting those you don't like and finding things to punish them for. It's not much of a step to go from "Someone sent us some info about this group of douches who raped a girl. Let's hack around and see what dirt we can find to use against them", to "We don't like that business/person/political-party. Let's hack around and see what dirt we can find to use against them".

Again, centuries of that sort of "justice" is why we have the rules we have today.

I think it's possible to not defend the situation but also allege a smear campaign against the HS football team. Doubly so since that is what is actually happening.



Yes. So because some people allege that there's a cover up to protect the team, the entire team and the school is being targeted. Even people who were not there and had nothing to do with it. Proceeding as though the allegation must be true is the problem here:



I really hope people can see what's wrong with the approach being taken here.

You can learn this from the wikipedia page.

What don't you believe? That it's a bad idea to toss out centuries of judicial process in favor of a small band of masked internet hackers when deciding how to dispense justice? It's interesting how a position which would normally be met with approval is viewed with near hatred in this case.

Are we allowed to hate both groups of people?