Anonymous Internet-Police, To the Partyvan! Options

[Stahlseele]

A Canadian political heavyweight has called upon Anonymous to "name and shame" four teenagers accused of raping a girl who committed suicide last week.
Read more at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/...ke-Down-Rapists

[Mach_Ten]

That "Little Bastards" like this exist and get away with it makes me sick to the core! .. so sickened that I took to the internet and signed an online petition !

"That'll Learn 'em !"

I wonder, is there a 2070's collective of a similar nature ? instead of LULZSec ... CHUMMERSec ... or instead of Anons, "Mostly unknowns"

[Stahlseele]

You mean, like Jackpoint? O.o

[Seriously Mike]

You mean, like Jackpoint? O.o

Yeah, or The Exchange.

[Mach_Ten]

You mean, like Jackpoint? O.o

yeah yeah, okay /facepalm

[ShadowDragon8685]

In Shadowrun, if something gets enough attention like this, I imagine there's interested parties interested enough to hire some deniable assets to see justice get done.


Actually, in my game, my players wound up completing a bounty hunter's Run when they pulled the details off his commlink after they roughed him up on behalf of the Ancients. He was on a job to track down an elf who raped an elf from Tir Tairngire while she was visiting Seattle. They decided they didn't like the schmuck bad enough that they freelanced his job, picked the schmuck up, and handed him over to the Troll's Johnson.

Then they figured out that the Johnson had planned to doublecross the troll bounty hunter - but he wasn't prepared to doublecross an entire team of Runners with Spirit backup, so he wound up paying them anyway. Then the troll called them, angry they'd freelanced his job, and demanded a quarter of the take as a finder's fee. They decided to pay it out rather than have him cause trouble down the line, and he sweetened the deal with details on someone they had been doing some legwork looking for.


So, yeah. Sometimes, something like this can happen in Shadowrun. I doubt a politician/public figure would make an open, public call for Shadows justice, though. They'd just hire a runner. Alternatively, if something gets heard by the right person in the right bar or the right Matrix feed, some Runner with some time and energy to spare might actually decide to do it on their own. Such things probably wouldn't make the news, though; just a story goes around about a teenaged girl who killed herself after getting no justice for a gang rape, and a month or so later her rapists just vanished, or were killed in "unrelated" street crimes.

[Bigity]

Looks like Anonymous has taken the job.

Reports aren't on in how much their face talked up the price.

[Stahlseele]

Yep, they are doing it.

[X-Kalibur]

A Canadian political heavyweight has called upon Anonymous to "name and shame" four teenagers accused of raping a girl who committed suicide last week.
Read more at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/...ke-Down-Rapists

While I'm not generally a fan of groups like anon and lulzsec, I do like watching people direct their actions towards something good like this.

[Bigity]

I'd be more interested to see why prosecutors felt they didn't have enough evidence to bring a charge. I mean..if they had a video..that seems pretty damning. Of course, I haven't seen nor do I want to see it, but I would think rape or not rape would be pretty obvious.

OTOH, maybe there is a good reason they didn't bring charges, and all this does is attack people illegally.

[X-Kalibur]

I'd say the people have a right to know why charges weren't brought up. It seems like they are mostly holding the Canadian Justice system hostage. They either re-open the case and begin legal actions else they will release the names of those responsible. That, in turn, would lead to actual vigilanteism

[Stahlseele]

which is quite clever actually . .

[Bigity]

Until someone innocent gets screwed over. Just a mess all around.

[CanRay]

Until someone innocent gets screwed over. Just a mess all around.

Someone innocent already got screwed over.

But I take your point.

[pbangarth]

Problem is, even scumbags have to be protected by the law. If they aren't, then it is a small step to those in power being able to define people as being beneath the protection of the law.

Oh ... wait ...

[Sengir]

Mob justice as a sign for the breakdown of society certainly has a dystopian feel, but IMO in cyberpunk stories the standard attitude towards crime is total apathy. The only thing which makes people remotely care about crime rates would be body lotteries...

Also, the kind of crime which sends everybody running for the pitchforks changes like every fashion. Chances are they have a different one in 60 years, my money being on something magic-related (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I'd say the people have a right to know why charges weren't brought up.

I'd say that police work which did not lead to a formal indictment does not belong into the public. Let's say somebody denunciated you as peddling child porn, the police turns your place upside down and goes through every photo you posses and every email you have in your accounts before realizing there is nothing to be found. Would you like the complete inventory to be published because "the people have a right to know why charges weren't brought up"?

And especially in case of sexual offenses, especially^2 those involving minors, it is not just about protecting the rights of the accused: The girl killed herself because of "a vicious bullying campaign spurred by a photo of the attack that was spread around her school by one of her attackers." I doubt her condition would have improved if she had seen the juicy details of the case discussed across the country, complete with the usual suspects accusing her of having asked for it...

[X-Kalibur]

You may want to read it a little more. I'm fine if they want to keep the perpetrators unidentified, but the people have a right to know that they were somehow unable to find proof of a gang rape... of which there is apparently video or photographic evidence.

[CanRay]

You may want to read it a little more. I'm fine if they want to keep the perpetrators unidentified, but the people have a right to know that they were somehow unable to find proof of a gang rape... of which there is apparently video or photographic evidence.

One possibility is that the evidence given, while damning and absolute, may not be admissible in court for whatever reason, and thus cannot be officially released to the public either.

This is a case of the Law protecting the Guilty while letting the Victims just swing in the breeze. The first Dirty Harry movie gives an excellent example of this when Clint Eastwood finds the rifle that was used in murder, but because he was too busy trying to find the location of a (hopefully alive) girl, he didn't have a warrant to search the site and it became tainted evidence and about as useful as a paperweight for a whole lot of files. Now that's a fictional example, and I'm not sure how well the folks in the film did their research on the subject, but I'm willing to bet similar items have happened far more than once.

"The innocent have nothing to fear" is very much a fallacy that the police try to encourage "law-abiding" citizens. The truth is, we're all guilty of something that we can be charged for, even if it takes a week of Sundays to find the law we've broken in the WAREHOUSE that holds all of the laws of the land.

EDIT: And that's without worrying about planted evidence which might be done, especially in highly publicized cases where the public and the politicians are screaming that someone be found, and that they be found NOW! (Sorry if this offends our members that proudly wear a shield, but all it takes is one bad apple who doesn't get caught doing it, and an innocent life is ruined as they get sent up the river.).

[ShadowDragon8685]

I have a hard time trying to imagine what kind of evidence could be "damning and absolute" as regards a gang rape while not being admissible. I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible, mind you, but it would have to be tricky. I mean, it's unlikely that they'd have a cybereye recording from the victim's point-of-view whose existence was (somehow) deemed to have violated the defendant's right to privacy (as if such a thing would exist in a setting with cybereyes.)

Either way, the more I think about this, the more it makes me squirm. I mean, sure, there is an element of frontier justice to it that appeals - if the law cannot or will not help a gang-raped fifteen year old who then had images/video of it passed around, then what is the point of the law? On the other hand, as CanRay suggested, there might be a terrible circumstance here wherein the evidence against the guilty somehow winds up falling under laws designed to protect every relatively innocent, decent Canadian against jackbooted thugs simply kicking in their door, turning their house upside down until they find something illegal, then hauling them out in irons.

They might even have uncovered evidence that the sexual activity was, at the time it took place, entirely consensual, with a role-playing aspect to it that could let the video look somewhere else, and that the girl only felt violated enough to report it as rape after the videos and pictures started going around. I can full well see why they wouldn't want that news released, in which case the internet hate machine just got sicc'd on four boys largely innocent of heinous wrongdoing, when they should be attacking themselves - the people who pass around images and videos and like to degrade other people.

Another thing that bugs me is the bias of the source gone to for justice. This is CNN's take on the story, with several pictures of the victim. If she'd been fat or ugly, I imagine Anonymous would be much less interested in crusading to crucify the boys alleged to have raped her, and far more likely to be taking to 4chan with awful, heinous messages about her and girls like her. (Of course, pretty, thin white girls getting better treatment than fat, ugly or minority girls is hardly unique to Anonymous or the internet, but still, (nearly) everyone is notionally supposed to be equal before the law.)

[CanRay]

For those of you thinking of about sniggering at the idea of "Canadian Jackbooted Thugs", they exist, they're real, and they're after anyone they can get their hands on.

We're polite as a nation... Individuals are still just folk, good and bad in all of us.

[ShadowDragon8685]

For those of you thinking of about sniggering at the idea of "Canadian Jackbooted Thugs", they exist, they're real, and they're after anyone they can get their hands on.

We're polite as a nation... Individuals are still just folk, good and bad in all of us.

Now that you've made mention of it, it is kind of hard not to snigger at the thought of a jackbooted maple thug rummaging through all your things and ending every third sentence with a menacing "Eh?" Probably wouldn't be so funny if it actually happened, though.

[CanRay]

Now that you've made mention of it, it is kind of hard not to snigger at the thought of a jackbooted maple thug rummaging through all your things and ending every third sentence with a menacing "Eh?" Probably wouldn't be so funny if it actually happened, though.

It isn't.

Let's just say that I have known some people that had to deal with some rather unsavory fellows who would have been little better than thugs and goons were it not for the uniform and a badge.

That said, I've also known a few good, honest souls who wore those same uniforms. Police are folk, just like everyone else. It's just that they have the ability to be much, much worse a monster than your average citizen due to a combination of matters.

[X-Kalibur]

They might even have uncovered evidence that the sexual activity was, at the time it took place, entirely consensual, with a role-playing aspect to it that could let the video look somewhere else, and that the girl only felt violated enough to report it as rape after the videos and pictures started going around. I can full well see why they wouldn't want that news released, in which case the internet hate machine just got sicc'd on four boys largely innocent of heinous wrongdoing, when they should be attacking themselves - the people who pass around images and videos and like to degrade other people.

This is the big point really, when we get down to it. Obviously the "smear" campaign against her with photos aren't (or rather, shouldn't, in my mind) be met with serious legal action even though it technically is child pornography, because the people spreading it were also minors. It gets into a really weird grey area there. If they investigated and nothing was found, or rather, nothing admissible or there was some sort of proof that it was not a rape case; why hide that and sweep it under the rug? That's probably the main point here, lack of transparency. It doesn't help that the average person doesn't have any real clue about most laws.

[ShadowDragon8685]

X-Kal, therein lies the rub.

If they say "We know these boys raped that girl, but the evidence isn't admissible in court," then they've just sent a shock of unrest through the nation. Chances are they're going to be dealing with protests, people will scream and shout and demand that laws regarding what evidence is admissible or not get torn down or neutered, and more likely than not they'll have to deal with vigilantes deciding that if the law can stand there with a straight face and say that a heinous crime, a special kind of evil crime, was committed against a young girl and they're incapable of or incompetent to act upon it, they'll do so themselves. (Which really, is what's close to happening.) It also prejudices the public against them in the event any kind of criminal or civil proceedings do come against them.

And what happens if they come out and say "What happened to her was not, in fact, rape." That could be just as bad, even if they have concrete, full video proof of the event in which they outline, before anything sexual happens, that it's a role-playing encounter and she wants to live out a fantasy of being gang-raped? That would make it look like they're blaming the victim, and short of releasing the video, they couldn't exactly prove in the public's mind that that's what actually took place - and obviously they can't release a pornographic video like that! So it looks like a cover-up, like they drop-fucked the pooch and let a horribly abused young girl fall through the cracks and that, when the shitstorm boiled into a tempest, they went into full-on damage control mode. "She was asking for it." "She wanted it." Those statements are never going to sound good when a fifteen year old girl alleges she was gang-raped and then kills herself. It would bring the wrath of a vengeful and angry god (not to mention Internet) down on them, unless they did, in fact, have and release rock-solid proof, something along the lines of her on video explaining to the boys exactly what she wants them to do and outlining safe-words and such.


The real culprit, I think, is a culture shared amongst, at least, English-speaking North American societies that celebrates male sexuality while at the same time denigrating female sexuality. It's kind of a catch-22: if you have a penis, you're expected to get it wet, and if you haven't, then you're not a man, but if you have a vagina you're expected to keep it free of penises, or you're a whore and a slut. How the flying fuckadilly doo-daa-day does that make sense? We know it can't be because boys are expected to fuck other boys, because that's far worse in this fucked-up mentality's thought processes. So where the hell does this lead - young men are expected to have sex with young women, any time they possibly can, but young women are denigrated and excoriated if they consent to having sex with young men. Am I really the only one who can see this leading to a bad place? Somehow I doubt I am, yet it is allowed to continue. It is this pervasive culture, I think, which is at least as much at fault for the girl's being driven to suicide as the boys who raped her, if in fact she was raped, or entirely at fault if the encounter was consensual until suddenly it started getting bandied about. This culture, which made her into a victim, a target to be mocked, ridiculed and harassed, an Other, a Whore, the unchaste and unclean one who could be stoned and shamed freely and without reprisal.

Am I the only one who thinks that's monumentally fucked up? Like if they erected an enormous diseased penis twice the height of the Eiffel tower, it could be a monument to the fucked-uppedness of that mindset and culture. I mean, I can't really blame young people for spreading around naked pictures/video of one of their peers. Naked women can be found anywhere on the internet, but someone you know naked is something else altogether, there's an element of reality to it that just isn't present in your garden-variety porno. Such a thing would be a hot topic, and I expect most young people would want it.

What I don't understand, and what makes me furious, is the thought that it is then acceptable to harass, mock, and debase the subject of the imagery. All the moreso if she is alleging rape, that's simply supremely fucked up. They could fire a rocket-penis into the most suggestively vagina-shaped crater in the solar system and it wouldn't be sufficiently fucked-up to be a worthy monument to the fucked-uppedness of the mindset that leads to such things. That is what needs to be fought. The entire culture, the notion that A Man Is Not A Virgin but a Woman Is A Virgin. Really, do the fucking math, how can a man become a man, then, without making a woman not a woman? That does not add up, it's a zero-sum game. The constituents of column A can't achieve their "real" status without depriving it from a member of column B? What?!

I'm probably rambling. Just thinking about this is making me pissed.

[Stahlseele]

Wasn't there a similar case a few weeks back where everybody and their mother was crying how a lawsuit would destroy the lives of 3 college football players who raped a girl?