Good for you for taking an active role in what your kids are doing online (really). Is there some program which you use that logs them all, or what happens if they close out of the window before you can save it?
It’s unreasonable to expect that both people will always have copy of the chat (since it’s not automatically done).
Sure, but it’s a long jump from there to:
I’m not calling anyone’s employers, either.
If I were the one with the actual knowledge - Joe’s next-door neighbor - then I’d be the one calling the employer. Here, I agree I’m not… SO I AM NOT MAKING ANY CALLS.
The only people that are making calls are Joe’s next-door neighbor – i.e., the ones with actual knowledge of guilt.
Right. Knowledge of guilt that consists of: “Here, call this number!”
Yes, but it requires that the Commonwealth prove an intent to annoy. Obviously that’s a question of fact, but the PJ people will undoubtedly say that their intent is clearly to inform the community of the existing danger, not to annoy.
Um… how so? The people making the calls are the people that participated or observed the guilty conduct.
And on what basis do you trust that claim?
Um…No, they’re not. They’re mostly people who read about the “guilty conduct” on a message board. I’m not at all sure whether that changes the legal standing, but I thought you might want to have your facts straight.
Sure you can. Indeed, in almost every case, the weird thing about blackmail is that in most cases that which is threatened (disclosure of a true fact) is perfectly legal. (There is of course the possibility that the “fact” whose disclosure is being threatened is fabricated, which raises issues of defamation). I can tell your wife you cheated on her. I can threaten to do so. I can’t demand money for not doing so.
What makes it blackmail is when you use the threatened disclsoure of true fact to get something else . . . usually, though, it’s something material. Here is sounds like what people are talking about is “threatening disclosure of X in order to get subject to admit to X.” I don’t know that this is blackmail or extortion under the law.
If that’s true, it changes my view of their actions.
But it’s unclear to me that it’s true. I’ve read their chat logs and descriptions of busts, and I don’t see any evidence that contact is made by anyone other than the people involved in the chat.
Can you provide an example of it being otherwise?
It seems to me that if you have knowledge that a person committed a crime, you call the police. You don’t call that person’s employer, or family, or family’s employers. What am I missing here?
It seems to me that the main tactic this group uses that people in this thread are taking offense to is the harassment they’re causing their “busts.” This isn’t evident in the logs and descriptions. It IS evident in their forums.
When I read their forums a while back (a year or two ago), they had a thread devoted to each bust, where various people (more than the one person chatting and the one making the phone call to confirm the number) would post details about the person as they were found. Home address, work address and phone number, names of family members and phone numbers, names of organizations the person was involved in (churches, social clubs, etc) and their phone numbers. Sometimes they even looked up neighbors and their phone numbers. There were many more than two people posting this information, and many, many more describing what happened when they called these numbers and yukking it up for the rest of the membership. It really is a wolfpack mentality.
I don’t have any current, direct evidence as I don’t recall my login to that board and I honestly have no interest in reading it again. If it’s different now, that’s great and I withdraw my criticism.
But the trouble is that this isn’t the case. Someone who purports to be “Joe’s neighbor who saw it all” is putting up a message board calling for members to call and harass the person that he claims he saw attempt to mug Carl.
I wouldn’t have a problem with PJ’s actions if they simply trolled for rapists and then reported that information to the police. I would fairly minor reservations if PJ restrained themselves to trolling for who they felt were rapists, reporting them to police, and then in the meantime accusing those people of their attempted crimes.
In both of the above situations there remains the prospect of accountability if a case arises where the PJ member is mistaken or simply malicious.
The line is crossed however, when PJ actively recruits anonymous member to aid in harassing people who have been accused by other anonymous members. Finally, the actual danger comes when people respond to the recruitment and join in on harassing people whom against they have only hearsay evidence.
To give an example, it is perfectly natural, legal, and correct for a parent whose child has been raped to accuse that individual. Angry phone calls, confronting friends and relatives is also natural, and given some limits, correct and legal. Even recruiting friends and others to join in on this is correct, again with certain limits on what the ‘contact and confrontation.’
At this stage there is still accountability. The accused still has the recourse of taking the accuser to court and saying, “Dammit! I was in Tulsa when it happened!” and suing. Likewise, the accused has the option of going to the police and saying, “She and her friends are harassing me. They use phone cards but it’s obviously them and with a little investigation it can be proven.” Even at this stage there is the prospect of accountability in the cases of mistakes or malice.
The line is crossed when the accused contact information is put forth on a message board and members encouraged to anonymously harass them. At this point the harassers are relying on second or third or forth hand hearsay and thus have entered very dubious moral ground. Furthermore, the harassed individual has little legal recourse against a nationwide network of anonymous accusers.
In addition, legally, it opens up PJ to charges of incitement to violence or at the very least, they can become an unwitting aid to such. Sex Offender lists [complete with addresses] have been used in at least one case as target lists for murder and those were individuals who had at least been convicted [served time and released]for their crime.
I applaud PJ’s goals. I laud their efforts to aid numerous law enforcement groups who already spend their hours in chat rooms to catch rapist and attempted rapists and bring them to justice.
What I cannot condone however if there efforts to dole out their own “Perverted Justice.” The far reaching and anonymous nature of the Internet aids greatly in their goal of punishing these rapists and at the same time it removes any accountability for mistakes or malice while simultaneously making itself an excellent tool for vigilante justice.
Their goals are laudable but they would be better achieved aiding law enforcement by assisting in their stings.
From the PJ website, text that appears at the bottom of each posted log:
In light of that, I’m going to have to ask those who claim it’s otherwise to provide a more reliable cite than “I saw it once on their forums.”
Bricker Headshops also have big signs saying “For tobacco use only” right by the giant bongs, the wide variety of pipes, rolling papers, and posters of the Grateful Dead and Cheech And Chong.
Yes. And as you point out, there is ample evidence that their intention is to encourage use other than tobacco only. Cheech and Chong, for example, are known for their extravagant marijuana use. So you can point to other evidence to contradict the “Tobacco use only” sign.
Where is the Cheech and Chong poster in this example?
Will that do?
No.
The source for that article’s claims seems to be one man. And coincidentally enough, he’s Scott Morrow, not a neutral source:
Can anyone link to or quote a direct piece of evidence that supports these claims?
They’re quoting the site, which (not surprisingly) is blocked from Google. Morrow’s claims come later.
Excerpted from the Followup Forum rules: