Internet vigilantism a dangerous game
Anonymous witch-hunt, threats not the way to fight for justice
The first in the series of four videos was posted online June 7.
It begins with ominous music and graphics. Then the camera focuses on a figure wearing a black-and-white Guy Fawkes mask, the sort popularized by the film V for Vendetta.
The gender of the masked figure is indiscernible. The voice is computer-generated.
“We are Anonymous. We are Legion. United as one. Divided by zero,” it intones. Then, it makes its demands.
Unless the province’s Integrated Child Exploitation Unit, or ICE, immediately arrests a list of people that Anonymous claims are Internet pedophiles, the group will release names and photographs of those whom it alleges are online predators. Who is Anonymous? When the “hacktivist” group first coalesced in 2003, its raison d’être was social criticism through absurdist online pranks.
But since 2008, when Anonymous launched a campaign against the Church of Scientology, the anarchist movement has become much more political, attacking big corporations such as Sony and PayPal, government agencies from the U.S. Copyright Office to the Boston Police Department, and media outlets from Fox News to PBS.
In the last two weeks alone, Anonymous has taken credit for hacking the sites of the Athens Court of Appeal (to protest the Greek government’s shutdown of Greece’s public broadcast system), the African National Congress (to protest the ANC’s support of the government of Zimbabwe) and the English Defence League (to protest the group’s vicious anti-Muslim ideas.)
Anyone, anywhere can adopt the moniker and don the mask, to launch whatever righteous crusade or malicious mischief he or she chooses.
This week, somebody launched one such operation here.
Through videos, Anonymous claims its members have been engaged in a clandestine anti-pedophile initiative across Western Canada and the northwestern United States, monitoring chat sites. The operation has allegedly discovered pedophiles in Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge, Kelowna, Kalispell, and other communities, including teachers, politicians, and doctors.
When ICE didn’t respond quickly enough for Anonymous, the group posted pictures of two local men. The video included their names and the names of their employers.
By Friday, the video had been viewed more than 65,000 times. Anonymous has now threatened to release more names.
Police can’t simply arrest people based on anonymous tips. And since no one from Anonymous has agreed to meet with them, it’s hard for real detectives to verify the validity of the Anonymous allegations, much less for the Crown to prepare a case for successful prosecution.
Internet vigilantism is a dangerous game.
“Out” people who are innocent, and you smear their names, and even put their lives at risk. If those you name aren’t so innocent? You give them time to destroy evidence, or flee the country. Certainly, your interference could hobble the ability of investigators to do their jobs — and waste police resources.
In the high-profile cases of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, the two Canadian teens who killed themselves after they were cyberbullied, vigilantes jumped right in and published the names of those it claimed were responsible. In both cases, not all their allegations proved to be true.
In a Big Brother era of social alienation, where many individuals feel disconnected from democracy, helpless to oppose both government and corporate control, the idea that the Internet empowers non-violent, but highly effective, social rebellion is intoxicating.
Anonymous supporters are fond of Marshall McLuhan’s aphorism, “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.”
Such a philosophy allows any self-appointed avenger with a laptop or smartphone to imagine him or herself a 21st-century freedom fighter. And in a few instances, as in the Arab Spring, Anonymous has done genuine good.
But in far too many cases, its hyper-judgmental, ill-informed vigilantism has fanned public hysteria and seriously hampered the efforts of the very people who were actually trying to fight the moral wrongs Anonymous purports to denounce.
No matter how indignant we may be about an alleged crime, especially one with young victims, there are no shortcuts to justice. Those who have real evidence have an obligation, as citizens, to turn it over to the police, without threats or melodramatic grandstanding. Pedophiles are despicable. But we can’t make our community safer with online witch hunts or social media mobs.
Anonymous says its members are “the ones who dare to think freely without regard for others.”
But in a civil society, we need to have regard for others — and for all the ethical consequences of our actions.