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The Internet, Trolling, and Cyber Security
King Boo Hoo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The New York Times posted an interesting article today which will be in this Sunday's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html
It's too long to spoiler (7 pages), so I'll leave it up to you guys to read it. It talks about the Trolling Internet subcultures, the status of Internet communities, cyber security, etc. All of which made me wonder what PA thought about all these issues:
[EDIT]
I've been using the wrong words and so discussion has been focusing on the wrong things. I'm not so much interested in trolling -- insults, bullying, etc. I'm interested in the real-life actions, the illegal things, the hacks and such. The actual raiding, not the verbal abusing.
[/EDIT]
What do you guys think about Internet trolls? Namely 4chan, but there are others.
-Is what they do moral or immoral?
-Should they face legal consequences for their raids?
-Do you think they really will face legal consequences for their raids?
One troll claims the answer to trolling is to have a thicker hide and not feel so hurt by what you read on the Internet. Another troll claims he trolls to weed out the week and undeserving of the Internet.
-Do you agree with either theories?
There were numerous instances in the article showing that personal information is quite obtainable on the Internet. This is somewhat worrying when even major sites can get hacked. I'd like to use Amazon, but evidently if someone cared enough they could probably get all my personal information and credit information. If they then put this information on 4chan and I got raided, my life would be made seriously difficult.
-Will the Internet ever be secure so my personal information is safe? How/Why/When?
Bullying and saying mean things to me I can ignore, but 4chan raids have shown that there are no limits of morality or legality that they're not willing to break. They essentially operate with the motive of 'chaos is fun' and 'pushing the limits of how horrible we can be is fun'.
-What's your reaction to these sorts of things?
I think the problem is that adolescents have long felt the urge to do these things once the rules of the adults stop being omnipotent, but the code of inner morality hasn't yet fully settled. Perhaps some of the things they consider doing are their form of poking at the limits of morality to see where they stand. In reality, there exist parents who see these actions and can punish them as a form of maintaining parental rules before inner morality can take over for it. Furthermore there are police who can instill fear in adolescents to stop them from committing the crimes, or at least arrest them once they do. And ultimately, in reality you have but 1 name, 1 identity, and you recognize you will be held responsible for your actions now forever. On 4chan on the other hand... a community which encourages crossing the boundaries of morality, not just pushing them. Parents have no idea what their kids are up to, police have no way to stop them, and the adolescents know they're anonymous and unstoppable. This wasn't so much of an issue when the cyber world and real world were separate and the most that could happen was someone yelling at you and calling you names-- then it was still just basic bullying that one could develop a thicker hide against. But now as reality and the cyber world are bridged more and more, problems like this begin to occur, and theoretically, will continue to increase in occurence as the 2 realities become more and more combined.
Personally, I find 4chan to be terrifying. The targets are picked at near random, the power of the raids is unimaginable. There is no logic, reason, morality, or limit -- it's just raw chaos. It's like how newer horror movies don't focus so much on mass-killing or stealthy stalkers but rather on the psychopaths who create scenarios/traps that will induce the most painful physical and psychological damage imaginable... except it's reality and not a movie.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html
It's too long to spoiler (7 pages), so I'll leave it up to you guys to read it. It talks about the Trolling Internet subcultures, the status of Internet communities, cyber security, etc. All of which made me wonder what PA thought about all these issues:
[EDIT]
I've been using the wrong words and so discussion has been focusing on the wrong things. I'm not so much interested in trolling -- insults, bullying, etc. I'm interested in the real-life actions, the illegal things, the hacks and such. The actual raiding, not the verbal abusing.
[/EDIT]
What do you guys think about Internet trolls? Namely 4chan, but there are others.
-Is what they do moral or immoral?
-Should they face legal consequences for their raids?
-Do you think they really will face legal consequences for their raids?
One troll claims the answer to trolling is to have a thicker hide and not feel so hurt by what you read on the Internet. Another troll claims he trolls to weed out the week and undeserving of the Internet.
-Do you agree with either theories?
There were numerous instances in the article showing that personal information is quite obtainable on the Internet. This is somewhat worrying when even major sites can get hacked. I'd like to use Amazon, but evidently if someone cared enough they could probably get all my personal information and credit information. If they then put this information on 4chan and I got raided, my life would be made seriously difficult.
-Will the Internet ever be secure so my personal information is safe? How/Why/When?
Bullying and saying mean things to me I can ignore, but 4chan raids have shown that there are no limits of morality or legality that they're not willing to break. They essentially operate with the motive of 'chaos is fun' and 'pushing the limits of how horrible we can be is fun'.
-What's your reaction to these sorts of things?
I think the problem is that adolescents have long felt the urge to do these things once the rules of the adults stop being omnipotent, but the code of inner morality hasn't yet fully settled. Perhaps some of the things they consider doing are their form of poking at the limits of morality to see where they stand. In reality, there exist parents who see these actions and can punish them as a form of maintaining parental rules before inner morality can take over for it. Furthermore there are police who can instill fear in adolescents to stop them from committing the crimes, or at least arrest them once they do. And ultimately, in reality you have but 1 name, 1 identity, and you recognize you will be held responsible for your actions now forever. On 4chan on the other hand... a community which encourages crossing the boundaries of morality, not just pushing them. Parents have no idea what their kids are up to, police have no way to stop them, and the adolescents know they're anonymous and unstoppable. This wasn't so much of an issue when the cyber world and real world were separate and the most that could happen was someone yelling at you and calling you names-- then it was still just basic bullying that one could develop a thicker hide against. But now as reality and the cyber world are bridged more and more, problems like this begin to occur, and theoretically, will continue to increase in occurence as the 2 realities become more and more combined.
Personally, I find 4chan to be terrifying. The targets are picked at near random, the power of the raids is unimaginable. There is no logic, reason, morality, or limit -- it's just raw chaos. It's like how newer horror movies don't focus so much on mass-killing or stealthy stalkers but rather on the psychopaths who create scenarios/traps that will induce the most painful physical and psychological damage imaginable... except it's reality and not a movie.
King Boo Hoo on
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Why does the whole topic remind me of this?
ANONYMOUS DOES NOT FORGIVE
It's just overblown sensationalism.
Plus pretty much everyone that got interviewed in that article was some delusional self-righteous douche, so it's easier for me to disagree with them.
People need to grow up and not kill themselves over trolling and griefing. Harassing private individuals in person and on the phone, and posting their private information online is not trolling, that is definitely beyond trolling and getting into illegal territory. But if I log onto Second Life and harass furries in voice chat, and then post my exploits online, that's just griefing.
Also, frankly, the kind of serious trolling and identity theft that these people engage in is necessary to teach society a few lessons: first of all, don't post personal information online, and second, how dangerous and fucked up it is to let incompetent corporations maintain huge, searchable databases full of private personal data.
I used to think so to, but a look at some of the raids show more than just generic bullying...
There was some kid who made the mistake of putting his rap videos on youtube despite the fact that he was white and sucked at it. 4chan decided they hated wiggers like him, so they found his myspace, and then his photobucket. Then they hacked his photobucket and found photos of his girlfriend (also highschool aged), nude. They sent out these nude photos to the parents, every student at the school, administrators at the school, etc. They also did the usual business of putting up his home for sale on numerous websites, sending him 1000 pizzas, signing him up for tons of religious groups and military services, prank-calling him, etc. But the idea of having nude photos of your girlfriend sent to every student in the school just because she is dating a guy who puts rap videos on Youtube?
Or the one mentioned in the article, prank-calling a dead son's mother pretending to be the dead son? Or putting iPods on his actual grave and taking photos of it?
Throwing bricks through windows?
When these actions go past the Internet and enter the real world they're really going past bullying and into harassment on a fairly dark level.
I mean, you can say the kid shouldn't have had nude photos of his girlfriend saved somewhere on the Internet. Personally, I can see why he would've thought it safe to save them there, even if I wouldn't do it. But it's a line of arguing I don't feel is warranted in the first place -- we're not trying to weed out anyone from the Internet who isn't a paranoid expert on the quickly-evolving field.
In response to your questions:
I don't think there's really any inherent morality or immorality to most of what they do. Words on the internet are just words, and people can just walk away from that. However, when it gets into obtaining people's personal information and displaying that for everyone so they can harass people, that crosses a line. If internet trolls are harassing or threatening someone through other communications means (e-mail, phone, or the woman who kept getting pizza deliveries and cab calls) then that crosses into illegal territory. Comments on a message board can always be avoided by not visiting that site. But when people target you personally (and e-mail counts) I think that's just sick, and it's also already covered by existing law - the article says that enforcement agencies don't really have the time to address these, so it doesn't really seem like "cyberharassment" laws are going to do much to change it.
The above poster got it right as well. The story about people-prank calling the dead kid's parents pretending to be him made me wonder what kind of sick people could do something like that. It's disturbing.
At least two of those actions (gaining unauthorized access to a computer system under somebody else's name and harassing people over the phone) are already illegal, and the third (misrepresenting your identity) may or may not also be illegal depending on what exactly you're doing and where you're doing it.
Calling this all "trolling" is a complete misnomer.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Right, but I'm focusing more on the second, more illegal type of actions. Bullying is bullying and nothing new, kids have been killing themselves over video games and bullying for years. But at least then the bullying was restricted to the online world.
This bridging of virtual and real is what interests me and what leads to these more serious problems. How much further will the two worlds be bridged? Fully to the degree that your Internet name is essentially your real name? How bad will the raids get? When/how will legal enforcement step in?
Bullying is bullying, grow a thicker hide and STFU. But I'm interested in this... the step into reality... where the threats that you grew to ignore as a form of bullying become a reality to fear.
That last part, I can't tell if it is just some random person from the town or "ANONYMOUS". I thought journalists had a duty to be clear about things.
Maybe if we write enough articles about them (with real names) then the trolls will just eat each other. My eyes almost rolled out of my head when I read the guy saying that he was prepared to have his name out there because he had a gun and an escape route. 1.) Does that mean anyone who doesn't have your quick solution of a gun and escape route is justifiably threatened and harrassed? 2.) What are a gun and an escape route going to do against someone hacking your bank account and all the other ridiculous shit people like him do?
Boundaries of internet behavior are not as clear cut as IRL, and for a sensible person, especially when communicating with somebody you don't know, the implication is that additional care not to overstep is necessary.
On cyber security, so far it's been a lost fight. People are unable to understand the implication and additional possibility for harm by almost every little bit of personal information/fact they divulge online. I agree that it's difficult to maintain anonymity and be "social" at the same time, but at the very least some common sense should be applied to what you keep known about yourself on the interwebs.
You're right, I'll edit my original post. I wasn't sure why everyone was so focused on words and bullying and not the actions that occured in the real world, but obviously it's because I was using the wrong words.
Thanks.
I think the article is unclear on the distinction, too.
Also, Weev is full of shit. He successfully trolled the journalist. :P
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Given what I've heard of in other raids, I'm likely to say it is indeed Anonymous.
In the case of the kid who committed suicide for some reason somehow connected to an iPod, someone from 4chan actually went to the cemetery, put an iPod on the grave and took photos. In the case of the high-schooler whose girlfriend's nude photos were found, someone from 4chan actually went there and posted flyers of the nude photos.
So yeah... they're crossing into the real world, and that's scary.
Rather than going down the road of trying to prosecute individual cases of cyberbullying and identity theft in a prototypical War On _______, we should be addressing the infrastructure itself, educating the people about these technologies and their implications, and changing the laws to prevent this kind of information from being so readily available in the first place.
We're not going to stop corporations from maintaining database of personal data. Even if we could, that would cause operating problems. "I'm sorry sir, that account number doesn't exist. No, we can't look it up by your personal information."
As someone else mentioned, don't post personal information online is hard. I like to think most technological goods can be bought online for cheaper than in stores, however that requires me giving away -all- my personal information: name, address, credit card information, email, ip, etc.
Are you suggesting we all stop using Amazon, Ebay, and all those other sites?
Being paranoid about everything isn't a good way to live, and not one you can expect the general public to sustain. If a bank robber breaks into your security box and takes some files/photos you'd prefer remain hidden out of it, few people will laugh at the victim and tell him he should've known better than to keep those files/photos in a bank. It's socially expected that what goes into a bank is safe, and I don't fault the general public for thinking that giving Ebay or Amazon their personal information is safe as well.
Me shooting people teaches them to wear body armor.
He looks like a guy who'd post on 4chan. Just look at him.
Nail him for distribution of child porn.
I'm sorry, but you don't post personal information in a publicly accessible way by using commercial services. It's practically impossible to defend oneself a security breach at a third party. What you can do, is try to reduce your online purchases to specific places and avoid making personal information available for the public. That's pretty much it.
It's when they got infected with weaboo.
I am however unwilling to get into a detailed discussion of this at this point.
What they're doing IS illegal, all of them. Distribution of child porn, identity theft, harassment, death threats, etc. If this were a real-life gang in some city, the cops could stand some chance at nailing them for it. The problem, as mentioned in the articles, is that to get the guys you need to get the IPs from the sites, the names from the IPs, and then you can start finding real evidence to get them. But local law enforcement doesn't have the necessary tools to do it, and the people that do have the tools don't have the times.
And the people from 4chan know all that so they know they're invincible, and that knowledge is as bad as the fact.
Uuuh, I'm sorry....WHAT? What would that tools be? A court order?
I agree.
Except for the part where "being paranoid" vs "being reckless" is not really the choice one faces.....
Problem is, you try to get a court order, they come back with a Section 230 defense.
Well to start with: basic knowledge of the internet?
I'm not sure what you're implying here... that local law enforcement is capable of tracking down a (inter?)national band of internet bullies that are trying to remain anonymous? Have you been down to your local law enforcement office lately?
I'm unfamiliar with it, I'd try to read it, but I'd appreciate if you could elaborate.
Edit: Ok, I tried reading on it, it seems that it protects user generated content "providers" and not the users themselves, what am I missing?
edit2: mrflippy, I'm implying that there is no possible way to improve the situation for law enforcement, as any legislation would still face the "international" aspect of the internet. The tools are in place, incompetence may indeed be a reason to make it difficult and work to satisfaction ratio may be another, but they certainly have all they need.
Have you ever actually tried to get law enforcement to deal with Internet crime?
Local PDs won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Well, it's not like the police would be going after the ISP. The board where things were discussed would likely be fine, but whoever posted child porn wouldn't have anything to do with a section 230 defense.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
All for the lulz I guess.
Edit: Yes yes, I know, some of them became serial killers too, but that's another story.
How do you determine who posted the child porn though?