Dark Justice and the World of Online Vigilantism
Vigilantism has always been a tricky subject for multiple reasons. For one, why would a non-restricted, ungoverned entity be able to uphold their personal vision of the law. Proper law enforcement has always had oversight, so their authority does not become absolute. This is generally a good thing; however, it leaves some areas less policed, which in turn can cause the public to think that law enforcement officials are not doing enough. This is the situation that leads to vigilantism. There is also the fact that it is in a legal grey area, meaning there are no strict laws against it. That being said as soon as a person commits a crime under the banner of vigilantism, they can be charged for whatever crime they have committed. On top of that, there are myriad examples of vigilantism that caused devastating damage. For instance, all of the lynchings in the United States during the 20th century and before were perpetrated by vigilantes, most notably members of the Ku Klux Klan. On the other hand, there have been actions such as those taken by the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI in 1971. With the benefit of hindsight, the documents released during their breach of the FBI offices have had a positive impact on the country.
But that is just vigilantism, it got much more complicated when activists move onto the internet. Cyber vigilantism, as it’s commonly known as, can take many forms including, “scam baiting, acts described as hacktivism, citizen led cyber-stings, such as those orchestrated by Perverted Justice, and crowdsourced acts of vigilantism.” [1] All of these different types have good and bad outcomes. For instance Dark justice, is a “Perverted Justice” team working to catch online pedophiles, that seem to have had a positive impact. In addition, parts of the online activist group known as Anonymous, have gone on sprees where they release the information of suspected pedophiles. In one case they released the information of over 1500 suspected predators in one day [2]. But concerns have arisen that they may be inadvertently interfering with official investigations and breaching the privacy of innocent individuals. In Edmonton, information that was discovered by Anonymous hackers concerning two child predators derailed an actual police investigation, resulting in all charges being dropped and the case being dismissed [3].
The examples of both negative and positive cyber vigilantism go on and on, including the botched “crowdsourced act of vigilantism” in the case of Sunil Tripathi. Sunil was wrongfully accused of being the Boston Bomber before the police had caught a suspect. Waves of death threats, online harassment, and leaked personal information led Sunil to commit suicide shortly before the police arrested the actual Boston Bomber [4]. In addition there have been events that are a little more morally ambiguous like Project Chanology (Coordinated attacks against the Church of Scientology) and the MegaUpload Retaliation (coordinated attacks against the FBI and Interpol for taking down the illegal file sharing site Megaupload).
We conducted research regarding cyber vigilantism and whether it is actually beneficial to our society. It may be tempting to think so because there are numerous cases where we can see people have tried to do good online, but end up becoming a hindrance to an investigation or simply causing damage. Kosseff states “Highly skilled private groups — untethered from the many constraints and rules that bind governments — often can be more nimble in pursuing bad actors in cyberspace. For that reason, it is tempting to provide private hackers with broad leeway to battle terrorists, criminals, and other bad actors.” [5] However there is a pretty good chance that the hacktivists might not help, or even can hinder a pending investigation. If there is a chance this could happen, is it worth what the possible upsides would be?
We want to argue that cyber vigilantism, though it can be very rewarding, is not worth the risk it poses. We came to this conclusion due to numerous reason. The first being that it may not always be worth the risk for these vigilantes to serve their justice considering that they could end up getting in the way and derailing any real progress an actual investigation may have. On the surface it may seem like a good idea to have these cyber vigilantes helping out, but if they get in the way, the investigation could end up being a failure, and that is a real life consequence caused by people online and one failed investigation due to cyber vigilantes is enough to say it isn’t worth it.
The second reason we think cyber vigilantism is a bad idea is because we don’t believe it is a good idea for an entity to exist, even online, that serves its own idea of justice. This could end up being a huge problem if they started to become radicalized or something of that nature. These cyber vigilantes exist online without any regulations or oversight, so they can be as extreme as they want and this poses a huge power problem. Proper investigations and gathering credible evidence is not something that could be enforced on these groups and, “there is not a ‘quality control’ mechanism to assure a minimum level of preparedness.” [5]
There is just to many wild cards and not enough regulations to being able to reliably count on so-called heroes online.
Also, in terms of ethics, should we be okay with unqualified random people online serving justice in place or in supplement of the police and people who are qualified to do so? Should we or can we trust vigilantes online to serve justice? We wouldn’t trust random people on the street who just say they could solve a crime to actually solve a crime, so why should we trust people online who think they can solve crimes? Sure there has been cases before where they have solved or helped solve crimes, but there are also numerous example of them not making progress or actually getting in the way.
We concluded that cyber vigilantism should not be allowed in any form due to the possible risk of damage. That being said we have also concluded that there should be no formal action on the government’s part to seek out and stop these cyber vigilantes. This is due to the rate at which the events are occurring. According to the data collected by Paolo Passeri, who has been collecting data on cyber crime since 2011, the number of cyber vigilantism events has been steadily decreasing over the past decade. It is now at an almost negligible rate, which is why we have concluded that it would not be worth the time, money, or effort to track these groups down and stop them.
References
[1] Smallridge, Joshua, Philip Wagner, and Justin N. Crowl. “Understanding Cyber-Vigilantism: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology 8, no. 1 (Jan, 2016): 57–70. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1787752058?accountid=9784.
[2] “Hackers Take down Child Pornography Sites.” BBC News. October 24, 2011. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15428203.
[3] Southam, Greg. “Creep Catchers’ Vigilante Efforts against Child Predators Hinders Investigations, Police Officer Says.” Edmonton Journal. September 30, 2016. https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/creep-catchers-vigilante-efforts-against-child-predators-hinders-investigations-police-officer-says.
[4] Madrigal, Alexis C. “#BostonBombing: The Anatomy of a Misinformation Disaster.” The Atlantic. March 11, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/-bostonbombing-the-anatomy-of-a-misinformation-disaster/275155/.
Manion, Mark, and Abby Goodrum. “Terrorism or civil disobedience: toward a hacktivist ethic.” ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 30, no. 2 (2000): 14–19.
Adam G. Klein (2015) Vigilante Media: Unveiling Anonymous and the Hacktivist Persona in the Global Press, Communication Monographs, 82:3, 379–401, DOI: 10.1080/03637751.2015.1030682
[5] Kosseff, Jeff. “The Hazards of Cyber-vigilantism.” Computer Law & Security Review. June 02, 2016. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0267364916300863.
[6] Passeri, Paolo. “HACKMAGEDDON.” HACKMAGEDDON. 2011. https://www.hackmageddon.com/.
