Brit judge orders Facebook to rip masks from anonymous cowards A 45-year-old woman from Brighton who was subjected to a litany of abusive messages on Facebook has won a landmark High Court order forcing the social network to reveal the identities of anonymous internet trolls who labelled her a paedophile and a drug dealer. The Guardian reported on Friday that Nicola Brookes had received " …
Article isn't wrong - her lawyers use the term "private prosecution"
Maybe the CPS will wake up and kick Mr Plod into action once the prosecution is launched.
After all - if you can prosecute people for making jokes about airports you should presumably prosecute them for real crimes too.
I'm a bit torn.
If she makes it a criminal matter I sincerly hope she loses, because we don't need more of the "account and IP are criminal proof" nonsense. On the other hand the trolling scumbags certainly need to get kicked in the privies. A permaban from FB would be a start, perhapsan injunction forbidding the use of "social networks" for a year or two so that they can go and have a life instead of harassing people. But it needs to be a civil matter.
I'm on the opposite tack.
Attacks such as she experienced can cause real social harm, which can translate into real economic harm. I hope she gets the names, and drags the idiots kicking and screaming into the light.
Now - whether or not actual harm has been done, and what should be done about it, is a matter for a court (and maybe a jury). But wishing failure upon her cause seems a bit prejudiced to me. I'm hoping she gets her day in court, and that the jerks responsbile get theirs, too.
It surprises me that at least seven readers here think that IP info must be approved as a proof of identity beyond reasonnable doubt, and thus taken as proof in a criminal trial. That denotes complete lack of technical knowledge.
Or do the downvoters think that the harrassers should be given a medal as opposed to the swift kick in the nads I was recommending?
Seriously, the audience here is going down the drain. Attention span of a goldfish on meth crystal.
Court injonction. There's no technical way to enforce it rigorously but in case they slip again and are caught because someone complains the consequences are harsh enough that they would probably not take the chance, or at least be very careful not to offend anyone if they do. A bit like a restraining order.
Erm....Are you sure?
No seriously, are you totally sure?
Because there is no way in which you can verify the persons actual name.
On my fiends list I have frubious bandersnatch (formerly sprout mistress) a bertie basset and a few others. And I can defiantly say that their passport utilises there more common family name.
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
- TS Elliot "The Naming Of Cats"
It took lawyers working pro bono to get Facebook to take some action - the major thing being the issuing of a press release. As the article states, the landmark order remains to be served on Facebook in the US where the company stores its data - and we don't know if that's going to be successful.
Oh, that will be successful and FB will have to cough up the email addresses. Whether or not that eventually gets you to the real perps is a whole other story.
Reading between the lines, I expect the woman was using her FB account to post comments on news or blog sites (seems to be the in thing now) and drew the comments there. If it were someone she actually 'friended' it would be a simple matter to 'unfriend' the perps. How applicable the laws will be when she finally gets to the culprits? No clue, but I'd be betting on the windmills not the perp walkers.
If anything, it helps the trolls and bullies. People who create an account with malicious intent will always use fake names, but innocent people who naively go along with that policy open themselves up for particularly frightening types of abuse.
The fact that they want the person's IP address, real name and address at all is proff that people have a valid reason to want to be Anonymous; To protect themselves from retaliations.
You may not like what a person says to you, but that is still their right to say it, and you could always apply filters for keywords on messages, or decide not to read something.
If I accused you of being a paedo here on El Reg, even as an AC, I think you'd feel a bit differently about that. Especially if you happened to live in Britain. I take it from some of the stories posted here, it's one of their last shooting offenses, and the cops aren't too particular about making sure the trial comes first. And while I'm all for boiling the paedos in oil AFTER the conviction, I believe very strongly that you are OWED your day in court first.
"Especially if you happened to live in Britain. I take it from some of the stories posted here, it's one of their last shooting offenses, and the cops aren't too particular about making sure the trial comes first"
Being shot by the police no-questions-asked is for "being brown in a built up area". Paedophilia is a lynching.
"You may not like what a person says to you, but that is still their right to say it..."
Actually, not entirely true. Courts have repeatedly ruled that some forms of speech are NOT protected, and you have no right to 'unprotected' speech.
Defamitory, inciting, and provcative speach that boils down to what one justice called 'fighting words' are on the short list of things that may put you in legal jeopardy. Likewise, the classic "fire" in crowded theater - Unless there really *is* a fire.
In this case, the instigators have accused a person of specific, reprehensible crimes without recourse to court judgement or evidence - accusations that very plausibly have been injurious to her social and financial well-being. Indeed, an un-informed third party might well act on those baseless accusations, thereby plausibly placing her physical safety in jeopardy. That puts the bullies squarely in the cross-hairs of the law.
In short - your right to be a mouthy annoyance ends when your words cross certain lines.
Now - Has actual harm been done? I dunno. This is why we have courts - but in order to get a judgement, first we need to know who these idiots are.
The same court order that force FB to cough up the names gets you a fresh one for the emailed to cough up the next set of data. The hope is that eventually you wind up with real information. Not sure how many shams you'd need to get through though. Or how much trouble it actually causes the miscreants.
She couldn't have just changed her Facebook settings to hide her personal details and to prevent them messaging her...?
Besides, she's done the easy bit getting the IPs, just ask one Andrew Crossley how difficult it will be proving anything on an IP address.
AC cause they're probably after me now.
That's the first thing I thought - surely she "befriended" these people before they posted the comments, else was savvy enough to change the default security settings to share her updates with complete strangers...
Unless (and this is unlikely) this is seriously the first contact she's had with teh denizens of teh general internets and she's honestly surprised.
When someone sets up a fake account in your name, and then sets about spamming all sorts of people with malign messages purporting to be from you, how do you block that?
Its a form of proxy attack, where they defame your reputation by their behaviour, and then you cop all the negative feedback that their actions create. Rather similar to when someone used your email address as a "from" contact on their spam campaign.
Just to explain - that is a general opinion
Benjamin 4 is a moron - now I am insulting an individual, do you see the difference?
Now if I were to create an account call Benjamin_4 and using that account post messages like 'I am a moron' that's a different thing again and depending on what is posted could even lead to the persons life being in danger
Now do you understand? Do you still think this is a non-issue?
Actually, not that it was reported here, but Facebook didn't actually contest the court order. Thanks to our data protection laws, unless a court ordered them to, it would be illegal for them to release the data.
The alternative therefore to going to court is to allow Facebook et al to release information to anybody that asks, and imagine how much of an uproar that'd cause?
A lot of internet sites where comments are allowed have something hidden in the Ts and Cs (usually in plain sight if anyone ever bothers to read it) that allows them to cough up details on receipt of a court order. In most cases it's obvious that abuse has occurred and they'll provide the information, although it's not unknown for a site to appeal against an order when they don't think it's reasonable.
Blocking abusive accounts achieves bugger all when the trolls can setup new ones in 5 minutes or less - I've been down this road in another case on another social networking website and we gave up after getting around 1200 accounts shut down in a 9 month period.
What's more worrying is what the law firm pointed out - that the police were utterly incompetent in the face of cyber-harrassment, resulting in one law for the rich/famous and another for the plebs. That's my experience too and I'm glad a law firm has decided to try and address this issue. In the case I was dealing with the police refused to even acknowledge it was a problem or record complaints and taking it down escalation paths got nowhere even though the identity of the troll was well established (She had a criminal record for GBH, and the threats weren't idle.)
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
The nasty people allegedly set up a fake FB account _in_her_name_ and used that to attack other people and insinuate that she was up to no good.
FB's alleged "Real-names culture" did nothing to stop this and the woman concerned tried all ways she could to get FB to do something about it which they ignored. Hence her need to resort to the law.
Please try to report this story properly.
you bet they are - more so, now they have "investors". The only way Facebook can actually return a profit to those investors is to encourage more people to sign up, and those that are signed up to use it more than they do.
Anything which jepordises that will have to be fixed - pronto.
Which makes me curious as to why the lady in question seemed to hit a brick wall originally. I suspect she must have made here complaints to the equivalent of the call centre, who didn't appreciate the importance of her claims.
Now it's an above-the-fold story, I suspect FB are going to work very hard to make it go away as quickly as possible.
"What is the bet that said US company will completely ignore the UK court, which will be helpless since it does not actually have juristriction."
My bet? Zuck & Co. will happily roll over for the court order. They want good relations with other countries, as there's money to be made, and rolling to a court in this case will in no way hurt their image. All they need is a plausible excuse.
I set up a fake FB account on one of my friends who told FB that it was a fake account- actually just to see what they would do- at which point the suspended it and gave me 48 hour to get it reinstated.
I'm no fan of FB but if they were using a dupe account from my experience its pretty damn easy to get the FB police involved.
Wow, what a sad little tale. All this because of a comment on x-factor. I have no idea who the singer/whatever on xfactor is or what they did, but its got to be a special type of simpleton to go to all the trouble of trolling and framing someone just for that.
Religious nuts and politicical commentators are for trolling, but x-factor?
I suspect theres more to this than were being told or the troll is just very,very sad.
Why did she hit a brick wall initially? : UK cops don't really get cybercrime so much - especially if you are not famous.
The x factor thing was one contestant who was kicked out for doing coke (yeah in the media and entertainment industry ... who'd have thought ! )
I think her comment was probably along the lines of "yeah he was wrong, but he was young and so probably just a kid who did something stupid, like we've all done" ....
Hope this helps and for the record, i am glad she won, i only hope *what* she won is of some use in finding the troll scum. trolls are just the mean bullys of the web and should just have a wank or something.
"How bizzare the troll went to all that effort to destroy someones life over a, to be honest quite reasonable comment on something so trivial (a crap tv show) that it has no bearing on anything."
Actually it was probably because of how she reacted to them slagging off her initial comments...
Remember the internet is where a mouthy 12 year old girl gets beaten into submission (Jessi Slaughter) over a dumb comment that is typical of a 12 year old making.
Its rough out there.
Cracked recently had 4 Things You Shouldn't Do With the Internet. Read it.
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