In our June 23 – 29, 2016 issue, the Advocate ran a piece called “Uncivil Discourse,” which was about the online backlash incurred by two local college students after they aggressively protested a panel discussion at UMass. The reader response surprised us and inspired us to take a closer look at the laws and issues around online harassment.
According to a 2014 Pew Research study, 40 percent of all internet users have been harassed in some form online. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, that proportion goes up to 70 percent. The study broke down the type of harassment by gender and age group. The results were telling.
While men were more likely to have been called names and deliberately embarrassed, women were more likely to be stalked or sexually harassed. A full 26 percent of women 18 to 24 are reported to have been stalked online, while 25 percent were the target of sexual harassment. Yet, only a very small number of cases ever make it to the courts.
“Cybercrime is such a new area of the law,” says Anne Yereniuk, assistant district attorney for Franklin and Hampshire counties. “We’re really kind of at the forefront of these issues … The problem is that the law takes a while to catch up with the times.”
At the heart of the problem, it seems, is the nature of the internet itself. Due to the anonymity that it affords users, it’s often difficult for victims and law enforcement alike to determine the source of threats and whether or not they’re credible. A shortage of investigators on the local level with the skills to conduct such investigations means that resources are often shared among agencies, and the sheer volume of these cases means that not every case will get pursued, with resources going toward the most heinous.
Detective Corey Robinson is a digital forensics and cybercrime specialist with the Northampton Police Department who works largely on cases involving child exploitation on the internet. He says he typically works with only one other detective in the Hampshire and Franklin county area, and knows of only one other agent in Hampden county.
“I’m stretched pretty thin,” he says. “I would love to see more resources put into this type of work. There really is a lack of resources in digital forensics in this area.”
While he says the department isn’t inundated on a daily basis with cyber-harassment cases, he does have to deal with them frequently. Limited resources and a cumbersome legal process make investigating or prosecuting many harassment cases infeasible, he says. Often, the best way to deal with it is for police to intervene and warn the harasser to stop.
“Most of the time we try not deal with it through the legal process, but if it’s egregious then we will,” Robinson says. “Typically it’s not what we do. These cases take a lot of work and they’re oftentimes long and drawn out. If I were to apply for a subpoena today [to identify the user of an IP address], I might not get results back for three months to move forward on the investigation, even if I know who it is.”
Robinson says laws just can’t keep up with the pace of technology.
“In law enforcement,” Robinson says. “We rely a lot on case law, decisions made by our courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. But case law is usually not occurring until two or three years after the issue has been raised. Usually, there’s this void of ambiguity until that occurs.”
Most of the time, he says, the only course of action is to remove the victim from the situation.
“Sometimes it doesn’t reach the point of a crime, disturbing as it is,” he says. “And we also have to protect people’s free speech, so you’re in this conundrum of ‘what do we do here?’ … We’re just not prepared to bring charges against hundreds of thousands of people. So obviously it’s easier for us to separate the person from the situation. Typically we tell them to remove their social media identities and get off of it. It’s difficult. Sometimes people don’t want to hear the answers that we tell them.”
When the harassment is anonymous and coming from a number of sources, victims may come to the conclusion that fighting is simply not worth it.
“It ends up being very incumbent upon the victim of that crime to make sure they take a screenshot, get it documented, show it to the police officer, and/or get some kind of a forensic search of their cell phone device or their computer,” Yereniuk says.
At the federal level, there seems to be a prevailing opinion that something needs to be done, but change is slow.
In a 2016 appropriations bill, the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee makes a recommendation to the Department of Justice that it intensify its efforts at combatting online abuse. “The Committee is aware of concerns regarding increased instances of severe harassment, stalking, and threats transmitted in interstate commerce in violation of Federal law,” it reads. “These targeted attacks against Internet users, particularly women, have resulted in the release of personal information, forced individuals to flee their homes, has had a chilling effect on free expression, and are limiting access to economic opportunity. The Committee strongly urges the Department to intensify its efforts to combat this destructive abuse and expects to see increased investigations and prosecutions of these crimes.”
“Our laws were written a long time ago,” Robinson says. “Technology is growing at a rapid pace and our laws take awhile to catch up. Usually, by the time we’re reacting and changing laws there’s been instances where people have slipped through the cracks. And I don’t have the perfect answer for every law. I just think someone needs to take a better look at how we’re dealing with some of these cybercrimes.”
Contact Peter Vancini at pvancini@valleyadvocate.com.
