Cyber Vigilantes

Like a trainwreck, I just couldn't look away from Joan Peterson's latest post. I'd stopped bothering to read and comment there back on 1 April, but this spat over the whole "CSGV posting people's personal information and getting banned from twitter" was just too delicious to pass up.

As Heather recently pointed out, Ms. Peterson is all upset that people are discussing publishing her personal information online. The principled position would be to say that it is a dirty practice to publish this data, regardless of who does it. However, Ms. Peterson is on record cheering along the CSGV's efforts to cyberstalk multiple individuals.

Her latest post tries to explain why it is ok to "keep track of" gun rights people, but why it is unacceptable to publish personal information for her and her allies:

I am pretty open about who I am and why I am doing what I'm doing. I'm not trying to hide anything. Many who comment here use screen names or comment anonymously. This allows them to be as rude and aggressive as they want. Some bloggers don't allow comments or anonymous commenters. I still do, though I moderate for obvious reasons. Recently a gun control organization posted some of the real names of the gun rights activists hiding using screen names and anonymous postings. This was done because of many of the ugly verbal attacks made recently against victims and gun control advocates. Some of those names were actually already public knowledge. It caused a fire storm of accusations and even shutting down of a Twitter account of one gun violence prevention group. One of the results of this latest ugly and angry exchange is that someone threatened to publish directions to my house- where I'm not sure. The way it was worded was a challenge to me. Behind it, I could almost hear the tone of voice- the challenging, bullying, intimidating tone that was implied.

I'm trying to extract some general principles from this to figure out how reasoning works in JoanLand. I suppose one could derive the following principles from her screed:

1) If an individual publishes under a real name rather than hiding under a pseudonym, then it is not acceptable to "out" the individual or publish further information as the individual is not hiding.

2) If you feel that someone's words are ugly or hurtful, then you may ethically cyberstalk them and then publish their personal information.

3) If you feel that someone is verbally attacking a victim then you may ethically cyberstalk them and then publish their personal information.

I personally disagree with ugly, vicious personal attacks. Vulgarity is the last refuge of the small-minded. And threats which rise to the level of stalking, harassment, or other criminal activity should be reported to the police.

However, I find Joan's guidelines for ethically cyberstalking people to fall way short. Let's face it: In Joan Peterson's perfect world, all gun owners would be licensed like sex offenders, preferably with the information available to the public. Heck, based on what her political allies believe, all people who disagree with their opinions should be treated as such. Based on those sorts of beliefs, I find her protestations to be a bit feeble.

In my opinion, if someone needs to be "kept track of" due to threatening or harassing behavior, then you should report them to the authorities. That might mean law enforcement, or it just might mean the administrators of whatever social media the interaction is occurring on. What CSGV is doing could be most charitably described as vigilantism. Gun owners who are informed on the gun rights issue tend to understand the difference between legitimate, ethical self-defense and vigilantism, but unsurprisingly, anti-gun bigots tend not to.