Cyber Stalking: What a Wicked Web We Weave
US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit: United States v. Fullmer et. al.
We live in very contentious times. The red-state-blue-state divide is political, geographical and cultural. Debate about issues is frequently obscured by the politics of hate, by innuendo and by ad hominum attacks on those who speak out on the issues. Whether you support Rush Limbaugh or Al Gore, Sara Palin or Barack Obama, there seems to be way less common ground than in times past—and way less interest in even finding it.
Everything has become a crisis. Everything has become an issue that cannot be compromised. And everything is magnified and disseminated exponentially, courtesy of the worldwide web. Just a click away, a wonderful and dreadful thing the web: both a fountain of breaking news, information and learning and a cesspool of violence, pornography and hatred all at once.
Perhaps there’s no other tool with the power to destroy lives and reputations so easily. Bloggers can be indifferent to facts. Rumormongers can ruin lives with a well placed post. And anyone with a computer can upload their own demise on line or set in motion events that lead to the demise of others.
Somewhere between on-line beheadings and spam, we find US. v. Fullmer.
The case is about the activities of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) and six individual defendants (referred herein collectively as “SHAC”) who were either employees, principals or in some way associated with SHAC. SHAC was formed in 1999. It has been uncompromisingly opposed to Huntingdon’s research with animals and committed to closing its laboratories. According to SHAC, Huntingdon was a purveyor of animal cruelty in the interest of science and corporate profits. Its abuses of animals were depicted in a surveillance videotape (viewer discretion advised) obtained by someone posing as a Huntingdon lab technician. When aired on British TV, it led to a spate of protests and the birth of SHAC-UK and subsequently, its US counterpart after SHAC’s relentless campaign caused Huntingdon to relocate to the states.
SHAC’s opposition to Huntingdon was not based on the actions of Gandhi or Martin Luther King. It was something new. Something born out of the cyber age. It targeted Huntingdon and companies that dealt with it, from accounting firms, bankers and realtors, to Huntingdon board members, stockholders and employees, including their wives and children. SHAC used its website as a bludgeon. Its take-no-prisoners, scorched-earth approach to its mission was incredibly effective. And frightening. As defendant Gazzola put it, “this is the most successful campaign in the history of the animal rights movement and it’s precisely because we’re pushing the limits and we’re tired of standing around holding signs and yelling at buildings and writing letters and not getting anywhere. We’re gonna do what we have to do in order to be effective and in order to save lives.”
The court’s opinion chronicles a sampling of the SHAC defendants’ activities. Its web postings included the following:
-Coordinating protests;
-Encouraging direct action (both legal and illegal, the illegal kind being both lauded and disavowed simultaneously);
-Instructing economic sabotage (including step-by-step how-to instructions as well as posting times for coordinated electronic assaults on corporate servers and fax machines);
-Listing accomplishments (such as people and places that had been attacked or acquiesced to SHAC’s demands); and
-Promoting vandalism (or at least excusing and appreciating it as a natural overflow of anti-Huntingdon outrage).
In a message to all associated with or employed by Huntingdon, defendant Harper used the backdrop of successful personal and institutional attacks to put Huntingdon and its business partners on notice of SHAC’s reach: “animal abusers …may be safe from the cops, the army, and the FBI…they are not safe from us…If no one else will treat them like the criminal scum that they are, at least we will…It is time to go beyond our fear of reprisals.”
Given the contents of the surveillance video, some might find such hard-edged tactics acceptable. But there was more. There were physical attacks and protests at board members’ homes. There were personal threats to them. To their children. Home addresses were published on the web. Phone numbers were published. Houses were flooded, windows smashed and neighbors intimidated. There was the posting of the “Top 20 Terror Tactics.” There were death threats by email and phone. And there was a state of fear that was nurtured and encouraged by SHAC.
SHAC’s web page, while always disavowing illegal activity, sympathized with its supposed unknown, more violent compatriots, and published instructions about how to avoid detection or arrest for such activity (even a cursory reading of the court’s decision is like a manifesto on modern economic warfare by cyber means—in many ways, it’s as disturbing as the Huntingdon video). Those targeted lived in abject fear for their lives, some to the point of arming themselves, others to the point of surrender, acquiescing to SHAC’s demands rather than resisting them alone.
Defendants were eventually charged and convicted of a variety of offenses, including conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection ACT (AEPA protects those who use animals for testing from certain forms of animal-rights activity), conspiracy to commit interstate stalking as well as three substantive counts of stalking.
On appeal, defendants argued, among other things, that the convictions violated their First Amendment right to engage in civil disobedience and to voice their objections to Huntingdon’s activities. The court disagreed. While some postings on SHAC’s website were protected speech, notwithstanding it was “speech that many find offensive and uncomfortable,” other posts which “coordinate electronic civil disobedience and disseminate the personal information of individuals employed by Huntingdon and affiliated companies are more problematic.” Such communication was not protected speech and some “constituted ‘true threats.’”
As the court observed, “viewed in context, the speeches, protests, and web postings were all tools to further their effort” and were not speech protected by the First Amendment. They were crimes. Accordingly, the individual defendants received sentences ranging from one year to six years in prison.
We are left with a number of questions: Are these people heroes in the animal rights movement? Should they be applauded for putting their lives on the line for their beliefs (even belatedly, since on line, they denied personal involvement)? Are they simply zealots who did what was necessary to save animals?
Or are they thugs? Bullies? And political / business terrorists?
Those on the receiving end of their “protests” would vote for the latter category. Many who share SHAC’s views might see them as visionaries. But the question remains: What type of society are we evolving into?
Maybe the ends justify the means when it comes to animals. How about when it comes to global warming? To illegal immigration? To mandatory vaccines for H1N1? To gun control or legalizing marijuana?
Are we inexorably on a road that takes no prisoners in a winner-take-all battle over everything? Or have we already crossed the Rubicon when it comes to civil discussion and the common good?
Sometimes it looks and feels that way. Sometimes it looks and feels like we are willingly letting the common ground beneath our feet slip away, completely indifferent or oblivious to the fact that we are falling into something much more dangerous and intolerant and insidious—all in the interest of advancing THE cause.
Which, of course, says something either about our lack of powers of persuasion or our inability or unwillingness to listen to the other side. Or to lose gracefully. In the market place of ideas that is America, the wheat has always been separated from the chaff, which historically has brought out the best in America, and which hopefully, will continue to do so even as the internet has the potential to bring out the worst.
Still, we should be glad about this uniquely American problem because freedom of speech can only be abused where it exists in the first place.
