Re: Guardian angels, the decency brigade, and cyberseraphim

[angels@wavenet.com (CyberAngels Director : Colin Gabriel Hatcher)]

Thanks Declan for forwarding your letter to me.  I'll answer some of the
points you refer to:

>So much for anonymous remailers! But the CyberAngels, in a fit of almost
> painful hypocrisy, use anonymous remailers themselves, as Charles Platt
>recounts in his book _Anarchy Online_:

Some of our members use anon remailers (although strictly speaking they are
pseudo anon remailers and therefore the user can be traced).  These are
members who are also supporters of privacy and anonymity online.  I do
myself use an anon remailer.  There is nothing hypocritical about it at
all.  We are not proposing to ban anon remailers, we are simply concerned
about the abuse of them.

>
>      How would this decency crusade actually work in
> practice? Well, later in 1995, one net user received the
> following not-very-friendly, not-very-literate warning, sent
> via an anonymous remailer:
>
>          The Net is out of control, sex crimes, hate crimes
>     and felonies.
>          Just as on the streets, CyberCrime is committed by
>     a minority of criminals who destroy the quality of life
>     for an innocent majority. And just like on the streets
>     the Guardian Angels will combat it.
>          We have good reason to believe that you are
>     involved in unlawful, harmful, hateful, threatening
>     and/or harassment, particularly relating to minors. We
>     will be watching you.

This message was not from our organization at all.  Surely you have heard
of  impersonation?  The oldest trick in thebook.

>
>      The netizen who found this in her mailbox was baffled
> and irritated. She had no idea what she'd done to provoke the
> warning, and since the message was anonymous, there was no
> way to _find out_ what she was supposed to have done.

Just goes to show what happens when people abuse anon remailers, right?
But it was not me.


>     By November, the Angels claimed they had 200 volunteers
> working for them, busily searching for bad guys on the net.
> "We have reported a number of Child Pornographers (50) to
> Sysadmins [system administrators] this month," Colin Hatcher
> noted, although he was no longer signing his real name to his
> progress reports, perhaps in fear of reprisals from angry
> pedophiles.

LOL, Gabriel is my nickname!  I think the writer is thinking too hard about
conspiracies...


>And, as Steven Levy wrote in Newsweek last October: "After the issue of
>child safety in cyberspace came up on his radio talk show, [Curtis]
>Sliwa decided to pursue in his usual high-profile fashion... Though the
>CyberAngels cannot document a single case where one of their numerous
>reports led directly to an arrest, they have compiled a fat file of
>press clippings."

People also wish to evaluate the work of the Guardian Angels by asking how
many arrests we have made.  But this misses the point of the work entirely.
We do not patrol to make arrests.  We patrol to help others.  And a good
patrol means that nothing happens.

As for press, we didnt even send a press release until 4 months after we
started, and then only to announce our website.  And we've only sent one
more press release out since then.  We do believe however that we have
helped to bring the issue of children and the Internet to the forefront and
that is a good thing too.

>
>In the attached piece, the Angels hold themselves up as the arbiter of
>what is appropriate for kids or not under the Safesurf system.
>So far so
>good -- but what criteria do they use when checking to see if a site is
>"genuinely kidsafe?" Where is it documented and published? What training
>do their self-selected vigilantes have?

The Safesurf system is a voluntary rating system that URLs undertake
themselves.  If you want to know more about the criteria you should check
out Safesurf themselves at http://www.safesurf.com

>Will the fight-censorship list
>be blocked when we have messages like this one on it:
>
> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/rimm/asst/anti_porn_group_11_22_94.letter
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Those orphan kids in the terminally ill section of the hospital are so fun
> at night when they are drugged out. I love sucking on their tiny
> finger-sized cocks and probing their tight holes. Their slender little
> bodies are completely smooth. They're going to die pretty soon so they
> won't come back to me several years from now as hairy grown up men blaming
> me for why they are all mentally messed up. And since they are orphans
> with no one to look over them except for overworked staff, I could get
> away with just about anything.

Why ask?  Clearly a site with a message like this would not be suitable for
children to read.  That would be an adult site rating.

>
>Since blocking software like Safesurf and SurfWatch is central to our
>case challenging the CDA...

Safesurf does not make software.  It's not a software manufacturer at all.

>Fortunately, that doesn't mean we
>have to accept or support the efforts of their unfortunate and
>intemperate net-vigilante allies.
>But I still want to help rate some web pages, so ---- "Gabriel," I want
>to be a CyberAngel. Sign me up!
>
>-Declan (now a CyberSeraphim)

Declan I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but since you clearly are
hostile to our mission I see no reason why we should invite you to help us.

Of course you could always sign up as an anonymous volunteer from an anon
remailer , or from another account, and pretend to believe in what we are
doing ;)

CyberAngels is about self-regulation.  Let us not confuse the fight against
internet crime with the criminalization of free speech.  We propose the
former not the latter.

Gabriel

*************************************************************************
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men
and women remain silent and do nothing" (Edmund Burke)

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances."
(US First Amendment to the Constitution)

"Those who sacrifice security for freedom, will have neither"

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