It's true that some of the information is important for filing legal charges and it should be made known to those affected. There needs to be good ways of sharing this but doxing is not one of them.
The problem is that doxing punishes an alleged offender before they have been judged as guilty of anything. The dox info might wrongly implicate someone else by mistake and so is very dangerous.
The elephant in the room here is that it is illegal and so despite putting the doxer at risk of legal troubles of their own, it does not work towards a legal prosecution of the alleged criminal.
Here's a few sources for that from a quick search or two:
- Once you outline the address or location of a person, within which a person can be placed at risk, YOU have VIOLATED THE LAW. PERIOD. [1]
- "Doxing is always illegal, [...], doxing falls under various state criminal laws, such as stalking, cyberstalking, harassment, threats, and other such laws, depending on the state." [2]
- It probably counts as harassment at least in the UK [3]
In this case it is probably illegal, likely as a result of deanonymizing @zeartul and harassment. There are no reasons for a legal case against them to post a picture of his face for example. A legal argument could be made that it is harassment and intimidation. Courts take into account context so it's not necessarily as absurd as that sounds.
I'm not saying don't bring those responsible to justice, I'm saying this is mob justice, which is no justice at all.
You're completely right. I think I've seen so much doxxing here that's it's almost been sickeningly normalised.
But then again, doesn't the media/news do this all the time with people having charges put against them?
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There are a lot of laws around what can and can't be disclosed about people at different stages of the legal process, and depending on what they are accused / convicted of, and depending on their age.
MSM works within the law on this, at least they appear to. In your region of the world there was a big scandal about journalists going outside the law to get information on people in the Leveson Inquiry some years back, you might remember. They definitely want to reveal as much as they can, especially the tabloids, and actually it sounds a lot like what's going on here, though that's not to say doxing is always furthered by hacking, doesn't seem to be in this case.
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Exactly! There are perfectly valid and legal reasons to disclose someone's information online.
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Laws are jurisdictional and doxxing is not always illegal despite what that article says. This would be quite easy to argue as legal and that is only if you live in a place where you'd have to argue it.
Perhaps we should use a different term than doxxing for what is transpiring here. We are unmasking a criminal so that his victims may seek re-compensation.
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Any illegality must be demonstrated and would be very contextual, so it could very well result in a failed prosecution, implying it's legal. But it should be determined case by case. So I concede that it may not always be illegal on these grounds.
If you believe you have the ability and the right to designate someone a criminal without any legal process then we subscribe to different ideas of justice.
One thing should be clear to anyone: giving out his girlfriends name serves nothing except intimidation. You may believe this intimidation is warranted, but that is what it is. I think his photo could also be viewed as purely intimidation and doxing, as it gives anyone who would wish to find him and harass him information to identify him in public. But perhaps it useful for other legitimate reasons. Girlfriends name though, not.
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He stole money from me. I have every right to label him a criminal. Doing so is part of the process. You can't remove how the process starts. You seem to be putting the cart in front of the horse here.
edit: I dont condone the GF stuff or think releasing her info is legal or warranted.
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Yes, of course you can label him a criminal, in the sense that it is your right to seek justice, and an accusation is the first step as you correctly point out. So I don't mean to diminish that. What I do mean, and I think this is obvious, is that your claim needs to be substantiated with evidence, not only of your loss but very importantly this it is actually the accused flesh and blood person. You can call him a criminal, but that does not make him a criminal, it just starts this process. Laws around false accusations and slander are something to consider too, but I don't want to get sidetracked by that right now.
I'm glad you agree some of the approach of this post is not right. I have huge sympathy with you and others who've been scammed, I'm completely against scams, I ran @sadkitten against them for some time and helped out in other ways in the past. But seeking justice in a just way is essential. You cannot actually have justice without it.
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