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Facebook group hosted naked photos of women soldiers
Private Facebook groups can be valuable discussion areas for like-minded people, but they can also promote toxic behavior in the wrong circumstances. The Center for Investigative Reporting has revealed that the US' Naval Criminal Investigative Service is looking into a Facebook group, Marines United, that was used by soldiers in the US and UK (including the Marine Corps, Navy Corpsman and Royal Marines) to share naked photos of servicewomen. While the group has had some above-board discussions, according to one anonymous veteran, it has been dominated by "creepy, stalker-like" photography, revenge porn and the vile talk to match. Over two dozen of the women were identified by their names and positions.
Recommended Reading: Meet the attorney who's fighting revenge porn
The Attorney Fighting Revenge Porn Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker Carrie Goldberg started her practice to "be the lawyer" she needed after being harassed online by an ex. Now she's a pioneer is dealing with revenge porn cases, defending victims against hacking, leaking and other online attacks when relationships come to an end.
US Congresswoman proposes federal revenge porn bill
Representative Jackie Speier has formally introduced a bill that would make revenge porn a federal crime. The Intimate Privacy Protection Act targets both those who share sexually explicit images without the subject's consent and those who profit from the act. It classifies the distribution of nonconsensual porn as a privacy violation than as harassment, because it also intends to protect people whose sensitive images are maliciously distributed by medical professionals and law enforcement. If it becomes a law, anyone found guilty of breaking it would either have to pay a fine or spend up to five years in prison, depending on the details of the crime.
Alien sex tapes, robot rape and the evolution of consent
A little over a week ago Engadget's EIC and I had dinner with a couple of friends at a Chinatown Thai restaurant in L.A. As I sipped on a Singha Slurpee, our dinner companions, Claire Evans and Jona Bechtolt of the band Yacht, gave us an off-the-record rundown of a bizarre and twisted plan for the release of their next single, I Wanna Fuck You Till I'm Dead. They'd created a One Night in Paris-style sex tape spoof with a twist: Instead of peeling off their clothes, the couple would peel back their flesh to reveal hypersexualized alien bodies.
Facebook fights harassment with impersonation alerts
Online harassment is bad enough by itself, but it can be particularly insidious when harassers try to impersonate you -- they can easily ruin your reputation with a few bogus posts. Facebook might just have a way for you to fight back, though. It's currently testing an impersonation alert feature that automatically warns you when it believes that someone is trying to mimic your account. If you believe there's an impersonator at work, Facebook will manually review the offender and shut them down.
UK issues new guidelines for punishing online trolls
Lawmakers in the UK are slowly coming to the realisation that online abuse can be just as damaging as its real-world equivalent. Last year, revenge porn became a specific crime, and the maximum prison sentence for internet trolls was increased from six months to two years. Acknowledging these serious cybercrimes is one thing, but it's also important to know what exactly constitutes a punishable offence. To this end, The Crown Prosecution Service is proposing an update to its Social Media Guidelines to help criminal prosecutors bring keyboard cowards to justice.
The 'godfather of revenge porn' gets 2.5 years in prison
Hunter Moore, the founder of revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp, has been sentenced to two and a half years in jail. In addition, the 29-year-old will have his mental health evaluated while behind bars and will have three years of supervision upon his release. Moore is generally regarded as a notorious figure in the growth of revenge porn, enabling jilted lovers to post intimate pictures of their former beaus when the relationship broke down. It all seems like just desserts, although if there's one galling element of his sentence, it's that the fiscal penalty is so minor, since he's being forced to pay a fine of just $2,000.
California's new online hub helps you fight revenge porn
If you're a victim of revenge porn, the attempt to fight back can prove daunting. How do you get someone to pull the offending images? Where do you turn to for legal aid? California wants to offer some help. The state has launched a cyberexploitation hub that gives victims, police and companies the resources they need to respond to (and ideally, prevent) revenge porn. You can find a pro bono lawyer, for instance, or the best practices for website owners trying to protect their visitors. No, the hub isn't guaranteed to fix anything -- but it might provide an important first step when you're hurt, lost and seeking justice. [Image credit: Getty Images]
Pornhub streamlines revenge porn reporting process
Pornhub has introduced a new online form (NSFW) that will help identify and remove nonconsensual revenge porn from the site. In the past, victims could only send through removal requests via email, but the new process hopes to cut out all the red tape people had to go through in the past. The company's vice president Corey Price said: "It is vital that we continue to make our community feel safe. We want all Pornhub users to know that this new reporting process is for their security and peace of mind first and foremost." Most US states have already set laws against this type of porn, with California being the first state to convict someone running a revenge porn site. The essence of the online form is to act quickly before the video goes viral, because once that happens, it's nearly impossible to remove all traces of it. [Image credit: Getty creative]
21-year-old charged with sextortion crimes
A 21-year-old from New Hampshire has been charged with a range of crimes surrounding a grisly extortion scheme involving underage girls. The Department of Justice accuses Ryan J. Vallee of hacking into several teenagers' social media accounts, holding them hostage unless they sent him explicit images of themselves. If they didn't comply, he would threaten the girls with "additional harm," although after obtaining the pictures, he distributed them to others anyway. In addition, Vallee is said to have accessed the victim's Amazon accounts and ordered "items of a sexual nature," which were then sent to their homes, causing untold distress.
Google will pull 'revenge porn' out of its search results
An unintended side effect of the increasingly connected world we live in, is that sometimes your identity can be maliciously tied to information that should remain private. The proliferation of "revenge porn" that's often used to target and harass women has taken advantage of the internet's unforgiving search capabilities in exactly that way, and as a result Google is announcing a change in its policy to fight that. Soon, the search giant will accept requests from people to remove nude or sexually explicit images of themselves shared without their consent from its search results. According to the blog post, Google already accepts requests to remove info like bank account numbers and signatures, and calls this an extension of that "narrow and limited" policy.
Revenge porn is now a specific crime in the UK
Posting revenge porn has always been a bad idea, but the UK is about to make examples of those heartless enough to share nude photos of their exes. As of Monday, the country's Criminal Justice and Court Act treats revenge porn as a specific crime. Publicize racy private images with the "intent to cause distress" and you'll face up to two years in prison. While the law could technically punish this behavior before, the Act is meant to discourage those who otherwise wouldn't get the hint.
Revenge porn site operator sentenced to 18 years in prison
If you think that posting nude pictures of your ex is somehow an acceptable response to your breakup, take a lesson from Kevin Bollaert. He's been sentenced to 18 years behind bars (he could be eligible for parole after 10) for operating 'yougotposted.com,' a revenge porn site that hosted more than 10,000 sexually explicit images of women posted without their knowledge or consent.
Facebook clarifies what you're allowed to post on its social network
Facebook's content guidelines have sparked confusion, to put it mildly -- a lot of people are unsure as to whether or not they have to use their legal names, or whether it's safe to post breastfeeding photos. At last, though, the social network is clearing the air a bit. It just posted new Community Standards that don't change the company's stance, but should remove some of the gray areas. For one, it's emphasizing that you only have to use your "authentic identity," not the name your government recognizes -- important if you identify with a non-traditional gender. Facebook also clarifies that you can mention hate speech for the sake of social commentary, and refines its views on harassment, nudity and what happens to your account when you die. A few sections are completely new, such as one explicitly forbidding revenge porn and other forms of sexual exploitation.
Twitter introduces new rules against revenge porn
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo once admitted that the website sucked at dealing with trolls, but you've got to give the company credit for doing something about it. The micro-blogging platform has just launched more stringent rules against revenge porn after making it easier to report doxxers and impersonators in February. If you visit Twitter's community rules and abuse policy, you'll see language making it clear that any intimate content posted without the subjects' consent isn't welcome on the website. Under "Content Boundaries and Use of Twitter," you'll find:
'Revenge porn' site operator convicted, faces 20 years in prison
The man responsible for running revenge porn site 'ugotposted.com' has been found guilty of identity theft and extortion. The San Diego County Superior Court jury decided that Kevin Bollaert could now face up to 20 years in prison for the offenses. According to the WSJ, it's the first conviction of a revenge porn website operator, although the Federal Trade Commission has also acted to shut down photo archives and the public sharing of photos of people without their permission. In fact, while California's new revenge porn law has now been established, it wasn't used in either case.
'Revenge porn' peddler banned from posting images without consent
If your significant other sends you artful nudes, it'd be pretty nasty to share those pics in the event of your separation. It's a feeling that the Federal Trade Commission shares after handing down a judgment on Craig Brittain, the owner of a website that many believe traded in revenge porn. Is Anybody Down was a site catering for user-submitted smut that, perhaps obviously, was believed to be used by jilted lovers trying to get one over on their exes. The site itself shuttered a while ago, but the FTC has now ruled that Brittain cannot publicly share photos of people online without their permission, and destroy any archives that he still has. Failure to comply with this will be met with a $16,000 fine for each and every individual violation.
Posting revenge porn could soon become a serious criminal offence
The posting of 'revenge porn' may become unequivocally illegal in England and Wales soon, after the House of Lords agreed yesterday the law should be amended to specifically include the practice. Currently, anyone that shares explicit images to humiliate a former partner can be prosecuted under sex offense laws -- something the Crown Prosecution Service was keen to highlight in new guidance released a few weeks ago. To deal with the growing problem more directly, however, the Lords' amendment would consider the sharing of such images a serious criminal offense in its own right, carrying a maximum prison sentence of two years. Should MPs in the House of Commons approve the amendment, perpetrators would be more easily punishable, and victims would have stronger grounds to demand the removal of any published images. Clarifying the law with regards to revenge porn isn't the only crackdown on bad internet behaviour currently under consideration, as the UK Justice Secretary recently called for the maximum prison sentence for serious trolls to be increased from six months to two years.
