The Internet Vigilante
from the catching-criminals-from-the-home-office dept
An article in the LA Times talks about a woman who spends an awful lot of time every day trying to catch online pedophiles. She has quite a track record of success, and law enforcement professionals respect her work. However, it does bring up some questions about how legal what she does is (though, she says she talks to law enforcement people all the time to make sure she doesn't cross the line). The article also talks about a number of other such "vigilantes" who have caused more problems than they've solved. Many have been arrested for downloading child porn, even if they claim it was for part of effort to catch someone.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
The Internet Vigilante
[ link to this | view in thread ]