Article: The CSI Effect: The truth about forensic science

Author: Jeffrey Toobin

Presentation Leader: Ri

Summary:

The article covers several points about investigative forensic science exploring its factual sides with the comparison to its fictional representation. The article tries to reference one of the then most popular CBS television series named “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” [2], and 2 of its spinoffs “CSI: Miami” [3] and “CSI: New York” [4]. While doing so, the author describes how the real-life crime investigations are much more tedious and fallible in contrast to its fictional representations. The article starts with giving a real-life criminologist Lisa Faber’s statement in the courtroom where after analyzing hundreds of hair and fibers she could come to the conclusion that the evidence might have originated from the source.

The author points out this cautious description in conclusion compared to the much more confident assertion shown in the fictional TV shows. Additionally, the author mentions how the general public nowadays believe that science can, with definite certainty, identify the criminal based on the limited amount of evidence.

The author then focused on the analysis of bite marks, blood spatter, handwriting, firearm and tool marks, and voices, as well as of hair and fibers – which are popular forensic-science tests depicted on “CSI”. Many of these forensic techniques are outdated and somewhat obsolete in present courts. Some of these techniques also show errors in their follow-up examinations as well.

The author tries to find the origin of these forensic techniques in the early 19^th century and its successful usage in the early 20^th century. The author mentions an incident where a New York doctor, Calvin Goddard, analyzed bullets to successfully identify which submachine guns they were fired from. This might be revolutionary at that time, however, the techniques remain quite the same to this date without much improvement.

The author explores more on Lisa Faber’s journey at how she first came to choosing forensic investigation as a profession. The article also describes briefly the process of analyzing hair in the criminal cases. For DNA testing with hair, the author found out, hairs whose roots are intact only have nuclear DNA, which is unique to each person. However, the hairs collected from the crime scenes often lack hair roots, to begin with. The author then learns from Lisa Faber the complicated and tedious process hair analysis – starting from hair color to its chemical composition.

The author then briefly describes the 2 types of DNA testing – nuclear DNA and mitochondrial (mt) DNA. Although mtDNA testing is more frequent and can eliminate many suspects after testing, it is greatly prone to errors. The author explores the perception of different professional experts about the use of mtDNA and its fallibility. It divides the experts into 2 groups where one group believes in the credibility of using mtDNA to further establishing findings from generic hair analysis and another group believes it should be excluded because of its flaws.

Later in the article, the author describes the recent steps taken by Faber in her lab combining traditional and modern technology for hair and fiber analysis. It is called Biotracks – a burglary program – which analyzes tissue, hair, fiber samples dropped at the crime scene by the criminal while using rubber gloves, wiping tissue, soda bottle, etc.

On the final note, the author hinted how the fictional TV representation makes the forensic profession popular and quite hipster in the eyes of public, despite having a somewhat stretching representation from the real-life scenarios.

 

Reflection:

I found the article to have an interesting way of exploring the forensic investigation while establishing a sense of dissimilarity with its fictional representations. As the television series like CSI, tend to serve the purpose of entertainment, they often seem to build their fictional world based on some real-life existence. One of the topics that are strongly existent in the fictions is that they need to have a definite finding at the end of the show. This leads them to force feed some conclusions which might not be used with such confidence in the real-life.

Additionally, in the real-life, the process of investigation can be a long, complicated, and monotonous process. Contrast to this, the fiction episodes are usually less than one hour long. Hence, many of the criminologists in the fictions possess much higher confidence in the accuracy of their findings. As described in the article – an air of glamour, an aura of infallibility. This is done mostly to make the show more interesting and entertaining to the audience. The shows, after all, are meant to serve as an entertainment, not documentary.

It was very interesting for me to learn the intrinsic details of the investigative process and the margin of error for them. I was unaware of how much effort and time are spent in collecting suitable evidence, analyzing them, and trying to come to a conclusion keeping potential errors in mind. I was really intrigued to find out that even at times follow up examinations might come to the same false conclusion. Also, the incident of the convicted suspect, Jimmy Ray Bromgard, in the rape case of an eight-year-old, where he was later found innocent. The initial trial had the manager of the Montana state crime lab, Arnold Melnikoff, testify stating that the odds against the suspect were one in ten thousand. However, the later DNA testing proved that the initial conclusion was wrong. It made me realize how difficult it is to come to a definitive conclusion in the forensic medicine sector. It also justifies how Lisa Faber phrased her conclusion in a very carefully picked words in the earlier part of the article.

The thing that intrigues me further is that the public misbelief about the accuracy of the scientific findings. I was also intrigued by the impression the jury had over Faber’s fiber analysis, as the article states “The prosecutors liked the idea of fibre evidence… it was more ‘CSI’-esque.” It raises the question in my mind whether we are mixing up real-life facts with fictional enticements. Like Michael J. Saks states, “It’s the individualization fallacy, and it’s not real science. It’s faith-based science.”

 

Questions:

• Is fictionalizing investigative forensic science exoterically a good approach?
• Many experts hold different opinions when it comes to mtDNA as a subsequent test to hair analysis. What are your thoughts on using mtDNA (which has a higher error rate) in the court?
• Do you think making the general public aware of the potential error rate in forensic science might actually decrease the credibility of the whole sector?
• With the relevance of this class, can the crowd be trusted in crime investigations given that even the experts are at times fallible?

 

References:

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/07/the-csi-effect

The CSI Effect: The truth about forensic science by Jeffrey Toobin

[2] http://www.cbs.com/shows/csi/

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

[3] http://www.cbs.com/shows/csi-miami/

[4] http://www.cbs.com/shows/csi-ny/

 

 

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Article:

Chapter Six: Doing Something Good in So You’ve Been Publically Shamed by Jon Ronson

Summary:

In the sixth chapter of his book, the author opens with an account of developers Hank and Adria at Pycon. During a conference presentation, Hank and his colleague were joking together about ‘dongles’ and ‘forking,’ terms that had a clear sexual connotation.  In the row directly in front of them, Adria turned around and snapped a photo of the two developers. Not much time passed before Hank and his colleague were pulled out of the room by the conference organizers to discuss their sexual comments. After explaining the situation, not much more came of the situation during the conference.

However, when leaving the event, the two developers soon discovered that Adria posted their photo and the subject of their jokes on Twitter: “Not cool. Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and ‘big’ dongles. Right behind me #pycon” (pg. 114). To further explain her tweet, she produced a more extensive blog. In conversation with Ronson, Adria further detailed her feelings of danger after hearing the comment from the men behind her.

The repercussions for Hank was termination from his work. Nothing was mentioned about the consequences for his colleague. After being terminated, Hank turned to Hacker News to publicly apologize for his lewd remarks. In his statement, he mentioned the outcomes of his actions – his termination. Adria asked to remove this portion of the apology.

The public jumped into the conversation to both defend and further shame both Hank and Adria. Adria was received rape and death threats while her work was hit by a DDoS attack. The DDoS attackers threatened to continue until Adria was fired. She was shortly fired. Hank was defended and then later insulted by men’s right bloggers. These bloggers focused on Hank’s masculinity – or lacking masculinity. Both the shamer and shamed were harmed by the actions of the crowd.

In the latter half of the chapter, Ronson switches gears slightly by writing about his interview with a 4chan user accused of DDoSing PayPal. According to the author, her motivation for shaming was “the desire to do good” (pg. 123) and stems from a place of powerlessness: “on the internet we have power in situations where we would otherwise be powerless” (pg. 123). This place of powerlessness is apparently rooted in violations, namely stop and frisk, of others constitutional rights.

Later, in their conversation about Adria, the 4chan user defends Hank claiming that Adria infringed on his and his colleague’s freedom to speech. And, that in the case of Sacco (another victim of shaming mentioned in Chapter Four), she became the symbolic enemy – rich, white person. The 4chan user claims that some “crimes” –like these – cannot be handled by the courts but by shaming.

Reflection

As we learned, 4chan/b/ is ephemeral, with threads lasting no more than a few minutes and most disappearing from the front page within hours.  Because of this, Ronson’s comment that “somebody inside 4chan was silently erasing me whenever I tried to make contact” (pg.121) seems like a misunderstanding of 4chan/b/. If so, a tad more research would have been beneficial instead of misleading readers about the nature of 4chan/b/ users or the level of administration/moderation that occurs on the forum.

In addition, the author’s connection between stop and frisks and online activism seems relatively weak. In the connection to police, Ronson makes the statement that “one by-product of [stop and frisks] was that some repeatedly frisked young people sought revenge in online activism – by joining 4chan” (pg. 126). This statement is based on conversations with only two individuals from New York City. And, in his conversation with Troy, there is no mention that Troy even engages in online activism; his activity on 4chan could simply be to have a free space without interference instead of seeking revenge.  Although the evidence supporting the association between NYC stop and frisks and online activism isn’t particularly strong in this book, the notion that powerlessness can translate over into bullying –or shaming more broadly-  does make sense.

The conversation about Hank and Adria could have been bolstered with a conversation about guilt. Shame and guilt are different. The former leads to painful feelings about our identities (we feel bad about ourselves), and the latter leads to empathic views about how we behaved poorly as well as the consequential harm.  The discussion of guilt/shame could help pull out the issues with shaming a little better to demonstrate why guilting someone might be a better alternative than shaming.

The shameful rather than guilty response can be seen for both Hank and Adria. In Adria’s response, she states: “no one would have known he got fired until he complained” (pg. 129) … and it was “his own actions that resulted in his own firing, yet he framed it in a way to blame me” (pg. 130). The result of her shaming appears to be defensive and angry rather than empathic and remorseful. Something similar can be said of Hank. In his response to Hacker News, he might not have appeared furiously angry. But his description of distancing from female co-workers shows some alteration to his self-worth. He notes that with female developers, “I’m not as friendly. There’s humor, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I can’t afford another Donglegate” (pg. 130).

For both Hank and Adria, shame seems counterproductive.  I have not finished the book yet, but I hope there is a discussion about shame versus guilt.  And, in particular, how the public can elicit guilt rather than shame to help change people’s behaviors for the better.

Questions:

1. Is shaming inherently bullying?
2. If not, when does shaming become bullying?
3. Is shaming justifiable for the greater good?

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Technology: Timeline JS

Demo leader: Tianyi Li

Summary:

TimelineJS is one of the open-source storytelling projects by Knight Lab from Northwestern University. The Lab develops easy-to-use information visualization techniques for journalism, storytelling and content on the internet.

Timeline JS is a Javascript-based tool that enables both non-programmers and technical people to build visually rich, interactive timelines. Beginners can create a timeline using a Google spreadsheet, whereas experts can customize and instantiate timeline on their own webpage. TimelineJS can be embedded as iframe on sites or blogs. You can create your own Timeline on their website and embed the URL in an iframe in your own website, or you can integrate Timeline using javascript in your own front-end code.

Advantage:

Timeline JS can be built on their website by modifying given template Google Spreadsheet. The simple API enables non-programmers to use the tool. Once the Google Spreadsheet is published, you do not have to re-publish it when you update the data. It will be automatically updated in your timeline. In addition, it supports media links from many external websites like youtube and twitter. Timeline JS can also be plugged into javascript and html codes for expert programmers, using JSON data input, or even edit their CSS styles to incorporate personalized design.

Possible misuse and Limitation:

I do not see any significant or unique possibility of misuse of this tool. Any tools that embed links and multi-media sources might be misused to embed malicious links that steals user information.

Also, according to the tips and tricks on the website, the optimal number of slides is around 20, so the tool cannot be scaled for big data time series visualization.

Walkthrough:

[OPTION 1] Using their website:

Tutorial video

Step1: create your spreadsheet

Build a new Google Spreadsheet using the template given on the website  You’ll need to copy the template to your own Google Drive account by clicking the “Make a Copy” button.

Drop dates, text, and links to media into the appropriate columns.

Note: Don’t change the column headers, don’t remove any columns, and don’t leave any blank rows in your spreadsheet.

Step2: publish the spreadsheet to the web

Under the File menu, select “Publish to the Web.” In the next window, click the blue “publish” button. When asked, “Are you sure…?” click OK. Close the ‘Publish to the web’ window. Copy the URL for your Timeline from the browser’s address bar. It should look something like this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xuY4upIooEeszZ_lCmeNx24eSFWe0rHe9ZdqH2xqVNk/edit#gid=0

Note: Disregard the URL that appears in the “publish to the web” window. It used to be used below, but changes to Google mean that you’ll get an error if you use it now.

Step3: generate your timeline

Copy/paste spreadsheet URL into the box given on the tutorial walkthrough at step3, you will also be able to configure optional settings there. This is to generate your timeline. (Make sure you’ve published the spreadsheet.)

Once you are done, click “enter” (or “return”) on your keyboard

Step4: share your timeline

The step 4 on their web page will give you both a shareable link and a line of code if you want to embed the timeline in an iframe. You can just click on the “Preview” button to test your timeline on the same page, or “Open preview in a new window”.

[OPTION 2] Using javascript

Documentation

If you want to integrate timeline on your own website, just load Timeline CSS style, javascript library. Then you will be able to create your own timeline either from Google spreadsheet or a JSON file, by constructing a Timeline object using their javascript library. You can also customize the css style.

Example Code:

<html>
 <head>
 <title>Timeline JS demo</title>
 <!-- There are three key things you need to include on your page to embed a timeline: -->

<!-- 1 A link tag loading the Timeline CSS -->
 <link title="timeline-styles" rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/css/timeline.css">

<!-- 2 A script tag loading the Timeline javascript -->
 <script src="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/js/timeline.js"></script>
 </head>
 <body>
 <div id='timeline-embed' style="width: 100%; height: 600px"></div>
 <!-- 3 A second script tag which creates a Timeline -->
 <script type="text/javascript">
 // option 1: use google doc
 // The TL.Timeline constructor takes at least two arguments:
 // the id of the Timeline container (no '#'), and
 // the URL to your JSON data file or Google spreadsheet.
 // the id must refer to an element "above" this code,
 // and the element must have CSS styling to give it width and height
 // optionally, a third argument with configuration options can be passed.
 // See below for more about options.
 function timeline_googleSpreadsheet(){
 timeline_GoogleSpreadsheet = new TL.Timeline('timeline-embed','https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cWqQBZCkX9GpzFtxCWHoqFXCHg-ylTVUWlnrdYMzKUI/pubhtml');
 }
 // option 2: use json
 function timeline_json(){
 $.getJSON("timeline3.json", function(json){
 window.timeline = new TL.Timeline('timeline-embed', json);
 })
 }
 // timeline_json();
 // configureing options
 function timeline_option(){
 var additionalOptions = {
 start_at_end: true,
 default_bg_color: {r:0, g:0, b:0},
 timenav_height: 250
 }

timeline_option = new TL.Timeline('timeline-embed','https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cWqQBZCkX9GpzFtxCWHoqFXCHg-ylTVUWlnrdYMzKUI/pubhtml', additionalOptions);
 }
 // Uncomment any one of the following three lines to try things out:
 // timeline_googleSpreadsheet();
 // timeline_json();
 // timeline_option();
 </script>
 </body>
 </html>

JSON file:

{
 "title": {
 "media": {
 "url": "//www.flickr.com/photos/tm_10001/2310475988/",
 "caption": "Whitney Houston performing on her My Love is Your Love Tour in Hamburg.",
 "credit": "flickr/<a href='http://www.flickr.com/photos/tm_10001/'>tm_10001</a>"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Whitney Houston<br/> 1963 - 2012",
 "text": "<p>Houston's voice caught the imagination of the world propelling her to superstardom at an early age becoming one of the most awarded performers of our time. This is a look into the amazing heights she achieved and her personal struggles with substance abuse and a tumultuous marriage.</p>"
 }
 },
 "events": [
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "{{ static_url }}/img/examples/houston/family.jpg",
 "caption": "Houston's mother and Gospel singer, Cissy Houston (left) and cousin Dionne Warwick.",
 "credit": "Cissy Houston photo:<a href='http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447043@N00/418180903/'>Tom Marcello</a><br/><a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADionne_Warwick_television_special_1969.JPG'>Dionne Warwick: CBS Television via Wikimedia Commons</a>"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "month": "8",
 "day": "9",
 "year": "1963"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "A Musical Heritage",
 "text": "<p>Born in New Jersey on August 9th, 1963, Houston grew up surrounded by the music business. Her mother is gospel singer Cissy Houston and her cousins are Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick.</p>"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/fSrO91XO1Ck",
 "caption": "",
 "credit": "<a href=\"http://unidiscmusic.com\">Unidisc Music</a>"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1978"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "First Recording",
 "text": "At the age of 15 Houston was featured on Michael Zager's song, Life's a Party."
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/_gvJCCZzmro",
 "caption": "A young poised Whitney Houston in an interview with EbonyJet.",
 "credit": "EbonyJet"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1978"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "The Early Years",
 "text": "As a teen Houston's credits include background vocals for Jermaine Jackson, Lou Rawls and the Neville Brothers. She also sang on Chaka Khan's, 'I'm Every Woman,' a song which she later remade for the <i>Bodyguard</i> soundtrack which is the biggest selling soundtrack of all time. It sold over 42 million copies worldwide."
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/H7_sqdkaAfo",
 "caption": "I'm Every Women as performed by Whitney Houston.",
 "credit": "Arista Records"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1978"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Early Album Credits",
 "text": "As a teen Houston's credits include background vocals for Jermaine Jackson, Lou Rawls and the Neville Brothers. She also sang on Chaka Khan's, 'I'm Every Woman,' a song which she later remade for the <i>Bodyguard</i> soundtrack which is the biggest selling soundtrack of all time. It sold over 42 million copies worldwide."
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/A4jGzNm2yPI",
 "caption": "Whitney Houston and Clive Davis discussing her discovery and her eponymous first album.",
 "credit": "Sony Music Entertainment"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1983"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Signed",
 "text": "Houston is signed to Arista Records after exec Clive Davis sees her performing on stage with her mother in New York."
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/m3-hY-hlhBg",
 "caption": "The 'How Will I Know' video showcases the youthful energy that boosted Houston to stardom.",
 "credit": "Arista Records Inc."
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1985"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Debut",
 "text": "Whitney Houston's self titled first release sold over 12 million copies in the U.S. and included the hit singles 'How Will I Know,' 'You Give Good Love,' 'Saving All My Love For You' and 'Greatest Love of All.'"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/v0XuiMX1XHg",
 "caption": "Dionne Warwick gleefully announces cousin, Whitney Houston, the winner of the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the song Saving All My Love.",
 "credit": "<a href='http://grammy.org'>The Recording Academy</a>"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1986"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "'The Grammys'",
 "text": "In 1986 Houston won her first Grammy for the song Saving All My Love. In total she has won six Grammys, the last of which she won in 1999 for It's Not Right But It's Okay."
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/eH3giaIzONA",
 "caption": "I Wanna Dance With Somebody",
 "credit": "Arista Records Inc."
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1987"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "'Whitney'",
 "text": "Multiplatinum second album sells more than 20 million copies worldwide. With 'Whitney', Houston became the first female artist to produce four number 1 singles on one album including \"I Wanna Dance With Somebody,' 'Didn't We Almost Have It All,' 'So Emotional' and 'Where Do Broken Hearts Go.'"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/96aAx0kxVSA",
 "caption": "\"One Moment In Time\" - Theme song to the 1988 Seoul Olympics",
 "credit": "Arista Records Inc."
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1988"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "\"One Moment In Time\"",
 "text": "The artist's fame continues to skyrocket as she records the theme song for the Seoul Olympics, 'One Moment In Time.'"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "",
 "caption": "",
 "credit": ""
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1989"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Bobby Brown",
 "text": "Houston and Brown first meet at the Soul Train Music Awards. In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Houston admitted that it was not love at first sight. She turned down Brown's first marriage proposal but eventually fell in love with him."
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/5Fa09teeaqs",
 "caption": "CNN looks back at Houston's iconic performance of the national anthem at Superbowl XXV.",
 "credit": "CNN"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1991"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Super Bowl",
 "text": "Houston's national anthem performance captures the hearts and minds of Americans ralllying behind soldiers in the Persian Guf War."
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/h9rCobRl-ng",
 "caption": "\"Run To You\" from the 1992 \"Bodyguard\" soundtrack..",
 "credit": "Arista Records"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1992"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "\"The Bodyguard\"",
 "text": "Houston starred opposite Kevin Costner in the box office hit, The Bodyguard. The soundtrack to the movie sold over 44 million copies worldwide garnering 3 Grammy's for the artist."
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/5cDLZqe735k",
 "caption": "Bobby Brown performing \"My Prerogrative,\" from his \"Don't be Cruel\" solo album. Bobby Brown first became famous with the R&B group, New Edition.",
 "credit": ""
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "1992"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Married Life",
 "text": "<p>After three years of courtship, Houston marries New Edition singer Bobby Brown. Their only child Bobbi Kristina Brown was born in 1993.</p><p>In 2003 Brown was charged with domestic violence after police responded to a domestic violence call. Houston and Brown were featured in the reality show, \"Being bobby Brown,\" and divorced in 2007.</p>"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/ABC_-_Good_Morning_America_-_Diane_Sawyer.jpg",
 "caption": "Diane Sawyer ",
 "credit": "flickr/<a href='http://www.flickr.com/photos/23843757@N00/194521206/'>Amanda Benham</a>"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "2002"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Crack is Whack",
 "text": "<p>Houston first publicly admitted to drug use in an interview with Diane Sawyer. The singer coined the term \"Crack is Whack,\" saying that she only used more expensive drugs.</p>"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "https://youtu.be/KLk6mt8FMR0",
 "caption": "Addiction expert, Dr. Drew, talks about Whitney's death and her struggle with addiction.",
 "credit": "CNN"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "2004"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Rehab",
 "text": "<p>Houston entered rehab several times beginning in 2004. She declared herself drug free in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2009 but returned to rehab in 2011.</p>"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "",
 "caption": "",
 "credit": ""
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "2005"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Being Bobby Brown",
 "text": "<p>Being Bobby Brown was a reality show starring Brown and wife Whitney Houston. Houston refused to sign for a second season. A clip of her telling Brown to \"Kiss my ass,\" became a running gag on The Soup.</p>"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "",
 "caption": "",
 "credit": ""
 },
 "start_date": {
 "year": "2010"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "A Rocky Comeback",
 "text": "<p>Houston's comeback tour is cut short due to a diminished voice damaged by years of smoking. She was reportedly devastated at her inability to perform like her old self.</p>"
 }
 },
 {
 "media": {
 "url": "//twitter.com/Blavity/status/851872780949889024",
 "caption": "Houston, performing on Good Morning America in 2009.",
 "credit": "<a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFlickr_Whitney_Houston_performing_on_GMA_2009_4.jpg'>Asterio Tecson</a> via Wikimedia"
 },
 "start_date": {
 "month": "2",
 "day": "11",
 "year": "2012"
 },
 "text": {
 "headline": "Whitney Houston<br/> 1963-2012",
 "text": "<p>Houston, 48, was discovered dead at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on on Feb. 11, 2012. She is survived by her daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, and mother, Cissy Houston.</p>"
 }
 }
 ]
}

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Summary

Chapter Four of Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed begins with the story of Justine Sacco. Sacco was a public relations specialist working in New York City. In December 2013, on a flight to South Africa, she sent out the following message to her Twitter audience (roughly 170 people):

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” (68)

Ronson correctly observed that this tweet was offensive and badly-worded, but — as he tells the story of what happened to Sacco afterwards — he makes it clear that he does not think it was hate speech. Put simply, that message destroyed Sacco’s life. Not long after she posted it, she became subject to a moral trial by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. She was immediately charged with racism and insensitivity to the AIDS crisis, and her Twitter profile — along with other information about her available online — was ransacked for further evidence of her moral shortcomings. At some point, the tweet was retweeted by Gawker media journalist Sam Biddle to 15,000 followers.

This tweet cost Sacco her career (at the time, she was employed at what she identified as her “dream job”) and led to personal invasions of the nth degree. For example, she had boarded a plane immediately after tweeting; by the time she touched down in South Africa, there was already a stranger waiting for her at the airport to snap her photo. Google searches for her name jumped from 30 or so a month to over a million (71). She had to take refuge in her apartment, essentially going into hiding.

Ronson emphasized that at the time of the book’s writing (in 2015), Sacco was reluctant to speak with journalists. She was afraid of being further misunderstood. It seems that his explicit sympathy toward her — and willingness to paint her as a human being who was not racist or sociopathic, but merely, perhaps, with bad taste in humor — is the only reason he was able to interview her for the book.

The author’s interest in the Sacco case led him to sit down with a man named Ted Poe. After telling Sacco’s story, Ronson recounts his time with Poe, a legal prosecutor notorious for serving absurd and arguably over-the-top punishments to defendants. These sentences were specifically designed to shame people. For example, one of Poe’s punishments stipulated that a young man who killed two people in a drunk driving incident walk around with a sign declaring his crime in front of high schools and bars once a month for two years (p. 82).

Intriguingly, while Ronson had expected Poe to be an absolute monster, he found the prosecutor’s explanation of these unusual punishments to be “annoyingly convincing” (86). Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the young man who was sentenced to self-shame for manslaughter later came to be grateful for the punishment. By his assessment, Poe had saved him from a lifetime of incarceration and given his life purpose by facilitating his ability to serve as a warning (87).  The chapter concludes with a discussion between Poe and Ronson on the fact that shaming based on trial-by-Internet is much worse than legally authorized shaming.

Analysis

This book couldn’t have come too soon. Two personal contacts of mine who work in news media have both been effectively kicked off Twitter for badly-worded commentary, charged with moral indiscretion — even though they’re both a far cry from the hate speech-mongers that pervade the Internet and somehow never get policed. I mention this specifically because I myself am not that close to the media; I’m not uniquely disposed to having personal familiarity with this scenario. Many of us probably have first or secondhand experiences with online shaming to various degrees.

While Justine Sacco should have been a bit more wise, she certainly didn’t deserve what happened to her. The fact is, on some level, her shamers probably knew that. At some point Ronson points out that some among the angry mob must have known that the decisive Tweet did not emanate from xenophobia, but was a shoddy attempt at poking fun of white privilege. He writes that “people [must have chosen] to willfully misunderstand it for some reason” (74). We can speculate as to why so many people would indulge this vindictive mentality— they get to feel like they’re a part of something, and perhaps as if though they’re on moral high ground. It’s the pleasure of righteousness, perhaps. What is key to me, here, is that the Internet uniquely empowers this impulse. Which makes me wonder if it reveals a secret about human nature, a tendency toward mob mentalities that most of us would prefer not to think about.

Along these lines, Ronson observes that many are willing to get on board with appearance rather than reality: “It didn’t matter if she was a privileged racist, as long as she sort of seemed like she was.” By now, popular discourse on “truthiness” (thank you, Stephen Colbert) has brought this situation to light. But the simply acknowledgement of the Internet falsehood-machine doesn’t mean that it’s being dismantled. If anything, it’s becoming more powerful. Our current President has used lack of falsifiability to his advantage — charges of “fake news!” to discredit fiat media have a tangible impact on the public, and our understanding of politics. Ronson points out that through Twitter and other platforms, “every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain” (78-79). Under these conditions, nuance is often lost, and communication about subtle and complex issues breaks down. I’m not sure that anything even remotely important can be declared on Twitter unless the speaker is willing to fight a war.

Questions:

1. Is shame-based punishment ever acceptable? In what contexts — online, in a court of law, among close friends and family? Is it more acceptable for certain types of offense than others?
2. Should popular web platforms, especially Twitter, take a more active role in policing hate speech? If they did, would this help to stymy misplaced outrage?
3. Do you think there’s a way to automate detection of hate speech online, and would this be desirable?
4. Is the “justice system” of the Internet really as lawless as Ted Poe says it is, or are there discernible “rules” (patterns) we can follow to mitigate the potential of being shamed or harassed online?

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The Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) is a suite of function libraries for the Python programming language. Each of these are designed to work with natural language corpora — bodies of text generated from human speech or writing. NLTK assists natural language processing (NLP), which the NLTK developers define broadly as “computer manipulation of natural language.”

Uses for the various libraries contained within the NLTK suite include, but are not limited to: data mining, data modeling, building natural-language based algorithms and exploring large natural language corpora. The NLTK site notes the following:  “[NLTK] provides basic classes for representing data relevant to natural language processing; standard interfaces for performing tasks such as part-of-speech tagging, syntactic parsing, and text classification; and standard implementations for each task which can be combined to solve complex problems.” Moreover, there is extensive documentation that “covers every module, class and function in the toolkit, specifying parameters and giving examples of usage.”

I discovered NLTK because I am interested in automated sentiment and valence analysis. Having had a very brief exposure to Python, I was aware that is has a gentle learning curve, and have been confident that I can learn enough Python to use some of its more simple sentiment analysis functions. However, I’m rusty with programming, and I keep running into roadblocks. Ultimately my goal is to use one or more of NLTK’s sentiment analyses libraries to explore certain natural language datasets, although I’m not there yet.

However, I can give some instructions and screenshots from what I’ve found along the way.

Getting started with NLTK:

1. Download and install Python. The latest Python installation packages can be found at python.org, which includes OS-specific instructions.
2. Download and install NLTK from NLTK.org, which also includes OS-specific instructions.
3. For reference, there is a free introductory and practice-oriented book on NLTK here: http://www.nltk.org/book/
4. The final step I can advise on is to import data and select the library from within the NLTK suite to work on it.

I myself haven’t gotten this far yet. It was difficult for me to install NLTK on my Mac and Linux machines using the NLTK instructions given for Unix-based systems. I think I have the program properly installed, but I’m not sure.

For further demonstrative purposes, however, here are screenshots of the documentation for two NLTK sentiment analysis tools. The first is from “Sentiment Analyzer,” which was developed to be broadly applicable in NLP, and and the second two are from “Vader,” designed to work on text from social media.

 

Okay, I think that’s all I have for now. I intend to keep working with NLTK throughout the semester — so if anybody is skilled with Python, or interested in valence/sentiment analysis, it would be great to talk with you about this!

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Article:

Edwards, S., & Koettl, C. (2011). Looking to the Sky: Monitoring Human Rights through Remote Sensing (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Harvard International Review; Cambridge, 32(4), 66–71.

Discussion leader: Md Momen Bhuiyan

Summary:
This article reviews the usage of remote sensing tools, especially space-based platforms, for the purpose of human rights research in active conflict zones. Two main challenges in human rights monitoring in a conflict zone are: observers usually don’t get access to these places, and evidence collected are mostly limited accounts from the eyewitnesses which are not powerful enough to have any significant impact. The author uses examples from Darfur, Sri Lanka and South Ossetia to persuade the readers about the necessity of remote sensing tools in such cases.

The author starts by describing the impunity that armed actors get if a conflict zone is a remote area. In these places external observers like human rights NGOs have very limited mobility that prevents them from having direct access to any information about human rights violation. As a result they have to rely on second-hand testimony. Although these testimonies are corroborated and cross-checked, they fail to make any impact as the actors responsible in these accounts have a way to frustrate these claims. The perpetrators’ standard response in these cases ranges from denial to deferral.

To overcome these situations in Sudan, in June 2007 Amnesty International launched a remote sensing project named “Eyes on Darfur” in partnership with American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS). The project tried to attain two goals at the same. The first one was to collect and gather irrefutable evidence of destruction of villages by presenting before and after satellite images of the attacked villages. The second goal was to act as a deterrent by regularly monitoring high risked villages. Amnesty International has also used remote sensing tools in both Sri Lanka and South Ossetia to find evidence of war crimes.

Although remote sensing technology like satellite images can be used for different purposes like detecting massacre, secret detention facilities, housing demolitions, troop gathering etc., it has the limitation that the crime must have a clear physical effect in space. It cannot document atrocities like torture, systematic oppression, genocidal intent etc. So the satellite images can only be used as a complementary tool to the traditional field work.

Reflection:
In this article the author highlights the application of remote sensing technologies in human rights research till 2010. Although remote sensing has been used for a decade, it didn’t have the impact that the author was hoping for. For example, this paper [1] suggest that the government of Sudan increased violence in Darfur in retaliation to the constant monitoring. The number of conflict zones around the world has increased. Still now human rights advocacy groups have to use individual stories to raise awareness. For example, little boy in Aleppo [2].

Question:
1. Does constant monitoring provide any benefit in a conflict zone?
2. Given that the satellite images need careful analysis by the experts, Can crowdsourcing be used in this context? What are the ethical issues in that case?
3. Can drones be used as an alternative tool for monitoring? What are the benefits for that?
4. Can remote sensing tools be used to predict future conflicts?

 

[1] Gordon, Grant. “Monitoring Conflict to Reduce Violence: Evidence from a Satellite Intervention in Darfur.” (2016).
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/17/world/syria-little-boy-airstrike-victim/index.html

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Paper:

Hanham, M. (2015, July 9). Kim Jong Un Tours Pesticide Facility Capable of Producing Biological Weapons: A 38 North Special Report

Discussion leader: Tianyi Li

“You can’t trade your freedom for security, because if you do you’re going to lose both. “

—— Brandon Mayfield

Summary:

This article is a report by 38 North, which is a program of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS dedicated to providing the best possible analysis of events in and around North Korea. it investigate capability of North Korea to build biological weapons (BW) in large scale for military use.

It is a common practice to cover BW development programs with civilian pesticide facilities, despite of any assertion. Previous example include Iraq’s Al Hakam Factory who produced both Bacillus anthraces and Bacillus thuringiensis, and Soviet Union’s Progress Scientific and Production Association, who produce bio-fertilizers in peacetime but BW for war. North Korea’s efforts of BW program is revealed since 2015, when a defector fled the country carrying human testing data. From North Korea’s media report where Kim Jong Un toured a facility ostensibly for producing pesticides, it is estimated that the same facilities are able to produce military sized batches of BW, especially anthrax. The author explained how Anthrax, one type of BW, is related to and can be covered by commonly used pesticides. Then he listed evidence from images that shows the modern equipment North Korea has.

The author then continued to explain how North Korea develops this dual-use capability. Not only do the devices maintains the ability to produce BW, but the action North Korea took to illicitly import relevant materials is making them highly suspicious. North Korea is under International treaties, regimes and national laws that prevents BW, however, much of the equipment seen in the Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute violates export control laws. In addition to import from China, some open-source research reveals that the Swiss branch of an international nongovernmental organization provided training. known as intangible technology transfer (ITT), and basic equipment to the North that may have inadvertently contributed to North Korea’s ability to produce BW.

The motivation of North Korea to develop BW dates back to the Korean War, when it is accused that Americans were conducting BW test on Koreans. This accusation is reinforced when news broke that the American military had mistakenlyshipped live-anthrax to labs in nine US states as well as to the Osan Air Base in South Korea. The tour of Kim Jong Un is believed to be a veiled threat to the US and South Korea.

Reflections:

This article listed facts and analyzed the hidden possibility enabled by those facts, of North Korea’s capability of developing BW. It supports its argument by quoting previous similar examples and motivations for North Korea to have the intention. As is explained in the report, biological weapons facilities are notoriously difficult to identify and monitor due to their dual-use nature, and they can operate in each capacity. With the history and plausible intention of North Korea’s interest in BW, the facilities they have is viewed at least a future threat. The report did not elaborate on the human rights perspective, instead, it stated facts and possible connections that link the fact to the hypotheses. This makes it objective, concrete and convincing.

Biological weapons in their current form are inherently indiscriminate weapons. It is almost inconceivable that they could be directed at a specific military objective.Biological weapons are perhaps the only weapons that cannot in any way or form be directed only at military objectives. A disease will not distinguish between civilians and combatants. A Japanese biological weapons attack on the Chinese city of Changde in 1941 resulted in the death of around 10,000 people. About 1700 Japan’s own troops were also among the casualties.

With the lack of discussion on the human rights perspective, I searched for literatures with that kind of discussion. I would recommend Weapons of mass destruction and human rights, by Peter WEISS and John BURROUGHS: https://www.peacepalacelibrary.nl/ebooks/files/UNIDIR_pdf-art2139.pdf. They pointed out that “With few exceptions those who think, write and speak about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) live in a different world from those who think, write and speak about human rights.” The experts in those two fields think about different problems. More importantly, the characteristics of WMD, and of nuclear weapons in particular, provide both the magnitude and the condensed launch time that expand the concept of self-defence from a reaction to actual or imminent aggression to a preventive strike against aggression that may occur at any time in the future, be it weeks, months or years from now

 

Questions:
* Do you think the right to peace, along with the right to life, should be considered as Human Rights? How do you think WMD or BW in particular influence such human rights?
* Do you think it is still important to insist on respect for the human person and elementary considerations of humanity—on fundamental human rights—even during the chaos and intentional violence of war?
* How do you think Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) can be abolished or at least reduce the risk of their being used? How to prevent their proliferation, what damage they cause to humans and other living things?

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Paper:

Dimond, J. P., Dye, M., Larose, D., & Bruckman, A. S. (2013). Hollaback!: The Role of Storytelling Online in a Social Movement Organization. In Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 477–490). New York, NY, USA: ACM.

Discussion Leader: Lee Lisle

Summary:

Various forms of social media have been able to assist social mobilization movements with events such as the Arab Spring to rating system for Mechanical Turk employers with Turkopticon. In particular, these platforms have allowed for people to find and help other people facing similar struggles or harassments. Hollaback is an organization that brings together victims of street harassment to share their stories and promote awareness. The main platform for their organization is a website, but they have further used mobile technologies to enhance their reach.

After some discussion on various background topics, the authors discussed their semi-structured interviews with 13 users of the platform. Each interview lasted between 30 and 90 minutes and asked users to recount the story they shared on Hollaback, along with their motivations and feelings after they shared their story. The authors then analyzed the interviews using grounded theory to find how people using the platform are affected by the presence and use of the platform. They then continue on to evaluate how sharing stories can help other “genres” of communities.

 

Reflections:

I found this paper to be a fairly interesting take on how storytelling can assist with the creation of online communities. In particular, I found their sections on previous works to be the best part of the paper, since it was so rich in providing context for the rest of their paper.

I also found it interesting that the authors brought up “slacktivism” in the paper. While they never used the term again, the authors presented details (with quotes!) on how the work of Hollaback (and storytelling communities in general) was not slacktivism despite the relatively low requirements on users. To be more specific (and to not diminish the role of these users), the people in the community don’t need to put in extreme time commitments or go to any joint location in order to “rally” or perform more traditional forms of activism. In addition, the users seemed to be allowed to be as anonymous as they desire to be in their stories, which can lower the requirements and make them feel more at ease.

I also thought the “Researcher Self Disclosure and Reflexivity” section was an interesting addition that I had not considered before this paper.   Understanding one’s own bias and discussing it is something I haven’t seen in many papers. However, I do question if this practice can reduce bias, both from the reader and the author. In this spirit, I will also disclose that I am a fan of storytelling and grounded theory and was before I read (and volunteered to lead discussion on) this paper.

One issue I had with the paper was that over half of the participants were students, while the issue at hand had no specific relation to students. Furthermore, while I recognize that this issue is not a U.S. specific issue, having less than 10% of participants be from other countries seemed like an odd choice for the interviews. The authors did not establish that the culture of the UK is not sufficiently distinct from US culture, and this should have been one of the selection criteria for participants.

Questions:

• Do you think that this form of storytelling is “slacktivism?”
• Beyond the two examples in this paper, what are other forms of Frame transformation and extension in social movements?
• Does the shift from the researcher being a “friendly outsider” to an active participant change the way people should respond to this paper? Furthermore, how does the self-disclosure section impact this?
• In the discussion I raised issues with 2 different selection criteria for participants. What do you think are appropriate selection criteria for interviewing participants for this kind of study?
• Last class we discussed the pros and cons of anonymity, and it appears in this paper as well. How would you compare and contrast the ways anonymity helps with this paper and the 4chan paper?

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Paper:

Agapie, E., Teevan, J., & Monroy-Hernández, A. (2015). Crowdsourcing in the Field: A Case Study Using Local Crowds for Event Reporting. In Third AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing.

Discussion Leader: Lawrence Warren

Summary:

In this great age of social networks and digital work, it is easy to think that any job or task can or should be done online, however there are still a few tasks which inherently require a physical presence of a real person. This paper identifies a hybrid method which allows tasks to be handled by a group of individuals in an area of interest and is supervised by an offsite coordinator. There were 4 main insights in this study

1. Local workers needed to overcome physical limitations of the environment
2. Local workers have greater engagement with the event attendees
3. Local workers needed to assure that information collected fulfilled the requirements set by the remote coordinator
4. Paid workers offer more fact based reports while volunteers offer richer context

In this hybrid model tasks were divided up and then assigned to one of four roles (reporter, curator, writer, and workforce manager) and was used on 11 local events of various size, duration, and accessibility most of which were publicly advertised and were not expected to receive much news time or blogger presence. Local reporters attended the events in question, during which they completed a set of assigned tasks which had been decomposed based on what area was trying to be covered during a particular event. The curator was the quality control portion of the model and made sure information was provided in a timely matter and was not plagiarized. Based on the curator feed, the writers then created short articles called listicles which made it easy to write and understand for anyone who was not an expert. This of course was all happening while the manager was overseeing every part of the process since they are familiar with what the requirements were for every step in the process.

 

Reflections:

This model seems to have several similarities to how news can be done correctly in my opinion. It is not feasible to have a professional reporter at every event, but it is possible to employ satellite workers for smaller events and have their work be put through a series of professionals to be published as to not miss anything which may be insignificant to someone not associated with a specific community, but is very important to those who have direct contact with the community events. The main issue with separating work tasks was also addressed within this paper and that is information fragmentation. Tasks have to be assigned in such a way that there is going to be overlap with information collection or else reporters with different writing styles or levels of experience will create discrepancies and missing information. Probably the most interesting results of this paper in my opinion are centered around the quality of the articles. I am in no way doubting the effectiveness of the technique, however the way this experiment was set up it did not really have much to compare itself to. Small local events which had no coverage were used and then articles were created and then compared to articles of past years of similar events which I believe can have some skewed results. It would have been a better comparison if they instead covered a more popular event and compared stories of similar context of the same year to compare the results.

Questions:

• According to this paper there were a few challenges which were presented by the physical environment (mobility, preparation time, and quality assurance). Which of these do you think is the easiest to overcome? How are these problems unique to the hybrid model?
• The workflow model in this paper describes how roles were assigned to both local and remote workers. Can you think of any possible issues with the way they have the workload broken up? How would you fix these problems?
• Certain limitations were mentioned with this method of reporting which were mostly based on the lack of in depth training. Can you think of a way which that very training may interfere with this model of reporting?
• Recruiting seemed to be an issue with this paper but if this model was to be widely implemented that could not be the case. There are already recruiting platforms as mentioned within the article but how can you more actively improve the participation of this kind of reporting?
• Will this model be able to stand the test of time?

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Paper:
Douglas, D. M. (2016). Doxing: a conceptual analysis (Links to an external site.). Ethics and Information Technology, 18(3), 199–210.
Discussion leader: Md Momen Bhuiyan

Summary:
In this paper the author discusses doxing, intentional release of someone’s personal information onto the Internet by a third party usually with the intention to harm, from a conceptual point by categorizing it into three types: deanonymizing, targeting and delegitimizing. Although doxing is a fairly old concept, recent “Gamergate” incident has stirred public interest in this. Author also discusses how this practice is different from other privacy violation activities. Finally the author tries to justify some deanonymizing and delegitimizing doxing where it is necessary to release personal information for revealing wrongdoing.

From Marx’s point of view, revealing any personal information removes some degree of anonymity of the subject. Here Author uses Marx’s seven types of identity knowledge as a reference for types of personal information that can be used for doxing. He distinguishes doxing from blackmail, defamation and gossip as first one requires a demand to the subject, the second one requires the information to be damaging to the subject and the third one is usually some hearsay. He then uses Marx’s rationale for anonymity to discuss the value of anonymity.

Deanonymizing doxing is revealing someone’s identity who was previously anonymous. Author uses two example to illustrate this. One is “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the creator of Bitcoin. And the other is “Violentacrez”, a Reddit moderator. Targeting doxing, usually followed by deanonymizing doxing, is revealing specific information about someone that can be used to physically locate that person. Targeting doxing makes the subject vulnerable to a wide range of harassment, from pranks to assault. Delegitimizing doxing is releasing private information about someone with the intent to undermine subject’s credibility. Sexuality is commonly used in this context. Delegitmizing doxing has the potential to create “virtual captivity”. Delegimizing doxing goes hand-in-hand with targeting doxing where the first one provides the motive for harassment and the second one provides means. This combination is illustrated in the “Gamergate” incident where a former boyfriend of the subject posted her personal detail which resulted in prolonged harassment.

To justify doxing author interprets Bok’s two claims about public interest that the public has a legitimate interest in all information about matters that might affect its welfare. He puts the burden of proof on the individual who attempts doxing and claims that only the specific information relevant to revealing a wrongdoing is justified. While in case of “Satoshi Nakamoto” public interest doesn’t seem to justify doxing, in case of “Violentacrez” doxing was justified as it held him accountable and he stopped participating in hate speech. Author also comes to the conclusion that doxing doesn’t have to be accurate to be harmful.

Author then describes the objections of these justification. The first objection is that deanonymizing doxing promotes other forms of doxing. So this should be rejected on the same ground that targeting doxing is rejected. Another objection is that cost and harms of deanonymizing outweigh social benefit. For example deanonymizing doxing can be used as a tool to intimidate dissenting views. So other forms of justice should be considered. In case of “Violentacrez”, there was an alternative like deleting his comments by Reddit. Although this conflicts with freedom of expression, it is justified if freedom of expression is not considered an absolute right that can’t be limited by other rights. Another response is that accountability should go both ways in deanonymizing someone. But this accountability in itself doesn’t justify doxing as those revealing information might be able to afford other protection like costly legal battle.

Reflection:
The first thing that is noticable in the paper is that the author tries to qualify doxing to an individual. Furthermore he usually refers the victim as female which might seem appropriate for the recent doxing trend. But it ignores one of the top contributor of doxing, Anonymous. Author doesn’t note that delegitimizing doxing can be categorized as defamation. Also he discusses gossip in a similar context while by definition is doesn’t involve publicly releasing information on Internet. He could have mentioned “Boston bombing” as an example for harm of misinformed doxing.

This paper did a good job categorizing doxing using motive as the prime factor. Although author visited all of the categories with enough depth he didn’t cover many examples for them. He mentions that the burden of justification falls on the doxxer but doesn’t provide any detail from them when discussing the examples. Finally the author explanation of his justification and its critic was insightful.

Questions:
1. Is whistleblowing justified?
2. Is doxing in journalism justified?
3. How do you establish public interest in justification of doxing?
4. To what extent can crowdsourcing be used for doxing?
5. How do we prevent doxing?

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