Cyber Stalking: It's Real & Potentially Deadly (£)

When a “digital issue” became a real life danger.

It started with tweets; you’re beautiful, you are amazing, I love you… you are everything to me, I need you, why won’t you speak to me, please speak to me… I don’t know why you are like this, I hate you, I will kill you, this is the hammer I will use,  we will be together in death.

These are some of the real tweets sent by an obsessed individual to a famous British singer.

Following these tweets, the obsessed man travelled from mainland Europe to the home of the singer and knocked on the door. Luckily the celebrity saw who it was before opening the door, called the police, and he was arrested. What had been a “digital issue” became a real life danger.

The police officers dealing with the case told the stalker to delete all the malicious tweets he had sent. He did this and when the case got to court there was no evidence against him and he walked free.

Another celebrity starts receiving fan emails. These emails begin with similar expressions of worship but quickly become more and more unhinged.  The email that finally spurred authorities to action stated that the stalker would kill and bury a child and no one would ever know who it was and could do nothing to stop it. This time the stalker turned out to be an obsessed female, making what were assumed to be false threats for attention.

These are just two out of thousands of cyber stalking cases a year. They are maybe a symptom if not a by-product of the communication revolution of the last 20 years. Geo-tagged social media; Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat and 24-hrs-a-day news has made it the norm to allow the whole world into our lounges, our bedrooms, our lives. They allow direct communication between people who were once inaccessible. We share intimate details of our lives with the world; these networks aren’t local, they are global.

This is not a problem confined to celebrities, one in five British women (18.1 per cent) and one in 12 men (7.7 per cent) have suffered repeated and unwanted intrusive behavior which causes them fear or distress.

In the case of the twitter stalker nothing was done while it was a “digital issue”, and this is the problem. 50 percent of domestic incidents now start online. There is no gap between our digital and real lives but the law does not yet recognised this.

Police officers are often the first ones dealing with these situations and they often lack the necessary training to deal with it appropriately. Had the twitter stalker sent the death threats through the post there is no doubt that the officers in question would have evidenced them in the correct way. The fact it was “digital” meant the officers weren’t trained in how to deal with it, and for lack of better ideas they had the suspect delete all the evidence they needed against him.

This is not the fault of police, budgets are stretched thin and training is always one of the first things to be cut. It is not just police; council, social workers and charities do not have training that can literally be the difference between life and death when dealing with this type of crime and abuse.

After years of prolonged domestic abuse, a victim plucked up the courage to leave her abuser. A domestic violence charity helped her escape and relocate to a safe-house with her children where she could start rebuilding her life. She was still in intermittent contact with her abuser because of the children. He requested that she send him a picture of the children. She took a picture and sent it to him, without realising the phone’s image geo-location was turned on.

The abuser used to image to geo-locate the safe house and turned up. Luckily the victim was protected by the security procedures and staff, and was quickly moved to another safe house. Needless to say this was highly distressing for the victim, but it could have been much worse; a woman is murdered every three days in the UK by their partner. The most dangerous time is when the victim leaves, this is why understanding the ease at which our digital lives can be tracked is so important.

The last thing on a victim’s mind having finally broken away from her abuser is the boring matter of changing passwords but thanks to 24-hour tracking by Google and Apple this is maybe one of the most important things to keep her safe.

The government’s increase in spending on Cyber and the creation of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is commendable. However, the NCSC will mostly deal with what is termed “Cyber Dependent” crime; computer based crimes such as hacking and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

This additional funding should not leave out “Cyber Enabled” crime; offline crimes that are increasingly facilitated using technology, such as stalking and domestic abuse. Without an increase of proper training for front-line staff many more cyber enabled crimes will at best go under-reported and unpunished, at worst put lives at risk.

Max Vetter : http://ow.ly/ohQ63002kVT