The More Mainstream Media Covers Craigslist Attack

The AP's Internet correspondent Anick Jesdanun covers Jason Fortuny's sociopathic publication of the personal information and photos of more than 150 men who responded to a fake, sexually explicit Craig's List posting:

"It's a sad commentary overall," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and privacy advocate. "It's one of those situations where both sides look bad. ... From an ethical standpoint, this isn't brain surgery." [...]

In this case, however, the men who replied to Fortuny's posting did not appear to be doing anything illegal, so the outing has no social value other than to prove that someone could ruin lives online, said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Oxford and Harvard universities.

Whether Fortuny violated any laws is less clear, he said.

"It's one of those questions that could find its way onto a law school exam because it is comparatively new territory," Zittrain said. [...]

Fortuny's liability under Washington state law, [Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation] said, rests on whether the disclosures are of legitimate concern to the public.

The Register's Andrew Orlowski strings together a few Slashdot postings and says I climbed on the "tallest horse in the world" I could find to object to Fortuny's attack (Actually Andrew, I'm a modern guy, I got on the tallest bike I could find.)

There's a sense that what prompts much of the outrage isn't simply the privacy breach - and Fortuny may have been as successful in drawing attention to the brittle nature of privacy as any campaign by the ACLU, whatever you may think of his methods. One wonders if some of the outrage is stimulated by the brutal fact that computer networks aren't the idyllic, utopian playground some imagine them to be.

The BBC's Bill Thompson puts Fortuny's stunt in context with some other recent privacy outrages in his column.

[Fortuny] has acted in a despicable manner, and deserves whatever legal action is coming his way. He also deserves to be ostracised by the online communities he was so clearly seeking to impress.

We didn't need to know about his experiment to understand that the net creates new possibilities for public exposure. And we certainly don't need to give Fortuny credit for his cheap trick.

After all, this was the week in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologised publicly for messing with his users' privacy and getting it wrong at the massively popular social networking site he created.

And Seattle P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson, Jr. adds:

On Monday I spoke with a man who said that his name, phone and e-mail had been posted without his knowledge.

The man said he never replied to the Craigslist sex ad, suggesting someone else – a stranger? Fortuny? – got hold of his personal information and used it against him.

This certainly wouldn't be an Internet first.

"I'm not very happy," the man said.

"This is a nasty joke."

You have to wonder if what Fortuny just did is such a big crack-up, why so few are laughing.

And don't forget to stop by Upcoming.org founder Andy Baio's blog, Waxy.org, which had the first real story on this.

Photo: Doviende