'Anonymous' has a voice - a strong one . . .

[ConsƦcons]

Posted: 04/12/2013

Inside Anonymous' Operation to Out Rehtaeh Parsons' Alleged Rapists


In the days following the suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons -- the teenage girl
from Halifax who committed suicide after being gang raped, photographed,
and harassed -- the hacktivist group Anonymous is playing a game of
chicken with the authorities in Nova Scotia. Anonymous says they have
the names of four suspects, and are threatening to release that
information if justice is not delivered.

Those names have in fact been circulating in small online circles, but
the information has been withheld from publication on Anonymous's
largest social media channels. All of this has caused a storm of
negative feedback from those who view Anonymous's actions as destructive
"vigilantism" while Anonymous maintains they are only involved because
"several crimes have been committed in Nova Scotia. A 17-year-old girl
killed herself because the police failed to do their jobs."


I spoke with a member of Anonymous who is directly involved with the
operation to bring Rehtaeh's rapists to justice, in order to get a
better handle on their motivations.

VICE: How do you go about sourcing the information that has led to
naming the four suspects?


The information we have gathered comes from a combination of internet
research and informants. It's a lot more like being a journalist than it
is being a detective. We use advanced search techniques to comb the
internet for statements, photos, videos, whatever we need. We can locate
statements by suspects made years ago on accounts they may not even know
still exist.

We've also developed a level of trust with our online community and they
feel comfortable speaking with us because they know we'll protect their
identities. We validate their information in the same way the police
might, by cross referencing stories and doing background checks on the
individuals who are providing the information.

There's also a psychological factor. It's important to recognize the
motives behind the person who is providing you the information. Some
people just want to be involved so they'll embellish their accounts or
perhaps they want revenge. You can't always count on a person's memory
either so it's important to test them to discover if the story they are
telling you has been compromised by time or their emotional state.


VICE: In this case, did your sources approach you?


Most of the sources approached us, but we tracked down quite a few of
them by examining the online interactions of the victim and the suspects.


VICE: What have you learned about this case so far that you want people
to know?


Only half of this case is about those four teenage boys and the alleged
rape. The real guilty parties here are the adults that violated Rehtaeh.
I would like to see those boys punished for what they did because I
think it sets a terrible example for the other young men in Nova Scotia,
but almost even more I would like to see the police and the school
system pay for what they did to that girl.

They had a responsibility to be there for her, to protect her and to
relieve her torment. They failed at every turn to help her. Now they're
all too busy blaming one another. The school claims they didn't know.
The police say they couldn't find any evidence. They're both guilty of
incompetence.


VICE: What happens if you have the wrong person?


I became specifically involved in this operation to prevent that. I
didn't get involved in Steubenville. I didn't like the way it was
handled. People were called out and in some cases forced to prove their
innocence before being let off the hook. It seemed a lot like guilty
until proven innocent.

I have experience tracking people down online. We would never go public
on this unless we were 100 per cent sure. Fortunately, this isn't really
an issue. The boys who committed the assault were very public about what
they had done. The photo taken of the rape was circulated throughout the
school, possibly to hundreds of kids -- this of course goes to back my
previous statements about how incompetent the school administration was.

People are using this idea of us possibly implicating the wrong
individuals to detract away from the real issues. We all know who the
police and school officials are that are guilty in this case. I think
it's also important to note that justice systems often find innocent
people guilty and sentence them to prison, or even in the U.S. for
instance, death. So it's nonsense to compare the justice system to
Anonymous, but I doubt I'd be embarrassed if our track records were
viewed side by side.


VICE: How would you respond to columns like Chris Selley's in the
National Post that say your efforts are not needed?


Wow, you picked a real winner there. Well, no offense to Chris Selley or
the National Post, but he seems to insinuate that if the police screw up
and a few rapists get off the proper response is "tough shit," move on
to the next case. For that, I think he's a moron.

Let's slow down for one second and assume that I did release the names
of those rapists... what law am I breaking? I suppose they could sue me
for slandering them. Of course, to do that they'd have to prove I was lying.

This gets worse: he says we should ignore the photo being spread around
the school because it probably happens all time.

We can't expect the legal system to punish everyone that's passing
around photos of women being raped, now can we? It's "fairly routine
adolescent behaviour." Chris Selley article epitomizes the rape culture.
Selley is equating a traumatic rape with a picture of a girl's breast
she took in a mirror and sent to her boyfriend.


VICE: What similarities do you see between this case and Amanda Todd's?


I think both deaths were preventable. I think Rehtaeh's death will be
similarly exploited. Politicians will go on television, as they already
have, and talk about how now is the time to focus on this problem.
They're going to say we need to do more and then they'll probably
announce funding for some sort of study on bullying—or talk about how
they're going to dedicate themselves to solving this issue.

If you could solve bullying by talking about it on the news, we'd all be
over it by now. What can a Justice Minister do to stop bullying? He's
miles above the problem. We need action in the schools where the
children can feel it.


VICE: What are you going to do if the RCMP cannot bring any justice
for Rehtaeh?


I think someone should warn the women, at whatever college these boys
end up attending, that the guy sitting next to them has no respect for
their humanity and will likely violate them the first chance he gets.

A lot of people have said we should only take into consideration the
wishes of Leah Parsons, but I think we have a responsibility to every
young girl that could potentially get dragged in to a dark room with one
of these assholes.

However, I don't think it's fair for me to make the decision to out them
on my own. I've been working closely with a group of people to discover
all of this information and we're going to discuss it amongst ourselves,
consider all of the repercussions, and hopefully make a wise decision.


VICE: In light of your operation here, how would you respond to
Rehtaeh’s mother who has asked for no further “vigilante justice” or
“bullying” in retaliation for Rehteah’s death?


Mrs. Parsons said she doesn't want vigilante justice. I quote, "I think
they need to be accountable for what that they did. I don't want them to
be physically harmed." I don't see how that conflicts with any of our
intentions.

Anonymous is not advocating that these individuals being harmed in any
way. However, we have been in contact with Mrs. Parsons. We shared the
information we have with her and told her for now we'll withhold it from
the public. We aren't doing that because we're waiting for the right
moment to release the hounds. We've flushed out a lot of new leads for
the police, we hope they'll follow them and we don't want to compromise
their investigation.


VICE: In your interview on CBC’s The Current, Anna Maria-Tremonti asked
you about how Anonymous was wrong about Amanda Todd’s alleged tormenter
Kody Maxson—as if that’s a fact. Clearly they’re basing that on the RCMP
saying Kody was a person of non-interest, but I know from my own
investigation that Kody is connected to a ring of sexual extortionists,
has separate charges for sexual assault and sexual interference
pertaining to a minor, and admitted to the Vancouver Sun he knew Amanda
Todd “in a sense.” You didn’t really answer her question directly—so how
would you respond to that now?


What I should have told Anna Maria Tremonti this morning, when she
mentioned Amanda Todd, was this: the media continue to draw comparisons
to the Amanda Todd case, in most instances to show how Anonymous has
failed in the past to positively identify a suspect.

As you're aware (because VICE did their due diligence on this subject)
Kody Maxson was the individual Anonymous named as the cyberstalker we
believed eventually drove Amanda Todd to commit suicide.

The police labeled him as a person of no interest, yet, shortly after he
claimed to have fled Canada from sexual assault charges on another
minor. Kody Maxson is not an example of how Anonymous incorrectly
identified a perp, it's another example of how lazy and ill-equipped the
police are in handling these types of crimes.

I believe Kody Maxson is the reason Amanda Todd is dead and because the
police continue using outdated methods of investigation, it's likely
he'll never be brought to justice.

[Liberals are VERMIN]

Supporting those radicals may appeal to people's sense of
vigilantism, but in the long run it is not a good idea.