I went and read the forum in question. It's full of nontechnical people who are obviously teenagers. It reminds me a lot of video game forums I used to visit, with gaudy image signatures and all, except here the competition is to collect (and trade) the best "slaves" and spy on them. My guess is that these people started out with video game cheats and, without anything better to do or anyone to stop them, it spiralled into this.
One interesting tidbit is that people seem to often post stories of interactions with their "slaves". It usually involves them trying to seem powerful and scary, but at the same time there's an undertone of wanting to connect with the people that they spy on. For instance, after one guy intentionally outs himself by posting on his "slave's" facebook profile, he chats with her and keeps trying to convince her (in a threatening way) to skype him so that he can show her how to install an antivirus. There are also a lot of interactions of the "put a shoe on your head and hold this sign and I'll stop hacking you" variety.
Edit: Also, don't miss that bit at the end about the RAT software author quitting in part because of the Syrian government's use of his software against rebels. Scary stuff.
They want to interact with them because they feel alone and this is as far as their ability to handle social interactions go.
It used to be that such people would eventually develop the skills to interact with adult society, but hey why do all that work when you can just put a hacked copy of Sims 3 on pirate bay.
It makes me want to counter hack them (which wouldn't be very difficult) but I won't, because it would be illegal (and would potentially cause harm to third party).
They want to interact with them because the 'slaves' are above their social position. It's the only way they have to interact, if you can call it interacting, with that 'hot girl from facebook' who wouldn't give them a look in real
It's that same reason most forum posters go crazy when a girl posts.
> without anything better to do or anyone to stop them, it spiralled into this
Surely the basis for not being evil, is to not do bad things to other people by the command of your conscience?
I understand that the majority of the offenders are likely children, and I hope that most of them will remember themselves doing this with feelings of shame for a very long time, because these sort of acts are not merely pranks. They may affect their targets in seriously negative ways.
I was just trying to give interesting details, not so much to excuse or accuse. I just meant that, from the tone of discussion and my general impression of the people, that's how I assume that they wound up there. I imagine that it also has to do with amateur porn (not all of which is obviously released with consent) and reality TV making voyeurism a familiar thing.
I guess I mostly think of them as dumb and immoral, but I do think that it's evil to have those kinds of interactions with people. I don't understand why people consented to holding up signs that said "pwned by...." - to me, that looks like bullying.
Actually, I guess I do kind of understand. I got prank called regularly on high school, and that felt pretty terrible. But I tried to along with it in the hope of defusing it amicably, and it took me a long time to admit that I was a victim and go to a third party to make it stop (the equivalent here would be to reinstall windows).
I think it's a bit presumptuous to say the "gateway activity" if you will, to ratting innocent people was video game cheats. There are plenty of websites that use this forum style. There are plenty of bored people in the world.
That's just internet version of peeping your neighbors through binoculars and leaving them shit on the doorstep to mess with them.
Obnoxious, insensitive, but evil? Like axis of evil - evil? Like evil marketing practices of pharmaceutical companies - evil? Nah. Just kids ... of any age. They were bothered by making little kid cry. Can't be that evil.
What about discovering that you, a young girl, have been seen naked on your webcam? Can you imagine what that can do to the mind of a child/young adult? Imagine all the troubles that can bring to a human mind, and imagine if that mind can already be a little troubled.
I say pure evil. Like holocaust evil, just at a smaller scale.
Honestly (and maybe obviously) I just mentioned "holocaust" because of the "not axis of evil -evil". Of course a bully is not comparable to a genocidal regime...
But a moronic teenager potentially messing with another teenagers lives forever (Amanda Todd like), in a systematic and industrialized manner, just for laughs or some sociopath self-power acertion (not for science, not for profit, not for educational purposes) kinda reminds some nazi pseudo-doctor from the holocaust.
I think it's a bit much to compare this, but to be fare you're misquoting and leaving out the "at a smaller scale". It is most definitely sociopathic though.
What about peeping plus mind torture, bullying, public humiliation, blackmail,...
The (exclusively) peepers are probably just teenagers. The evil ones are those who don't do it for quick, funny sexual purposes.
The evil ones are those who do it for the fun of torturing the "slaves".
The evil ones are those who use the collected material for profit (or silly cyber-cred) at the expense of a young girl's mind.
In western society, they are not equivalent but are related and intersectional, esp. considering this kind of peeping is about sexual coercion and violence against women and girls, a kind of violence that gets backed up by society and its institutions.
This is inside your home. It's betrayal and an invasion of privacy, it's an active hack, it records audio and video and the peeper is sharing the audio and video with the world.
It's a order of magnitude worse than looking in through a gap in someone's curtains.
I disagree. Not everyone has an easy relationship with computers and technology. These sort of acts have the potential to seriously disturb some people that have been forced to use the Internet to get by in modern life, but do not have a full grasp of what it is and how it works.
How would you feel if this was done to your Grandmother?
Pretty much same way as if someone would peep at my Grandmother disturbing her and left something disturbing on her doorstep or teased her any other way.
Actually I'd feel bit better because in computer scenario I would know what to do help her.
By the age of 14 you are supposed to have a developed enough sense of morality to understand that this is very bad. I don't think this is an acceptable excuse.
Who are these mythical 14 year old boys that are supposed to have developed 'enough' of a sense of morality? To paraphrase The Virgin Suicides: obviously Dr., you never were a 14 year old boy.
I was one of those mythical 14-year-old boys that knew better than to spy on girls by hacking their webcam. I don't know why so many people assume that boys are stupid at age 14 but I can assure that is not the case in general.
That's just a stupid Americanism.[1] You don't need to do a bunch of wrong things to learn what's wrong. You learn what's right and wrong because your parents tell you what's right and wrong, and society and school socializes you to teach you what's right and wrong. If you get to 14 and need to scare someone like this to learn what's right and wrong, you're either defective or your parents and teachers have failed at their jobs. More likely, you know it's wrong and you just don't care.
[1] I'm an American and love America, but we elevate apologizing for bad things kids do (because we don't have the stomach to properly discipline them) to an art form.
"we elevate apologizing for bad things kids do (because we don't have the stomach to properly discipline them) to an art form."
Conversely, the US seems fond of trying kids as adults when they cross some or other threshold of crime. As an outside observer it seems an odd contradiction.
This might be somewhat ranty and unprofessional, but I have to say it
You learn what's wrong from your parents, and your teachers, and society. I'd like to disagree with you on that point. Yes, you get ideas passed down to your by others, but if you do not bother to examine them and act blindly on the premise that these things must be right, because others told you, without putting any deliberation into the truth of these moral dictates, then...how to get this across without seeming as angry and ranty as I am? Because things like this viscerally disgust me. My parent taught me they didn't care (or couldn't), my school taught me I was in the wrong place, and my peers taught me that I was scum. And I didn't act on those morals, or I wouldn't be writing this paragraph, nor living, nor breathing. Of course, this didn't last forever. I recovered, and I learned how to deal with people. But what you just said, that I...I was defective for not leaving a place that obviously didn't welcome me, the implication that I should have crossed hades, that's worse than telling me to "go die", because you said it with moral righteousness.
Now I know you're talking about 14 year olds that spy on girls, and I don't think that's morally right either, but your explanation of why it isn't, it's just...wrong somehow.
Firstof, they're not defective. Don't even say a child is broken. Misunderstood? Maybe. Misled? Maybe. But not broken nor defective nor hopeless. Because when you take a child, filled with expectations and hope, trying to make sense of the things that happen in the world, and you tell them they're broken, you're killing them. Yes, some might recover from it, just as someone shot might survive, but you and I agree that shooting a kid is still a pretty bad thing to do, no matter whether they survive or not, right? So don't do it.
Ok, so after I've vented some of my anger, and proably shared way to personal details with everyone on here, back to business. Society is a pretty bad measuring stick for morals. Define the "average morals" to be the reference point, and Schindler becomes the most amoral man in the third reich. You see how this averaging is a pretty bad idea, right? Ok. Then to the disciplining thing. There's a difference between teaching something to your kids, and threatening them to do something. Teaching leads to moral understanding and a moral code. Threats will only teach that might is right, and the only thing holding together morals is violence. I think this worldview does point towards why religious people often ask atheist why they don't think the world will collapse into anarchy without the concept of a hell. Because hell is violence as the foundation of morals. If you want to affect any of those kids, go out and teach them why it's wrong instead of threatening to hit them if they do it again.
TL;DR: As a past victim of social ostracism, post makes me angry. Average morals are a bad idea. Disciplining kids will lead to obedience from threat, not to morals. Teaching will. So go teach
I can tell there's a lot of thought and a lot of emotion behind that, I just wanted to say one thing - discipline, as instilled by parents or whoever else, doesn't have to come at the point of force.
And if a child is 14 years old and pulling the stuff mentioned in the article, I'm sorry but they are defective. Maybe the sort of defective that can be fixed, but they are committing actual heinous crimes against other people. These are not the actions of kids filled with expectation and hope, these are the actions of little psychopaths with no empathy, and they need to be stopped.
When you subtract the technological component, these things become bad pranks. My fathers generation used to search paper bins for porn and spy on the girls locker room, and these kids are scaping your laptop for porn and spy on girls through their webcams. Whilst I get that these things are slightly different, using technology as an excuse to blow an action all our of proportion is not a wise thing to do. We honestly should know that because we work with technology. See, a murder is a murder whether it was done with bare hands or with a guided rocket. Theft is theft, whether it is through snatching your wallet or hacking your bank data. So when kids do things they used to do in very similar ways the did in the past, with the only variable changing being technology, it'd be foolish to call them heinous criminals, or psychopaths with no empathy.
At least that's my stand on the issue.
Recording audio and video of people in their homes and then sharing it over the net, using it as leverage to get the victims to do things, harassing them in their homes...
This in no way equivalent to sneaking a look into the girl's locker rooms or rummaging through a bin for discarded porn! It's harassment, it's invasion of privacy and it's downright evil. That's before we even get into computer hacking.
You're right the tools don't matter in the slightest, but you completely miss the scale of the crimes. To throw it back at you - just because these kids are sat behind their computers at home doesn't make it any less heinous, or lessen the effects on the victims.
> I'd like to disagree with you on that point. Yes, you get ideas passed down to your by others, but if you do not bother to examine them and act blindly on the premise that these things must be right, because others told you, without putting any deliberation into the truth of these moral dictates...
Statistically speaking, as a 14 year old you're not going to come to any earth shattering conclusions in morality that your parents, society, school, teachers, etc, have overlooked. Critical examination is an important life skill, but so is accepting that adults have a lot of insight into the world that you don't, and that society can teach you a lot without your having to learn things the hard way.
> My parent taught me they didn't care (or couldn't), my school taught me I was in the wrong place, and my peers taught me that I was scum.
Nothing about what I said is meant to assert that parents, teachers, etc, always say or do the right things. I'm necessarily speaking in generalities. I don't think your average teenager doing this kind of thing can raise the defense that their parents and teachers didn't teach them right from wrong. Some parents are terrible at being parents, and don't love and support their kids while also teaching them. But we're speaking in generalities here.
> Firstof, they're not defective. Don't even say a child is broken
A 14 year old is not a child. Not fully an adult, but not a child either. Respecting peoples' privacy should be well within the wheelhouse of your average teenager. And some people are broken. There is a bell curve of ability to function in society, and some people are X number of standard deviations away from the mean in a wrong way. It's unfortunate, but there is no point in not calling a spade a spade.
> Society is a pretty bad measuring stick for morals.
On average, society is a pretty good measuring stick for morals. There's all sorts of things you shouldn't do, that people don't do, because society tells them not to. There is a difference between blindingly accepting things like racisim, because in some contexts it is socially accepted, and acknowledging that even that same society still teaches you not to kick animals or kick little girls in the shins. Contemporary social understanding is a great starting point for your own moral framework, and one which you should lean on more heavily as a child and a teenager until your rationality and experience develop sufficiently to better analyze the world around you.
> Then to the disciplining thing. There's a difference between teaching something to your kids, and threatening them to do something.
Children are not adults. They are not capable of the rational thought of adults. They can be taught, but they cannot always be taught.
Right now, my 3 month old doesn't realize that I continue to exist when she can't see me. From 3 months to 3 years to 13 years, children and teenagers are still partially formed, their faculties of reason not fully in place. Your toddler isn't going to understand your reasoning with her, and while your teenager will usually do so, at the end of the day, sometimes the only thing they will understand is punishment.
> I don't think your average teenager doing this kind of thing can raise the defense that their parents and teachers didn't teach them right from wrong.
You are talking not about the "average teenager" but about the "average teenager doing this kind of thing", yes?
One is a very tiny fraction of the other.
I think, looking at the tiny fraction, it is way more likely that (lack of) guidance by the parents/teachers/society is to blame than the kid being inherently "bad".
Especially since kids with developmental problems, that maybe have trouble developing their own moral compass, can still be raised with proper values, given the right environment. The converse (bad environment+neurotypical kid) however, is very likely to result in bad behaviour.
edit I am NOT trying to excuse any of this behaviour btw. Just saying that environment is a huge factor. And speaking from just over a year's experience teaching kids (computer stuff) roughly this age (a bit younger, 8-12 usually), quite a few of them have impressively well-developed moral compasses :) And the ones that are a bit more .. rowdy, I meet most of their parents at the end of the day, and I do notice some "patterns" (it's none of my business of course and I try to not judge, but little things like some make their kids thank me for helping them this afternoon--absolutely unnecessary for me of course, but it's still a signifier for caring about their upbringing and manners, etc)
Minors or adults, this is a startling demonstration of psychopathy. It's one thing to spread fear for profit, it's a whole 'nother ball game to do it for fun.
Psychopathy? I think it's more likely an excess of free time and puberty boosting testosterone in young men. These are just inquisitive, snooping horny teenagers.
They're not just doing garden-variety spying - they're deliberating trying to cause fear in their subjects by broadcasting their own presence.
There's a pretty big difference between a peeping tom, and a peeping tom who then mails you pictures taken through your window. One has no sense of boundaries, the other is taking glee in others' suffering and fear.
I'm a lot more concerned about the latter group - the lack of empathy is disturbing.
This is the equivalent of saying 'boys will be boys'. Dismissing this kind of sexual coercion and spying as just natural behavior is hugely sexist and insulting to men and boys everywhere, let alone encourages this kind of treatment of women.
Or bored teenagers from some suburban hell-hole with nothing better to do, that haven't developed any sense of morality yet, and think this is just fun.
They could be kicked all day and have their glasses broken (metaphorically speaking) at school.
