[span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);"] [/span][span style="font-family: Arial Narrow; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 255);"]Personally, I think what this guy did is horrible. I hope he pays bigtime for it. [/span]
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"][h3]The Seattle Craigslist sex scandal [/h3][a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/29/meet_the_sf_chrons_n.html"]San Francisco Chronicle columnist[/a] [a href="http://www.tinynibbles.com/"]Violet Blue[/a] has posted a comprehensive roundup of the Craigslist sex scandal making the blog-rounds since last week. Over the weekend, I solicited comment from others known for insight on privacy and life online, and will post their thoughts here as they come in. For what it's worth, I think what Jason Fortuny did is shameful and wrong in the extreme. But one obvious moral to this tale: your private information is as intimate as your private parts. There are serious risks to sharing either with strangers you bump into online. [/p] Violet writes: [/p][blockquote]Last Monday Seattle resident Jason Fortuny (and a friend) carried out a thought experiment into reality -- one I think anyone who has surfed Craigslist sex ads has entertained. He took a hardcore Women Seeking Men ad from another city and reposted it to see how many replies he could get in 24 hours. [span style="color: rgb(192, 0, 0);"]Then he [/span][a style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(192, 0, 0);" href="http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/RFJason_CL_Experiment" target="_blank"]published[/a][span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(192, 0, 0);"] every single response -- photos, emails, IM info, phone numbers, names, everything, to a public wiki[/span] ([a href="http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/RFJason_CL_Experiment" target="_blank"]Encyclopedia Dramatica[/a] -- site is up and down, check back if down). Then they [a href="http://rfjason.livejournal.com/410835.html" target="_blank"]went public on Jason's LiveJournal page calling it The Craigslist Experiment[/a], inviting readers to identify the CL ad's responders and add more info ("Your Goal: identify people you know IRL and point them out. We've already had great successes here.") It has turned into quite a meme, [a href="http://rfjason.livejournal.com/414284.html" target="_blank"]getting posted all over the place[/a]. (...) They got 178 responses, with 145 photos of men -- cocks, faces, more; full email addresses (both personal and business addresses), names, and a few IM names and phone numbers. One respondent used a Microsoft employee email address, another used a usar.army.mil (military) email address. They got audio, too. Since then, there has been [a href="http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/CosmicJohn_CL_Experiment" target="_blank"]one copycat in Portland[/a]. Respondents have emailed him asking him to take the info down, and he has simply published their requests.[/p] Since then Jason has had [a href="http://rfjason.livejournal.com/411937.html" target="_blank"]*his* private info published to CL[/a] and [a href="http://rfjason.livejournal.com/412784.html" target="_blank"]been threatened physically[/a], threatened with lawsuits, and has been hated on by everyone from online BDSM communities to Wired (and I saw he [a href="http://rfjason.livejournal.com/414730.html" target="_blank"]was interviewed by the NY Times[/a] on friday Sept. 8, so I wonder what position they'll take on all of this). [a href="http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1553329" target="_blank"]Wired called him "sociopathic"[/a] while commenters are saying things like "Disclosing an email to the public is indeed a violation of privacy, and if anyone has a spine, they will take you down with a massive lawsuit that will make you regret ever doing this. You are a liar, a xenophobe, an a**hole, and deserve to have your ass beaten to within an inch of your life."[/p][/blockquote] [a href="http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2006/09/the_seattle_cra.html"]Link[/a] to the full text of Violet's take on the story ([em]NSFW warning: post contains the image Fortuny posted with the ad, which is sexually explicit[/em]). Here's more of what Ryan Singel wrote on the story last week at Wired News: [/p][blockquote] Judging from the [a href="http://rfjason.livejournal.com/414284.html"]comments[/a] in his LiveJournal page, Fortuny seems not to realize or pretends not to realize that his prank may cost people their jobs and possibly, their marriages (if you really want to see the pics and original ad, click on the first link in that post). He also doesn't seem to get that he's opened himself up to huge civil lawsuits under Washington [a href="http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.73.060"]law[/a]. [/p]These aren't prominent people, there weren't breaking the law and there's no news value in posting their identifying information. There'd hardly be any value in posting the stuff even with the information removed and faces blurred on the photos, but there might be some -- if only as a warning to naive people. [/p]And I hope Fortuny does get sued.[/p][/blockquote] [a href="http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1553329"]Link[/a]
