Internet Industry
Efforts
Although the Internet industry
has tried to combat abusive electronic communications overall, the industry
as a whole has not addressed cyberstalking in particular. According to a review
conducted as part of the preparation of the report, most major ISPs have established
an address to which complaints of abusive or harassing electronic mail can
be sent. In addition, these providers almost uniformly have provisions in
their online agreements specifically prohibiting abusive or harassing conduct
through their service and providing that violations of the policy will result
in termination of the account.
In practice, however, ISPs have
focused more on assisting their customers in avoiding annoying online behavior,
such as receiving unsolicited commercial electronic mail ("spamming")
or large amounts of electronic mail intentionally sent to an individual ("mail-bombing");
relatively less attention has been paid to helping victims of cyberstalking or
other electronic threats. For some ISPs, the procedures for lodging complaints
of online harassment or threats were difficult to locate, and their policies
about what does or does not constitute a violation of service agreements were
generally unhelpful. In addition, many ISPs do not inform their customers about
what steps, if any, the ISP has taken to follow-up on their customer's
complaint. These problems -- hard-to-locate complaint procedures, vague
policies about what does and does not constitute prohibited harassment, and
inadequate follow-up on complaints -- may pose serious obstacles to
cyberstalking victims who need help.
Online industry associations
respond that providing such protection to their customers is costly and
difficult. Although they recognize that larger ISPs have begun to commit
resources to dealing with harassment online, they caution that the costs of
imposing additional reporting or response obligations upon ISPs may make it
difficult for small or entrepreneurial ISPs to continue providing service at
competitive rates. For example, the Commercial Internet Exchange, whose members
carry approximately 75 percent of U.S. backbone traffic, cautions that no attempt
to impose reporting requirements should be made unless fully justified by the
record. However, according to the same group, the decentralized nature of the
Internet would make it difficult for providers to collect and submit such data.
Accordingly, the evidence of the scope of the cyberstalking problem is likely
to remain for the forseeable future defined primarily by anecdotal evidence,
with no basis to determine whether the phenomenon is growing, static, or
declining.
Educating and protecting
consumers.
Despite the difficulty in fully
defining the scope of the cyberstalking problem, however, industry has made
notable efforts to inform consumers about ways to protect themselves online.
Such information is principally focused on protecting children and consumers
on the Internet. For example, since 1996, the Internet Alliance, one of the
key Internet industry groups, has worked with the Federal Trade Commission
and government agencies on Project OPEN (Online Public Education Network).
Project OPEN provides information about fraud, parental controls, and protecting
privacy. Although this information is not specifically relevant
to cyberstalking, much of the advice about protecting children and safeguarding
privacy while online may be of assistance to individuals who want to use the
Internet while protecting against potential cyberstalkers. More recently,
a number of industry organizations have joined together to develop, GetNetWise.Com
- a single, comprehensive online resource to help parents and children use
the Internet in a safe and educational manner.
Other similar industry efforts
have recently been announced to address other aspects of computer-related
crime. For example, the Department of Justice and the Information Technology
Association of America (ITAA) announced the Cybercitizen Partnership in March
1999. This partnership is intended to boost cooperation between industry and
government, expand public awareness of computer crime issues among children and
adolescents, and provide resources for government to draw upon in addressing
computer crime. The industry has also responded to the complaints of parents
who are worried about the content available to their children over the Internet
by announcing the "One Click Away" initiative to give parents
important information about protecting their children in a central location.
Similar education and outreach efforts, approached through cooperation between
industry and government, may educate individuals concerned about these issues
and therefore mitigate some of the dangers of cyberstalking.
In addition, other Internet
industry sectors have begun to address aspects of the cyberstalking problem.
Many of these solutions focus on the ability of individuals to protect
themselves against unwanted communications. For example, most Internet
"chat" facilities offer users the ability to block, squelch, or
ignore chat messages or "paging" from individuals who are attempting
to annoy or threaten them. Similarly, many e-mail users have tools which allow
the users to block e-mail from individuals who are attempting to harass or
annoy them. Such a solution may be useful in situations where the
communications are merely annoying. Unfortunately, such a solution is less
appropriate when threatening communications are received, because a victim who
never "receives" the threat may not know they are being stalked, and
may be alerted, for the first time, when the stalker shows up to act on the threat.
In another type of response,
providers have begun to set up "gated communities" for individuals,
families, and children. The techniques used by such communities are still in
developmental stages, but they range from specialized servers, which allow potentially
objectionable content to be filtered at the server, to designated areas for
children and teens, which place restrictions on the amount or types of personal
information that will be provided to others. Individuals who are concerned
about being stalked may find refuge in such communities.
While these efforts all reflect
important initiatives for self-protection, both industry and government
representatives agree that a key component of addressing the cyberstalking
problem is education and empowerment: If individuals are given clear direction
about how to protect themselves against threatening or harassing
communications, and how to report incidents when they do occur, both industry
and law enforcement will be in a position to cooperate to conduct investigations.
Cooperation with law enforcement.
Both industry and law enforcement
benefit when crime over the Internet is reduced. In particular, the Internet
industry benefits significantly whenever citizen and consumer confidence and trust
in the Internet is increased. Accordingly, both industry and law enforcement
recognize the need to cooperate more fully with one another in this area.
Industry representatives have noted that contact between industry and law
enforcement -- particularly in the area of harassment -- is sporadic and
episodic. Industry representatives, who were consulted as part of the
preparation of this report, indicated their willingness to participate in
training efforts for law enforcement. Law enforcement -- particularly on the
state and local level, who will often be first responders to cyberstalking
complaints -- should be willing to engage industry in dialogue and take
advantage of the expertise offered by industry in designing training programs.
Moreover, closer cooperation between law enforcement and industry will help to
ensure that law enforcement officers know who at the ISPs to call and how to
proceed when they receive a complaint, and ISPs have a contact in law
enforcement when they receive a complaint that warrants intervention by law
enforcement.
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