When Massachusetts Democrat Katherine Clark introduced legislation in Congress last year designed to combat Internet “swatting”—the practice of falsifying an emergency report in order to deceive law enforcement to respond to a phony emergency at a specific residence, for the purpose of harassing the person “swatted”—she knew that as a woman, she was poking into a potential hornet’s nest. While men are more likely to suffer mild to moderate online harassment (through name-calling, for example), a Pew study in 2014 confirmed what many young women are already painfully aware of—they are disproportionately targeted by the severest forms of internet-inspired harassment—physical threats and stalking—and usually at the instigation of men:
Young women, those 18-24, experience certain severe types of harassment at disproportionately high levels: 26% of these young women have been stalked online, and 25% were the target of online sexual harassment. In addition, they do not escape the heightened rates of physical threats and sustained harassment common to their male peers and young people in general.
Rep. Clark’s legislation, titled the “Internet Swatting Hoax Act” of 2015 (co-introduced by Republican Patrick Meehan of PA) makes it a crime to communicate phony reports of threats such as “active shooter” or “domestic disturbance” that waste local police enforcement resources in responding or result in injuries. Current federal law only criminalizes fake bomb threats or terror attacks. The punishment—jail time—for such acts is dependent on whether the government agency is forced to respond and whether someone is injured or killed as a result. Offenders also must reimburse whatever law enforcement agency has spent its limited public resources on their juvenile pranks.
Sadly (and predictably) , after introducing the bill, Congresswoman Clark was subjected to the same type of “swatting” her legislation is designed to prevent. In January of this year, Rep. Clark was greeted with swarms of armed police on her front lawn, responding to a phony report of an “active shooter” at her residence.
But although this experience was unnerving, Rep. Clark had actually expected this type of retaliation. She has devoted a good portion of her congressional career to fighting online threats and harassment, particularly against women, and convincing law enforcement to treat these as seriously as “normal” crimes. One of her constituents is Brianna Wu, the internet web designer who was subjected to waves of online threats and misogynistic attacks in what became known as “Gamergate.” The vileness of these online assaults and their incessant, vicious sexual targeting of women prompted Rep. Clark to investigate how law enforcement, both locally and at the federal level, was actually handling the issue of online harassment against women specifically:
“When we heard of what Brianna Wu was going through, and really started looking into Gamergate and how extreme—not only the level of threats that were coming in, but the velocity with which they were attacking women; really a 24/7 onslaught of hateful threats and comments. This shouldn’t just be something that we accept as part of women using technology in their work lives and in their personal lives.”
The online harassment Rep. Clark observes is particularly prevalent against professional women such as journalists and academics, women in technology careers typically dominated by men, and women who run for public office. What Rep. Clark found, however, was that one of the most common reactions by law enforcement was to essentially shrug their shoulders and suggest women simply stay offline:
“We’ve had [law enforcement] ask, ‘Well, what is Twitter?’ and, even recently, a Boston judge saying to one of the victims, ‘You just have to go offline.’ We hear, ‘It’s virtual, and you just have to turn off the computer and walk away.’”
Except in the real world it isn’t a matter of choosing to “stay offline.” As Adrienne LaFrance’s article in The Atlantic this week points out, aside from the obvious fact that no woman should have to alter her behavior to accommodate such abusive behavior by men, most working women have to maintain some type of online presence, be it on social media, professional networking or otherwise, and they shouldn’t have to put up with facing harassment every time they go online in order simply to make a living. The economic consequences to women are real, as Rep. Clark explains:
For the millions of women and girls who use the internet every day to navigate their jobs and personal lives, online abuse is not only emotionally devastating, but it also curtails their professional choices and their full participation in the economy. In an era when 80 percent of companies conduct internet searches on job candidates, and many positions require a high Klout score or thousands of Twitter followers, women simply cannot afford to not be online.
Moreover, online threats cost real money through missed wages, legal fees, and private protection services. In fact, the average cost for an instance of cyber-stalking is $1,200, and women disproportionately bear this cost.
When she pointed all this out to the FBI, Rep. Clark was frankly told that online harassment was not a priority to them. But threats of rape and murder should be a priority for a federal agency supposed to enforce federal laws prohibiting violence against women—a threat is a threat whether made face-to-face or transmitted by some coward behind a keyboard—as Rep. Clark pointed out in an op-ed she wrote forThe Hill:
Women experience sexually explicit or threatening messages 27 times more than men, and for women of color and LGBT women, the rate is even higher. Considering the real world implications and the lengths to which women must go to protect themselves, we have to demand more from those charged with enforcing our laws.
Lawmakers in Washington have already taken steps to address this, yet implementation is profoundly lagging. In 2006, Congress recognized the real-life dangers of online harassment and amended the Violence Against Women Act to make online threats of death or serious injury illegal. Yet, even though it is a federal crime, federal prosecutors pursued only 10 of the estimated 2.5 million cases of cyber-stalking between 2010 and 2013.
So Rep. Clark has now introduced a bill in Congress called the Cybercrime Enforcement Training Assistance Act (full text here) which provides cash-strapped local law enforcement agencies with $20 million in federal grant funds to assist them in investigating and prosecuting online crimes, including online harassment towards women. The federal funds would aid the purchase of computers and software capable of conducting the forensic investigation necessary to uncover the perpetrators, provide funding for emergency dispatch services, and furnish more sophisticated training for law enforcement.
While many states have such laws against cyberstalking and harassment, the efforts by local law enforcement to investigate these types of crimes can vary drastically, depending on the digital savvy and sheer motivation of local police departments. A jurisdictional problem also arises when the stalker or harasser is perpetrating these acts across state lines, most often through anonymous accounts. The bottom line is that local police are often at a loss for expertise with how to deal with such offenses, and that is what Rep. Clark’s legislation seeks to provide:
“My goal is for every woman to know that there’s going to be help for you and you will be able to have a law-enforcement system that is going to assist and bring safety back to you and allow you to continue to earn a living and have a professional life online that is not thwarted by this criminal behavior.”
To support passage of this bill, call your congressperson and reference H.R. 4740.