You've heard it before, the refrain of many a blogger: I haven't updated for a while. But today something came up that deserved a post.

First, some background. I started the Gibson Index in February of this year after a series of injustices emerged relating to computer crime (and the overzealous prosecution thereof). Since then, I've seen hundreds of cyber attack alerts - and of course, the Snowden NSA debacle is still unfolding. I've expanded the circle of people I follow on twitter to include new people that I wouldn't normally have followed. Many of these people are extremely outspoken, and seem to be drawn inexorably to the InfoSec field because of this - perhaps because there is a sense of rabble-rousing in the field.

This has meant that I've been having the occasional glimpse of the dark underbelly of the Internet. I'm not talking about the criminal element - I'm talking about assholes. Misogynists. Bigots. People who have no idea how to respect or communicate with women as their equal. Why have I seen this underbelly, you ask?

Because it is a free-floating plague that constantly grasps from its pit of despair, attempting to belittle and torture women and minorities into nonexistence. And these people I follow, with their strong personalities, deal with it every day. Through their social media efforts and connections, they try to shine a light on this diseased side of the Internet.

They observe it. They suffer it. They fight it. And it has to stop.

An article was posted today on The Verge that details numerous times where this aspect of the Internet has reared up and victimized people. And one of those victimizers was Andrew "weev" Auernheimer.

Early in the development of the Gibson Index, I used Weev as an example of the injustices perpetuated by the US Department of Justice under the outdated CFAA laws. In essence, I defended him, because I looked at the technical details of what he did and saw that it did not really rise to the level of hype it had garnered. And I knew that Weev was no hero; there were many stories about his trollishness. I tried not to play up any sense of heroism, just the sense of wrongness on the part of the DOJ, but until today, I didn't recognize the extent of his assholism and the bigger picture of his participation:

Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, a well-known provocateur, hacker, and anti-Semite, circulated her home address and Social Security number online. He also made false statements about her being a battered wife and a former prostitute. Not only did Sierra find herself a target for identity theft, but all the people who had threatened to brutally rape and kill her now knew where she lived. So, she logged off and didn’t return to the web until two months ago. She gave up the book deals, speaking engagements, and even fled her home. An anonymous internet group had chased her off the web and out of tech, and it finally managed to hijack her offline life.

The Verge in The End of Kindness: Weev and the Cult of the Angry Young Man

It's entirely conceivable that the FBI and the DOJ used the laws to their advantage to punish him in general, and that the AT&T incident was simply the straw that empowered the camel to fight back.

And I think I support that. I shouldn't, as it's pretty douchey to bend the law for one's own agenda, but in this case it seems that the FBI and the DOJ have found a way to achieve their stated law enforcement agendas, despite having to approach the problem in an unorthodox way (translation: they got their douche on for "the greater good").

John Gilmore famously said "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - sadly, it doesn't seem to have these adaptive powers when it comes to fighting hatred and evil.

It stinks. And it's making the Internet stink.

When it comes to that, the Internet's only powers are exposure and education. Unfortunately, with this kind of seething hatred, exposure tends to be seen as stoking the fire and education seems to be a sisyphean battle.

I hope that we, the citizens of the Internet, can find a way to fight this problem. I don't know how it can be done. Short of having crazy perspective-altering superpowers like The Crow, or access to a Point of View Gun, I can't conceive of a way to teach thousands/millions of people the concepts of empathy and equality.

I hope we can fix the damage.

Update: