Randi Harper is one of the women that Gamergaters love to hate the most. A software developer, she became Gamergate Public Enemy #4 — after the troika of Sarkeesian, Quinn, and Wu — when she developed a BlockBot that enabled Twitter users to easily shield themselves (insofar as this is possible) from possible Twitter harassment at the hands of Gamergaters and others of their ilk.
This little bit of software garnered her many months of vicious harassment herself, and ultimately a three-part smear series on Breitbart by Gamergate’s pet “journalist,” Milo Yiannopoulos.
Now one Gamergater is going after Harper’s Patreon supporters, using personal information taken from the crowdfunding site when it was hacked earlier this month.
After finding the names and addresses of Harper’s several hundred Patreon supporters in the leaked data, British blogger Sam Smith took it upon himself to “warn” these people of Harper’s alleged crimes against decency by sending a mass email to everyone he found on the list.
But to a lot of people — myself included — his supposedly friendly warning read more like a blackmail attempt.
One of the recipients of the email shared it with me yesterday. It starts off in a decidedly unfriendly manner:
I am the author of the major blog www.matthewhopkinsnews.com. I am sending you this email because your name appears in a list of people who donate to a Patreon operated by a person called Randi Harper. The list was confidential but has been hacked and placed online by unknown third parties. As a result of the leak you may be named, so please read this email carefully.
Smith — who goes by the name “Matthew Hopkins” online, styling himself as a sort of digital reincarnation of the original “Witchfinder General” — then lays out what he sees as Harper’s ethical failings, linking to Yiannopoulos’ three-part smear job as proof. Among Smith’s complaints:
Harper has … admitted to drug abuse, including attempting to smoke meth from a broken lightbulb. She also irresponsibly dyed her dog blue and accidentally allowed it to lick up her drugs.
Dyeing a dog blue may annoy the dog, but if done properly it will not harm it. And literally billions of human beings on our blue planet have used drugs at some point in their lives.
Now we come to the blackmaily bit, which Smith insists is not blackmaily at all:
You are supporting a person who is associated with some of the vilest imaginable extremism. …
As a responsible journalist, I can assure you I shall not be publishing the list. However, some of you may work in regulated roles with responsible access to information, vulnerable adults or children. There may be a lawful public interest in my contacting the relevant authorities (including an employer).
Smith went on to ask Harper’s supporters if they, personally, “endorse her extremist views” and if they felt “aggrieved at Ms Harper’s failure to safeguard your personal data.” (Never mind that it was Patreon’s job, not Harper’s, to protect the data on its servers.)
If Smith’s email was intended to rattle its recipients, it seems to have succeeded. The person who sent the email to me reported that “[i]t left me quite shaken and furious.”
If the email was intended to scare donors into abandoning Harper, it has apparently backfired in a big way. Indeed, Motherboard reports that, according to Harper,
Smith’s efforts has had the opposite effect: her backers have responded by doubling, and sometimes tripling their donations. Her campaign has jumped more than $1,300 a month in donations after the emails went out.
For his part, Smith insists, as he did in a post yesterday, that his email wasn’t intended to be threatening. He had simply
decided the ethical thing to do would be to warn the people concerned, reassuring them I would not release the data and also what might happen, as I thought the Patreon boilerplate warning insufficient.
That bit about there being “a lawful public interest in my contacting the relevant authorities (including an employer)?” That was
actually just boilerplate legal language related to UK law. Obviously I am analysing these supporters and in some limited circumstances I might be required to report things – for example if they were a risk to a child. As a person who may wish to enter a regulated profession, I would be expected to cooperate with the authorities. Far from being a blackmail demand it is just standardised ‘cover-yourself’ legal language.
I will have to consult with the monkey lawyers flying out of my butt on that one.
Some Gamergaters have insisted that Smith isn’t really one of them, which is a bit silly, considering that he is a regular on the KotakuInAction subreddit — one of Gamergate’s main hubs of activity — who happily posted a photo of himself hobnobbing with Yianopoulos at a #Gamergate meetup in London last April.
But it is worth noting that the overwhelming majority of those posting about Smith’s email blast on KotakuInAction since word of it got out earlier this week have been strongly critical, blasting it as the sort of thing that (in their mind) only evil anti-Gamergaters would do. (Never mind that they haven’t.)
Of course, Gamergaters (and the mythic “third party trolls” they like to talk about so often) have been doing far worse to Sarkeesian, Quinn, Wu, Harper and many others among Gamergate’s favorite villains for more than a year now.
Still, the reaction to Smith’s blackmail-that’s-not-really-blackmail-honest suggests that at least some Gamergaters have a few sickly shreds of decency still living deep inside them somewhere. I can only hope they can nurse their decency back to full health before they ruin the lives of more people in their attempt to rid the game world of anyone and everyone who disagrees with them.
And I hope Patreon brings the full force of its lawyers down on Smith.
pretty simple really; he’s using stolen data to threaten people to use their finances in his interest by threatening to report them to various authorities if they fail to comply. The most textbook, open and shut, case of blackmail if ever there was one. Made all the worse because his threat is absolutely laughable and I’m sure patreon and those affected could happily take him to court if needs be
Oh God, the sad serendipity.
I just found out this MIlo dude exists and watched a video of him trying to defeat feminism.
On top of being a ridiculously hateful human being, he’s an idiot. His use of logic is like watching a monkey trying to solve a rubix cube; Since he doesn’t understand any of the ideas, concepts, or fields of the group he opposes (he says “feminists” but he MEANS “women that won’t go home, stay there looking pretty, and be happy having babies yay! They’ll be living in Barbie Dream House with no danger of their delicate girl neurons overheating from trying to do all that math, physics, and science that no women enjoy! They all want to do their nails instead!”), he takes his rubix cube says “I think feminists are saying this rubix cube is not a blunt object! But if it is a blunt object, maybe is rock? I think is rock! ::smash bang smash smash::
He’s completely fucking ridiculous and painfully stupid.
“… he takes his rubix cube says “I think feminists are saying this rubix cube is not a blunt object! But if it is a blunt object, maybe is rock? I think is rock! ::smash bang smash smash::”
I love this metaphor and would like to marry it.
Hello.
Does he really complain about a supposed drug usage ? And does he really want to address that with blackmailling ?
Well, then, i’m sure that to be congruent with his intents and actions, he’s also going to write to people who… say… buy music from the Rolling Stone ? After all, by bying this music, they are supporting persons reputed to have use drogs ?
I’m still wondering where is the rationality in that.
Have a nice day.
Can anyone enlighten me about what “vilest imaginable extremism” Randi Harper is associated with? Obviously it must be something which would shock even an ISIS jihadi.
Soooo…where IS Alan? I’m sure we’ve said his name at least three times. Yet he hasn’t materialised. I can’t stand the suspense! Must.know.legal.stuff.now!
Also, one of my friends received this email too. I can testify to the galvanising influence it had. Just not, obviously, in the way intended by the author!
Actually, secret services are some of the few organisations that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done in your past; I’ve been told that the informal recruitment policy of the UK’s SIS is “We don’t care if you touch children, as long as it can’t be used against you.” As long as you do your job and make sure you can’t be blackmailed by agents of another state, you’re pretty secure in your employment.
Smith’s threat was obviously made to frighten people in much more normal professions that require a certain amount of social responsibility – such as teachers or sports coaches – who might actually be afraid of losing their jobs if their employer found out they were associated with drug use or “extremist” ideology.
I’m glad people reacted the way they did, though. There’s no better way to tell someone to fuck off than to ignore what they’re trying to get you to do.
@Terrabeau, I think you misunderstood. The question was about Smith’s conceivable occupation that would make him obligated tell all criminal activity of all the people on that list. Because that’s his reasoning for making those comments. I might be a(n) [insert job] some days, so I might have to tell “the authorities” about you random person on the internet whose name I got from a list obtained illegally.
On the mandated reporter thing. As a mandated reporter, I’m really only liable for those I have direct professional contact with. Like, if one of my students is being abused (and they are under 18), I have to contact CPS with what information I have at the point at which I have a reasonable suspicion that the abuse is occurring. But if I heard about a random child being abused I would have no professional responsibility to report and would not be under said guidelines to report and would actually have less impact to CPS (I’ve reported as a non-mandated reporter before and the treatment is noticeably different). I am also under no obligation to warn the family (often times it’s dangerous to do so, because it gives them time to hide evidence) and certainly under no mandated reporter obligation to stalk out the perpetrator and inform their workplace about their behavior (in fact doing so is not only unethical, but would be a grievous misuse of confidential information and grounds for termination and arrest).
So yeah, this excuse making about mandated reporter stuff is a thin excuse over a real goal of justifying harassing random women by targeting their employers.
Like I’ve said a few times now, it speaks volumes about Gamergate’s mantra of “ethics in journalism” that they unquestioningly swallow the work of a Brietbart contributor, let alone one as smugly, blatantly vindictive as Yianniopoulos. I’ll admit, it’s a tautology to put “smugly vindictive” and “Breitbart” in the same sentence…
Maybe he means GamerGate?
She must have come out in favour of throwing beer in rapists’ faces.
It’s actually about ethics in patreon journalism.
For comparison: a few years ago, a BNP membership list was leaked, and at least one person whose name appeared on it (a police officer) lost their job shortly afterwards. Many more people in positions of power/responsibility didn’t, but were worried about the possibility.
Smith is being incredibly vague in an attempt to spread the same fear. By claiming that the word “extremist” means “says stuff I disagree with” (see also “radical”, “militant”), he thinks he can blur the line between “people who think that harassment is a problem” and “people who think there are too many foreigners around these days”.
He isn’t going to pull this trick on the supporters, and he doesn’t need to convince their employers, should he track them down. He doesn’t even need to convince some supporters that their employers might be taken in by it. He’s trying to convince supporters that their employers might be taken in by some unnamed GG-er (presumably one who can make a more persuasive argument).
It is a cunning plan.
You have to be looking I’m a mirror when you say my name.
Anyway, to business.
Firstly as I’ve mentioned before there’s no such thing as “UK law”. England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all have separate systems.
In English law there’s no mandatory reporting rules for *anyone*. There is some talk of introducing such a law in relation to social workers where they suspect child abuse, but it’s s controversial subject. Generally in English law there’s a tradition that the Criminal Law should only apply to acts not omissions. You should only be punished for something you did, not something you failed to do.
The law requires certain organisations to have child protection policies. One thing those can address is reporting. It’s not compulsory though.
Where the law does step in is providing protection for people who do report. Obviously this will sometimes involve breaching confidentiality, which is often itself an offence or a disciplinary matter. We have a Public Interest Disclosure Act that covers that.
We used to have a thing called misprision of felony that made it an offence not to report serious crimes generally, but that was abolished in the 60s. Now the only obligatory grassing up is related to certain terrorist offences.
But currently you could be a nurse watching a colleague raping a patient and you still wouldn’t be under any legal duty to report it. However your employment contract will probably incorporate a patient protection policy so it might be an internal disciplinary matter not to.
Not always though, there’s been a lot of scandals lately about abuse in private care homes and the fact that there’s no compulsion to make people report.
http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2015/may/07/pros-cons-of-compulsory-reporting-child-abuse
@tralala — there’s one notable difference in that example…
Monkeys are fun to watch and kinda clever. Milo, is not.
EJ:
But… that’s practically arson! Still not the “vilest imaginable extremism”, though, unless you have a really impoverished imagination.
Moggie:
Certainly. Randi Harper invented a Twitter
blockbot. What more vile extremism can be imagined than a tool that prevents ignorant blowhards like Milo and “Matthew Hopkins” from inflicting their repugnant opinions on members of the public who have no desire to hear them?!
On a practical note, seeing as how dogs are traditionally colour blind, would they even know if they’d been painted?
(Looks at header picture)
“Pictured at the Manly Men’s Conference of Manliness Annual Fancy Dress Party (l-r): Crap Draco Malfoy, Booji Boy from Devo“
Zeb Berryman:
Remembering back to the time in my teens when I was into that occult stuff, no-one actually knows what happened to Hopkins as far as I know; he disappears into history along with all his loot. Though there is one story that might be the one you’re thinking of where the inhabitants of the village he retired to got tired of his boasting and subjected him to the “ducking” ordeal that he inflicted on so many women– from which he caught pneumonia and died.
Hopkins was a piece of shit. Sixpence a “witch”, what a nice little racket. “Discovering” witches meant stripping them naked in public, shaving off their body hair (what a nice little bit of sadistic voyeurism, and a warning to other women to keep their mouths shut) and poking them with needles to determine the “witch’s mark” the devil put on them at their initiation– any funny-shaped mole or part of their body that didn’t bleed or otherwise respond was seized on as “proof”. Needless to say, many of his needles had retractable points to ensure conviction.
So, in short, calling yourself Matthew Hopkins is basically announcing to the world that you’re a sadistic, misogynist, fraudulent shithead who exploits fear and ignorance among the general public, and who will one day end up on the receiving end of his own arrogance and cruelty (we can only hope).
How dare we spoil his dangerous edgelord pose with historical “fact”! Next we’ll be saying Guy Fawkes was a Catholic theocrat and not a brave freedom fighter and then where will we be?!
I am one of the people targeted by the Witchfinder General. I doubled my pledge to Randi and notified my boss that he might try to contact her. She laughed and told me to keep up the good work.
@Moggie:
It stopped a rapist from raping, and ruined the property of a white man! What possible crimes could be worse? What cause could be more extreme?
@Alan:
Where I come from, painted dogs look like this, and know full well what they are:
http://www.stlzoo.org/files/2214/0076/8413/Painted_Dogs_Jim_Schulz_Chicago_Zoological_Society.jpg
In the northern hemisphere, painted dogs look like this, and might well not know (in fact, I’ve heard people ask whether they know that they’re dogs at all):
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01652/china_dog_1652617a.jpg