Bob,
Im the person who posted the article and Mary responded to it. Im not sure
how I feel about what those folks are doing, but I suppose that I agree with
you.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bob Hachey
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2017 1:47 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Info Wars: Inside the Left's Online Efforts
to Out White Supremacists
Hi Mary,
Thanks for sharing this one.
I am strongly opposed to doxing which I see as very toxic. I am no fan of
Nazis but doxing IMHO, creates way more problems than it purports to solve.
It will surely divide further an already badly divided nation. IF we want to
take further steps on the road to civil war, doxers have at it.
I have no issue with those who want to send strong messages of disagreement
to those whith whom they disagree but when you start contacting employers,
neighbors, etc. youre acting just like Joe McCarthy. Doxing will also
increase the paranoiah of a mostly paranoid nation. Time to go looking under
my bed for Nazis.
Bob Hachey
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of MARY CONVY
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2017 8:41 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Info Wars: Inside the Left's Online Efforts
to Out White Supremacists
There is a pretty popular livestreamer who I watch often. He started doing
the Fergeson protests and is quite respected and now travels the country,
and once in awhile the world, showing protests from this unique perspective.
The other night he was at a anti-fa protest filming. I could hear people
asking who he was, their panic circulating through the crowd. Then he was
attacked.
They tried to stop him from filming. With some irony, the police protected
him and he continued filming, with protection. So much for the fact that
the author below claims sunshine cleanses.
_____
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2017 10:36 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Info Wars: Inside the Left's Online Efforts to
Out White Supremacists
Antifa members and counter protesters gather at the rightwing No To Marxism
rally on August 27, 2017 at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Berkeley,
California. (photo: Amy Osborne/AFP/Getty Images)
Info Wars: Inside the Left's Online Efforts to Out White Supremacists
By Decca Muldowney, ProPublica
30 October 17
An anonymous group of vigilantes works to identify racists, a legally gray
tactic known as doxxing that comes with plenty of risk for all.
Fallon is not her real name. Its a pseudonym shes using because she wants
to remain anonymous. She knows that can be an elusive goal, chiefly because
of people not unlike her.
When I first contacted Fallon, here is what she told me about herself: shes
in her mid-30s; shes white; she has children; she works a 9-to-5 office
job; and she lives in Ohio. She has a voice like a school teacher or a
nurse, steady and determined. She loves PowerPoint slides and spreadsheets.
She seems organized, efficient and articulate.
She also says she is part of Great Lakes Antifa, a self-described group of
anti-fascist activists. Within her local antifa group, she says she is part
of an even smaller collective. These are what are known as the antifa
doxxers. In the evenings and her spare time, Fallon says she researches
and reveals the identities of neo-Nazis in America.
Often beginning with nothing more than a name, or even a picture, Fallon
says she tracks down people who have attended far-right rallies or meetings,
who have sent death or rape threats on the internet, or who are members of
white supremacist groups like the KKK or National Socialist Movement. She
says she uses property records, tax documents, voter registration databases,
social media, real estate websites and real-life surveillance to find them
and verify their names and locations.
And then she makes a choice. What kind of dox will she do?
For some of her targets, she says she contacts their church or employer,
emailing screenshots of the online abuse they allegedly have perpetrated.
For others, she calls their workplaces or colleges to explain that an
employee or student says they are a member of a white supremacist group. And
in the most serious cases, she says, she publishes their names on
sympathetic left-wing news sites, like Its Going Down. As a result, people
aligned with antifa might make posters naming and identifying the individual
as a threat, putting them up around the persons town or community.
While Fallons doxxes may have serious consequences, her work is relatively
mild compared to some other doxxing cases. In some high-profile instances,
doxxing has involved publishing a persons home address and then actively
encouraging people to harass them. In one recent case, Tanya Gersh, a Jewish
resident of white nationalist leader Richard Spencers hometown Whitefish,
Montana, was relentlessly harassed and threatened with phone calls after
being named in a blog post on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. Andrew
Anglin, the editor of The Daily Stormer, posted not only Gershs phone
number and address, but details about her 12-year-old son, and encouraged
readers to harass them.
Fallon says she doesnt go this far. But she still believes her work is
powerful.
A dox is a digital brick through a window, she says.
The digital battle that Fallon is engaged in is just one form of combat
between elements of the political left and right that has raged throughout
2017. In August, the potential for physical violence burst into the
mainstream consciousness when white nationalists clashed with
counter-protesters in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. The displays
of far-right extremism, sometimes called the alt-right, have occasionally
been met with an anti-fascist opposition ready to use extreme methods,
including violence, to push back. Such antifa members wound up in the
clashes in Charlottesville.
For many Americans, the left/right warring complete with competing
manifestos and symbols and coded language looks like little more than
fringe nuttiness. But the street fights whether in Berkeley, California,
or Charlottesville are quite real. The online sparring is less visible,
but no less important to those caught up in the tumult.
Fallon and other antifa doxxers say they dont want to let people live
secret lives of hate and bigotry. Their opponents on the right are not
averse to online tussling either. Recent leaks from inside a white
nationalist chat room showed the so-called alt-right planning to dox
anti-fascists in retaliation for perceived humiliations in
Charlottesville.
Doxxing exists in something of a legal gray area. The digital tools doxxers
use and the public information they collect have long been used by
journalists to investigate and write about people theyve deemed newsworthy.
Fallon says she doesnt see her work as very different. She compares
releasing the names of neo-Nazis publicly to the registering of sex
offenders; while information about sex offenders is made public by
government officials, Fallon notes the information is meant to help
communities protect themselves. Fallon says she wants fascists out in the
open.
Sunlight cleanses. It sanitizes, it sterilizes, Fallon says.
Not everyone agrees. In Cyber Misbehavior, a bulletin published by the
Department of Justice in May 2016, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joey Blanch and
Executive Assistant Attorney Wesley Hsu, at the United States Attorneys
Office Central District of California, described doxxing as a form of
cyberharassment.
[Doxing] can expose the victim to an anonymous mob of countless harassers,
calling their phones, sending them email, and even appearing at the victims
home, write Blanch and Hsu. However, as they point out, There is no
general reference to cyberharassment under federal law.
It would be hard to introduce a single federal law against doxxing, says
Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and author of
Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, because it runs the risk of conflicting with
the First Amendment. She points out that while there are various state and
federal laws in place to combat stalking, harassment and clear threats,
these dont always apply when someones name, address or phone number is
published online. That information, after all, can be already available in
the White Pages.
However, Citron still thinks any kind of doxxing is dangerous. I dont
care if its neo-Nazis or antifa, she says, this is a very bad strategy
leading to a downward spiral of depravity. Citrons worry is that all too
often doxxing ends up hurting the most vulnerable. It provides a permission
structure to go outside the law and punish each other, she says. Its like
shaming in cyber-mobs.
The challenge of prosecuting cyber harassment is familiar to Ari Waldman,
associate professor of law at New York Law School. He says creative lawyers
are finding ways to help victims of doxxing, but they face challenges.
Even where tools exist, where doxxing is part of a constellation of
behaviors that constitute harassment, there are many instances where they
wont win a lawsuit because online harassment is not taken seriously,
Waldman says. Judges and juries frequently feel that unless something
physically threatening has happened, the publication of ones personal
information is not, in itself, illegal.
Echoing Citron, Waldman worries that if doxxing of the kind Fallon does
becomes normalized, it risks legitimizing a dangerous tactic. We need to be
concerned about the use of this tool as a weapon, he says, which usually
affects marginalized populations.
I came into contact with Fallon while interviewing a string of other antifa
activists about doxxing. One man cryptically mentioned a group of antifa
doxxers renowned for their work. Would any of them speak to me, I asked?
A couple of days later, I got a polite email asking if I was interested in
learning more about digital doxxing of white supremacists, signed,
Warmest regards, Anonymous member of Great Lakes Antifa. Later, after we
spoke on the phone, the woman gave me her nom de guerre: Fallon.
Fallon says she has rules. She says she never doxxes minors and rarely
doxxes people of color. She sees a distinction between hardened members of
far-right militias and a 19-year-old Trump supporter flirting with white
nationalist ideas. But she says she has no qualms about the final step of
her research: outing those sympathetic to racist, white supremacist or
fascist ideas.
Theres nothing more ethical than doxxing Nazis, she tells me.
Not only is Fallon a doxxer, she tells me she trains other anti-fascists and
activists to dox, and to protect themselves from being doxxed. She says
shes given her online webinar training to local liberal groups, as well as
to anti-fascists across the country. In total, she claims shes run 25
webinars since November 2016, training around 300 people.
Fallon agrees to walk me through the training she gives. Late one evening
she texts me a website address via Signal, an encrypted messaging app. It
links to a conference call program hosted on gotomeeting.com, a platform
usually favored by businesses. At a prearranged time, I log in and find
Fallon already on the line.
The workshop has the bland title IT Security Training, but really its
split into two parts: learning to doxx, and learning how to protect yourself
from being doxxed. If you can dox its easier to protect yourself from a
dox, Fallon says. The first slide shows an agenda, with a picture of a man
wearing black, his face covered, sitting at a computer.
The first point on the agenda is, What is doxxing?
Doxxing, Fallon explains, is the process of gaining personal identifying
information of a user, and using the information to socially engineer
consequences. The word itself was coined by hackers in the 90s, from the
phrase dropping documents or docs, meaning to reveal someones identity
and information online.
She offers a brief history of doxxing, focusing on Gamergate, a 2014
online controversy that resulted in various female video game designers and
critics being doxxed and brutally abused on the internet. Loosely organized
through forums like 4chan and Reddit, Gamergate trolls targeted game
developer Zoe Quinn and female journalists and gamers who spoke out to
support her. Quinn fled her home, fearing she could be physically attacked
by people who found her information online. She recently launched Crash
Override, an advocacy group for victims of digital abuse. Three years later,
she still receives threats.
For Fallon, the Gamergate episode was a watershed moment. This was the
first time the alt-right really coalesced, she says.
The doxxing Fallon says she does is nowhere near equivalent to that of the
Gamergate trolls. As well as publishing the personal information of women
they disagreed with, Gamergaters also sent death and rape threats,
encouraging their targets to commit suicide.
Nonetheless, doxxing has become a major weapon for the left as well as the
right.
In one sense, doxxing isnt particularly new. Anti-fascists have used the
tactic of publishing information about fascists and hate groups for years.
Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center collect information and publish
dossiers. The real difference now is the internet, and social media in
particular.
After the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, high-profile Twitter
user and journalist Shaun King posted videos and pictures of so-called
alt-righters committing acts of violence, and used crowdsourcing to identify
information about the men. Some of these tweets led to arrests. The same
tactic was used by the Twitter account, @YesYoureRacist, run by Logan Smith.
These efforts also led to some serious misidentifications. One
Charlottesville protester wearing an Arkansas engineering shirt was
misidentified as Kyle Quinn, an engineering assistant. Quinn spent a weekend
in hiding due to the amount of online abuse he subsequently received. The
real protester, a former engineering student named Andrew M. Dodson, later
apologized.
Unlike these Twitter vigilantes, antifa doxxers like Fallon dont do their
work in public.
The majority of our chapters, she says, theyre pretty ethical about what
they do. She acknowledges that not every antifa doxxer might be as careful
as she claims she is, and that sometimes mistakes have been made. But those
are getting fewer and fewer and farther between.
These tools are also being used by the far-right. Since antifa appearances
in Berkeley and Charlottesville turned violent, so-called alt-right
activists on social media and sites like Discord, 4chan and 8chan have been
trying to dox antifa members. More often than not, Fallon says, they fail,
and end up doxxing hapless liberals instead, a trend confirmed by Keegan
Hankes, an analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center and Alexander Reid
Ross, a scholar of the far-right and author of Against the Fascist Creep.
In May, a user called kanuke7 posted identifying informationabout thousands
of signatories of a public anti-Trump petition on a pro-Trump Discord
server, branding the signatories as antifa. But Fallon says she has only
ever seen a real antifa member doxxed by the right if they were first
arrested and their identities made public by the police.
A risk Fallon doesnt mention here is that factions on both the left and
right also sometimes use doxxing against each other as a weapon in internal
disputes.
In a number of high-profile cases, antifa and other left-wing activists have
significantly disrupted the lives of their doxxing targets. In the aftermath
of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, some participants
reportedly lost their jobs, and one reportedly was even publicly disowned by
his family.
Eli Mosley, leader of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, recently
expressed sympathy with those on his side whose identities have been made
public.
We deeply empathize with the various Alt-Right activists who have had their
lives significantly affected over the past month, Mosley wrote in an
article on AltRight.com. He issued a hard-line ultimatum to other white
nationalists. When faced with the crucible of doxxing and the subsequent
employment and familial issues, an activist has two choices: double-down, or
cuck. Everyone in our movement must be prepared to stand tall and
double-down.
Ironically, as Keegan Hankes, an analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center,
says, when white nationalists are doxxed, it can get harder to keep track of
them. Hankes has spent the last couple of years tracking far-right groups
online. After Charlottesville, he says, so many people were doxxed and then
kicked off social media platforms like Twitter and Discord, that his job
became more difficult. He says so-called alt-right leaders were well aware
in the run-up to Charlottesville that they were taking a risk.
The message coming down from the top was, essentially, dont go to this
event if youre not comfortable with the idea of being doxxed, says Hankes,
No matter what kind of bravado they put forward on their platforms, they
know that many of their supporters are not known. They have reputations and
jobs to protect, he said.
Sometimes banning hate speech from social media platforms does effectively
reduce hate speech. In 2015, Reddit began banning subreddits that promoted
harassment against specific groups. Using complex search algorithms for
specific hate speech, Reddit aggressively moderated subreddits like
/Coontown and /fatpeoplehate. After this crackdown, they found that overall,
offensive language decreased, while users determined to continue posting
hate moved elsewhere.
Fallon searches for these hardcore users. She says the key to doxxing is
social media, and the information people willingly reveal about themselves
online. In her training session, Fallon points out that companies like
Facebook and Twitter are multibillion-dollar corporations with high levels
of security. She says antifa doxxers arent hackers like Anonymous, and rely
on something much more mundane than complex hacking tools.
There is one vulnerability that never lets me down, Fallon says, stupid
users. Fallon calls the people she doxxes marks, and says stupid marks
are the easiest to dox. Sometimes, she claims, it will only take her a few
minutes.
But no matter the intention, the outcome of a dox can be unpredictable.
Fallon says her team was behind the August doxxing of Corey Klicko, a former
Wisconsin leader for the Nationalist Socialist Movement. After Klickos
details were published on the anarchist site Enough Is Enough, he canceled a
meet-and-greet barbeque sponsored by the National Socialist Movement, and
distanced himself from the group.
After careful consideration and communications with positive people, Ive
decided to break away from anything that may be perceived as negative to
myself, my family or the community, Klicko told local media. Racism and
hate have no place in communities and we all need to move forward to better
provide for our future.
But it can go the other way. When neo-Nazi podcast host Mike Enoch was
doxxed by right-wingers on 8chans /pol/ board as New York web developer
Mike Peinovich in January 2017, it was revealed that his wife was Jewish. In
the weeks that followed, the so-called alt-right reeled from the
revelations. It appeared to be the end of Enochs fringe fame. But he
bounced back, separating from his wife and embracing his newly public
persona in the white nationalist movement. He continues to podcast and
appear at rallies. If anything, being doxxed has hardened Peinovichs views.
This is a possibility that worries George Hawley, author of the new book
Making Sense of the Alt-Right. One could argue that doxxing is
counterproductive, he writes, since doxxing victims will have no
disincentive to stop creating Alt-Right content after being revealed.
Indeed, they may become even more energetic and well known, as they no
longer need to hide their identities.
But Hawley also argues that doxxing works beyond the individual. While
doxxing is not necessarily a useful means of silencing one particular voice,
it may have greater unseen effects: it sends a message to others,
encouraging them to stop their work in the alt-right or dissuading them
from getting involved in the first place, he writes.
Every dox that Fallon works on goes through several levels of verification,
she says. Shes always looking for a region, a location, and, ultimately, a
home address. We like to have at least one solid recent proof of the
residence, but three is considered pretty golden. This proof could be a
voter registration record, property ownership record or a court record. We
talk about ethics all the time in our teams, she says. Fallon says they are
wary of stale information, like a seven-year-old traffic ticket that might
lead to an address where the mark no longer lives.
Were very careful about what we publish, she says. It is very important
not to dox the wrong person. I never publish anything until I have
validation of the data.
And sometimes this data is hard to find. Some marks have better security.
They might use fake online profiles, which Fallon calls socks. (These
kinds of fake online profiles arent limited to antifa and the so-called
alt-right. Theyre used prolifically on the internet by catfishers,
con-artists, and, most recently, by Russian bots and trolls involved in
disinformation campaigns.)
Fallon says there are four types of socks. The first is a legitimate account
with signal interference. This means the person might have an extremely
common name, like John Smith, that makes them hard to pick out. Or they
might share a name with a B-list celebrity. Searching for them involves
wading through results about another person.
The second is what Fallon calls a poorly made sock. This is a false
account created hastily, without much care. The person might use a fake
name, but still add all their real friends. Or they might friend their
fake account with their real account. All these things make the sock
vulnerable. In the case of poorly made socks, Fallon says she often finds
people through their girlfriends or wives. If I cant find the guy, I can
always find their woman, she says. The women arent as careful. They rate
things, they review things on Facebook and you know its near where they
live.
The third is a well-made sock. These are false identities where people
have taken real care to conceal themselves. Fallon says these often take a
few hours or even days to crack. Its never perfect, she says. She says
can still find their identities through partners, parents or adult children.
Finally, theres what Fallon calls a perfect sock. These are rare cases,
she says, where people are so conscious of their cybersecurity that they
have hidden themselves almost completely. Nonetheless, she says, they still
make mistakes, if you look hard enough.
Using herself as an example, Fallon shows me a slide with a screenshot of a
Facebook message. She laughs. This is a message she received from her high
school sweetheart who found her on Facebook, despite her security
precautions and fake name. This is a lesson. I have really good security on
the internet, she says, and yet I can be found. As Fallon has already
told me, no sock is truly perfect.
What does this all mean for the doxxing battle between left and right? White
nationalist Richard Spencer, who was punched in the face by a masked antifa
member on the day of President Trumps inauguration, says he doesnt believe
that doxxing will halt the growth of the so-called alt-right in the long
run.
You cant really be a leader unless you show your face, Spencer told
ProPublica, but he believes not everyone has to be as public as he is. One
probably cant work at a corporation or a law firm, or so on. But there are
plenty of ways of managing this difficulty.
He maintains that the alt-right is growing, and has the tacit sympathy of
many white Americans. At some point, he believes, the movement will be so
big that doxxing will no longer have any effect.
Some scholars also question whether doxxing will work to stop the far-right,
though for different reasons than Spencer. Ajay Sandhu and David Marciniak,
scholars of big data at the University of Essex in the U.K., recently
blogged about white nationalists right to privacy in the face of doxxing.
Is [doxxing] even an effective method of fighting fascism? asks Sandhu.
Is this an effective means of challenging racist views? Sandu and
Marciniak argue that doxxing simply isolates people, forcing them into
smaller parts of the internet. You dont really challenge them, you allow
them to exist in those isolated spaces, Sandhu says.
This is something Fallon acknowledges, but it doesnt worry her. I dont
mind them being keyboard warriors in their tiny little echo chambers, she
says. She just doesnt want them to feel empowered enough to take action in
the real world.
Thus Fallon says she is unwavering in her belief in doxxing. Its
nonviolent. Its transparent. Its validated. Its effective, she says.
I feel like, for me, if there was one thing that I could say to the
alt-right and to fascists it would be: You dont get to be a Nazi on the
weekend.
She said she wants people to take responsibility for their words and
actions. If youre a Nazi on Saturday, youre a Nazi all goddamn week, she
says.
On Oct. 5, about a month after I observed Fallons training session on
doxxing, a Tennessee chapter of the left-wing group Anti-Racist Action
published a communiqué on Facebook. Anti-Racist Action is a small,
militant anti-fascist group with roots in the left-wing skinhead movement of
the 1980s.
In the note, anonymous ARA members warn of the deceitful and untrustworthy
behavior of other anti-fascist activists, whom they named. Among the
accusations are that these other activists have lied to gain entry into
multiple groups, offered resources and withdrawn them at critical moments,
spread rumors.
At the end of the ARA communiqué is a list of supposed aliases used by one
of the activists they condemn. The last one catches my eye: Fallon. They
say that her real name is Jessica Nocero.
I reach out to the ARA to ask for more details, but the group never replies.
John Carico, an anti-fascist activist based in Tennessee, says he is aware
of the dispute between Anti-Racist Action and Nocero, among others. Carico
says hes had positive dealings with Nocero, and has seen no compelling
evidence of any wrongdoing on her part. In his opinion, Nocero might be
being targeted because she is wealthier than other activists, and her
resources make others suspicious.
I call Fallon and ask her whether she is Jessica Nocero. She says that she
isnt. She tells me Nocero is just a naïve liberal who has been
inappropriately identified and outed accused of being a danger to the
movement when she isnt one.
I keep searching, eventually linking the phone number Ive been talking to
Fallon on to one for Jessica Nocero. The modest biographical details Fallon
had shared with me appear to match Noceros.
When I send Fallon the documentation suggesting that she is Nocero, she
replies: Damn, thats a good dox!
I write to her encouraging her to tell the full truth about herself given
that she has already been publicly identified.
She says she is already getting threats online. When I ask who theyre from,
she says shes not sure if theyre from leftists or alleged fascists.
Ultimately, she sends me a written statement, acknowledging that she is
Nocero.
I am a mother, activist, worker, neighbor and active member of my
community, she writes. She says that the majority of anti-fascist work is
community service, and that shes done other such work as a medic,
community gardener and prison activist. Defending her doxxing work, she
writes, I still believe that ethical doxxing of white supremacists and
fascists is an important and effective tool in the Anti-Fascist wheelhouse.
Nocero says she has always prepared herself to be doxxed by white
supremacists, or members of the far-right. I am disheartened that I myself
was doxxed by leftist activists, she says. She says she still believes in
activist unity and radical solidarity, and hopes that other activists
experiencing doxxing do not fall prey to paranoia and fear.
Of all the things Fallon has told me, when she was anonymous and after her
public doxxing, theres one thing that stays with me, repeating in my mind.
No sock is perfect.
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