Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Lauren Weinstein [lauren () vortex com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 6:23 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?

                 Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?

                  http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000354.html


Greetings.  You've probably heard the tragic story of the
13-year-old girl who committed suicide after being spurned by a
MySpace identity she thought was a 16-year-old boy, but that
actually was a profile created by the mother of a neighborhood
parent
( http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-myspace9jan09,0,5809715.story ).

It's a sad event indeed, and the perpetrator certainly deserves
condemnation, even though a suicide was not a reasonably predictable
outcome of the very unfortunate exchange.

Prosecutors in Missouri, where the girl lived, were unable to find a
statute that would apply in such a case, but federal prosecutors
here in L.A. (MySpace is based locally in Santa Monica) are
reportedly exploring prosecuting the parent under federal wire fraud
statutes -- which can carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison --
apparently for not being truthful in the associated MySpace profile.

Much as I understand the emotions in play, such a move could
potentially carry awesome negative consequences for the open use of
the Internet.  If anyone reading this blog entry has never provided
false information about their name, age, sex, location, or other
characteristics to a Web site, you should definitely be considered
for a sainthood somewhere down the line.

The precedent that could be set by prosecuting a social networking
profile that contained false information could strike a blow to the
basic concepts of anonymity that protect Internet users from a wide
variety of privacy-invasive practices.

While one could argue that prosecutors would only go after egregious
cases, we also know that prosecutorial overreaching and misconduct
are not infrequent occurrences.

If this particular sad case becomes an excuse to squash anonymity on
the Internet, by criminalizing the creation of pseudonym-identities
in situations where the commission of crimes is not contemplated, we
will be entering into very dangerous territory indeed.

There have already been legislative efforts to require
verifiable ID for social networking sites, which could rather
easily evolve into an "Internet driver's license" and requirements
that virtually everyone on the Net be provably identified at all
times online ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000231.html ).
This would primarily push "undesirable" activities totally underground
and do even more damage, but the political attractiveness of such an
approach might be undeniable among the usual suspects.

Attempts to blame and constrain the Internet in response to human
tragedies are almost always misguided and replete with the potential
for widespread collateral damage.  They're traps that we should do
our utmost to avoid, even in -- especially in -- the most
emotionally heartrending of cases.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
   - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com

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