As tptacek says, I don't view reporting like this as "doxxing." As the series hopefully shows, Le Roux was a hugely newsworthy figure for many different reasons, so reporting his background and how he got there is part of understanding where he is now. As for being nervous, many of the major players in the story are in US custody, and perhaps somewhat counterintuitively a lot of people involved want to tell their part of the story. If they have beefs, they are typically with each other not with me. I do try to be careful, though.
To me, it's just semantics. Let's say that someone published this much information about you. And let's say that they had whatever justifications. That there was widespread agreement that it was OK. Whatever. How would you feel?
Are you essentially positing that the only relevant consideration to whether publishing information about someone is ethically defensible is whether or not the subject feels good about having that information revealed? It seems to me there is a material difference -- and a vast one at that -- between "I have done serious investigative work and wish to present evidence that Joe Foobar is a criminal kingpin who can be linked with drug-running and murders" and "I am publishing personal information about Joe Foobar because he said something mean about a group I identify with and I wish to screw with his life."
The concept of "criminal kingpin" is entirely based on "a group I identify with". In this case, some nation or government or whatever. So, as I see it, there's arguably no fundamental distinction between your two examples. It's arguably all about power.
Dude, please. Laws are abstractions and relative and whatnot, but Really Bad People do exist and the public has a right to know. Otherwise, why have journalists or even laws at all?
I personally give up once a person gets so defensive that they start excusing murderers. That a person will so quickly sacrifice their morals for their face on an internet forum, is disheartening.
But myerbergs_army's stated rationale was not that Le Roux is fair game for doxxing because he's so bad, it was that he was fair game because his activities are newsworthy.
Honestly, I don't have a clue. Who gets to decide? Some murderers are presidents, and others are on trial. There's really no point in arguing about it.
Are moral rules situationally dependent on the personal feelings of the person subject to those rules? I would hate to be in jail, but I think it's morally and ethically valid to put people in jail in certain circumstances. Similarly I think that politicians and public figures should be subject to a high degree of scrutiny and transparency about their personal lives, even though I personally wouldn't enjoy such treatment.
By "feel", I meant more what you might feel justified in doing about it. The key "moral rule" for me is to only mess with people who have messed with me. I don't get into third-party stuff, and I have little sympathy for those who do.
So what you're saying is, it would be moral for this guy's murder victims to dox him, but not a reporter? The funny thing with murderers is that they can only really be stopped by third parties.
Germany has the concept 'people of public interest' for which different rules concerning media appearance and photographs apply. Politicians are an example. You could argue that it applies in this case as well.
Wrong country of course, but the idea as an ethical code is out there, that the public has some right for information on some, and only some, people.
Don't you know it's only ok when a given journalist has the blessing of the status quo and doesn't use automatic means (google doesn't count anymore of course, but copypasta of random code to help one on one's search is a big no no) of releasing such information?
If such a "journalist" wanted to write (about potentially classified™ information) about people working for defense contractors who create products only a minority of people care to voice dissent but has the blessing of the status quo, it wouldn't be ok because it would put lives at danger™. There is also an exception to this for when a billionaire helps you write about such info, but only less than 1% of it will ever see the light of day, and one must consult with the thought leaders™ of the status quo in order to have a voice where all the token freedom loving organizations also supported by such billionaire will blogspam such carefully vetted position on one's behalf.
> As the series hopefully shows, Le Roux was a hugely newsworthy figure for many different reasons, so reporting his background and how he got there is part of understanding where he is now.
Wasn't this Gawkers main argument in their defense against the hulk.
I do not understand the comparison you are trying to make. Gawker was sued for releasing a clip of the actual sex tape. Everyone involved stipulated that a detailed story about the tape would have been fine.
No, not quite. Their main argument was that it was newsworthy and "it", in particular, was the video and not the article. The article itself could exist, but without the video. The video couldn't as there was a reasonable expectation of privacy.
They were sued because they refused to take down the video and their defense was absolutely terrible in every regard including joking in legally binding statements without going through and marking them as jokes/sarcasm: so they are taken at face value in the court of law.
Making jokes about child porn ("newsworthy if the actor is over the age of four") isn't how you win over jurors.
Doxing is a targeted attack intended to harass and terrorize the victim as retribution for expressing dissenting opinions or beliefs. The ultimate goal is suppression of free speech.
There's a difference between learning private information and disclosing it.
Publishing information on a particular private individual because the public's benefit is sufficiently great is a hard line to even vaguely pin down - a home address, all private contact methods, and enough personal data to forge their identity on a passport application is probably never warranted to publish, but you're going to acquire that information while researching private citizens for any reason, and then pare it down to the minimum required to establish whatever story you're reporting on.
One might distinguish "doxxing" as "publishing all the information you can retrieve", without any filter or goal other than making the information as public as possible.
I was not attempting to insinuate that the author had done so; I was just thinking aloud on the distinction between "doxxing" someone and what journalists often do.
Police officers, almost universally. Abortionists. Parents of little children, frequently. "This guy we pictured in front of a gay bar." Many people who find themselves targeted by one of the (numerous) Internet hate machines. Elected officials. Unelected officials. Anyone involved in a contract negotiation with the Teamsters. People who take substantial efforts so that ex-romantic partners do not discover where they live because of a well-founded fear that that ex-partner would attempt to murder them. Television personalities. People who recently won the lottery. People named Adolf Hitler (no, not that one).
There exist numerous reasons to not love the idea of one's personal information, particularly regarding one's work or home, put out there broadly, particularly when it is attached to information one does not control and/or in a circumstance which would tend to show it to people who do not respect standard middle class norms of detachment. Redditors did not invent concern over this issue. Many of the people with strong concerns about it are demographically dissimilar to the modal Redditor.
Edit to add: It occasionally happens that journalists will transgress upon society's norms in this area and persons sympathetic to the aggrevied parties will transgress back. I have not heard a journalist say, in response to that "OK, fair commentary, wot wot." This often comes up in the context "We have published gun owners' addresses because the public has a right to know who owns guns." "We have published your address because the public has a right to know who writes newspapers."
I'm a little confused. I agree that there is such a thing as maliciously or recklessly posting personally identifying information about people. Is that "doxxing"? If so, why are we pretending that this story constitutes "doxxing"?
Because that is what the comment to which I replied upthread claimed.
No relevance to this story; I've just seen you say "Doxxing is a thing that only Redditors care about" a time or three on HN, and believing that to be something that you believed generally rather than specific to this article, found it necessary to say "Actually, that's a bit more of a widely-held position than you seem to believe."
There's a difference between outing details of someone's life with salacious or hostile intent and telling a story.
The fact that this guy on one hand built an incredibly high quality application that had and has a major positive impact on the world is a story that needs to be told.
The fact that he's a damaged, amoral man who is allegedly a career criminal and drug dealer is a story that demands to be told. He represents the Id of mankind -- and personifies the paradox that perfect security and privacy benefits society at large, and that society also includes the bad guys.
Maybe drug dealers are the unsung heroes of drug law liberalization. The Drug War was arguably driven by racist and authoritarian goals. So dealers are arguably freedom fighters, rather than criminals. Maybe he killed some people, but I suspect that was in self defense.
Personally, I interpreted the question as a shorthand for: "Aren't you afraid LeRoux could see that as doxxing, and of potential dangerous consequences to yourself?"
Yes, that's what I meant. But I do also consider the distinction between doxxing and journalism to be highly subjective. The judgment typically comes down to ingroup vs outgroup. Once someone is identified as "other", they're fair game.
This all occurs to me as a show trial. They're making an example of him, as authoritarian systems tend to do. And one aspect of that is being dragged through the mud. Being slandered. It's dog pack behavior, and I find it disgusting.
Some people who do that consider themselves journalists. But then, people who doxx people might also consider themselves journalists. It's a hard call.
> Thus, we usually have to write the name of the oil company as "Exxon", though its proper spelling is "e exx o n". (Don't make the mistake of pronouncing "Exxon" like "exon"; you will appear unsophisticated.)
So that's way off-topic. But what he says about "dox" vs. "doxx" is as much a preference as "focused" and "focussed", or "busing" and "bussing" - there's no "correct" way, not even if it is the original way.
Is Stallman a new William Safire or Brian Garner? I never knew this was one of his areas of expertise. Oxford lists "doxx" as an alternate but accepted version. I don't have an OED license so I dont have access to the full etymology they use.
It's simple: Dox is short for "docs". Shortening a 4-letter word to a 3-letter word is sensible (albeit lazy). Shortening a 4-letter word to a 4-letter word ("doxx") is stupid.
I don't know why people spell it with two. Maybe they think it looks cooler? But really it's hacker slang for "I accessed and published sensitive information about an individual" and is in most cases horrible.
Does he really think he can just imagine things, and then convince other people they are true?
Wikipedia says:
> The company initially planned to change its name to "Exon", in keeping with the four-letter format of Enco and Esso. However, during the planning process, it was noted that James Exon was the governor of Nebraska. Renaming the company after a sitting governor seemed ill-advised, and the second "x" was added to the new name and logo.
No mention of them wanting to name the company with a greek chi but not having that on their typewriters.
To be fair, the wikipedia claim isn't cited. Neither is rms's of course.
Convincing other people of things that are false is standard practice every April 1. I believe that whole Exxon article is an April Fool's joke.
...although looking at it more carefully, the doxing article is not dated April 1, and it has the same claim in it. Maybe he forgot what he was doing and successfully trolled himself. I don't know. But yes, the Exxon thing is obviously, demonstrably false.
Also, if I understand him right, he insists that the oil company Exxon is mis-spelling as well as mis-pronouncing it's own name, and he knows better. rms is an interesting guy.