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Katherine Clark takes on online harassment against women, but at what price?

Rep. Katherine Clark of District 5 in Massachusetts is already famous in her own right. She’s labored for her constituents, and even gotten a few simple to-do’s taken care of since her December 2013 election. But just what does the Female Democratic Congress woman has aimed in her cross hairs next? Your internet freedom, and your cyber identity to go along with it. We’re talking about domain privacy, and everything that comes along with it as far as your real identity is concerned.

Clark recently brought the subject of online harassment against women to the halls of Congress, and urged that it be taken more seriously in the same realm of homicide, and global terrorism, in fact, Clark’s ideal is to see that anyone who registers a domain must have their private information or “Cyber identity,” protected and made private by ICANN (Internet Corporation Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN recently proposed that their privacy policy be revised, and has put it up for debate among consumers.

Under the proposed revisions, organizations such as Domestic violence shelters, human rights activists, and others may be forced to disclose personal information for the registrants—if their site accepts donations, or uses ads to promote their cause. This would also affect the LGBT community as well, many of which reside in Clark’s district.

Clark was also very vocal about her support for the new bill she has proposed to Congress in late May. For this new bill, she’s asking for 4 million dollars that would be used to hire more 10 more FBI agents specifically assigned to create a task force for the investigation into Cyber harassment of women. It would also go toward research and development of programs designed to educate law enforcement agencies nationwide—for faster response times of cyber stalking. Clark says that she wants the programs and education to provide the help and expertise that the law enforcement agencies would need to be able to take the virtual crimes and bring them to real life, or real-time solutions to help the victims of online harassment.

Brianna Wu and the FBI investigation

One of these victims is Brianna Wu. Brianna Wu is a female game developer and founder of Giant Spacekat studios in Massachusetts where Katherine Clark is from. Wu reached out to Clark after receiving recent threats and growing tired of the trend of non-responsiveness from the FBI. According to Wu, her threat toll is up to 106. She says she’s even submitted her threats to the FBI for investigation.

Wu’s goal is to see Clark’s bill become a reality, and hopes that it will provide some hope for her to breathe a sigh of relief from the daily harassment she receives constantly.

“In a political environment, where law enforcement has frankly not been very helpful for my family at all, Katherine Clark is the reason we’re getting any attention on this at all.” – Brianna Wu

The fact that this new bill will only cause more problems for the United States, and won’t necessarily solve any of the pre-existing problems is an understatement. The bill would redefine how users are “allowed” to use the Internet, and interact with people online. In fact, the LGBT community that Wu claims to align with, is one of the biggest targets for online harassment, and cyber stalking since the early 2000s. Wu being trans gender, identifies as female—where as many other LGBT members in the community identify as “trans.” While the proposal would make doxing too easy in some respects, it promotes more of “who’s watching who,” rather than having someone in your corner fighting back for your rights to privacy and free speech.

It also doesn’t shed light onto those who promote the same harassment from their end while fighting for the indictment of said harassers. If you simply call someone out of their name in a facetious manner, it constitutes harassment and would be grounds for investigation under this bill. Even simply having an upset interaction online would as well.

As far as harassment is concerned, Katherine Clark’s very own constituents who consist of: Brianna Wu, Zoe Quinn, and even Randi Harper and Anita Sarkeesian have, in fact, harassed, doxed, and cyber stalked people to keep their views on things singular. GamerGate, the group that many left-wing feminists claim to harass and doxes feminist, and feminist sympathizers such as Katherine Clark, has yet to prove that it is responsible for a feminism-related fatality, or intense personal harassment claim. The reality of the situation is this: we cannot become solely focused on setting rules and guidelines in place with a tool that anyone can utilize for any reason. The reason why is because we will always end up with things like the GGautoblocker, created by Randi Harper.

Live in your world, play in ours

What’s more, you can always, if you’re tech savvy, place false ip addresses and sock accounts to harass people online. This is common knowledge that the Internet provides to many would-be hackers. Many of the same advocates whom Katherine Clark is claiming to fight for, are the ones perpetuating the cyber harassment, doxing, and are self-exposing their information by simply tweeting, or checking in using Facebook.

We as consumers, constituents, taxpayers, and voters should not stand for someone speaking for us, and attempting to introduce bills that support people who aren’t ethically clean and are practicing what it’s fighting as its core basis. Currying favor in one’s district and gender isn’t equality, it’s plain wrong. And we as taxpayers, consumers, and even gamers shouldn’t sit idly by and let someone force us to remember the old slogan: Live in your world, play in ours.



Kenay Peterson

The Gaming Ground

Twitter: @TheDark_Mage

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Tags: #GamerGate, Brianna Wu, FBI, Katherine Clark, Online harassment