The silent torture - Cyberstalking

Last Friday (24/2/12) our Digital Cultures lecture was hosted by Dr. Emma Short, a world leading researcher in Cyberstalking. The behaviour, facts and figures behind the people who stalk and who are being stalked was staggering, with little left to the imagination.

The research that had been collected concluded that 32% of people who are cyberstalked develop a mental illness called "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder", a illness which your brain regurgitates and relives the fear and emotions felt during the worst part of your ordeal. As a sense of psychological trauma, it's an illness synonymous with ex-army veterans, bomb disposal workers and rape victms. However, cyberstalking fit in amongst the aforementioned when it came to the % of sufferers affected.

Cyberstalking has a subtle difference to cyber bullying, stalking being the means of "mental assault, in which the perpetrator repeatedly, unwantedly, and disruptively breaks into the life-world of the victim, with whom he has no relationship". Cyber Bullying on the other hand is often seen between younger ages, seen in social media. Cyberstalking has the aspect of sheer anonymity and is often regarded as adult-on-adult, with the tendency of their interest being that of a more sexual one.


Dr. Short's research also showed that 40% of victims were males, a surprise as the stereotypical idea of abuse online is that it's usually directed at women. Another quashed stereotype was that former partners would be the stalkers, yet when asked, respondents answered that only 4% of people's attackers was an ex-partner.


Most victims were aged between 20-39, with ages ranging from 14-74. Teenagers said that social websites were the primary sites that could provide and provoke cyberstalking, pondering the idea of whether social media needs to be censored. 


Using examples from the study, their was the story of one woman who was subject to a torrent  of vivid images, glorifying and showing violent rape. Another story was of a teacher who was accused of meeting someone through a child pornography site. This saga went on for years, and the attacker or the reasoning was never discovered. 


Guardian article on Dr.Short's research

A severe case of cyberstalking was displayed in 2003. Two friends, addicted to internet chatrooms were seduced into the world of secrecy. One was so enticed he began obeying and carrying out commands by the woman he was talking to online. He carries out the plan set by this 'secret agent' to kill his friend.

After being arrested, the courtroom would later learn that the the various people he was talking too were all one person attempting to manipulate his every move. Yet the real twist is that that one person turned out to be his friend, whom he's attempted to kill.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/kill-me-if-you-can/

Cyberstalking is a global issue, in which their are serious reprecussions not only for the attacker, but the victim aswell.

The British Crime Survey estimated 5 million people were victims of cyber abuse.

Big Brother isn't watching us. Calm down!

When talk of surveillance arises, in everyday life, my experiences have taught me the responses will carry a theme similar to "everything we do is being watched", "my details are all tracked", "someones watching me". Despite the range of outlandish paranoia infested drivel, their is a degree of truth, however, we're not "live on channel 4". "This isn't Davina", and yes, yes we can swear. 


Surveillance begins at a young age. As a baby and infant there's always people watching you. Be it parents making sure you're safe, whether it be at your playgroup or nursery when people are employed to ensure your safety. Even other infants watch you, like, for example you're in the midst of assembling a dynamic, implausible lego tower.


Even as you get older, go through primary years at school, the consensus is you aren't ready to be responsible for yourself, teachers will look out and watch you throughout school. At home parents will have a wandering eye fixated on their childs' every movement. Even if you're playing out, mobile phones and curfews have now made it almost impossible for a child to escape the clutches of their parents. Unless they wanted to.


As we hit adolescence, become more independent, communicate less with our parents and transcend our personality from a likable, soft spoken child, to unruly, loud, unnecessarily angry teenagers, the watchful eye is still their. Throughout your life it's there. 


Now, at 19, nearly 20 and out my teenage years, there's so many devices where my details can be tracked. Whether it be my mobile phone, Facebook and Twitter pages, cards from various retail stores or credit cards. 


Gary T.Marx summarised these thoughts in his "Encyclopedia of Social Theory" when he said:

"With the trend toward ubiquitous computing, surveillance and sensors in one sense disappear into ordinary activities and objects –- cars, cell phones, toilets, buildings, clothes and even bodies. The relatively labor-intensive bar code on consumer goods which requires manually scanning may soon be replaced with inexpensive embedded RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) computer chips which can be automatically read from short distances."

 The idea that so much in our everyday life can track us is a truly frightening prospect. Yet when you regain your breath, sit down, make a cup of tea and begin to think through said prospect, is it?

For example, i hold reward cards at Game, Gamestation, Blockbuster and HMV, (i like video games). These companies know this. I've purchased items from all of them enough, that they know down to a fine detail what genre of games, music, DVD's i like. Why do they need to know this? Well, if their having a sale, they want me to know it's on. They want to know if the items on sale appeal to me. How would they find this out? Well. Ummm, huh? They could just check my history of what i purchased there.

Gamestation don't want to hack my phone. They're not the News of the World. They want to sell me games. They want me to spend money in their store. How can they enhance the chances of me returning. They appeal to things they know i like/enjoy.

The thought that contemporary society has floated into some overblown, Orwellian world where we can't move without being watched. Is this a problem? On every High street there's CCTV. They aren't interested in whether you're going to Blockbuster, or whether you've quickly detoured into Tesco Express. They're their to be a legal watchdog. If you were mugged, CCTV gives the police a greater chance of catching the mugger.

If you abide by the law, then cameras watching you in public aren't interested in you.

Does a robot's risk outweigh its' reward?

The concept of a robot immediately provokes two avenues of thought. The first being the tall, sliding, silver computer, that talks like 'Microsoft Sam', similar to the one Screech had on 'Saved By The Bell'. The other is a more 'real' description. An organism which can proceed to have lifelike emotion, yet is manufactured and programmed by computer intelligence.

Not to be confused with Peter Crouch's embarassing dance to celebrate goals, the term robot is "a machine capable of carrying a series of complex actions automatically". However as the old cliche goes, "with great power, comes great responsibility".

The U.S army has decided to invest heavily on the idea of robots, whether it be something like this. The questions will arise whether something like that spider looking thing is safe in the middle of combat. What if a programme fails? What if soliders develop a moral, real friendship with the computer? \

Alongside this robot, the U.S military has been testing throwable robots in Afghanistan. The Robots, despite looking like cheap remote-control cars are to be used to be the eyes of the solider, before they go into hazardous situations, or entering buildings. The idea is that, they are durable, so can be thrown and provide the scouting, therefore endangering itself rather than a human.

The idea of robots, not long ago seemed like a distant, almost impossible daydream. The closest we would get to a living robot was seeing Megatron or Optimus Prime alter from cars to giant, mechanical beasts. However, with the work of the U.S military, the extension of knowledge and the lengths the Japanese have gone too, all we're missing now is Craig Charles commentary and a fighting arena.

Furthering the point on the Japanese, they have gone to the lenghts of devising robots that can play violins, strut on the catwalk and sing in a way which makes you more likely to buy a CD off a robot than N-Dubz.

The idea of robots, and the immediate thought of the "saved by the bell" type figure is distant. Nowadays a robot has the potential to be a smart, sophisticated, wildly intelligent individual. The prosperity available when we combine the intelligence of the smartest computer programmers and eliminate the naive, reserved outlook of the human. A world with robots sounds somewhat appealing.