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Comment by pdeuchler | Hacker News Reader

Also worth noting that criminal harassment via the internet is largely a failing of law enforcement, not a failing of the infrastructure of the internet or a sudden arrival of a new species of really mean humans. There are some privacy/free speech issues down this road, but by and large LE have abdicated their responsibilities in this area.

And while it's a different discussion all together, I think examining why conflating criminal harassment and "trolling" has become in vogue would teach us a lot about how power is used in the modern age.

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> LE have abdicated their responsibilities in this area.

On the contrary. One of my side-projects is involved with the running an Internet-to-PSTN wake-up-call service. The service is free-to-use in the US (because domestic calling is so cheap) which also means it gets used by criminal-harassers who send wake-up calls at 4am to their targets (we do aggressively rate-limit which helps mitigate these issues). We are frequently contacted by local police departments across the country (we don't spoof our Caller ID) seeking information about who made the call (roughly 25% of the time we get a subpoena or court order) and almost always we see the call request came from an IP address hiding behind a simple PHP web proxy script or a Tor node.

While my story is an anecdote it does demonstrate that it is very easy to hide your identity online for quick hit-and-run harrassment - it's not that LE have abdicated - it's that they've done all they can do - because what can you do with an IP address allocated to Egypt?

While the issue I've described is a societal problem, it does have a technical solution: if the phone numbering system were redesigned so they worked more like email addresses then people could change their phone numbers or use disposable numbers and aliases which would put an immediate end to unwanted calls... but that's not going to happen.

More phones should just come with whitelist support. Where calls will automatically go to voice mail if it isn't on your list. I have this on my phone due to lots of wrong numbers and it works great.

Details puhlease.

iOS 10 doesn't seem offer a built-in Contacts whitelist feature, but iOS does expose an API allowing third-party applications to filter-out incoming calls and messages: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099 - someone could easily write an app that would use your Contacts as a whitelist, assuming one doesn't already exist.

For iOS, i leave DND mode on full time. Contacts that are Favorited are serve as the whitelist, are not screened by DND. Any second call in 3 minutes will override DND instead of being directed to voicemail.

Android I'm fairly sure has some relevant things built in. On my Motorola I can set a do not disturb time overnight where only alarms and calls from selected people will come through (and some other options and combinations). This is android 7 settings > sound > do not disturb.

There seem to be a lot of apps for whitelisting generally.

I have a contact on my phone named "Spam" which currently has about 25 numbers associated with it. I have it set to "Route to Voicemail" (option in the Google Contacts app).

For iOS, I'm currently checking out Hiya Caller ID and Block by Hiya https://appsto.re/us/cXg16.i

I've had it installed for about an hour now and indeed have not received a single spam call. Experiment at your own discretion.

I'm late to the party, sorry. But I use an Android app called Extreme Call Blocker. Nothing gets through that I don't explicitly allow to get through. And in the case of unknown/anonymous callers, they don't even get my voicemail: There's a setting to pick up the phone and immediately hang up for whichever callers you want. It's basically the equivalent of just not feeding the trolls. It only costs a couple of bucks, but it's easily the best five bucks (or whatever) I've ever spent for an app.

If that were my business I'd charge $.01 to a credit card per call. A bit harder to hide anonymously then.

Or even charge a one-time $1 to sign up, and then free wake-up calls for the life of the account.

Or don't accept requests from known Tor exit nodes and open proxies. Lists of these do exist, though you'll have to pay.

I agree completely with you. Framing the harassment as "trolling" has been a propagandistic victory for the harassers.

Actual trolling is way less worrying. I don't like it and I certainly wouldn't partake in it, but you can actually ignore it. Harassment, not so.

No, it's been a victory for those peddling the fear articles and soliciting victim bucks.

It's really simple. First you make outrageous claims, then you define everyone who disagrees as a harasser. Find the one tweet or comment that's a bit off color, and pretend that's representative. Or just false flag it.

It's the digital version of how to discredit an opposing view or protest, you just need one person smashing a bus stop or looting a store. Once you have enough fear, it becomes self justifying.

Deciding who's the victim and who the harassers seems quite subjective. Let's say that I hit the beach sidewalk wearing a leather-sack-style thong jockstrap, an 18" Bowie knife, and roller blades. Right out of Wild Boys. But totally legal. And let's say that I attracted a crowd of critics, who felt threatened, and who threatened me. And supporters.

Who would be the victim(s), and who would be the harasser(s)?

When I think of harassment, I think of it as an intentional action. If you did that with the intent to disturb people, I think it would then fall under you being the harasser and others being the victim. But then on the other hand if they intentionally threaten or make you feel threatened, they are harassing as well. My definition based on intent may be incorrect, but I feel as though it makes the argument slightly less subjective.

Well, some of the stuff that people do to make a point about discrimination and harassment is expressly done "with the intent to disturb people". I pulled my example from William Burroughs' Wild Boys. But some of the costumes in gay pride marches come pretty damn close. And hey, it's all good fun. But people need to play safe, avoiding needless risk.

Do you honestly believe that free speech is less valuable than law enforcement?

How does converting the internet into a police state help combat anonymous harassment? Privacy is a tool to prevent harassment; not the other way around.

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