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She didn't comment horrible things on his website, only a critique of an article. He took offense to that, de-anonymized her by abusing the moderation system and looked for distasteful comments elsewhere.

I won't speak to the legality of it because I'm not qualified, but it's morally reprehensible.

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That is not necessarily the order these things happened in.

He could have

1. Taken offense to this comment/taken interest in what else this user comments (which you can do without any admin tools)

2. Seen the islamophobic/xenophobic comment

3. De-anonymized the user

In this version the de-anonymization is related to the more repugnant comments, not the initial critique.

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