risp.ri.gov     1
riag.ri.gov     1
ride.ri.gov     1
mhrh.ri.gov     3
narragansettri.gov      1

The local agencies named so far, and I should stress that the accuracy of this data has not been confirmed, (though at least one celebrity, Josh Duggar, has been outed with what looks like a high degree of confidence,) include the Rhode Island State Police, the Rhode Island State Attorney General’s Office, the Rhode Island Department of Education, three accounts from the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (formerly the Rhode Island Department of Mental Health, Retardation & Hospitals) and the official government site of Narragansett, RI.

Ashley Madison is an online dating service, headquartered in Canada, aimed at people who are married or in committed relationships. Its slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair.” Hackers stole the data and demanded that the site be shut down, or the data would be released. The released data, according to experts consulted by the , appears to be real.

This might have been a purely prurient story of no real relevance, the private lives of individuals should remain just that, private. However, the use of government email accounts makes this of interest to voters. Should government workers be using their work emails to potentially cheat on their spouses?

We’ll see what happens as this story unfolds.

In the 60’s and 70’s, as a kid growing up in Providence in a family of modest means, we used to make handmade gifts in woodworking and ceramics classes and exchange them with family members and those close to us. No one ever went into debt for buying everyone something for a holiday that was supposed to be about the birth of Christ.

A couple of generations have passed since then, generations who through no fault of their own grew up bombarded with advertising at almost every turn of their heads. Maybe because not everyone had televisions when I was young, or maybe because we spent more time playing outside, we weren’t exposed to it as much. Now, though, the last generations have grown up in the public relations age and not enough of them were warned about the nature of that business, to influence them to buy, buy, buy.

Radio and print advertising were easy to gloss over, we could change the channel or flip the page, even early TV ads were easy to ignore. But, as the years rolled on, advertisers got more clever and the opportunities arose to hone their skills with television ads, online ads and now ads on smartphones, the succeeding generations got overwhelmed and now by into what advertisers are doing without giving it much thought.

The FCC ruled subliminal advertising illegal in 1974, but think about the aggregate damage the use of non-subliminal advertising has had on our culture. Today, advertisers have the carte blanche right to run just about any ad they want. Corporate America pumps more into advertising their products than it does to produce the goods, thereby pumping up the cost of the product and no one seems to realize the fact.

A marketing student told me just the other day that courses teach students now, just to market to the high-end buyers since the middle class and lower income ranges are already brainwashed into their buying patterns. If this cynical view is being taught in classrooms, imagine the conversations taking place in the marketing departments and board rooms all over America and beyond.

The key is education. When I was a senior at Classical High School, my English teacher, Mr. John Sharkey, took almost two weeks to explain to us the nature of advertising and the need for us to be cynical and critical of every ad we saw since the primary objective was for that ad to separate us from every dollar in our pocket. I have no idea if anyone is still including that lesson in any curriculum, my guess is that since most teachers spend way too much time teaching to a test, that this is one lesson that falls by the wayside.

Our kids need this knowledge. They need to know the difference between the Wamart commercial with paid actors playing associates telling the world what a great place Walmart is to work; and the actual working conditions and bare subsistence level most associates live while Walmart is one of the greatest recipients of corporate welfare. Young men need to know that using Axe spray isn’t going to get them attacked by a group of young women. Young women especially need to know they don’t need to look like fashion models. And everyone should know, they don’t have to go spend money for spending money’s sake just because of the birth of Christ more than 2000 years ago. Christ isn’t getting any of the money spent, it’s all going into corporate coffers.

Merry Xmas, all; and to all a good life!

Later that night I ended up checking out LoveGov, which features as part of its mission statement the “right to individual privacy”. When you see that on the Internet, it usually means the ability to protect personal information from view or misuse, and often it means protecting anonymity on the Internet. In a larger context, it usually fits into “Internet freedom”, which organizations like Demand Progress have taken the lead in fighting for. I want to be clear, I don’t think LoveGov or Demand Progress are advocating anything of the sort that follows.

But, idling about the Internet, I stumbled across this article on Reddit and its user-created censorship of Gawker and the reasons and consequences. To sum that up, a reporter from Gawker was investigating a Reddit moderator (who don’t run the site, and are pretty much given free rein) and decided to publish the Redditor’s real name. The Gawker reporter, Adrian Chen, describes this Redditor as specializing in “”. The current focus of this guy was on a part of Reddit called “CreepShots” which is summed up nicely in this manner “When you are in public, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. We kindly ask women to respect our right to admire your bodies and stop complaining.” Essentially, “we’re going to take pictures of women (usually their breasts and bottoms) and post it on the Internet. Good day.”

So you might see why this makes my jaw drop. But then there’s also something here. Someone decided that the creeps needed to be outed. And out them they did, which is leading police to pursue charges against at least one man. In fact, good people, lead by an anonymous woman are doing so, collecting information on those who posted on CreepShots and posting it publicly to a Tumblr called Predditors, as well as sending it to employers and law enforcement. If you scroll through it, you find a bunch of average men. Average men who just happened to take pictures of women without consent and then post those pictures publicly online.

Reddit, in case you’ve forgotten, was a major player in the SOPA/PIPA Internet blackout. In fact, while this was happening, some of its heads were touring the country touting Internet freedom and activism.

Naturally, the creepers are running scared. One of the fundamental rules of Reddit is “don’t post personal information“. Any of them could be next. And in response to this, the outing of people doing frankly disgusting acts, how did much of the Reddit community respond? When word leaked that Mr. Chen would expose the identity of Violenacrez (a well-connected moderator), the Reddit moderator community preemptively banned all Gawker links across various sub-boards on Reddit. Mr. Chen sums it up simply:

Under Reddit logic, outing Violentacrez is worse than anonymously posting creepshots of innocent women, because doing so would undermine Reddit’s role as a safe place for people to anonymously post creepshots of innocent women.

I am OK with that.

As a feminist, I’m disgusted by these actions. This is the sort of action that people who’ve made the mistake of treating anonymity as equaling “male” would undertake. I know it’s surprising to folks, but it’s no longer a man’s web. The stereotype of computer users being nerds who’d drool over the thought of a woman has long since passed. Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are dominated by women. Female consumers are the economic engine that makes the Internet profitable.

And as someone who values liberty and free speech, I’m disgusted. There are times when anonymous speech is right and just. And then there are times when anonymity is used merely to shield yourself from the consequences of reprehensible behavior. And the latter is what every poster on Reddit who ever posted a creepshot is engaging in. It’s what every pseudonymed commenter on the Journal or GoLocalProv who posts something they’d never ever say in public engages in. You have the right to say whatever horrible thought springs into your head. But you don’t have the right not to suffer consequences. Especially if it’s sexist garbage.

Good on the people behind Predditors for creating consequences.

As an added note, Tuesday was Ada Lovelace Day, named for the first computer programmer.