christiefan915
Catalyst
WASHINGTON — Ever since law enforcement started seeing cases in the early 2000s, the crime known as sextortion has proliferated on the Internet, altering the lives of thousands and ensnaring victims from college campuses to military bases.
On Wednesday, the Brookings Institution will release two studies billed as the first in-depth reviews of sextortion — in which someone uses nude photographs of someone to demand ever more sexually explicit content or other goods — and its precarious place in a legal system that acknowledges its existence but has yet to write it into law.
“It’s about the security environment in a world in which anyone can attack anyone from anywhere,” said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings, an author of the studies. “When we’re thinking about that, we’re usually thinking about drone strikes or cyberattacks, which has all these same elements. We’re not usually thinking of sexual violence.” Prosecutors say sextortion is increasingly common, with as many as 6,500 victims. It can involve hacking into victims’ computers to steal sexual images or even commandeer a webcam, then using the files to extort the targets.
More often, perpetrators use social media to coax one photograph from a victim, then use that to demand a continual supply. A State Department employee at the American Embassy in London was sentenced to more than four years in prison after threatening to put sexually explicit images of women online. Law enforcement agencies acknowledge the proliferation of sextortion, but it does not exist as a separate offense in federal or state law, nor does any government agency maintain data on it. No academic literature is available to educate the public or provide resources for victims. It is remote and anonymous. It involves high-level computer intelligence, and it gives sexual predators access to thousands of new potential victims, researchers say. And, Mr. Wittes said, it has not been addressed appropriately.
Brookings, for example, found at least 1,397 victims in only 78 cases. In one case, prosecutors identified “at least eight possible minor victims” of a California man who had posed as a teenage girl on social media to trick real teenage girls into sending him explicit photographs. In another, the government refers to “more than 100” possible victims of one perpetrator.
Yet because sextortion is not a crime, its perpetrators are often prosecuted under a piecemeal slate of state and federal charges, such as stalking, extortion and computer fraud. According to Brookings, 71 percent of the cases involved only underage victims, and virtually all adult victims were female.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/u...n=click&contentCollection=U.S.&pgtype=article[/SIZE][/I]&_r=0
On Wednesday, the Brookings Institution will release two studies billed as the first in-depth reviews of sextortion — in which someone uses nude photographs of someone to demand ever more sexually explicit content or other goods — and its precarious place in a legal system that acknowledges its existence but has yet to write it into law.
“It’s about the security environment in a world in which anyone can attack anyone from anywhere,” said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings, an author of the studies. “When we’re thinking about that, we’re usually thinking about drone strikes or cyberattacks, which has all these same elements. We’re not usually thinking of sexual violence.” Prosecutors say sextortion is increasingly common, with as many as 6,500 victims. It can involve hacking into victims’ computers to steal sexual images or even commandeer a webcam, then using the files to extort the targets.
More often, perpetrators use social media to coax one photograph from a victim, then use that to demand a continual supply. A State Department employee at the American Embassy in London was sentenced to more than four years in prison after threatening to put sexually explicit images of women online. Law enforcement agencies acknowledge the proliferation of sextortion, but it does not exist as a separate offense in federal or state law, nor does any government agency maintain data on it. No academic literature is available to educate the public or provide resources for victims. It is remote and anonymous. It involves high-level computer intelligence, and it gives sexual predators access to thousands of new potential victims, researchers say. And, Mr. Wittes said, it has not been addressed appropriately.
Brookings, for example, found at least 1,397 victims in only 78 cases. In one case, prosecutors identified “at least eight possible minor victims” of a California man who had posed as a teenage girl on social media to trick real teenage girls into sending him explicit photographs. In another, the government refers to “more than 100” possible victims of one perpetrator.
Yet because sextortion is not a crime, its perpetrators are often prosecuted under a piecemeal slate of state and federal charges, such as stalking, extortion and computer fraud. According to Brookings, 71 percent of the cases involved only underage victims, and virtually all adult victims were female.
(Continued)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/u...n=click&contentCollection=U.S.&pgtype=article[/SIZE][/I]&_r=0
