Cyber Stalking

Dear Dr. Bahma

Hello,

I ‘d appreciate your attention and the time you spent on reading through my weblog and posting useful feedbacks on it.

I have already responded to your notes by posting comments on my weblog following to your posts. But I ‘d like to explain more about my weblog in this email.

First of all, the initial entry of my weblog is all regarding explanation about Cyber Stalking by the use of law. I also preferred to come up with a rich article in order to provide newly readers with the opportunity to fully understand about Cyber Stalking.

Considering compulsory requirements for our weblog mentioned by you, I used quotations from other websites and cited them properly. Additionally, I posted my opinions related to every single post except two of them, which are Law-Cases as follows:
1. law-limited-in-cyberstalking-cases.
2. Identify a Craig’s list Stalker With a Reverse Email Search.

Secondly, I chose this topic due to the issues that I have seen and heard about large number of women around the world who are hurt and disturbed by these kinds of crimes, but because they don’t know anything about  the law unable defined themselves.  My aim was to help this group of people.

In the end, I again thank for your attention and I will try my best to post better pieces of information on my weblog from
 now on.

Sincerely,
Mohadeseh  Pourbehzadi

The former human-resources manager at the Great Wolf Lodge in Thurston County has pleaded guilty to charges of cyber stalking for making more than 4,000 obscene and threatening phone calls to 1,200 different people in the United States and Canada.
Daniel Leonard, 32, of Olympia, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on Tuesday and faces up to five years in prison when he's sentenced Dec. 3.
Leonard's crimes were first discovered by the Monterey, Calif., police in August 2009 when a woman reported receiving what the U.S. Attorney's Office described as "highly sexual and threatening phone calls." She said the caller ID showed several different numbers and area codes, but that the voice — which sounded altered in some fashion — was always the same.
The woman received calls at home and at work for several months, until police were able to track down a so-called telephone "spoofing service," which allows a caller to change or fake a caller ID number.
The company, Tel Tech, in New Jersey, said Leonard had used the service and provided records of all the calls he had made.
The records showed that Leonard had called hundreds of women, including one woman in his apartment complex in Olympia, who received 177 calls. The woman filed numerous police reports, saying she believed the caller could see inside her apartment when he was talking to her.
Investigators say Leonard often used a device that electronically altered his voice.
A federal search warrant revealed that some of the victims had worked with Leonard either at the Great Wolf Lodge, a resort outside Grand Mound, or when he worked in human resources at the Hotel Victor in Miami.
Federal prosecutors say many of the victims altered their lives. Some moved, others quit jobs and still others canceled their cellphone numbers, only to start receiving calls at work or home.



http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012897687_leonard15m.html

MARION COUNTY, Fla. -- It's the modern day equivalent of graffiti on a bathroom wall. A Marion County girl was arrested for posting explicit messages about another girl and adding her phone number to an Internet porn site.
Marion County sheriff's deputies say 17-year-old Shannon Marie Mitchell posted sexually explicit messages about a 15-year-old girl on a porn website. The messages included the girl's cell phone number along with comments like “great at phone sex.”
The messages were enough for investigators to transport Shannon Mitchell to the Juvenile Assessment Center on a charge of aggravated cyberstalking, which is a felony.
“Guys from wherever were calling saying, ‘I’m going to be in Ocala. I hear you do this, I hear you do that.’ As you can imagine, for a 15-year-old girl, that's got to be hell,” Judge Cochran of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said.
Mitchell, a high school senior, was interviewed at her Ocala home by detectives. During the interview, detectives said, Shannon stated, “I did it,” and told detectives the victim would not stop harassing her.
Mitchell and the 15-year-old victim have never met, but investigators say the suspect is currently dating the victim's ex-boyfriend and that may have been enough to provoke Mitchell.
To the victim’s family, it is not a game.
“She has received countless inappropriate text messages, private phone calls coming through,” the victim’s mother told WFTV over the phone.
The sheriff's office said that the original posts that prompted their investigation have been removed. But with more complaints of teens harassing each other via cell phone and over the Internet, deputies want teens to know how seriously they take the crime.
“When you make a call to the Marion County Sheriff's Office and say my child is being cyber-bullied or sexually harassed, we investigate that,” Cochran said.
Mitchell is charged with a third-degree felony. If she were an adult, that charge could carry a maximum of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. However, in the juvenile system the focus is on rehabilitation and judges have more discretion.

http://www.wftv.com/news/22715275/detail.html

States have begun to address the use of computer equipment for stalking purposes by including provisions prohibiting such activity in both harassment and anti-stalking legislation (Riveira, 1,2). A handful of states, such as Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire and New York have specifically including prohibitions against harassing electronic, computer or e-mail communications in their harassment legislation. Alaska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and more recently, California, have incorporated electronically communicated statements as conduct constituting stalking in their anti-stalking laws. A few states have both stalking and harassment statutes that criminalize threatening and unwanted electronic communications. Other states have laws other than harassment or anti-stalking statutes that prohibit misuse of computer communications and e-mail, while others have passed laws containing broad language that can be interpreted to include cyberstalking behaviors (Gregorie).

> Recent federal law has addressed cyberstalking as well. The Violence Against Women Act, passed in 2000, made cyberstalking a part of the federal interstate stalking statute. Other federal legislation that addresses cyberstalking has been introduced recently, but no such measures have yet been enacted. Consequently, there remains a lack of legislation at the federal level to specifically address cyberstalking, leaving the majority of legislative prohibitions against cyberstalking at the state level (Wiredpatrol.org).

Over 1 million women and 900,000 men are stalked in the UK every year** but until now there’s been very little research available about cyber-stalking. Today sees the launch of a research project expected to reveal the true extent of the problem.  The Electronic Communication Harassment Observation (ECHO) was commissioned by the charity Network for Surviving Stalking and will be carried out in partnership with University of Bedfordshire.    
Project leader Dr Emma Short from the University psychology department expects the research findings to change public attitudes towards stalking,”There are stalkers for whom the internet and mobile phones are just convenient ‘tools of their trade’.  But we think there are also vast numbers of internet users who are engaged in harassing behaviours simply because they don’t know the rules of appropriate on-line communication. At the moment there are very few widely agreed guidelines or rules about how to behave on-line – we hope ECHO will define behaviours that are generally experienced as anti social or likely to cause distress in on-line communication.”
Chief Executive of Network for Surviving Stalking Alexis Bowater, herself a cyber-stalking victim, urges anyone with experience of on-line harassment or cyber-stalking to participate in the study. “If you’ve been bombarded by emails, or if someone’s made you feel alarmed, distressed or even frightened by what they’ve sent, written or posted about you on-line, please tell us about it by filling in an ECHO questionnaire. It’s anonymous. Network for Surviving Stalking is putting cyber-stalking on the agenda in government; industry and the criminal justice system – it’s time everyone started taking this crime seriously.”
Anyone who thinks they’ve experienced on-line harassment or cyber-stalking can take part in ECHO.  Participants are asked information about their on-line behaviour; what form the harassment has taken and how it has affected them.  The questionnaire is at www.nssadvice.org/survey




http://www.nss.org.uk/2010/09/cyber-stalking-project-launched/

The problem that prosecutor Jack Banas is running into the case against Lori Drew is a legal one. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read my post “Megan’s MySpace Suicide” and this Fox News article about the case.) There are no laws on which he can bring charges against Drew and her co-conspirators. Missouri state law is too narrow and doesn’t include cases of cyberstalking, which is what we’re talking about here because Megan Meier was the target of this harassment. Banas can’t bring charges against Drew if the specific situation doesn’t fit with the law, and that’s the problem into which he’s up against. He can’t take the case to court without charges and he can’t bring up charges because the law hasn’t yet been adjusted to our changing cyberworld.
According to the Fox News Article, only a handful of states have specific laws to address the growing problem of cyberstalking; these states include Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Washington. A few other states–Florida, Nevada, Delaware, and Virginia–have made changes to their stalking laws to include cyberstalking.
Banas’ hands are tied. In order to allow for prosecution in further cases where teens or others are harassed online, we have to let our state legislatures know that they need to be abreast of the changes in how people communicate in our world and make laws that protect citizens accordingly. It won’t bring back Megan Meier, but it will bring justice to other victims of online harassment.




http://atypicalgirl.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/law-limited-in-cyberstalking-cases/

The Network for Surviving Stalking says the police, Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are doing their best to tackle the problem.
It says service providers have a moral responsibility to help prevent the abuse but are doing little about it.
However, providers have said there is little more they can do.
There are few statistics but, anecdotally, they say cyber stalking is a widespread and growing problem.
One victim, who did not want to be named, told the BBC she was subjected to abuse, insults and death threats from a stranger online over a five-year period. She described receiving up to 30 messages every day.
Her work meant she had to be contactable online but she never replied to the messages and continually blocked the sender. However, her stalker simply changed their profile and continued to track, abuse and threaten the woman and her family.
"I constantly reported it to the police. I didn't feel I had the same support that someone would have if they were stalked offline. It was very much 'turn the computer off, change your name online'. I felt the support wasn't there and that was what was more upsetting because I felt very trapped and nobody could help me at all."
The police say every force does now have a dedicated point of contact for harassment issues and the government says it is taking action.
The Home Office, police and CPS are set to begin work with charities on an anti-stalking strategy in the autumn.
Jennifer Perry of E-Victims.org called on the government to "set the agenda so that online harassment will be taken seriously, the police take it seriously and business is forced to act".
But the Network for Surviving Stalking says internet service providers are the missing link as they are refusing to take part in the initiative.
It says they have a moral and corporate responsibility to take part.


Alexis Bowater, of Network for Surviving Stalking, said: "We need the internet service providers to get on board they need to take moral and ethical and corporate responsibility for what is happening to the millions of customers that they make billions out of."
However, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) says it is doing all it can about the abuse but it is not possible to police the internet in the way demanded by victims' groups.
James Blessing, of ISPA, says many people "assume that internet service providers can do more that they actually can", comparing expectations of them to "asking the police to put a speed camera on every stretch of road in the country".
He said: "Internet service providers are there to help charities and government to find solutions to this and we have been talking to them for many years. Unfortunately expectations from other parties seem to be a lot a higher than what is actually achievable in a technical and operational sense."
Paul Mutton, of online security firm Netcraft, told BBC Breakfast that computer users always have to be careful what personal details they make available on the internet.
"If you don't want people to find out information on you, don't put it on the internet," he said.
"ISPs can do a little bit to help out, by encouraging users to install anti-virus software, firewalls and such like, but ultimately if you put your information online you are relying on those websites to remain secure, and for their privacy settings not to expose that information to anyone.
"If in doubt, don't put the information online in the first place."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11118152

It was a moment Roland Reed had long dreaded. "Just Googled you, dad," began the text from his daughter. "Why are all these people saying horrible things about you online?" Reed stepped out of work, took a deep breath and dialled his daughter's number. As calmly as he could, he explained that he wasn't really a child abuser, but that someone on the internet had it in for him. A cyberstalker had chosen Reed as his victim, apparently at random. "I told her, 'It's just some nutter, ignore it,'" he says.

But Reed himself couldn't. Every night he logged on to the internet to see what his stalker had been doing to destroy his reputation that day. The allegations were spreading insidiously on internet forums, and he was powerless to stop them. Even if he did have time to contact each site moderator – where one existed – there was no point, he believed. His stalker, posting from behind an untraceable proxy server, would just create a new identity and spring up elsewhere. Plus, he didn't want this belligerent stranger to know that he cared. It would just feed their lust for attention and destruction.

Being accused of paedophilia is damaging for anyone, but for Reed, a 42-year-old youth worker, it was catastrophic. He had already warned his boss that someone had started a smear campaign against him, calling him a child molester on various message boards, and then adopting multiple personas to pile on to these forums and give the impression that lots of people agreed. Luckily, Reed's boss believed him. But what about anyone else who was bored enough to enter his name into a search engine? "Any time a work colleague gives me a strange look, I think, has he found this stuff about me on the internet?" says Reed, who is still being targeted to this day.

Cyberstalking shares much with its offline cousin, but whereas "real life" stalkers almost always know their victims, usually intimately but occasionally merely by sight, on the internet there are more people who target individuals for no discernible reason – as Reed found out to his horror. It can describe any repetitive behaviour that makes someone else feel uncomfortable or threatened; that might mean unsolicited emailing, instant messaging and spamming, or compiling a dossier of personal information about a person in order to harass, threaten or intimidate them on- or offline. It might mean posing as someone else online, setting up a profile on a social networking site or an email address that is similar to the victim's own. Or, as in Reed's case, the creation of an online smear campaign to blacken a victim's name.
Reed agrees that cyberstalking is no lesser crime. "It's just as hurtful. The fact that it's a faceless coward hiding behind the anonymity of the internet is so frustrating. It allows them to do and say things they could never get away with in real life." And because it is easier to cyberstalk someone but harder to assess the effect it has, cyberstalkers tend to ratchet up their activity, says Sheridan. "Indeed, cyberstalkers may develop a tolerance to internet-based harassment, requiring more extreme activity in order to achieve the same 'rush'," she wrote in the study, noting that "similar tolerances have been observed among internet-using sexually addicted males."
The existing laws in England and Wales are not specific to stalking (the harassment act includes disputes between neighbours, for example), making it hard to assess just how prevalent the problem is. The CPS insists its new guidelines will ensure that more stringent restraining orders are granted, for example, and discourage the authorities from dismissing stalking as a bit of unwanted but essentially harmless attention.
"The problem of stalking on the internet is increasing and will continue to increase while we still take too many chances by allowing ready access to personal information on social networking sites," says assistant chief constable Garry Shewan of the Greater Manchester Police, the Association of Chief Police Officers' (Acpo) lead spokesman on stalking. Compounding this, in the online space there remains confusion over activities that would seem creepy when transposed to in the real world. People need to start making that comparison before they do something they might regret, says Dr Emma Short, a psychologist at the University of Bedfordshire, who today is launching one of the largest ever research projects into cyberstalking. "Quite a lot of people think it is acceptable to post compromising photographs of their exes online, yet they wouldn't dream of photocopying the pictures and posting them on their door," she says.
"My research has shown that everybody has an idea of the rules of the internet, but the problem is that everyone's idea is slightly different. I gave a lecture recently where one girl said that she was considering calling the police because her ex-boyfriend had posted graphic photos of her on Facebook, and then another student said she had just split up with her boyfriend and had done the exact same thing. She said it was fine because 'he had it coming'."

Statistics from Sheridan show that just 4% of stalking victims are harassed online only. More often, stalkers use the internet as another weapon in their armoury. Sarah Jones, 38, was harassed by a work colleague who began by making inappropriate comments in the office. "'Your hair looks nice, but I preferred it longer' – that sort of thing. Things that on their own don't mean too much, but when added together revealed a disturbing pattern of behaviour," she says.

After Jones complained to HR, her stalker started threatening to kill her in emails, calling her a "bitch" and a "whore", and revealing that he had found out personal details about herself and her family. Sometimes the threats were written in Latin – it is a common tactic of cyberstalkers to use a foreign language, she has since discovered. She eventually reported him to the police and he pleaded guilty to harassment after telling police he had a plan to break into her house, rape and kill her and then kill himself. He was given a nine-month jail sentence. Since his release, Jones has received a number of silent phone calls. They were traced to phone boxes near his parents' house, but there wasn't enough evidence to prove he was responsible.
There is no one catalyst for cyberstalking. Reed's ordeal began two years ago when he and his wife thought about buying a property in France. Unsure of the logistics, Reed decided to do some research, and stumbled across an internet forum for Britons looking to purchase houses abroad. In a public post, he briefly introduced himself to other members using his first name only, and asked for advice on the French property market. A few days later he received a threatening personal message via the site. "I just assumed it was a bored teenager getting up to mischief, so I sent back a reply along the lines of 'go away, little boy' and assumed that would be the end of that."

Responding, Reed believes now, was a mistake. "It showed that I had noticed what he was doing." Soon, he was receiving abusive messages and death threats from the same individual. One day, in a private message, the stalker announced that he had figured out Reed's full identity, and proudly trotted out his address, date of birth and wife's name. Every detail was correct. "I was horrified that someone would go to that extreme to find out information about someone they didn't know. There was absolutely no logical reason for it," says Reed.

But things were soon to get worse. "One day a friend phoned me up and said, 'Why are people writing stuff about you on the internet?' I didn't know what he was talking about, so he told me to Google my name," says Reed. On a news forum a group of people appeared to be accusing him of being a paedophile. He quickly realised that the messages had almost certainly been written by the same individual. "They all made the same grammatical errors and used phrases and pet words I recognised as coming from my stalker," says Reed.
Each week the stalker would repeat the allegations on different forums, and Reed was powerless to act. "Now I've had to stop torturing myself," says Reed. "If I checked up on him every day I would make myself ill." This sort of smear campaign is a common tactic for cyberstalkers, though it is more usually carried out by someone with a grudge. One woman cited in Sheridan's study said: "I started to get vicious, hateful emails from a variety of addresses. All were anonymous. And someone was pretending to be me and being vile to my clients. After about half a year of this, my ex started turning up and asked how my business was, quoting from these hateful emails. It was him who had sent them, and he was so proud of himself! It was such a shock, as we had parted months before on (I thought, anyway) good terms."

Other victims described how their stalkers had impersonated them on sex sites, giving their personal details out to men. Many talked of stalkers hacking into their email accounts, creating their own versions of their Facebook pages, and sending offensive emails to people in their name. Reed's response was to try to remove all mention of himself from the internet to stop his stalker finding out any more about him. That's why told his boss what was going on, and requested that his name be removed from any electronic newsletters that might mention his youth work projects or include a picture of him. "But you can't stop third parties quite innocently mentioning me," he adds. "I have discovered you can't be ex-directory on the internet."
After taking legal advice, he decided it wasn't worth reporting it to the police. "The stalker is abroad in a different jurisdiction and there is no guarantee the police there would be able to do anything about it. I just have to hope he will get bored and give up. That's why I don't ask forum moderators to delete his filth – then he would say, 'Ha, ha! He is reading this', and it will encourage him to carry on."

Lack of reporting, though, is a huge problem, according to Acpo's Shewan. "One of the things we all agree on is to encourage victims of stalking to seek help, to contact the police and charities." He adds that the police are hoping to work with internet service providers in the coming year to encourage them to help users report harassment. "The police and internet service providers have a responsibility to do more," he says. "If you look at child abuse, for example, there has been strong work in recent years that allows young people who feel they have been groomed or are upset about something said to them on the internet to press online buttons that will alert internet companies and criminal justice agencies. There are opportunities for similar types of processes to be set up."

Everyone, he says, should think hard about what personal information they put online – something all victims agree on. "Never give away your real name, even your first name," says Reed, "and never give away your job or location. It's preferable not even to reveal your gender. Definitely don't put up photos. I've since discovered that my stalker has targeted others and posed as them on forums using their photo as his avatar."
People need to become much more aware of the information they put out about themselves, says Short. We're in a sort of anything-goes twilight zone, she suggests, where people don't think they are really at risk. "In a way, it's a bit like when the HIV/Aids campaign began and people didn't think it could happen to them. People need to understand that some of their behaviour online opens them up to risk and modify it accordingly."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/24/ukcrime-police

Stalkers, including those who use the internet to target victims, will face tougher action, it was announced today, as prosecutors admitted they have failed to take the problem seriously in the past.
Suspected online and face-to-face stalkers will face court orders banning them from contacting victims, the Crown Prosecution Service pledged, even when they have been acquitted by the courts.
"Stalkers steal lives," said Nazir Afzal, CPS community liaison director. "We as police and prosecutors haven't taken it seriously in the past. Now we do."
The announcement came as prosecutors were given new guidance on how to deal with cases of stalking, including conducting risk assessments of victims and working with other agencies.
Prosecutors estimate that around 1 million people in the UK have experienced stalking. Although no figures are collated on the number of cases dealt with through the courts, there are thought to have only been a few hundred prosecutions.
"People have not been reporting stalking cases," said Afzal. "We believe that if people realise we are talking it seriously, that will encourage them to come forward."
But the measures are likely to provoke controversy, as an increased use of "restraining orders" will target even those who have been acquitted by courts.

"There may be cases where a victim has given evidence about stalking but the court does not convict the suspect. Restraining orders will be a vital tool … for the ongoing need for the protection of the victim," said Arwel Jones, CPS policy unit head for law and procedure.
"In cases of cyber-stalking, restraining orders can prevent the individual from communicating via a social networking site. A breach of a restraining order carries criminal liability."
Critics have long called for reform of a law that still does not recognise stalking as a distinct criminal offence. The existing guidelines instruct prosecutors to use the existing Protection from Harassment Act, which was passed in 1997 before the widespread use of the internet.
Prosecutors have said they will proceed in cases where there is sufficient evidence, even if the victim is against the action being taken. "We hope that charity organisations will provide the necessary support," Jones said.
Victims' groups welcomed the new guidelines. "This new guidance will go a long way to improving the lives of victims and to make sure that perpetrators are treated appropriately by the courts. Recognising in particular new forms of stalking such as cyber-stalking is ground-breaking," said Alexis Bowater, chief executive for the Network for Surviving Stalking.
"We hope the inclusion of cyber-stalking for the first time will encourage everyone involved to take this crime more seriously."
The new guidelines on prosecuting stalking come amidst continuing high-profile celebrity stalking cases, with actress Keira Knightly among those whose stalkers have been arrested by police.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/23/cps-prosecute-online-stalking

One computer, five phones and a sophisticated plan for stalking were used by cyber stalker David Cruz to harass his friend.

Cruz's six months of stalking Chloe Easton by e-mail, internet and text messaging was cut short by his arrest in May last year.
 
On Tuesday the American was jailed for five months at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court, bringing an end to a one-year police investigation. The investigation also revealed Cruz harassed another woman with threatening and malicious e-mails, in breach of a restraining order taken out against him in March 1999.
Cruz was also ordered not to go within 100 metres of Ms Easton or her parents or to a series of sporting venues where she runs competitively. But District Judge Mr McPhee made no recommendations in response to a Crown application to have Cruz deported to the US.
 
Detective Sergeant David Clubley, in charge of the case, said the court had granted a police request for Cruz's computer and phones to be seized, for later use in showing how successful police investigations into cyber stalking have been.  "He had a five-point plan on stalking, everything was planned, and nothing was left to chance. It was all calculated," Det Sgt Clubley said.
 
Confidante
 
His victim was a young woman he met through mutual friends. While she confided in him during a difficult time, he posted her personal details on the internet and began harassing her family and friends. After cracking the system, police found files protected by the password "abuser", including e-mails Cruz had sent to the woman.

The job of analysing the computer was given to the company that helped track the Wonderland Club international paedophile ring and recently helped police with al-Qaeda investigations. Among harassment suffered by Ms Easton's family and friends, her father once received a pornographic video attachment in an email which showed a woman "who looked remarkably like his daughter" engaged in group sex, Det Sgt Clubley said.
 
She was also sent up to 30 sexually explicit text messages a day with "disgusting sexual connotations."
 
Prostitute ranking
 
Police linked Cruz to the text messages by examining pages and pages of itemised phone numbers made from five phones. Phone numbers in the memory of Cruz's phone matched some of the numbers from the other phones. Cruz also posted personal details of the victim on a site described by Det Sgt Clubley as a "prostitute evaluation site". Her name, phone number and a description of sex services she had supposedly performed were posted for one day and received more than 700 hits.
 
It was eventually taken down by the service provider after a complaint from Ms Easton and police, but that did not stop the numerous calls she then received from potential clients asking for her services.
 
Chat room alias
 
Cruz also set up several aliases in a chatroom and discussed the woman's personal details. He then notified the victim that while he had been browsing the internet he had come across her name in the chat room, all the while writing the information himself that she had confided in him.  "At each stage he looked in advance to see how to cover himself. He even tried to set up his flatmate once. Nothing was spontaneous," Det Set Clubley said. More than a year after the stalking began, Ms Easton is "getting on with life."
"Her main problem, that she is still dealing with now, is the fact that she wasn't believed at the start," Det Sgt Clubley said.
When she accused Cruz of stalking her, he made a counter claim, saying she had sent explicit e-mails to him. In fact, he had hacked into her e-mail account and written the e-mails himself.
 
British police found details of another alleged victim, in America, in Cruz's computer and contacted Tennessee police. It was a "carbon copy" of the UK stalking and happened in the late 1990s. But Tennessee police ran out of time to prosecute and the case was never taken further.
 
An American student was stalked by Cruz after she wanted to end a short-lived relationship with him that began when they met in England in June 1998. After she returned to the States, Cruz e-mailed to say he wanted to visit her while on a trip there.
 
Vague threats
 
"She had already tried to break off the love interest part of the relationship, but wanted to keep the friendship going as he had been nothing less than cordial to her," Detective Dana McReynolds of the University of Tennessee police told BBC News Online. "He wasn't interested in ending it and made vague threats via e-mail."
 
Police then received e-mails from a person purporting to be a local doctor, complaining that his son had been solicited over the internet by the student. The student denied all knowledge of the son's doctor and had never been a prostitute. As police could find no trace of the doctor they began to suspect that the e-mail was malicious. The student could pinpoint only one person who would send such e-mails - she claimed it was Cruz. She had already taken out a restraining order against Cruz in March 1999, which he had breached by e-mailing her. "We tried looking for him, but believe he either left the state or the country. We went to his house, but he had gone. We went to his place of work, but he had left," Det McReynolds told BBC News Online.
 
Fictitious doctor
 
As the stalking stopped when Cruz disappeared, Det McReynolds believed he had the right man. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations - 11 months and 29 days - ran out before Cruz could be traced or any charges laid. The Tennessee victim was linked to Chloe Easton by e-mails found in Cruz's computer by British detectives. E-mails Cruz had sent to Det McReynolds, and e-mails sent from Det McReynolds to the fictitious doctor were found on the same computer.
 
"I never spoke to Mr Cruz, but he sent me e-mails threatening to get me fired, saying that I was harassing him, that the victim had cooked up the allegations to smear his name" Det McReynolds told BBC News Online. While the Tennessee case against Cruz is essentially closed, the district attorney does have the power to re-open the case.




Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3040623.stm

http://www.cyberstalkinglaws.com/category/cyberstalking-laws-articles

Cyberstalking is a recent form of criminal behavior involving persistent threats or unwanted attention using the Internet and other means of computer communications.
With more and more people going “online,” the opportunity to target someone on the Internet is becoming limitless. Cyberstalkers visit chat rooms, discussion forums or message boards in search of victims. The range of cyberstalking can range from aggressive and hostile email, chat room bullying, leaving abusing messages in guest books to sending e-viruses, tracing a victim’s computer and identity theft.
Like regular stalkers, cyberstalkers want to intimidate and control their victims. Cyberstalkers do it with the use of the Internet. The Internet can be used to trace the victim’s real name and address. For instance, it is remarkably easy to find out what party a victim is planning to attend and when by checking the information on a site such as Facebook.
The use of technology makes locating a victim easier than ever before. Anyone can type in certain key words into the computer which will bring up a myriad of internet datafurnishing companies that supply private records and information online, either free or for a nominal fee. The internet can do what private detectives of the past only dreamed of doing.
States are attempting to deal with this new form of criminal behavior. Early in 2009, the state of California enacted a set of new stalking laws. These laws make it a misdemeanor to publish information on the Internet which describes a teacher or his or her family or mentions where the teacher lives with the intent of having another person commit a crime against that teacher. The penalty is up to one year in prison and/or a $1,000 fine. This law can also be invoked to protect people other than teachers against cyber-threats. It is now considered a misdemeanor in California to place any person in fear of his or her safety by means of Internet threats and threats using cell phones, PDAs, video recorders or pagers.
Several cases of cyberstalking have been prosecuted under California’s new cyberstalking laws. In the state’s very first case, the state prosecuted a man who used the internet to impersonate his victim, a young woman who’d spurned his attentions. Pretending to be the victim, the man posted her phone number and address and stated that she had rape fantasies she wanted fulfilled. Strange men started to show up at the victim’s apartment ready to rape her and became angry when she refused. The cyberstalker was sentenced to six years in prison.
In another case, a graduate student from the University of San Diego cyberstalked five female students for a year. He sent hundreds of threatening emails. The graduate student was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison. He told police the women were ridiculing him. The victims, in fact, had never met this man.
Prior to California’s anti-cyberstalking laws, the crime was difficult to prosecute. Deidre Des Jardins, a student at UC-Santa Cruz, started getting violet emails from her ex-boyfriend. Some threats were directed at her, others dealt with violence in general. Local law enforcement agents were unable to do anything since the act of cyberstalking had not been clearly defined as a crime. The campus police, also, were unable to act, even though the threatening emails continued for several years. Deidre was told that since some of the messages dealt with violence in general and not specifically with her, it didn’t fit the definition of cyberstalking. Her ex-boyfriend was never arrested.
Cyberstalking can evolve into real-life stalking where the victim is harassed by excessive telephone calls, vandalism, trespassing and even physical assault.
Some cyberstalkers know their victims. Others have some kind of imaginary connection to the ones they stalk. It is not unusual for a celebrity cyberstalker to become violent when his fantasy is threatened. In a recent news story, a cyberstalker sent cyberthreats to a Knox County state’s attorney because the stalker believed that the state’s attorney was interfering in his relationship with model Cheryl Tiegs. The cyberstalker was obsessed with Tiegs and had been stalking her for years. She had never met him. The relationship existed in the cyberstalker’s mind only.
Cyberstalking is a real threat. Due to limited laws, the only real defense to use caution when revealing personal information on the Internet. The less, the better.



http://www.cyberstalkinglaws.com/category/cyberstalking-laws-articles/page/6

A new survey has been launched in an effort to find out the true level of cyberstalking in the UK.
It comes a day after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) unveiled new guidance to prosecutors and promised to get tough on cyberstalkers.
More than one million women and 900,000 men are stalked in the UK every year, according to the British Crime Survey.
But until now no research has been done to find out how many people are stalked or harassed online.
On Friday the Electronic Communication Harassment Observation (Echo) survey, commissioned by the charity Network for Surviving Stalking, was launched by researchers at the University of Bedfordshire.
They are hoping to find people who have been stalked, harassed or threatened through e-mail, on internet chatrooms or on social networking sites like Facebook.
Project leader Dr Emma Short said: "There are stalkers for whom the internet and mobile phones are just convenient 'tools of their trade'.
"But we think there are also vast numbers of internet users who are engaged in harassing behaviours simply because they don't know the rules of appropriate online communication.

On Thursday the CPS's community liaison director, Nazir Afzal, said the new guidance to prosecutors was the first time stalking - and cyberstalking in particular - had been officially recognised.
'Fear and trepidation'
Mr Afzal said: "Stalkers steal lives, that was the message I picked up from speaking to victims. Victims stop trusting those they know and every stranger is seen as a threat.
"People often can't answer the phone, receive texts or go to a familiar place without fear and trepidation. We want to give people their lives back."
Alexis Bowater, chief executive for the Network for Surviving Stalking, welcomed the new CPS guidelines.
She said: "This will go a long way to improving the lives of victims and to making sure that perpetrators are treated appropriately by the courts. Recognising, in particular, new forms of stalking such as cyberstalking is groundbreaking."
Liz Lynne, Lib Dem MEP for the West Midlands, said: "The crime of cyberstalking has exploded across Europe with the growth of the internet and social networking sites.
"It is not just celebrities who attract stalkers, nor is it just something that affects teenagers."



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11404284

Ms Bernal, 22, was shot dead by former boyfriend Michael Pech in September 2005 while she was working in Harvey Nichols, in Knightsbridge, London. The fun run, at Mascalls School, in Paddock Wood, was raising money to help harassment and stalking victims.

Ms Bernal's mother, Tricia, said the aim was to set up a national helpline. "Stalking and harassment is on the increase," she said.  "We are now getting a lot of cyber stalking via the internet and mobile phones and there is nowhere for these victims to go."

At the time of the shooting, Pech was awaiting sentencing after admitting harassment. After killing Ms Bernal, who grew up in Tunbridge Wells, he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. Last year, Mrs Bernal helped to set up a charity, the CRT Trust, in memory of three young women, including Clare, who were murdered by stalkers.

Participants in the fun run were allowed to walk, jog or crawl - and dogs on leads were welcomed.
About 400 people were registered to take part in the event.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8042759.stm

Cyberstalking is a relatively new challenge for most law enforcement agencies. The first traditional stalking law was enacted by the state of California in 1990 Since that time, some law enforcement agencies have trained their personnel on stalking and/or established specialized units to handle stalking cases. Many agencies are still developing the expertise and resources to investigate and prosecute traditional stalking cases; only some of agencies throughout the country have focused attention or resources specifically on the cyberstalking problem.


Law enforcement response: awareness and training are key factors

Based on recent informal surveys of law enforcement agencies, it appears that the majority of agencies have not investigated or prosecuted any cyberstalking cases. However, some agencies – specially those with units dedicated to stalking or computer crime offenses - have large cyberstalking caseloads. The New York Police Department's Computer Investigation and Technology Unit and the Los Angeles District Attorney's Stalking and Threat Assessment Team estimate that 40 and 20 percent of their caseloads, involve cyberstalking-type cases.

The dissimilarity in the activity level among law enforcement agencies can be attributed to a number of factors. First, it appears that the majority of cyberstalking victims do not report the conduct to law enforcement, because they feel that the conduct has not reached the point of being a criminal offense. Another reason can be that law enforcement will not take them seriously. Second, most law enforcement agencies have not had the training to recognize the serious nature of cyberstalking and to investigate such offenses. Unfortunately, some victims have reported that rather than open an investigation, a law enforcement agency has advised them to come back if the cyberstalkers confront or threaten them offline. In several instances, victims have been told by law enforcement simply to turn off their computers.

Another indication that many law enforcement agencies underestimate the magnitude of the cyberstalking problem is the wide disparity in reported cases in different jurisdictions across the country. For example, one state attorney general's office in a midwestern state indicated that it received approximately one inquiry a week regarding cyberstalking cases and that it is aware of approximately a dozen prosecutions last year alone. In contrast, the state deputy general's offices in neighboring states indicated they have never received an inquiry into this type of behavior. Although one would generally expect some disparity in differing jurisdictions, the size of the disparity suggests that some law enforcement agencies do not have the training or expertise to recognize the magnitude of the problem in their jurisdictions.