Dear Dr.Bahma

Posted by : Mohadeseh Pourbehzadi | Sunday, November 14, 2010 | Published in

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

Law & Cyber Stalking 2

Posted by : Mohadeseh Pourbehzadi | Saturday, November 6, 2010 | Published in


I found that cyber stalking is a new challenge for governments law agencies and  it appears which most of them have not worked on cyber stalking cases; because it is not a general and ordinary cyber crime.
But low level of activity about this crime between these agents maybe comes from a few numbers of files which are officially registered in courts.

I found that most of cyber stalking victims do not report to law agencies, either because they feel that it is not useable and they can never and ever get a result from this way. In the other hand, I found some evidences in few articles which shows most law  agencies have not prepared for this kind of crime. 


In my opinion, for preventing of committing this kind of crimes, governments have to prepare suitable situation for law agencies to be more familiar with similar cases and change them to trustable and reliable agencies for people of societies and in the other hand giving information about this crime to people of society

Man guility of cyber stalking: 4,000 calls to 1,200 people

Posted by : Mohadeseh Pourbehzadi | Thursday, November 4, 2010 | Published in

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

17-Year-Old Girl Charged With Cyberstalking Fellow Teen

Posted by : Mohadeseh Pourbehzadi | Wednesday, November 3, 2010 | Published in

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

Law & Cyber Stalking 1

Posted by : Mohadeseh Pourbehzadi | Tuesday, November 2, 2010 | Published in

With personal information becoming readily available to an increasing number of people through the Internet and other advanced technology, state legislators are addressing the problem of stalkers who harass and threaten their victims over the World Wide Web. Stalking laws and other statutes criminalizing harassment behavior currently in effect in many states may already address this issue by making it a crime to communicate by any means with the intent to harass or alarm the victim.

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).

John Mark Karr Under Investigation For Cyberstalking

Posted by : Mohadeseh Pourbehzadi | Friday, October 15, 2010 | Published in

The man who falsely confessed nearly four years ago to murdering JonBenet Ramsey is under investigation for cyberstalking a woman he met when he was a teacher and she was 9 years old, a Seattle TV station reports.

KING 5 News is reporting that Samantha Spiegel, 19, told Inside Edition that she first met John Mark Karr in San Francisco 10 years ago when he taught there as a substitute teacher.
They reconnected over video chat and e-mail. When she tried to break off their relationship, she claimed that Karr threatened to kill her, according to the TV station's Web site. San Francisco police told KING 5 News that they are investigating Karr.

Karr was arrested in August 2006 in Thailand after confessing to killing Ramsey, the 6-year-old beauty queen, in her Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996. A DNA analysis 12 days later revealed Karr was lying about the murder. KING 5 News said Karr may be living in Seattle and may have changed his appearance to look like a woman. He even stayed at a shelter for battered women, the report states.

The station cites court documents showing that Karr changed his name to Alexis Valoran Reich in Washington's King County district court in 2008. Spiegel said Karr, against whom she has a restraining order, became a woman in to get closer to young girls, the TV station reported."That's part of the reason he wants to change his appearance," Spiegel said.

The station claimed that Karr is also accused of trying to form a cult of JonBenet look-alikes, and that he would call these young girls "The Immaculates."

http://www.dailycamera.com/ongoing-coverage/ci_15156316

Cyber-Stalking Project Launched

Posted by : Mohadeseh Pourbehzadi | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | Published in

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/