She started her own firm. "That way, I could be the lawyer I'd needed."

November 29, 2016 11:49 AM

"A lot of the people called to legal-services work are do-gooders, and they are a little passive and meek. They don't have that fierceness that Carrie has." Margaret Talbot profiles Carrie Goldberg for The New Yorker: The Attorney Fighting Revenge Porn

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization for whom Goldberg serves as a board member, has published a reference guide to nonconsensual pornography (NCP) laws in 34 U.S. states and 1 district as part of their mission to provide support to victims of online abuse and harassment. CCRI's other publications include a list of NCP-related laws and statutes, an online removal road map that walks you through how to send content deletion requests to a variety of social media and networking sites, and the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, which provides pro bono legal assistance to victims of NCP.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA-14) introduced federal legislation targeting those who share and profit from the publication of NCP: The Intimate Privacy Protection Act of 2016. The full text of the proposed U.S. Code amendment (H.R.5896) is available here.

👊 What the Law Can (and Can't) Do About Online Harassment (2014)
👊 Know Your Rights: What To Do When Your Private Photos Are Leaked (2015)
👊 The state of privacy in post-Snowden America (2016)

NCP previously, previouslier, previousliest.

posted by amnesia and magnets (19 comments total)

Good article, thanks. I've written about this issue from an IP law perspective in the past, and it's good to see that things are getting a little better with the passing of more criminal statutes. There's a long way to go to educate police forces and prosecutors on charging for those images, though.

The book mentioned in the article, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, is really excellent and quite readable, if anyone is interested in learning more about the practical difficulties of dealing with these issues. It's not a how-to guide for someone who is actually trying to deal with their own NCP, more appropriate for practitioners in the field to understand the problems.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:31 PM on November 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yes, yes, yes!!! We need more people like this with our current president-elect. A goddamn hero. Girls kick so much ass.

I just really appreciate the overall tone and wording in the article. "grotesque ... barrage ... nonconsensual". Yes. We need to talk about situations like with with harsh, blatant words. I know a lot of times it is unintentional, but we need not spare the feelings of the people perpetuating these crimes. Especially so when they're in the gray area of formation.

This is one of the darkest facets of society. We have to fight it. I'm sick and shocked and tired of the constant abuse and exploitation of womens' bodies, talent, time, intimacy, minds, sexuality. There has not been a single aspect spared some perversity. The creation of these laws are a small, small step in the right direction. Right now my state has it down as a class 1 misdemeanor, the harshest they can go as a misdemeanor. I think that since the dissemination of the non-consensual media almost always involves transactions over state (or even country) borders, that we should use that to garner support for classifying it as a felony. Reading the article, some of the cases she's had are just devastating. The ones that include their address or personal contact information, the ones where the media is of a rape, the cases of extortion. This shit is causing real, lasting, hard-to-erase harm. We need to treat it as seriously as possible.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:40 PM on November 29, 2016 [18 favorites]

This person sounds like an awesome human being and the article is well written. I kind of wish the author didn't feel the need to include descriptions of her clothing, jewelry, or shoes though...I realize that's commonplace whenever the subject is female but it's still kind of lame.
posted by trackofalljades at 1:52 PM on November 29, 2016 [15 favorites]

I kind of wish the author didn't feel the need to include descriptions of her clothing, jewelry, or shoes though

And the photo SO reinforces this aspect! I saw this story in my Facebook feed yesterday, so I saw the headline and photo simultaneously, without too much other context. And with that photo...at first I read the headline as The-Attorney-Fighting-Revenge Porn. As in porn whose main character is an attorney fighting revenge.
posted by the_blizz at 2:01 PM on November 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

I kind of wish the author didn't feel the need to include descriptions of her clothing, jewelry, or shoes though

Hmm, that's a tricky question in this case. (In general, as a trope in profiles of prominent women, I couldn't agree with you more).

I can't quite articulate this point, but I sense that the writer is trying to make a subtle argument that what Goldberg is doing is precisely asserting the right of women to be both loud and sexual, if they desire, without that being construed as a waiver of privacy. In the same way that sending a naked selfie to your boyfriend or girlfriend does not justify public dissemination of that photo.
posted by msalt at 2:13 PM on November 29, 2016 [26 favorites]

I find this topic darkly fascinating, in an 'abberant psychology' sort of way, so thanks for sharing this with us.

I had a girlfriend send me some cheesecake photos once. It was cute. We broke up, later. I listened to a lot of bad music and wrote hideously awful poetry.

The cognitive leap from 'This relationship didn't work out' --> I want to shame and humiliate someone seems so... clinically pathological. I sort of want to know the eitology of this mindset.

I recall a certain wise old CFO friend of mine who once opined, 'Never email or message anything you wouldn't share with your grandmother.' I tend to think he was right, in a general-ish sense.
posted by mrdaneri at 2:42 PM on November 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

Saw her speak at a cle and she was awesome. Msalt you have it bang on, her whole vibe just eminated a "don't give a fuck what you dudes think" to room full of grumpy old dude attorneys.
posted by gnar_gnar at 3:00 PM on November 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

The cognitive leap from 'This relationship didn't work out' --> I want to shame and humiliate someone seems so... clinically pathological.

The kind of person who can look at a breakup in hindsight and say 'This relationship didn't work out' isn't the kind of person who seeks revenge.

What we are dealing with are people who are saying "this person has wronged me and deserves to be punished" AND THEN also taking it upon themselves mete out the punishment.

I think that plenty of people who experience breakups can end up in the "this person has wronged me" camp (I might even go so far as to say that most can end up thinking that way based on circumstances). It's a smaller subset who make the "wronged me" --> "deserves to be punished." leap, but once you're at "this person deserves it" it's not that hard to see why some people what to see "justice" done, regardless of how wrong it may be.

I will admit that as a teenager, I was kind of shitty to an Ex in a more private "this will make his life worse but only he has to know about it" kind of way. I blame my petty revenge taking on immaturity combined with a feeling of powerlessness.

And I kind of assume that it's the same for adults who pull this kind of shit now. Except that the people who spread revenge porn are supposed to be adults (no immaturity excuse) and are usually white and male (and therefore actually do have significant power advantages to the point where they can't deal with the idea of not having power over their partners).

I do kind of wish that we could live in a world where private photos of consensual activities didn't have the power to shame and humiliate people. But until that day, I'm glad that the Carrie Goldbergs of the world exist.
posted by sparklemotion at 3:10 PM on November 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

Thanks, sparklemotion. One also wonders how the conversation goes for these men with the next woman.

NEXT IN LINE: 'So, how did your last breakup go?'
REVENGE PORN AFFICIANADO: 'Well, I posted all of her confidential images to PunishThatSlut.org, so you know-- it went pretty well, all things considered.'
posted by mrdaneri at 3:45 PM on November 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

As usual the gaping hole in security is human. It's so human to trust your partner, and that's not a bad thing.

Remember when we discovered the US had a secret Eye of Sauron glued onto all communications. They said they made it to protect the people.
posted by adept256 at 4:06 PM on November 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

I mentioned Judge Ravin’s remark about how the facts of this case had hit him as a father. “That actually bothered me,” Goldberg said. “I wish it wasn’t always ‘As the father of a daughter’ or ‘As the husband of a wife.’ I wish it were ‘This kind of assault on someone’s dignity bothers me as a human being with a soul and a conscience.’ ”

This is a small point, but I've been thinking of this quite a bit over the last year. I've caught myself a few times doing something similar while trying to point out sexism or racism or what have you. "You know, my dad had to flee Nazi occupation in Poland, so idle talk of registering people by religion is pretty troubling to me", or, "you know my girlfriend has been talked over all her career, this is a real thing", and so on... And the few times I've caught myself doing that looking back I think to myself that there's something sort of weak about that, but I couldn't really put my finger on why I would be so disappointed in myself. But Goldberg's quote gets it just right. As a human being with a soul and a conscience...

(and I might add, as someone who's part of human society...)

Anyways, good article. It seems rare these days when we can celebrate people winning the fight.
posted by bumpkin at 6:41 PM on November 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

The cognitive leap from 'This relationship didn't work out' --> I want to shame and humiliate someone seems so... clinically pathological. I sort of want to know the eitology of this mindset.

Short term butt-hurt feelings of revenge post-breakup are common among all genders. What's new with revenge porn is
1) the toxic PUA/MRA culture encouraging men to dwell in their impotent rage, and
2) some ultra-evil entrepreneurs standing by to take any momentary lapse of reason and monetize it permanently.

I really appreciated Goldberg's point that intent to harass should not be a requirement for prosecution. The vultures who don't even care about the pain and humiliation involved -- or worse, get off on it -- are more evil yet. They not likely to mature out of this, and they are actively promoting the shame factor.
posted by msalt at 8:26 PM on November 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

The cognitive leap from 'This relationship didn't work out' --> I want to shame and humiliate someone seems so... clinically pathological. I sort of want to know the eitology of this mindset.

It's called entitlement. It's a huge, huge problem that's growing among young men. For some reason (there are many) they believe they deserve, outright, that they are owed romance and sexual attention, simply for being male. Bust has a pretty good article that dives into the darkest region of this line of thought. Worth reading.
posted by FirstMateKate at 6:32 AM on November 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

That's a good point that I had missed, msalt-- these sites are actual business concerns, which blows my mind even more. As in they have an office somewhere and accountants and Accounts Payable clerks, and one presumes, a nice little old lunchlady who is serving up bowls of clam chowder for PunishThatSlut.com.
posted by mrdaneri at 8:39 AM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Christ on a cracker, FirstMateKate, that was awful. I mean, thanks for posting it, it's something that should be read, but it literally made me want to vomit. I've done a lot of research in this area (may the universe save me from ever having to footnote 4chan ever again in my life), and somehow that still managed to surprise me in its awfulness.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:54 AM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

OMG, that article, FirstMateKate. !!! There could be a stand alone post just on that.

'Redistribution of women to the Beta Males'. *shudder*

I feel like that article could be re-purposed as a "group that voted for Trump" article. :/
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 11:50 AM on November 30, 2016

I noticed the parallels between the sexually frustrated young men and Trump voters, as well, CoffeeHikeNapWine. It's an odd world we live in where such things align so well.
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 4:59 PM on November 30, 2016

Thank y'all for taking the time to read!

jacquilynne, i am right there with you. I can only handle so much violent misogyny until I either get ill, or my PTSD is triggered and I end up severely dissociating. When Elliot Rodgers happened, I had to stay off the internet for a long while.

CoffeeHikeNapWine- I thought the article was really valuable, and considered bringing it to metafilter, but I was worried about the shitstorm it'd make, and the stress on the mods.
posted by FirstMateKate at 7:11 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the fantastic article FirstMateKate. I had no idea that this kind of violent misogyny had codified itself so coherently - and therefore - virulently. It is very worthy of a FPP, maybe with some further gloss. I think lurking in the background is the inevitable repurposing of what are (in my view) divisive and obsolete identity politics norms by groups whose identity is defined in violent opposition to others. This lot are a self identified 'excluded' group whose festering, and sadly naturally simian, resentment about what they feel is a lack of 'mate access' could be anticipated to cause mayhem in a troop of baboons - much less in an over armed and paranoid society. They codify an identity and full belief system and form a church like group. Very human, and very dangerous. I hope Law Enforcement keeps a toe and a nose in this septic tank to keep us all safe.
posted by The Salaryman at 2:08 AM on December 1, 2016