Anonymous v. Cincinnati Police
Monday, February 22, 2016 at 02:59PM Today's news around here was all about how the internet hacker/watchdog group that calls itself 'Anonymous' has done a data dump of Cincinnati police officer personal information related to their killing of a black man named Paul Gaston. I think that our cyber connected world will spawn more and more of these kinds of online crusaders. Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Anonymous...they fancy themselves as the defenders of truth and justice.
The question becomes whether we need to have these online vigilantes or not. The obvious presentation from all of them appears to be a common thread of "the system has failed and now we are exposing the faults". It begs the question of what would Anonymous have done in the days after the Rodney King verdicts. Is it right to riot? Is it right to engage in civil disobedience in the name of perceived injustice? How far is too far? Is releasing the home address and family information of police officers going too far?
Look, I am a lawyer. I tend to favor taking disputes to our courts in order to find a resolution. That is how I make my living. I have not seen the data dump that Anonymous made today. I don't feel the need to go looking for it. I have not watched the video that Anonymous published explaining the reason for the data dump. I don't feel the need to go looking for it.
My personal belief is that Anonymous did their data dump to raise awareness of the killing of Paul Gaston. They have accomplished raising the profile to that killing and if that was part of their goal, they have succeeded. Cincinnati already has one police officer charged with murder (University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing is awaiting trial for the killing of Sam DuBose). Will there be another murder charge? I have no idea. Will Anonymous bringing this matter under closer scrutiny make a difference to whether the officers get indicted? That's a strong maybe.