Brian Goudie - The Psychology of Internet Trolls

Brian Goudie

My name is Brian Goudie, I work in Thailand, and I have decided to break my silence and start a 'name and shame' campaign - and I hope the people that I name will try to sue me, as I have a carefully documented dossier of evidence that has been painstakingly assembled to record every, post, comment and email - the file is massive!

You may ask, all of this data has been recorded for what purpose?  The answer is simple - criminal actions under Thailand's tough Computer Crimes Act, and potentially future proceedings in the UK under the Prevention of Harassment Act.

The main site at the centre of the campaign has a whois address in the UK, and UK law requires us to show there was a 'course of conduct' involving more than two instances of harassment - in my case therenare hundreds.

Internet harassment has been around for many years, but as use of the internet has grown, the number of people affected has grown considerably.

In 2007, The International Journal on Cyber Crimes published a report on  internet harassment.

Theories of why internet harassment range from trolls suffering from mental illnesses, to outright malice - every case is different.

I am not alone in being harassed, the same trolls are subjecting my good friend David Hanks to the same treatment.

David  and I have had articles posted on the internet by a journalist, Andrew Drummond,  then swathes of disgraceful comments are made by anonymous posters.

These anonymous posters hide behind internet profiles with made up names such as Tommy Truthsearcher, Jules, Sam Kane, Ally, Sam Thai, The Weapon, Knutsa01 - all spend all their time making comments and threats from the comfort of their anonymous internet connections.

Fake Facebook profiles, fake Wordpress blogs, fake Blogger sites, fake Google Plus profiles - we have seen it all.

It comes under the umbrella name of 'internet harrassment' or 'cyber harrassment'.
It is a criminal offence in most countries, but difficult to identify offenders.

Now ask the question - why do they use fake untraceable accounts with fake photoshopped profile photos?

There are two reasons, firstly they in my view pathetic are low life cowardly scum bags who would never challenge face to face, and secondly they know if they can be identified we will prosecute them under Thailand's Computer Crimes Act.

Mow taking on an internet giant like Google will never be easy, but we have instructed our lawyers to do just that - the first hearing in the case will be in July 2014.

There are a number of people who now bave  cases against Google, and there is a great wealth of tips out there on strategies for suing Google.

People like Michael Roberts of Rexxfield and Dr. Janice Duffy have already filed cases against Google and Yahoo.

Dr. Duffy's case and Michael Robert's case was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald. Roberts court filings claimthat venomous accusations that appeared on the website, which he claims were made by his ex-wife, destroyed his business and have caused years of emotional distress. The claims — ranging from domestic abuse and tax evasion to extortion, blackmail and fraud — are still littered across the net for anyone to see.

David and I are suing for Google search results, and also a number of posts on Blogger.

Blogger

I dont know why, but claims of fraud, extortion, blackmail, tax evasion, raceketeering, money laundering, mafia connections, domestic abuse, paedophilia, sexual deviance, rape, drug abuse, and the use of words such as rapist, thief, liar, deviant, parasite, pimp, enforcer, mafia, mobster, snitch, rat, etc all seem to feature large in the vocabulary of your average internet troll.

But David and I have decided to fight back - we have instructed our lawyers to file dozens of criminal charges against Google Inc and Google Thailand, as the owners of Blogger. The case will be filed in Bangkok Central Criminal Court.

Google are to be prosecuted as a 'service provider' for a wide range of criminal offences, including providing internet services to third parties posting defamation, harassment, threats and use of fake photoshopped images.

Under Thai law, a 'service provider' can be held criminally liable for allowing third parties to post unlawful material, and failing to remove it when notified - this is a criminal offence in Thailand under T section 15 of Thailand's tough Computer Crimes Act - in fact it is a criminal offence in most countries.

Larry Page of Google

We have also instructed our lawyers to file charges against Google founders and directors Larry Page and Sergey Binn personally.

Sergey Binn of Google

One of the main issues in the case is the ease with which Google allows fake profiles to be used to set up hate blogs.

Google and Blogger are protected to some degree in the US from defamation suits, but there is no protection from internet harassment, 47 U.S. Code § 223, makes it justiciable if a service provider allows internet harassment to continue.

Google have already lose defamation cases in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, France and Germany - and just last week in the European Court of Justice in the 'right to be forgotten case'.

David and I are realistic, and we know that we are taking on Google, an internet behemoth, but we have no choice - we must fight back.

We are extremely fortunate to have been offered assistance by a well know 'internet consultant' who has had running battles with Google for some time, and his involvement will be announced later in the month as the proceedings start to move.

The proceedings in Thailand are just the start, tandem proceedings are expected in the US, UK and Australia - we are going to be busy.

Incidentally, the journalist has made a comment that I am using the images of Sergey Binn and Larry Page in breach of copyright laws - pot calling the kettle black as he copies images from Facebook, Google Plus and Flickr and uses them without permission.

David and I of course would love Larry Page and Sergey Binn to file a DMCA copyright complaint to remove their images from this blog - but they may well then have a hard time explaining why they did not remove our images when asked.

Brian Goudie - Internet Harassment and 'trolls' - and making Google take notice!

Brian Goudie - taking on Google

Over the past 18 months I have been the subject of a calculated and coordinated campaign of internet harassment.

My name is Brian Goudie, I work in Thailand, and I have decided to break my silence and start a 'name and shame' campaign - and I hope the people that I name will try to sue me, as I have a carefully documented dossier of evidence that has been painstakingly assembled to record every, post, comment and email - the file is massive!

You may ask, all of this data has been recorded for what purpose?  The answer is simple - criminal actions under Thailand's tough Computer Crimes Act, and potentially future proceedings in the UK under the Prevention of Harassment Act.

The main site at the centre of the campaign has a whois address in the UK, and UK law requires us to show there was a 'course of conduct' involving more than two instances of harassment - in my case there are hundreds.

I know exactly where it started, and where the epicentre of the campaign lies - a 'news' site where the administrator/owner has allowed about a dozen internet 'trolls' to post comments on his site, and then those trolls have posted elsewhere using fake profiles, and the material has gradually spread throughout other social media.

The owner of the 'news' site is a convicted criminal having in February of this year being sentenced to 4 months in jail (Suspended for one year) for similar behaviour against two of my friends. Following that conviction he has recently been ordered by Pattaya Court to post bail in another case, with another half dozen or so cases in the pipeline.

The seemingly never ending campaign of harassment has resulted in over two hundred 'news stories' written about just three individuals with hundreds of comments on the central site and other social media such as Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and other more obscure sites.

The comments from the trolls utilise just about every insulting word in the English language!

The burning question - why just three singled out when there are many others on the site - well easy answer, the three of us decided what wss going on was just not right, and filed Court cases - as soon as the first case was filed, the 'news stories' increased, often misreporting decades old stories.

Recent allegations result in the journalist and his trolls taking on the role of judge, jury and executioner - even before there is a real issue to be reported -more on that later.

More recently, my friends, family, ex-girlfriend and current girlfriend have been receiving comments, messages and emails from the journalist and the trolls telling them how terrible it all is, and how terrible their future will be.

The 'news' is of course not real news, it is a mixture of scarce facts held together by ourright lies, half truths and insults. It has included invasions into my private life.

Any journalism expert will tell you a journalist would never alter a news photograph ie use photoshop to electronically alter the photo - but using electronically alteredmimages is the particular specialty of this 'journalist', now with dozens of altered photographs appearing on his ' news' site.

And yes, before you ask, I am taking him to Court for the photographs, and all that did was make him post more fake 'photoshop' images and post them repeatedly.

A credible journalist, abiding by true journalism standards, would never allow a photoshopped image to be posted - the UK Editors Code of Practice specifically forbids this (our journalist is from the UK).

David Hanks - victim of internet harassment.

Late last week, my colleague (David Hanks) and I decided we had had enough of the trolls and instructed our lawyers to file proceedings against internet giant Google - the 'news' site is hosted on Blogger. That case is expected to first come to Court in Bangkok in July 2014.

We are not however suing Google for the 'news' site, but instead for search results, and also for allowing trolls to set up fake profiles with no certification of ID. Our friend the journalist gets a mention of course, as he had previously written an article referring to the use of SEO to 'manipulate Google'.

Under Thailand's tough Computer Crimes Act, if I cant find the troll, I can sue the service provider - in this case mainly Google, but we are also now looking at Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, Bing, Youtube, etc.

And now to internet trolls, what and who are they, and what motivates them?

I really like this image, as in my opinion the trolls truly are pathetic, and if you see some of the things I post about them you will see I dont agree with traditional theory of suffering in silence. I have found that hitting back and calling them for what they are has dampened their enthusiasm.

Morevover, we have now identified one of the trolls, and he will face Court on June 2nd 2014.

Recently, a study found that some internet trolls my actually be mentally ill.

A troll called 'Ben' who was interviewed by news.com.au is recorded as saying:

"It just makes me happy when I can make someone angry. It sounds weird but I kind of feed off the Internet trolling—the act of writing deliberately provocative or hurtful things on message boards and social media—seems to be everywhere these days, ...............The angrier I can get them, the better I feel," he told news.com.aU

'Ben' said the worst thing he ever did was vandalise the Facebook memorial page of a young girl who had committed suicide. "I wrote, 'How's it hanging guys'."

'Ben' doesn't feel any remorse, and strangely doesn't consider his actions bullying despite claiming he probably wouldn't have started trolling if he had not been bullied at school.

The whole campaign of internet harassment in my case centred around the 'news' site, and all the posters on the 'news' site would also post on my Blogger and Facebook and various other social media sites.

Initially, I stayed quiet and took the advice of many to try to ignore it and report it to Google - and it got worse, and the number of fake profiles increased and the number of posts mushroomed - some days as many as 10 to 20 posts would drop in my inbox!

And what did Google do when I reported all of this - nothing!

I filed many reports with Google, and recently filed a 20 page detailed complaint and received the same standard response from Google every time - Google is not a mediator of content and is protected by the Communications Decency Act Code 220 (defamation) - although our US based legal team says it is not likely to be protected in the current case.

If you make a report to Google they are likely to tell you they are not responsible for the content, but a number of Court cases around the world have shaken that presumption.

 Recent examples of Google's worsening Court woes are cases in the UK such as  Tamiz v Google and in Trijulka v Google in Australia.  The recent case in Spain in the European Court of Justice dealing with the 'right to be forgotten' only adds to Google's woes.

Because internet harassment is a new area of law, many jurisdictions are ill equipped to deal with it, although in the jurisdictions I am interested in, the UK, Thailand and Australia news laws such as amendments to the Prevention of Harassment Act (UK) and the Computer Crimes Act (Thailand) are starting to address the issue.

In the US, the Communications Decency Act makes much of the conduct I will write about is a US Federal Offence.

And today many thanks to +Spinosa +knutsa01 +Ally +samthai +theweapon +jules +tommyweapon +tommythruthsearcher + Spinosaj without whom my case against Google would not be possible.

Brian Goudie - Understanding Internet Harassment

Brian Goudie

Over the next few months I will be posting on this blog and documenting my experience with what can only be described as an ongoing coordinated campaign of internet harassment, and I intend to document my own personal experiences, as well as my now ongoing battle with Google,

Firstly, what is internet harassment? There is no clear definition, but according to Wiki Cyber Stallking and Internet Harassment has a wide range of different ways of manifesting.

In my case, it all started off when a journalist wrote a story about me in September 2012 - the journalist in question is now a convicted criminal and in the next few weeks is facing dozens of criminal charges.

My case is not unique, I have two close friends who have also been attacked. My good friend David Hanks was also attacked.

David Hanks

In my case, dozens of fake photos have been posted all over the internet along with dozens of allegations that my friend refers to as a 'myriad of lies'.

Initially it was very embarassing, especially the fake photos,  and did a great deal of damage to my life and business - now the harassment continues, but I have learned how to deal with it - criminal prosecution of the people involved.

For many months, I was subjected to a vicious campaign of harassment and intimidation, with death threats, threats of physical violence, fake profiles being set up in my name on Facebook, Wordpress, Google Plus, Blogger - everywhere!

Then these 'trolls' started sending messages and emails to my friends and family - at the same time the 'journalist' wrote over 100 articles witten on a 'news' website.

I took the owner of the 'news' site to Court, and the harassment increased, with the fake profiles commenting on the 'news'  site also leaving comments on my Facebook, Google Plus and Blogger posts. Many of the comments can only be described as disgusting.

Then, all the fake profiles started using the fake photos in their profiles, and postimg them in Google Plus albums, with backlinks and tags to my profile - this is still going on, but the trolls are now much more careful masking their locations and IP addresses.

The whole campaign of internet harassment centred around the 'news' site, and all the posters on the 'news' site would also post on my Blogger and Facebook.

I stayed quiet and took the advice of many to try to ignore it and report it to Google - and it got worse!

The accusations and names and threats I wont repeat here, but in months to come the details will be reported as the Court proceedings progress.

And what did Google do when I reported all of this - nothing! I received the same standard response every time - Google is not a mediator of content.

But what of Google? Google will try to tell you they are not responsible for the content, but a number of Court cases around the world have shaken that presumption, a recent example of which in the UK is Tamiz v Google and in Trijulka v Google in Australia.

Because internet harassment is a new area of law, many jurisdictions are ill equipped to deal with it, although in jurisdictions I am interested in, the UK, Thailand and Australia news laws such as amendments to the Prevention of Harassment Act (UK) and the Computer Crimes Act (Thailand) are starting to address the issue.

In the US, the Communications Decency Act makes much of the conduct I will write about is now a US Federal Offence.

And today many thanks to +Spinosa +knutsa01 +Ally +samthai +theweapon +jules without whom my case against Google would not be possible.

To be continued.

Brian Goudie.
25th May 2014