As Domestic Abuse Goes Digital, Shelters Turn To Counter-surveillance With Tor 133
An anonymous reader writes "Almost every modern abusive relationship has a digital component, from cyberstalking to hacking phones, emails, and social media accounts, but women's shelters increasingly have found themselves on the defensive, ill-equipped to manage and protect their clients from increasingly sophisticated threats. Recently the Tor Project stepped in to help change that. Andrew Lewman, executive director of the project, 'thinks of the digital abuse epidemic like a doctor might consider a biological outbreak. "Step one, do not infect yourself. Step two, do not infect others, especially your co-workers. Step three, help others," he said. In the case of digital infections, like any other, skipping those first two steps can quickly turn caretakers into infected liabilities. For domestic violence prevention organizations that means ensuring their communication lines stay uncompromised. And that means establishing a base level of technology education for staff with generally little to no tech chops who might not understand the gravity of clean communication lines until faced with a situation where their own phone or email gets hacked.'"
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So only the religious beat their wives? This is insightful?
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That was clearly not what OP said. Quasi-religious means that these ideas are holdovers from a highly-rigid religious society.
Re:in b4 idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
This ridiculous stereotype that women are abused and men are abusers must stop. It is completely untrue [odt.co.nz], and simply presented to an accepting society who believe that women are weak and gentle creatures.
Speaking as someone whose first serious partner was an abusive woman - one who knew how to play the people around her - it took me years to gather the strength to get away from her.
She once threw one of her soft toys at me, aiming to hit me with it. When I threw it back, she ran from the room screaming (so she could be heard by others) that I'd promised to never hit her.
She would regularly punch me - just out of the blue - and call it "a love tap." She raped me hundreds of times - six times in a night, once. She was reading daddy-daughter incest porn. If I didn't want sex on a particular morning, she'd accuse me of being gay, or just keep going anyway.
Once upon a time, I commented that a friend of mine had bought her partner a nice watch. My ex- started screaming incoherently at me, then lowered her voice saying that it clearly meant I was in love with this friend, then raised her voice and started shrieking other crap at me. Of course, everyone around came running to her aid, not bothering to work out what was going on.
When I was studying from 8am until 5pm, and then working from 6pm until 9pm, she started demanding that I stop having lunch every day so I could buy her roses.
She then stole $1400 from my bank account.
She later stole my $2000 computer, CD player, a bed, and other assorted items, then sent me the bill for the computer.
That particular group of friends now believe that I used to smack her around a bit, and wouldn't even meet her halfway.
According to the local rape crisis group if those acts were committed against a woman, that is abuse.
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Re:in b4 idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
I look forward to claims along the lines of, "It's not abuse unless you physically injure them,".
It's a hard line to draw without sufficient and legally-clear context; for example, consider a facebook/twitter/whatever post addressed to someone, stating "You look lovely today", posted without any further context from someone you know. To an ordinary non-abused person, and many abused persons, this statement is nothing more than a pleasantry. To someone hiding in a battered women's shelter, this could be a direct threat.
You see, abusers are (often) smart enough to not use words that any jury member would immediately recognize as a threatening/abusive gesture.
On the other hand, minus a no-contact restraining order, how do you legally tell the difference in a way that is meaningful? After all, if I said that to some random stranger, and they decide to scream for a cop to lock my ass up... err, what standing is there to do so? Maybe the person in question was raped a day ago and the rapist whispered those words - but I had no clue as to that having ever happened. Saying it may well have hurt the person due to PTSD, but even if I didn't know, there's a legal concept where ignorance of the law is no excuse, so if there were a law that could get me arrested for mental assault (for lack of a better term)...
I guess what I'm getting at is that you have to be damned careful as to where and how much you get the law involved with such things. It's likely much better for all involved that a simple no-contact restraining order draw the line instead, so that only those who the order is leveled against are, well, restrained, and the rest of us can go about our day.
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but even if I didn't know, there's a legal concept where ignorance of the law is no excuse, so if there were a law that could get me arrested for mental assault (for lack of a better term)...
You're confusing ignorance of the law (not applicable in your case, you know the hypothetical law) with mens rea [wikipedia.org] (applicable in your case, you did not intend to engage in mental assault).
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I look forward to claims along the lines of, "It's not abuse unless you physically injure them," and other quasi-religious nonsense which treats the brain as a perfectly rational ideal rather than just another organ subject to external influence.
What does this or any defense of it have to do with religion?
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I look forward to claims along the lines of, "It's not abuse unless you physically injure them," and other quasi-religious nonsense which treats the brain as a perfectly rational ideal rather than just another organ subject to external influence.
As far as I'm concerned, it's not abuse unless you can provide evidence that you attempted to stop it. If he doesn't have gouges on his face and you don't have his skin under your fingernails, you clearly didn't mind too terribly much.
Re:Digital Domestic Abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Sending a nasty email is not domestic abuse.
Stop trivializing the suffering of women that get beaten within a inch of their lives by brutal husbands.
Psychological abuse is the first step. Why do you think a woman continues to stay with a man who beats her?
And who said that their only concern is psychological abuse? They also need to make sure there isn't a way that
the abuser can't track and/or figure out where the victim is going to be in real life.
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they are psychologically imbalanced and believe it's better to be with a man who beats them than alone. and I've been the son of an abuse victim and unfortunately seem to find myself with friends that fall into that category consistently enough to tell you that's why.
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How about even less sugar coating? Fucking Stupid.
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You've clearly never been in a abusive situation. It's not so easy as "only stupid people get abused and don't do anything about it". Often they feel confined, and like they have no options; the person that they love (because usually that's how relationships like this start) is reinforcing that while simultaneously eroding self-confidence to keep them from leaving.
Saying they're stupid for not leaving abusive situations is ignorant. Futhermore, it's offensive to everyone who's been abused.
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It is about as ignorant as saying 'well, if I had a broken leg I would just keep walking!' It is easy to picture just walking away from an abusive relationship when one has never actually been in one.
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I don't buy it.
If a normal person puts their hands on a hot stove, it hurts and they remove it quickly.
If you are being abused, you get the fuck outâ¦..if not, something is wrong with YOU>
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I've loved a lot of people in my lifeâ¦but I've also had a few that fucked me overâ¦and that's it..they were gone.
Why is that so difficult to understand for some women?
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Let's not sugar coat it by being politically correct. I think the correct word to use is insecure.
Yes, insecure probably applies in alot of the cases but that doesn't mean they started out insecure.
Kindof like boiling a frog the abuser slowly makes them more and more insecure and erodes their sense
of self worth while at the same time making them think that the abuser is the only person who cares.
When/If they finally realize what is going on they have already been cut off from their other safety nets
and have no where to flee to.
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I've seen more to it than that. There's also cultural, societal, and religious pressures. In my pre-cana, what I lovingly refer to as the Catholic marriage stress-test, the topic of divorce came up with the arch-dioces present. The guy just stood there straight-faced and started in on how "you should stay with your spouse and work things out." This is the same group that was preaching about having sex on specific days of the woman's.. ahem... schedule as a replacement for any birth control, but that's anoth
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First, quit repeating the bullshit that women are the injured party. It is 50/50 [odt.co.nz] not 100/0.
Second, my mother used to attack my father, then beat herself up and ring the police, pretending that he had attacked her.
This went on weekly for about four years, until he left her. Then she proceeded to invite him around, beat herself up, and ring the police.
I
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Sending a nasty email is not domestic abuse.
Stop trivializing the suffering of women that get beaten within a inch of their lives by brutal husbands.
Psychological abuse is the first step. Why do you think a woman continues to stay with a man who beats her?
And who said that their only concern is psychological abuse? They also need to make sure there isn't a way that
the abuser can't track and/or figure out where the victim is going to be in real life.
She stays with a man who beats her because she knows herself. She knows that any man who spends a great deal of time with her is inevitably going to beat her just like the last one, she either cannot or does not wish to change her behavior, and she doesn't want to be alone.
If you date a woman whose boyfriend used to beat her, she will mould you into a man who beats her. It's not diplomatic to say it, but it's true, and the more men become aware that it's true, the less domestic violence we will have.
I've
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I notice a gender disparity in these discussions on domestic abuse. That's a great pity, partly because it perpetuates the idea that domestic abuse is mostly male-on-female, but mostly because it perpetuates the idea that real men don't become victims.
You can do better.
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I apologize for this. Women do abuse men especially psychologically as much if not more than
men but that being said the average man is considerable stronger physically than the average
women so if weapons are not involved the man does have an advantage. The man also probably
isn't usually as "trapped" as the women and probably has an easier time leaving if he decides to.
I watched a documentary once where they had a woman in a public park beating a man with a
newspaper then the actors switched places. Noone
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Actually, I did read the piece. It reads like so:
"But two months in, after a brief breakup, he put her hands around her neck and threatened her life, Sarah said."
This is psychological abuse, as written. If he had tried to strangle her, he would have done more than 'put his hands around her neck'. It was a threat.
"On New Yearâ(TM)s Eve of 2008, Sarahâ(TM)s partner passed out in their car after an argument over the gratuity on their bar tab. She tried to help him up the stairs but when he came-to
Re:Digital Domestic Abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Sending a nasty email is not domestic abuse.
My wife had to put up with an asshole ex-husband who thought the same thing during the early stages of our relationship. He loved to call her up once in a great while and screw with her head - usually after she'd gotten over the last time he called and once he figured out her new phone number. It wasn't until I called him up one day and said two things that he shut up and went away, never to pester her again.
Her personality brightened up a whole hell of a lot more after that, and we've been extremely happy about things ever since.
(...those two things? The first was a recitation of his home address and the hours he was usually home. I'll plead the fifth before I tell you the second one.)
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Physical Abuse and Harassment are two different things. Conflate them and you will re-invent thought crime.
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1) Verbal and emotional abuse can be incredibly harmful. When i worked in the courts, we found suicide by abused women was just as often precipitated by verbal threats as it was by physical abuse.
2) Thats not why they are having to cover tracks. Womens shelters are often beset by deranged ex partners hunting their former girlfriends wanting to beat or even kill
I know somebody like this (Score:2, Insightful)
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I've also learned there are two sides to every story. Be very careful judging if you've only heard one.
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Thats under marriage's definition of "we stop being two entities and begin being two less-than-entities".
I've been happily married for 15 years, and me and the wife have zero access to each others private space. Yes that include our communications and a lot more. Do we have things to hide? The answer ALSO belongs to private space.
But insecure feebles will always need to supervise each other while masking all that behind the "trust" motto. In the end, that's the same mentality of global surveillance at the c
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My wife knows my email password. She has full file permissions on my porn folder. I even have location sharing enabled on my phone.
But I will never share my Spotify playlists, lest she find out my hidden love of One Direction and Rebecca Black.
Re:I know somebody like this (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. My wife is free to read my email any time she wants, and vice versa. Can't imagine needing to hide anything. I've also learned there are two sides to every story. Be very careful judging if you've only heard one.
the other side of the story: "my husband thinks he has access to all my email."
Re:I know somebody like this (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone is actively hiding something from their spouse because they think their spouse will react negatively to it, then there's a problem with the relationship. However, this doesn't mean that the spouse has a right to see EVERYTHING that person says/does. In the parent's comment, they related the tale of a husband who monitored every cell phone message, Facebook post, and e-mail message his wife made/received. That's not normal behavior. I don't monitor my wife's messages. In fact, I'm not even on Facebook and she is. She could easily be saying nasty things about me there without me knowing. However, I don't demand to see/approve everything she says because I respect her. She's not "property" for me to "manage", she's my spouse and my equal in our relationship.
And lest anything think it only works one way, there are plenty of women who are as controlling as the example above. Either way, if you are demanding to see everything your spouse writes/says, there's a problem in the relationship.
Re: I know somebody like this (Score:1)
Hear-hear, in my 35 years of marriage I can't remember ever even looking through my wifes purse let alone email or phone/messages. The thought of doing so seems repugnant. In an intimate relationship if there's not room for individual privacy one or the other will end up being controlled or smothered if even by their own devising. If my wife wasn't allowed the privacy to stash money for a rainy day we would have washed out years ago. That's just one small area secrets can be immensely useful.
Re:I know somebody like this (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm being abusive, then I'm not going to want her to find outside help, and I'm not going to want her to talk to her friends about her problems. I'll want to control every aspect of her life. That's the situation we're looking at, not an otherwise-stable relationship with communications issues.
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Exactly.
When your partner stops you from seeing your family, colludes with your ex-wife to keep you away from your children, lies to her family about you, bites you, slaps you, grabs you, tries to pull your genitals off, puts a knife to your throat when you're asleep, and THEN tries to commit suicide when you finally leave her, perhaps you're not the one with the problem.
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Having privacy is not always about keeping secrets. It's about having your own life. I don't tell everything about my life because I'm not someone who needs to talk about me all the time. Also, frankly,it is because most of I do for work is boring, and she doesn't really want to hear about it. If she asks about the work conversation I had with a female coworker over lunch, I'll tell her but there's really nothing to tell, and I don't want to feel compelled to discuss/report everything.
Also privacy is not a
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Not only that, but if my wife didn't come home from work at her usual time - without calling me - I would be pretty upset. We'd all be sitting at the dinner table, wondering if she was okay, and I'd damn sure call. If she was 'out with friends' without telling me her plans beforehand, I'd be pissed.
Whether or not this has any bearing on "Sarah's" situation I can't say. But the article didn't make me feel very sorry for her.
Re:I know somebody like this (Score:4, Funny)
If you need to be private from your spouse/so, you should examine why. Then, alter your current relationship or find a relationship where it's comfortable enough that you don't feel like you have to keep secrets.
If you're keeping secrets, you're not all in, and bad things will come eventually. If you think that not being able to keep secrets constitutes abuse, I think you have a problematic definition.
As I'm very good at this sort of thing because I work in the industry and nothing goes in and out of our network without me knowing about it, it's come up. I explained to her that she would have to trust me that I would never read her mail (which I dont), and I would have to trust her that all of her secret emails involved surprise birthday parties or generalize complaints about me to her sisters (which I could understand). If she did feel the need to be sending the kinds of emails that if I read them we'd have a real problem, just divorce me instead. It will make the emails a lot easier, and I can hit on all her friends.
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Any person so obsessed with controlling everything you say or do and everyone you see won't let you live a normal life, because it's perfectly normal to have friends or family or colleagues or people with the same hobby you spend time with without your significant other glued to your side. It's like joining a sect where they want you to cut all contact with the outside world, surveillance is only the first step, then interrogation whenever you've been out of their control and finally they make up all sort o
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If you need to be private from your spouse/so, you should examine why. Then, alter your current relationship or find a relationship where it's comfortable enough that you don't feel like you have to keep secrets.
I don't, strictly speaking, need to have my email private from my wife. However, if my wife felt the need to surveil my email, I would have serious questions about her mental state and trust issues.
We do not read each other's email. I suppose I technically have access to her email since I run the email server, but I've already told her that while I won't read her email, if she intends to have an affair or something, she really ought to get a gmail account, just in case.
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Putting the TOR Browser Bundle on a thumb drive or a CD might be a usable solution. Take the flash/CD out when you're done using it and it leaves nothing on the computer, assuming there is no keystroke logger.
If there is concern that there might be a keystroke logger, then TAILS is the way to go. Boot from the removable media, and remove the media when you are done. Just make sure it's not found.
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unless it is a hardware keyloger.
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That is true, though a quick inspection of the keyboard cord should reveal one.
women are stalkers too (Score:3, Insightful)
why do none of these articles ever address the bunny boilers and child killer women? there are a LOT of them out there... David Letterman had a particularly noxious lady stalker nut after him.
but these articles always just Shit on Men....
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Because there aren't shelters filled with abused men and their children they took with them when they escaped the abusive relationship (that I'm aware of). I'm sure that won't stop your miserable whining, though.
Re:women are stalkers too (Score:5, Interesting)
Because there aren't shelters filled with abused men and their children they took with them when they escaped the abusive relationship (that I'm aware of). I'm sure that won't stop your miserable whining, though.
Fun fact: That's because there are very few shelters for men.
We've got a couple here in Canada, and they're heavily used. The abuse industry, and I will call it that for good reason has done quite a bit of work pushing the "only men can be abuses" belief. And have pushed it so hard that it's skewed court and family court against men. It of course also doesn't help that there's a huge social stigma on the "the wife/gf/so/etc" beat up the guy. With the "why didn't you stand up for yourself, etc.," bit. Police don't care one way or the other in the case of a domestic here, and try to find the primary person who instigated it. But if the women is the one, there really isn't anywhere for the guy to go.
But let's move onto the homosexual side. Depending on what study you want to cite, the abuse rates between both same sex couples hit as high as 70%, for the women again there's a place they can go to. For the men, not so.
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The women that founded women's refuge in the UK was demonised and started receiving death threats for suggesting that much domestic violence was reciprocal and that some women sought out abusive relationships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
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* "A University of Florida study recently found women are more likely than men to "stalk, attack and abuse" their partners"
* "A University of Washington study recently found women were nearly twice as likely as men to perpetrate domestic violence in the past year"
* "Virtually all sociological data shows women initiate domestic violence as often as men, that women use weapons more than men, and that 38% of injured victims are men. California State University Professor Martin Fie
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What's hilarious (in an ugly way) is that the same women who claim abuse only comes from men because men take advantage of their greater strength, also claim that women can do anything men can do and that sheer physical strength is not a factor.
Okay folks, which is it??
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"I'm not sexist but..."
No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sarah was probably abused as a child - that is all the knows. As an adult, she gravitated to a partner the was like her abuser.
Human beings are not this completely rational animal. As a matter fact, most of our decisions are based on gut feelings ( Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow [google.com]).
And when you mix in physical trauma, people break and do stupid things like run back to their abuser or don't leave. A lot of that is also fear - fear that the abuser will punish them.
Or to put is this way, to expect rational actio
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Honestly, I think it may be as simple as this:
It takes a certain type of person to fall into a trap like this.
Not that that means she doesn't need help, or anything of that sort. But if she was savvy she would have noticed that the guy was living a double life. If she was smart she wouldn't have tried to commit suicide with Ibuprofen of all things. Thankfully for her, she survived.
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Not surprising. That's a standard abuse pattern, and it's built on the belief that "x person has changed' and "they can change them, so they go back." I've done the whole support bit before, and the cycle is so cyclical that it's scary. The victim is responsible, the problem of course is that the victim is self conditioning themselves and the abuser is reinforcing it. You can bet that following up you'll see one of the following if they went back you'd see a standard following of control from restrictin
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No, those are simply rationalizations. The truth is that change is scary at the best of times, and much more so when you're tired, traumatized and afraid. And since those circumstances also make you less likely to think rationally and just go with your habits...
It's the same mechanism that keeps people in all kinds of bad circumstances, even if the way out seems both easy an
In related news... (Score:1)
The city of Carson, California has just passed a law making it illegal to insult Justin Bieber online.
(No, seriously.)
Teaching physics to 3rd graders... (Score:1)
The average worker in a violence shelter knows how to work the cursor on a computer and push the "send" button, but has a long, long way to go before beginning to understand the issues with Internet security. This problem has no technological solution. You can install the most sophisticated locks on your front door, but it won't protect you if you leave it unlocked, and it won't protect you from having your door smashed down.
There is a solution to this, and it goes "clink" with the closing of a prison cell
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What you say is true, but ignores reality. Yes, there is no technological solution, that's probably why part of what they're doing is educating the people who need help. You know, teaching them to throw the deadbolt in your door analogy. Also, a smashed down door is still preferable to a simply opened and shut one. A smashed down door attracts attention, both inside and outside the house. A smashed down door takes time. It takes effort. It takes a certain amount of physical skill.
Why insist on not im
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+1. Any solution is better than nothing. There isn't a 100% secure solution, but I've wondered about using TOR, but have the traffic hit a proxy after it leaves the exit node. The reason for this is that there are a lot of sites out there that block TOR traffic either for philosophical reasons or just due to abuse. Having the proxy in front allows for full access to websites. If the proxy's userdata is kept separate from IP address logs, it would be even better.
As for local network activity to protect
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"Any solution is better than nothing."
Unless the "solution" makes the situation worse. This is great for the ones installing and maintaining the technical "solution", but if it doesn't actually fix the problem then all it will do is cause a consumption of time and resources of shelter workers and give victims a false sense of security.
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Improving what? Tor won't improve the situation. Those at risk won't use it: they'll still have their identities on the net. If you only want to surf the web, you can do that without Tor. Even if it does get used, the people staffing the shelter won't understand it, and won't be able to advise these victims sufficiently to keep them from being exposed to abuse. These people have educations in psychology and social work (if even that).
People have been dealing with this problem for a long time. They do it by
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I'm beginning to suspect you haven't read the article... I know, I know... but still.
"Since then, the two groups have been working to develop a resource that will provide staff and advocates with the base level of technological know-how required to address casework with a digital abuse component."
"The Tor Browser Bundle is free software that works like most ordinary browsers but comes configured to make it harder for individuals to be tracked, obscuring or deleting things like a browser’s history, loc
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Your suspicions are wrong. A caseworker will not solve the problems of keyloggers, of smartphone recorders (audio and number logs), or of ignorant victims who just don't have any clue how to protect themselves. Tor won't solve any of that. If the victim needs to contact the caseworker, advocate or the police, they can do it over the neighbor's telephone or in person. This "resource" (the resource being developed by these two groups) won't fix exposures to a tech-savvy jerk who wants information from his vic
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I've seen things swing both ways, where abuse is claimed (to the point of one party in a relationship injuring themselves.)
A person who I worked with has dealt with that. From what I gather, after his messy divorce that he "lost", the other party scoring the house, kids, and both alimony and child support. Now, he is in a nasty cycle:
1: He is unemployed.
2: Ex hauls him into court demanding child support payments.
3: He is unemployed, no money to pay.
4: Judge tosses him in the county cooler for six mont
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Then he should response by fleeing and moving somewhere where they cannot find him.
Move to a new country or stop registering where you are.
Fuck that. I'd NEVER let someone push me around like that.
I'd put a bullet in a few local heads before I'd bow down.
best use of TOR I've heard of (Score:1)
indeed (Score:1)
Yeah, they must really be idiots considering that it's the holy grail of what can happen. So you've got an angry ex-bf harrassing a woman and stalking her but besides gray area stuff, didn't technically do anything illegal. Oh wait, now he reset your password to your
physical shelters need electronic shelters too!!!! (Score:1)
If a woman (OR MAN) is in a shelter for the purpose of protecting themselves from physical abuse the original act of which was psychologically scarring then the folks in the shelters need to be teaching those being sheltered some common sense. Stop using socal networking.
I have had multiple female friends and co-workers who have been properly traumatized by stalkers. The absolute first thing I tell them is to close their damn facebook account and wipe themselves off the internet. Social networking is the de
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ohh....
and no I no longer use Facebook.... have zero need now I have a wife and baby on the way.....
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see, this is exactly the sort of thing that we want to avoid. Being in a relationship with someone does not give you license to intrude upon her privacy.
Re:Poor Women..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude - if she was cheating on you, man up and leave. You do not have the right to do anything else, and unless you're a sociopath who loves mentally beating down a woman just to feel better about yourself, your story has no relevance here.