I've been doing some investigating.
I found this interesting article and it seems that there are laws in the works right now. I work near the police station so maybe I will stop in and ask them where they are at on those cyberstalking laws since this article is about a year old. Just so I am informed.
Here is the article:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/160201_cyberstalking11.html
Cyberstalker just out of reach of law, but finally, he stops
By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
When Joelle Ligon found her first love at age 15, she could not have known that her teenage romance would morph more than a decade later into a malevolent force relentlessly stalking her from cyberspace.
After years of enduring graphic sexual harassment, amorphous threats, creepy mind games and public humiliation, Ligon was on the verge of an emotional meltdown after moving to Seattle three years ago.
Anonymous e-mails -- vicious lies about her sexual history and character -- went out to co-workers. She had strong suspicions, but no proof, about who was tormenting her. Police could do little to help because there's no law against Internet harassment unless physical threats are made.
"I was never really certain who was doing it, and I never knew what was going to happen next," said Ligon. She spent hundreds of hours "doing damage control" at work and tracking down chat room postings and message boards where her online stalker posed as Ligon and gave out her telephone number so men could call her for sex.
Alone and at wit's end, Ligon finally made a crucial link 14 months ago that ended her powerlessness. Now Ligon, 35, is fighting back with new allies: The FBI, the U.S. attorney's office and the King County Prosecutor's Office.
Ligon has been telling her cautionary tale to groups such as Agora, which comprises computer-security and law enforcement professionals. And recently, she was in Olympia lobbying for a new state law that would make cyberstalking a crime. The road from being a frightened victim to an empowered advocate has been a long one. And Ligon's story is not over yet.
Problems begin
It began in 1983, the year after her mother died. She was sent to Salt Lake City to live with her uncle and his wife.
"It was a really hard time for me," Ligon recalled. But in May 1984, the 15-year-old got fixed up on a blind date with Jim, an 18-year-old senior with his own car. "I fell head over heels in love. He was good-looking, witty and intelligent."
What Ligon soon found out was that he was also controlling, manipulative and jealous. But the lonely young woman could not find the strength to free herself from the relationship until she was 22.
Then she moved to the South. By 1997, she had been married for two years, bought her first home, graduated from college and been working in Virginia as a public-information officer for Chesterfield County government.
"Things were going great," said Ligon. "A husband, a job and I paid off my school loans." Jim was just a bad memory.
Then, in the spring 1998, the stalking began.
Ligon opened an e-mail from a "Courtney Collide" that said things such as "I know your mother died when you were 14. I know where you went to high school."
"I just sat back in my chair -- stunned, shocked, confused."
By the time she got the third e-mail, Ligon knew it was Jim.
"I wrote back and said: 'Jim. I know it's you. Knock it off.' "
Sometime later, she got an e-mail from Jim explaining that "it came to my attention last week that you were recently the recipient of harassing e-mails from a former acquaintance of mine. I'm sorry that she bothered you. If these cretins bother you any more, let me know and I'll take care of it. Love always, Jim."
Attempts by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to reach Jim were not successful.
By September 1999, "Courtney" was sending pornographic pictures and e-mails such as this one: "I guess you think youre (sic) just too good for me and want me as an enemy -- not only is it bad karma to have enemies im (sic) a bad enemy to have oh well you made your choce (sic) and remember now when bad things happen that I just might be behind them."
And bad things did start to happen -- immediately.
That night Ligon "was asleep next to my husband and the phone rang at 2 a.m. The person said: 'Hi. This is Josh.' I said: 'Do I know you?' He said: 'Were you just on the Internet?' I said: 'No.' He hung up." Ligon pressed *69 to get Josh's number and tried to go back to sleep.
The next day, Ligon called the Chesterfield County police.
A detective tracked down the 19-year-old Josh who told the investigator he had been in a teen chat room and someone posing as Joelle had given him Ligon's phone number and asked him to come have sex with her and her husband.
A review of the police report shows that the detective tried to contact Jim, who never returned phone calls or e-mails. The detective consulted with the local prosecuting attorney who concluded "the e-mails do not meet the requirement to be a violation of the state code." The case was closed.
In the fall of 2000, Ligon and her husband moved to Seattle. Within months of moving into their apartment, the phone calls began. And shortly after Ligon got a job as a public information officer for the city, the e-mails started again.
In the spring of 2002, Ligon and her husband separated. At the same time, the harassment increased dramatically.
"Sitting at my desk, I got a phone call from a man asking for Joanna." That was quickly followed by two more such calls. Ligon realized what was going on, explained it to the last caller and begged him to tell her the Internet address of the chat room. Soon Ligon was looking at a message board posting from a woman seeking sex and giving Ligon's work number.
She began to get numerous calls at work "from men expecting to engage in some sort of sexual activity. I was furious. I couldn't believe he had the audacity to send potential sexual predators to my desk."
Ligon turned to the Seattle Police Department for help. But the SPD told her there was nothing it could do. A detective suggested she call the FBI.
An FBI agent listened to her story, got quiet for a minute and explained the bureau expends its limited resources for cyberinvestigations on child pornography, death threats and high-dollar hacking. Ligon said the agent suggested: "Why don't you just ignore it?"
"Then I felt, 'I'm alone. No one will help me.' It was the most powerless feeling you could possibly have."
Stalker's downfall
On Sept. 13, 2002, numerous city of Seattle employees and public-information officers received a vicious, "slanderous e-mail" purportedly from a group called Honor of Virginia that supposedly enforces the "honor code" for colleges in that state, including Ligon's alma mater.
The official looking e-mail said that Ligon "may have obtained employment under false pretenses related to her college degree" and "had a long record of moral turpitude, sexual deviance, drug use and psychological infirmity that would seriously call into question her ability to represent the taxpayers of your city."
Ligon learned about the letter when she got a call from her boss.
"It brought the stalking into my workplace in a way it never had before. It was so violating, so intrusive."
And it was also what ultimately led to Jim's unmasking.
Not long after the e-mail, Kirk Bailey, the city's chief computer-security officer, called Ligon to discuss what had happened. She told him she had been to the Seattle police and the FBI, but no one would help. "Kirk said: 'I know some people. Let me make some calls.' "
Before Sept. 11, 2001, before global computer worms, before spam took over the Internet, Bailey was working to bring together computer-security professionals and law enforcement in a group called Agora. It includes the top cybersecurity people from such companies as The Boeing Co. and Microsoft Corp., along with cybercrimes specialists from the FBI and local police and prosecutors.
Bailey called Ivan Orton, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney in King County and a cybercrimes specialist.
The state has no cyberstalking law. So Orton turned to the harassment statute, which makes it a crime to threaten to cause someone bodily harm.
When Orton reviewed the e-mails he found that "none of them threatened her person or property. So my first reaction was: 'I can see why the police and the FBI had a problem because it doesn't fall in with what's prohibited by the law.' "
"But I wasn't happy with that," he said. It was at about that time, Ligon recalled, that Jim made an error.
He sent an e-mail under Ligon's name to her co-workers that gave a link to an explicit pornography site and suggested that the city ought to teach Seattle's youngsters "the pleasure of naked wrestling."
By that time, Ligon had learned to save the Internet protocol address that comes with every e-mail.
Orton tracked the address on that e-mail and previous ones Ligon had given him to an Internet-service provider in Georgia. He got a subpoena -- based on the telephone-harassment statute -- and the provider disclosed the name of its customer.
"It was him," Ligon said. Her face still beams with triumph at recalling that moment. "It was registered to Jim. It felt like the first victory. It was unbelievable."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma took charge, and in January 2003, the FBI entered the case.
Warma faced an uphill legal challenge. A 1999 Justice Department report that examines the nature and extent of cyberstalking concludes that absent threats of violence, it "does not appear to violate federal law."
Warma went to South Carolina to argue for a search warrant for Jim's computer on the grounds that the 1996 amendments to the Federal Telecommunications Act places the matter in federal jurisdiction. The act prohibits the kind of harassment Ligon received over the telephone. And Warma believed the 1996 amendments extend the law into cyberspace. But the argument was turned down, first by a federal magistrate, then by a U.S. District Court judge who said he was not convinced the law applied.
Such problems have kept federal prosecutors across the country from pursuing such cyberstalking cases. The Justice Department report says there is no comprehensive, nationwide data on the extent of the problem. But it speculated there may have been "tens or even hundreds of thousands of victims of recent cyberstalking incidents in the United States."
In May, Ligon got an anti-harassment order in Washington and had it served on Jim in South Carolina. And for the first time in years, Ligon got an e-mail from Jim, under his own name, denying harassing her. It was sent from the same e-mail address as the harassing e-mails.
Feds need warrant
Orton said the feds have never backed down on their resolve to prosecute the case. But they needed the harasser's computer to do it and couldn't get a federal search warrant.
So Orton turned to state law against identity theft.
Jim used Ligon's identity when he entered sex chat rooms and gave out her phone number. That made it a felony because the identity theft was done with the intent to commit another crime: stalking.
In September, Orton got a state search warrant, which was sent to South Carolina for police to execute. But South Carolina police discovered Jim had moved.
But there has been good news: Ligon has been free of harassment for nearly a year. Still, she wants to make sure it will end for good for her and her fellow victims in cyberspace.
Recently Ligon testified to the state House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee, which is considering whether to prohibit cyberstalking, making what happened to her a crime. It's called House Bill 2771. She told legislators that although the investigation into her case continues, the future looks bleak because without the support of adequate laws, "this crime becomes nearly impossible to charge and prosecute."
"Please send a message to Internet stalkers. Make them understand that stalking, no matter what medium it is achieved through, runs counter to what we, as a community, will tolerate. Make them understand that they cannot hide behind the anonymity and vastness of the Internet. Make them understand that they will be caught. Make them understand that they will be prosecuted. And make them understand that Internet stalking could well mean jail time."
Here is the article:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/160201_cyberstalking11.html
Cyberstalker just out of reach of law, but finally, he stops
By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
When Joelle Ligon found her first love at age 15, she could not have known that her teenage romance would morph more than a decade later into a malevolent force relentlessly stalking her from cyberspace.
After years of enduring graphic sexual harassment, amorphous threats, creepy mind games and public humiliation, Ligon was on the verge of an emotional meltdown after moving to Seattle three years ago.
Anonymous e-mails -- vicious lies about her sexual history and character -- went out to co-workers. She had strong suspicions, but no proof, about who was tormenting her. Police could do little to help because there's no law against Internet harassment unless physical threats are made.
"I was never really certain who was doing it, and I never knew what was going to happen next," said Ligon. She spent hundreds of hours "doing damage control" at work and tracking down chat room postings and message boards where her online stalker posed as Ligon and gave out her telephone number so men could call her for sex.
Alone and at wit's end, Ligon finally made a crucial link 14 months ago that ended her powerlessness. Now Ligon, 35, is fighting back with new allies: The FBI, the U.S. attorney's office and the King County Prosecutor's Office.
Ligon has been telling her cautionary tale to groups such as Agora, which comprises computer-security and law enforcement professionals. And recently, she was in Olympia lobbying for a new state law that would make cyberstalking a crime. The road from being a frightened victim to an empowered advocate has been a long one. And Ligon's story is not over yet.
Problems begin
It began in 1983, the year after her mother died. She was sent to Salt Lake City to live with her uncle and his wife.
"It was a really hard time for me," Ligon recalled. But in May 1984, the 15-year-old got fixed up on a blind date with Jim, an 18-year-old senior with his own car. "I fell head over heels in love. He was good-looking, witty and intelligent."
What Ligon soon found out was that he was also controlling, manipulative and jealous. But the lonely young woman could not find the strength to free herself from the relationship until she was 22.
Then she moved to the South. By 1997, she had been married for two years, bought her first home, graduated from college and been working in Virginia as a public-information officer for Chesterfield County government.
"Things were going great," said Ligon. "A husband, a job and I paid off my school loans." Jim was just a bad memory.
Then, in the spring 1998, the stalking began.
Ligon opened an e-mail from a "Courtney Collide" that said things such as "I know your mother died when you were 14. I know where you went to high school."
"I just sat back in my chair -- stunned, shocked, confused."
By the time she got the third e-mail, Ligon knew it was Jim.
"I wrote back and said: 'Jim. I know it's you. Knock it off.' "
Sometime later, she got an e-mail from Jim explaining that "it came to my attention last week that you were recently the recipient of harassing e-mails from a former acquaintance of mine. I'm sorry that she bothered you. If these cretins bother you any more, let me know and I'll take care of it. Love always, Jim."
Attempts by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to reach Jim were not successful.
By September 1999, "Courtney" was sending pornographic pictures and e-mails such as this one: "I guess you think youre (sic) just too good for me and want me as an enemy -- not only is it bad karma to have enemies im (sic) a bad enemy to have oh well you made your choce (sic) and remember now when bad things happen that I just might be behind them."
And bad things did start to happen -- immediately.
That night Ligon "was asleep next to my husband and the phone rang at 2 a.m. The person said: 'Hi. This is Josh.' I said: 'Do I know you?' He said: 'Were you just on the Internet?' I said: 'No.' He hung up." Ligon pressed *69 to get Josh's number and tried to go back to sleep.
The next day, Ligon called the Chesterfield County police.
A detective tracked down the 19-year-old Josh who told the investigator he had been in a teen chat room and someone posing as Joelle had given him Ligon's phone number and asked him to come have sex with her and her husband.
A review of the police report shows that the detective tried to contact Jim, who never returned phone calls or e-mails. The detective consulted with the local prosecuting attorney who concluded "the e-mails do not meet the requirement to be a violation of the state code." The case was closed.
In the fall of 2000, Ligon and her husband moved to Seattle. Within months of moving into their apartment, the phone calls began. And shortly after Ligon got a job as a public information officer for the city, the e-mails started again.
In the spring of 2002, Ligon and her husband separated. At the same time, the harassment increased dramatically.
"Sitting at my desk, I got a phone call from a man asking for Joanna." That was quickly followed by two more such calls. Ligon realized what was going on, explained it to the last caller and begged him to tell her the Internet address of the chat room. Soon Ligon was looking at a message board posting from a woman seeking sex and giving Ligon's work number.
She began to get numerous calls at work "from men expecting to engage in some sort of sexual activity. I was furious. I couldn't believe he had the audacity to send potential sexual predators to my desk."
Ligon turned to the Seattle Police Department for help. But the SPD told her there was nothing it could do. A detective suggested she call the FBI.
An FBI agent listened to her story, got quiet for a minute and explained the bureau expends its limited resources for cyberinvestigations on child pornography, death threats and high-dollar hacking. Ligon said the agent suggested: "Why don't you just ignore it?"
"Then I felt, 'I'm alone. No one will help me.' It was the most powerless feeling you could possibly have."
Stalker's downfall
On Sept. 13, 2002, numerous city of Seattle employees and public-information officers received a vicious, "slanderous e-mail" purportedly from a group called Honor of Virginia that supposedly enforces the "honor code" for colleges in that state, including Ligon's alma mater.
The official looking e-mail said that Ligon "may have obtained employment under false pretenses related to her college degree" and "had a long record of moral turpitude, sexual deviance, drug use and psychological infirmity that would seriously call into question her ability to represent the taxpayers of your city."
Ligon learned about the letter when she got a call from her boss.
"It brought the stalking into my workplace in a way it never had before. It was so violating, so intrusive."
And it was also what ultimately led to Jim's unmasking.
Not long after the e-mail, Kirk Bailey, the city's chief computer-security officer, called Ligon to discuss what had happened. She told him she had been to the Seattle police and the FBI, but no one would help. "Kirk said: 'I know some people. Let me make some calls.' "
Before Sept. 11, 2001, before global computer worms, before spam took over the Internet, Bailey was working to bring together computer-security professionals and law enforcement in a group called Agora. It includes the top cybersecurity people from such companies as The Boeing Co. and Microsoft Corp., along with cybercrimes specialists from the FBI and local police and prosecutors.
Bailey called Ivan Orton, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney in King County and a cybercrimes specialist.
The state has no cyberstalking law. So Orton turned to the harassment statute, which makes it a crime to threaten to cause someone bodily harm.
When Orton reviewed the e-mails he found that "none of them threatened her person or property. So my first reaction was: 'I can see why the police and the FBI had a problem because it doesn't fall in with what's prohibited by the law.' "
"But I wasn't happy with that," he said. It was at about that time, Ligon recalled, that Jim made an error.
He sent an e-mail under Ligon's name to her co-workers that gave a link to an explicit pornography site and suggested that the city ought to teach Seattle's youngsters "the pleasure of naked wrestling."
By that time, Ligon had learned to save the Internet protocol address that comes with every e-mail.
Orton tracked the address on that e-mail and previous ones Ligon had given him to an Internet-service provider in Georgia. He got a subpoena -- based on the telephone-harassment statute -- and the provider disclosed the name of its customer.
"It was him," Ligon said. Her face still beams with triumph at recalling that moment. "It was registered to Jim. It felt like the first victory. It was unbelievable."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma took charge, and in January 2003, the FBI entered the case.
Warma faced an uphill legal challenge. A 1999 Justice Department report that examines the nature and extent of cyberstalking concludes that absent threats of violence, it "does not appear to violate federal law."
Warma went to South Carolina to argue for a search warrant for Jim's computer on the grounds that the 1996 amendments to the Federal Telecommunications Act places the matter in federal jurisdiction. The act prohibits the kind of harassment Ligon received over the telephone. And Warma believed the 1996 amendments extend the law into cyberspace. But the argument was turned down, first by a federal magistrate, then by a U.S. District Court judge who said he was not convinced the law applied.
Such problems have kept federal prosecutors across the country from pursuing such cyberstalking cases. The Justice Department report says there is no comprehensive, nationwide data on the extent of the problem. But it speculated there may have been "tens or even hundreds of thousands of victims of recent cyberstalking incidents in the United States."
In May, Ligon got an anti-harassment order in Washington and had it served on Jim in South Carolina. And for the first time in years, Ligon got an e-mail from Jim, under his own name, denying harassing her. It was sent from the same e-mail address as the harassing e-mails.
Feds need warrant
Orton said the feds have never backed down on their resolve to prosecute the case. But they needed the harasser's computer to do it and couldn't get a federal search warrant.
So Orton turned to state law against identity theft.
Jim used Ligon's identity when he entered sex chat rooms and gave out her phone number. That made it a felony because the identity theft was done with the intent to commit another crime: stalking.
In September, Orton got a state search warrant, which was sent to South Carolina for police to execute. But South Carolina police discovered Jim had moved.
But there has been good news: Ligon has been free of harassment for nearly a year. Still, she wants to make sure it will end for good for her and her fellow victims in cyberspace.
Recently Ligon testified to the state House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee, which is considering whether to prohibit cyberstalking, making what happened to her a crime. It's called House Bill 2771. She told legislators that although the investigation into her case continues, the future looks bleak because without the support of adequate laws, "this crime becomes nearly impossible to charge and prosecute."
"Please send a message to Internet stalkers. Make them understand that stalking, no matter what medium it is achieved through, runs counter to what we, as a community, will tolerate. Make them understand that they cannot hide behind the anonymity and vastness of the Internet. Make them understand that they will be caught. Make them understand that they will be prosecuted. And make them understand that Internet stalking could well mean jail time."