Last month, Eva Burgess was eating breakfast at the Rose Cafe in Venice, Calif., when she remembered she needed to make an appointment with her eye doctor. So the New York theater director got on her cellphone and booked a date.
Almost immediately, she started receiving "weird and creepy" calls directing her to a blog. There, under the posting "Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!" her name, cellphone number and other details mentioned in her call to the doctor's office were posted, along with the admonition, "next time, you might take your business outside." The offended blogger had been sitting next to Ms. Burgess in the cafe.
This is taken from an article in the Wall Street Journal today entitled, The Snoop Next Door. Stories like the one above are sprouting up all over the Web. They've become so popular that there are an increasing number of sites dedicated to them, along with dedicated groups showing up on such sites as Flickr (photos) and YouTube (video). More specialized sites featured in the article include PlateWire.com for shaming bad drivers and HollaBackNYC.com for reporting incidents of men leering, whistling at or otherwise harassing women.
My first thought on this was to feel that it's definitely not a good idea. Our society is becoming ever more permissive of the seemingly ubiquitous surveillance by government, law agencies, private security companies, corporations and so forth. The last thing we need to do is turn the Internet into one big network of tattletales. But then I started visiting some of these sites and was forced to rethink my initial reaction.
This is especially interesting to me in light of the recent stir caused by my Portland Hall of Shame series of posts wherein I call out local businesses who are being bad neighbors by not keeping their storefronts and sidewalks clean and in good repair. I feel that this is a completely innocuous thing to do and, indeed, it is already producing positive results and generating expressions of gratitude from neighbors who have suffered from the effects of these bad-neighbor businesses over the years.
But taking it to a personal level is another matter entirely. When you publish a person's photo, phone number, license plate number or other 'unique identifier' for the world to see, you're potentially putting them in harm's way. At the very least, you're setting them up for some embarrassment—if not harassment. Is that ever a good thing? I would say that in some cases it is, but determining where to draw the line is something so subjective that it may be impossible to define what those cases are.
The photo at the top of this article shows a huge pickup truck spanning two compact car parking spaces. And the California license plate number is visible for all to see. Few people would argue that this guy is being a complete jerk, but does that mean this photo should be posted in the Jerks photo group on Flickr? I'm guessing that if all my readers were to weigh in, there would be a fifty-fifty split in opinion.
But what about the photo of this guy on a NYC bus? It appears on Holla Back New York City where the tagline reads, If you can't slap 'em, snap 'em! The site gives women a place to post photos
and reports of guys who harass them. This photo is accompanied by this story:
This guy kept his leg wide open the whole time on the Q14 bus tonight. He kept putting his hand between his legs and massaged the area like he's in a porn movie. He kept eyeballing me and staring at me until I took out my camera phone and snapped this nasty pervert's face. As soon as he got off the bus, he just stared right at me through the window and I just flipped him my middle finger. Dirty pervert.
Other posts on the site tell of women receiving threats, being followed by men, etc. Many, if not most, of these incidents wouldn't be touched by the police. Even if they had the resources to do anything about it, they typically can't until a crime has been committed. So aren't sites like this a viable way for victims of harassment to defend themselves and warn others of the threat? Of course, you have to take into consideration the potential for lies, slander and blackmail. Say an angry ex lover or employee trying to exact revenge by posting a photo along with a fabricated story...
I'm still looking into this, but thought it worth sharing.
Check out the full article here:
The Snoop Next Door - The Wall Street Journal - January 12, 2007
Bad parking, loud talking -- no transgression is too trivial to document online. Our reporter on new Web sites for outing fellow citizens.
I'm in gadget geek heaven. I got a 
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