Cyberjustice: The Raisley Case, a Cautionary Tale
Philadelphia Inquirer has a story of a bizarre cyber-feud. It’s a story of involving dirty tricks, impersonation, divorce, broken families, and, ultimately, a likely jail term. An excerpt:
The two reclusive computer experts staged their vicious fight on a cyberspace battlefield, each intent on the other’s destruction.
One, who has built a career out of creating false Web personas, lured his adversary into an adulterous “affair” with a fictitious online lover, a humiliating hoax he broadcast across the Internet.
His target, a software programmer formerly of Western Pennsylvania, retaliated by unleashing a worldwide computer virus.
But it was a short-lived victory for Bruce Raisley, 48, who had lived in Monaca, near Pittsburgh.
On Wednesday, a federal jury found that Raisley’s vengeance turned criminal when he launched a program that directed about 100,000 computers to attack websites that republished stories detailing his sad saga, . . .
The internet is a public place. Everything someone does leaves a trail.