How to curb online harassment? Technology, law and advocacy can help.

[Commentary] A combination of legislation, technology, law and advocacy can improve online life. We need laws that acknowledge harassment by proxy and that attribute actions of the incited mob to the original upstream offender.

Rep Katherine M. Clark (D-MA) is in the vanguard, introducing legislation stopping some of the most formidable online acts. One bill criminalizes the malicious publication of private information, another prevents blackmailed demands for sexual acts, and a third punishes people who falsely report emergencies causing SWAT teams to be dispatched. Other important proposed legislation penned by Rep Clark is focused on the infrastructure of law enforcement – one requiring the Justice Department to publish statistics related to cybercrimes and funding, another providing funding to hire and train law enforcement officers to investigate cybercrimes and to procure advanced computer forensic tools. Meanwhile, Rep Jackie Speier (D-CA) introduced the Intimate Privacy Protect Act in 2016, to criminalize non-consensual pornography, with co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle.

[Carrie Goldberg is an attorney in Brooklyn at CA Goldberg, PLLC and a board member at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.]