It’s both a tricky and a ongoing problem. Many of the folks doing the harassing have access to a host of tools that make it difficult, if not impossible, to block them. Blocking by content is fraught with false positives and often the targets are activists who have legitimate reasons to be discussing hate mail and sensitive topics. Much like some anti-spam lists have discovered filters will often block discussions of spam samples.
I think it’s a valuable topic to discuss. One thing I would suggest is reaching out to the groups who are actively working in the anti-harassment space. They probably have been through many of the early iterations of “how do we protect people who come to us for help.” While I don’t have a lot of experience here, the first person I’d talk to is Jayne Hitchcock and then chase down the places she recommended. There are also a number of women’s groups who work directly with victims of harassment, that have visible contact information. I’m less familiar with the anti-racist and anti-anti-semitic groups but I know they have presences online, too. Even a few 30 minute phone calls will give you a crash course in what they’ve already tried and help create a much better policy. laura > On 15 Jul 2020, at 10:38, Hans-Martin Mosner via mailop <[email protected]> > wrote: > > This is a tricky problem. I would guess that some traditional spam-rejection > mechanisms might be applicable, but there are grey areas: > Rejection of mails from anonymous origins may help, but on one hand there are > some (sent via hacked ordinary mailboxes) which can't technically be > distinguished from non-anonymous communication, and on the other hand people > who are under threat of harassment might want to use anonymizing services > themselves to communicate. > Content filtering requires training samples, and there is probably not enough > data to train a Bayesian filter as in SpamAssassin or more modern sentiment > analysis neural networks. The false positive and false negative rates might > be unacceptably high, requiring manual checks. > In addition, these tools are not helping in identifying perpetrators. I would > suspect that they will in most cases use techniques which make them > untraceable. Given that trust in LEAs is damaged after the many racist police > incidents in the USA or the recent hatemail incidents based on information > retrieved through police computer systems in Germany, I would also suspect > that some victims would be reluctant to hope that police authorities will > track down perpetrators. > > Some groups on both ends of the political spectrum therefore prefer to track > down and attack peeceived "enemies" themselves. This is obviously not a > solution, even when it's well-intentioned. > > Cheers, > Hans-Martin > > Am 15. Juli 2020 10:40:05 vorm. schrieb Paul Ebersman via mailop > <[email protected]>: > >> We have all sorts of tools for detecting, filtering, documenting spam >> and processes for trying to get spammers off the net (and occasionally >> even prosecuted). >> >> But in these tense times, lots of PoC/non-white/non-cis get hate emails, >> death threats, etc. >> >> Is there software out there like spamassassin et al for detecting these >> kinds of threats? Does anyone have pointers on web pages/instructions >> for how to configure common mail readers/services so users can >> self-filter? >> >> Finally, I know that there are avenues for tracking illegal activity and >> ways to work with FBI, Interpol, etc. Any of these teams specialize in >> or at least familiar with how to prosecute hate crimes perpetrated via >> email threats? >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> mailop mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://chilli.nosignal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mailop > > > _______________________________________________ > mailop mailing list > [email protected] > https://chilli.nosignal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mailop -- Having an Email Crisis? We can help! 800 823-9674 Laura Atkins Word to the Wise [email protected] (650) 437-0741 Email Delivery Blog: https://wordtothewise.com/blog
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