What’s up, doxx?

by liberal japonicus

In the comments, there was some discussion of doxxing, which seems like a very mutable term, so a post about it might be interesting.

The term ‘dox’ comes from the 90’s hacker culture. It was originally ‘to drop docs on’, and because the hacker culture generally operated on a basis of anonymity, the tactic was structurally dependent on that to have its power. The google n-gram shows the rise of the term in the 2010’s.

I don’t think that just because concepts have to be named in order to exist. In the movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the main character, played by Frances McDormand, puts up three billboards to complain about police inaction in the rape and death of her daughter. We wouldn’t call that doxxing, because no private information was involved, but one can see how it might be considered to be similar. Back in the day, there were cases of people putting out leaflets but they were handled by a combination of littering, libel and post office regulations. If doxxing did result in violence, they’d probably be handled under those laws

One should also note that simultaneous with the emergence of doxxing, there was an established pattern of anti-abortion groups and activists publicizing the information of abortion providers. An example is the Nuremberg list, which:

distribute[d] personal information about over 200 abortion providers, including names, family members, addresses, photos and in some cases criminal and civil suit records. The plaintiffs argue that this information is presented in such a way that constitutes actual threats to the doctors’ lives and safety. The defendants claim they are protected by freedom of speech. Horsley states, “All we’ve done, and all really anybody’s accused us of doing, is printing factually verifiable information… If the First Amendment does not allow a publisher to publish factually verifiable information, then I don’t understand what the First Amendment’s about.”

Now, I think arguing that it was protected 1st amendment speech is more than a little bit specious, so one could ask if I take a similar stand with the Portland incident discussed here or the LA incident here. For the LA incident, I’m not cheering them on, but I’d note that there is already a law against publicly disclosing the personal information of a federal agent, so if it is on the books, it should be used.

Now, there is some opportunity for some lawyerly discussion about why one is bad and the other is ok and y’all are encouraged to go at it. I would like more details on the two particular cases, given that there are multiple examples of ICE agents overegging charges. In fact, a second link shared has the headline Anarchists and Rioters in Portland Illegally Dox ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement (emphasis mine) Since IANAL, I’ll just observe that the headline seems to suggest that there are two classes of doxxing, legal and illegal. And to be picky, I don’t think there is anything to support Noem’s claim that there has been a 700% increase in these incidents.

Furthermore, the LA one has the ICE officer going from the Civic Center to his house in Baldwin Park. which is, according to google maps, is a 22-40 minute drive through LA traffic. The affadavit (here) describes what happened and the investigating officer claims that all the livestreamed posts were deleted.

Shortly after the incident, the videos were taken down from the “ice_out_ofla” and “defendmesoamericanculture” accounts. Based on my training and experience, deleting or removing publicly facing posts or information that would otherwise be incriminating is often a tactic used to avoid arrest and detention by law enforcement.

This seems rather convenient, if you ask me. Furthermore, all three were described in in this New York Post (and this will hopefully be the last time I link to them) article as ‘Anti-ICE influencers’. So I’m not sure if their motivation was to overthrow ICE and by extension, the US government, or to get more likes on their posts. If it is the latter, I’m having a hard time seeing it as terrorism.

For the Portland incident, it says that the two platforms that were publishing information were the Rose City Counter-Info and the Crustian Daily. I don’t know about the first, but the second sounds awful similar to Crustianity, which has the following

As with all great faiths, Crustianity has endured its trials, its debates, its moments of division. The first great rupture came when Pineapple was revealed unto the world, causing a crisis of belief among the faithful. Some embraced it as a divine test of tolerance, while others saw it as a blasphemy upon the sacred slice.

Then, in later days, alternative diets arose, challenging the very foundations of dough and cheese. Those who could not partake in the traditional blessings of gluten and dairy sought new paths, causing yet another schism. But though our houses are divided, our crust remains whole.

Thus, three great sects arose: Crustolocism, Orthocrusty and Calzonism.

Though these sects may have their differences, they share one sacred truth: that pizza is the holiest of meals, and that no soul should go without a slice.

I’m thinking someone is taking the piss.

About the 3rd incident, there are laws against ‘swatting’, i.e.calling out the police and suggesting that there is a serious situation, inviting specialist police units to come, which I guess would include incitement to swat, which the third link is related to. However, reading the article, the person who is did it had a long running feud with the attorney in question.

The victim told authorities she had never met Curcio but knew he was a former resident at her mother’s Santa Monica apartment building. She said Curcio had harassed and threatened her mother for years and began targeting her family in January 2024.

Federal investigators say Curcio’s harassment campaign extended far beyond the doxxing incident. According to court documents, he repeatedly asked the victim’s mother, “What would you do if someone threw acid in your face?” and once posted a note on her apartment door demanding she move out.

Santa Monica police reported that security camera footage captured Curcio pepper-spraying the woman’s apartment doorknob in November 2024. The victim’s mother later suffered burns to her skin and eyes from the substance. (emphasis mine)

The date (November 2024) is before Trump took office, and so it seems likely that her staus as an ICE attorney doesn’t really enter into it. In fact, one could class this with crimes where people pose as ICE enforcement (here, here and here), in other words, people taking advantage of situations in order to cause problems. That they pretend to be anti-ICE or pretend to operate under the aegis of ICE doesn’t really matter and one of the characteristics of the employment of the term ‘doxxing’ is to argue that it is automatically wrong. I’ll turn it over the nous, who said

I do think it is important to note, though, that this particular scenario does not start with people on the left being upset that the Trump administration is enforcing the immigration laws and respond by doxxing ICE agents wholesale.

It starts with ICE being given arbitrary quotas and being sent out to grab people based on language and ethnicity, and detaining and deporting people without due process.

And even with that, the few people who have actually been doxxed (as opposed to those who are afraid of being doxxed – not for enforcing the law, but for being violent while pursuing these reprehensible tactics) only ended up getting doxxed because they were the ones caught being especially, shockingly violent on video while engaging in these reprehensible tactics.

Should the public’s response here be to say that all ICE agents should be allowed to wear masks so they need not fear being identified, or should it be to say that ICE needs to stop these show raids and use their enforcement power only to go after the actual criminals in a way that does not violate their right to due process? And if we protest it should be both, which of the sides of that choice should be the one we give priority to?

That is one aspect to debate. Another is that there is a tech component to this that makes it problematic. Leafleting a neighborhood is one thing, but the reach of the internet and social media, along with the emphasis on ‘engagement’ by the algorithms that drive them, make things a different beast.

It may be interesting to contrast this with Japan. When I first came to Japan, after I had been in my apartment for about a week, I had a visit (called a 巡回連絡/Junkai Renraku) by two neighborhood policemen. We were prepped on this and told to expect it in places outside urban centers. The police basically knew everyone who was living in the area and when a new person moved in, they would drop by. The protocol was to offer them some tea or coffee, have them sit in your living room and exchange small talk. Each local police koban had a handwritten map with all this information on. It was possible to get the information on a person with a specific request (for example, if I was visiting another participant on the program we were on and I couldn’t locate their apartment, I could and did go the koban and asked if they could tell me where they lived) This system still exists, though I think that the police might be a bit more hesitant to give out addresses (and with google maps, it is a lot easier to tell people how to get to a particular place) I also think that the requirement of visiting has faded a bit, but people are still required to submit a Resident information Card. The primary reason for this is for disaster management, but the system also functions in case someone is the victim of a crime or accident.

In 1988, there was the Act on the Protection of Computer-Processed Personal Data Held by Administrative Organs, which was confined to computer data. In the following years, there have been more protections about revealing information. If you watch any Japanese TV program that shows actual footage taken, the faces of passers-by as well as license plates are carefully blurred out. For some video, voices are altered and interview footage often is a shot of the person’s hands and body. These privacy laws often encompass anti doxxing. In a Western framework, there was never any separation between information held on paper and information held on computer, which seems to be the root of any number of problems.

Anyway, thread to talk about issues like this and how should we think about them. Have at it.