Pearl Harbor Day: Marriage in the Digital Age

On this Pearl Harbor Day, a story about Americans are managing to attack each other without any Mitsubishi Zeros. “How One Woman’s Digital Life Was Weaponized Against Her” (WIRED):

In the fall of 2012, Courtney and Steven had been together for 12 years but had known each other for 20: They met in a high school biology class and reconnected later when Courtney was going through a divorce.

[note the conventional-for-American-journalism “going through a divorce” phraseology, as though it was something that happened without human agency, not “when Courtney was divorcing her husband” or “after Courtney’s husband had sued her”]

Marriage is boring for some folks:

At the time, Courtney was staying home with her toddler. She and Steven had made that decision together, but still, it was rough on their marriage: Steven was working long hours as an IT instructor and felt the stress of being the sole breadwinner. He often traveled for work. Courtney was a nervous new mother, afraid to let her son stay with sitters, which only increased her sense of isolation. She was often angry at Steven, whom she began to see as controlling and neglectful.

Eventually Courtney was spending a lot of time online with Zonis and pulling further away from Steven. She kept telling herself that they were just good friends, even when Zonis sent her a penis-shaped sex toy. … [Steven] confronted Courtney. She was furious that he had read her emails but said she would stop communicating with Zonis. Instead, she moved the relationship to her tablet, behind a password; she also labeled Zonis’ contact information with a fake name.

[Why not sue for divorce and be free to hang out with the new friend? Washington State family law caps child support at about $20,000 per year, so it is not nearly as profitable as suing under California law, for example. Also, alimony after a 12-year marriage would likely be just 3 or 4 years. One has to stick with the boring IT instructor spouse if one wants to spend the bulk of the boring IT instructor’s income.]

Two can play the Internet game:

A few days later, Steven contacted his parents and Courtney’s parents and told them about the relationship. He found Zonis’ wife and wrote and texted her. He looked up Zonis’ parents on a people-finder site. “I would ask that you encourage your son to stop this affair before it completely ruins our family,” he wrote, adding that he had heard that the Zonises had an open relationship. “If you have any questions or would like to see some of the evidence, please email me.”

Lawyers start to make money:

In March 2015, Courtney filed for a protective order against Zonis, which would make further contact a crime. Steven filed for a similar order for himself and their son the month after the “exposure,” but Courtney had believed that doing so would be too antagonizing. Zonis and his wife responded in kind by getting orders of their own.

Social media can be worse than a time-waster:

There were accounts impersonating Courtney and Steven; one Google Plus account, which included the videos and Courtney’s contact information, birthday, and maiden name, had more than 8,000 views. There was an account for their son. A Facebook account in the name of “Jennifer Jones”—Courtney recognized one photo as Zonis’ pet tortoise—sent messages to her friends and family accusing Steven of abuse and of having sent “Jones” threatening emails and photos of his penis. (Zonis denies creating any of these accounts, saying: “I’ve never been on Facebook in my life” and “Who puts a picture of their pet on a secret account they’re trying to hide?”)

The Allens contacted Facebook, Google, YouTube, and other sites to have the accounts taken down, with mixed success. One of the hardest to remove was the Facebook page in their son’s name. When Courtney filled out a form indicating that she wasn’t the one being impersonated, the site suggested she alert that person to have it removed; there seemed to be no expectation that the targeted person might be a 4-year-old. The account stayed up despite repeated requests. (It was finally disabled in late October, after WIRED’s fact-checkers asked Facebook for comment.)

The Internet antagonist somehow gets hold of their real info?

In the summer of 2015, the Allens found out that a new credit card had been opened in their names and that one of their existing cards had been used fraudulently. They could see that all the attempted charges were to access sites that might yield personal information: ancestry.com, a site that allows recovery of old W2s, a company that does background checks.

The war intensifies:

In late June 2015, K&L Gates filed the Allens’ lawsuit against Zonis, seeking damages and relief related to defamation, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, electronic impersonation, and invasion of privacy. Two months later, Zonis filed his own suit in federal court in Arizona, making similar claims against Steven.

Emails had begun coming to Steven’s account at the University of Washington—a job he thought had gone unnoticed until he got an anonymous email referencing the school’s mascot: “Public record. all. done.” Soon dozens of accounts, from the IT department to the university president, were getting emails about the Allens, often with images of Courtney. According to court records, two preschools in the Kent area also got emails that appeared to be from Steven; they said that he planned to come in with a gun and start shooting.“It wasn’t me!” Steven cried when the police called him at work. “I’m here!”

Taxpayers get involved:

Later that fall, two FBI agents appeared at the Allens’. The couple hoped again that their troubles were ending at last. But while the agents were aware of their case, they said they were required to tell the Allens to cease and desist because Zonis had contacted them with evidence that he said showed the Allens were committing credit fraud against him.

There is a trial two years after the lawsuits were filed:

By the end of arguments, the Allens’ legal team had introduced 1,083 exhibits into evidence. The chart Van Engelen made just to organize the emails was 87 pages long. It was a level of scrutiny that few cyberharassment cases ever receive—and an illustration of what victims face when dealing with such a complicated case, especially if they don’t have access to pro bono help. K&L lawyers and paralegals had spent thousands of hours digging through the evidence. The value of Van Engelen’s time alone was in the ballpark of $400,000.

The husband and wife who defended themselves didn’t do very well against K&L Gates:

The K&L lawyers had not asked for a specific amount of compensation. The Allens told their lawyers that their goal wasn’t money but simply an end to the harassment.

The jury also chose yes for “Was the electronic impersonation a proximate cause of the injury or damage to the Allens?” The form offered a blank space to write in the total amount of damages warranted. The jury’s answer: $2 million. … The jury did agree with Zonis on one count: The Allens had “intruded upon the seclusion” of the Zonises, but they found that no harm had resulted. When the amounts awarded to the Allens were totaled, they added up to $8.9 million.

[How does $8.9 million compare to what happens in an actual shooting war? The U.S. military pays a $100,000 “death gratuity” to the survivor of a soldier killed on active duty, including actual combat.]

Readers” What do you think? Have Internet and social media brought us to the point where we can get all of our fighting done without buying weapons and without involving foreign countries?

More: read “How One Woman’s Digital Life Was Weaponized Against Her” (WIRED)