No age criteria. No training necessary. The only requirement: a desire to fight online criminals. Who are these CyberAngels? citizens performing a public service, or Boy Scouts gone haywire?
Last summer, Colin Hatcher expanded his beat. As a volunteer with the Guardian Angels, he used to look for signs of street crimes in his native London, in New York, and in Los Angeles, the city he moved to in 1995. But then Colin and Curtis Sliwa, founder of the band of volunteer crimefighters, decided another metropolis needed a few good men (and women): the Internet, which they call "the biggest city in the world."
Their focus on the Internet started when Curtis got email and mentioned it on his WABC radio show. In short order, he was fiooded with messages from concerned, sometimes desperate, computer users who complained of being harassed online, of stumbling across pornographic sites, of strangers trying to befriend kids in cyberspace with God knows what in mind. Enter the CyberAngels.
"We realized that there was a problem here," recalls Colin, who runs the project with, so far, exactly one computer - a PowerBook 150. "People were writing to us as if somehow they expected us to do something. So Curtis and I talked and said, 'Let's do it.' Just like when people phoned us from Moscow and said, 'Hey, we've got a crime problem in this city' - we went there and laid the foundation for a chapter."
A year later, the CyberAngels already number more than 1,000, Colin says. Their mission: to do all they legally can to promote online decency and respect, to combat rudeness, harassment, spamming, racism, and hate mail. They also say they'll report evidence of software piracy, computer viruses, and terrorism. Predictably, the group has vowed mainly to go after online child pornographers, those semimythical bogeymen of the electronic age. Who are these CyberAngels - citizens performing a valuable public service, or Boy Scouts gone haywire?
__ Saint or saboteur?__
It's easy to take an immediate liking to Colin. He may display a massive inability to heed the clock - he is late for every single appointment I have with him for four consecutive days - but he gives off an air of friendliness and sincerity. He's also a tireless verbal sparring partner. A 37-year-old martial arts expert and former history teacher who majored in English and drama, he'll throw himself into long discussions happily, fending off criticism of the Angels like so many karate chops.
Colin hasn't done much online patrolling lately. He's been too busy dealing with new recruits and the material they forward to him. When I meet up with him in the Guardian Angels' New York office, a roomy apartment on the Upper West Side, he shares his suspicions about a new member, a volunteer we'll call John, who is extraordinarily zealous in his pursuit of Net criminals. So much so that maybe, just maybe, John could be a saboteur. "This guy is deluging us with stuff he finds," says Colin, scrolling down his list of new mail. "I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, because nothing he writes betrays any sarcasm or hostility, but I'm keeping an eye on him. All we need to be forced out of business is 200 people like John who each send us 20 messages every day. We couldn't handle it."
Colin has reason to be paranoid. CyberAngels have received paralyzing email bombs. And someone pretending to be Curtis Sliwa has been sending offensive pictures to Guardian Angels friends and foes. Thankfully, in Colin's experience, such nastiness is outweighed by the many offers he receives from people extending a helping hand.
How do you become a CyberAngel? The process couldn't be simpler. Fill out a no-brainer application, nod your agreement to a general mission statement, and you're in. There are no age requirements; you can be 14 years old and become a netcop - and yeah, your 10-year-old sister is welcome to join, too.
The Angels don't ask if a volunteer has been online for any length of time. (Colin has told a few computerless volunteers that he'll be happy to work with them, provided they get themselves equipped first.) No training is offered. "None is needed," Colin insists. "We're not asking them to change very much about their lives. We ask them to keep their eyes open as they go about their daily business online. You don't need any special skills to do that."
Yes, the CyberAngels leader says, he can understand that some online veterans might not be amused at the thought of computer-illiterate children playing police officers. "I would expect a few fiames on that issue. People saying, you know, 'What business is it of theirs?' My feeling is you can be a CyberAngel without being an Internet professional. Just as we'll take anybody who wants to run actual street patrols. Listen, everyone has a perfect right to be concerned about child pornography on the Internet, even if they don't have an Internet account, because there are crimes being committed, and they'd like to help. That's perfectly legitimate, if you ask me."
I ask Colin if there are any traits or peculiarities that would disqualify people from joining his force. "So far, I haven't come across anybody that I would turn away," he says. "But if, for example, you wrote to us and said, 'I'm a member of the KKK, I hate foreigners, and I want to look out for them on the Net so we can destroy them together,' then of course, I'd write back and say, 'I don't think you're suitable for our project.'"
__ "Jaw-dropping hubris"__
In email exchanges and online discussion, the group has caught fiak from those who see the CyberAngels as a band of clueless Ninja Turtles whose ideas are grandiose, misguided, and kooky. "The Internet is a large, international community," wrote one critic. "Trying to impose standards from the Bible Belt onto folks in Sweden is a bit of a joke." Attorney Lance Rose, in one of his columns for the electronic magazine Boardwatch, castigated the online "safety patrol": "What the CyberAngels are doing would be just wonderful if they weren't also guilty of a jaw-dropping mixture of hubris and naïveté that, in its sum total, makes them at least as great a problem as whatever it is they're out to contain or destroy."
"Look," Colin responds, "our mission is to get things done. If people fiood our mailbox saying they've been victimized online and can we please help, we're not going to say, 'Just sit tight while we get the consensus of 40 million Internet users.' We're going to do something."
The Angels and their supporters believe online users should show a little appreciation for their crimefighting efforts, if only because their policing may help keep government regulation at bay. Colin knows that "the majority of Web sites do not offer pornographic material. The Net is by no means teeming with child pornographers. It's very much a problem caused by a small minority." Still, he says, that doesn't mean anyone should turn a blind eye. "Suppose there's a serial killer loose in New York City. You can say, that's only one person, what's the problem? Well, it only takes one serial killer for there to be a problem."
This happens often when CyberAngels explain their views. In their metaphors, something bad often becomes something much worse; something legal they happen to dislike becomes tainted with a miasma of unlawfulness. Curtis and Colin believe that people who swap child porn are also predators and child molesters - and the Angels will casually mention them in the same breath as serial killers.
When Colin got into an online discussion about smut with one of his critics, he praised a new European access provider for offering a porn free environment and sneered: "You may choose to live in a cyberneighborhood infested with child pornographers and other criminals." Note how the subject of legal adult material, which was at issue, is suddenly equated with (illegal) child porn.
Officially, Guardian Angels will tell you that they only want to ensure that people obey the law. But some of their words and activities are aimed at destroying or banning perfectly lawful material that offends their private sensibilities. Several years ago, in New Hampshire, members of Guardian Angels chapters in Manchester, Boston, and New York, wearing their trademark red berets and carrying placards, loudly protested the opening of an adult bookstore in Portsmouth. More recently, Curtis and five other Angels were arrested for attempting to paint over the artwork of one "Dread Scott," because they considered it antipolice.
__ Wanted: "pedophiles and radicals"__
This tendency to forget what the law allows is not alien to Colin's computer corps, either. He says that several CyberAngels volunteers forwarded him material they found objectionable from gay and lesbian discussion groups. (He repeatedly had to explain to his foot soldiers that there is nothing illegal about discussing gay themes.) And an Australian CyberAngel by the name of Hans von Lieven published a document on the Web in which he excoriates "unsavory characters on the Net, such as political radicals, paedophiles, et cetera." In von Lieven's view, "These people stop at nothing. Usually hiding behind an anonymous or false email address they spread their filth on the Net, hoping it will wind up in as many places as possible." Never mind, apparently, that there's no law against having radical political beliefs.
Racist views, sickening as they may be, are hardly illegal either - at least not in the US. But Sebastian Metz, international coordinator of the Guardian Angels and a CyberAngel volunteer, will tell anyone who listens that "pedophiles, racists, and other criminals have approached the computer era with clammy-hand-rubbing glee." (Racists and other criminals?)
Colin is quick to point out that the volunteers' private sentiments are their own business. The group has no official opinion on anything, except that the laws of the land must be obeyed, and those who violate them must be brought to justice. "There are a lot of things we don't have policies on," says Colin. "Bottom line, we're a single-issue group."
At least where the Guardian Angels (the parent group) are concerned, that observation hardly withstands scrutiny. The Angels, not content with merely attempting to enforce existing rules, actively campaign for new ones. They do so not just when they dress in colors and try to close down a New Hampshire porn shop, but also when they petition Internet service providers to adopt a speech code. The CyberAngels have taken to what they call "pressurizing" ISPs into mandating such a code, and they'd like to see InterNIC, one of the Net's few governing bodies, revoke domain names of providers who repeatedly fail to kick off offenders.
For the CyberAngels, none of this has anything to do with notions of free speech or the First Amendment. Information posted on their Web page says "We are all granted our freedom, but not the freedom to hurt, corrupt, abuse, or harass innocent people." Paul Kneisel, a New York writer who has been following the Guardian Angels for years, begs to differ. Writing in Cu Digest, a digital newsletter about computers and civil liberties, Kneisel points out that of the verbs in their list, only "to harass" is defined as a crime in most states. Other than that, he argues, the "freedom of one person involves exactly the right to hurt, corrupt, and abuse. In our public parks, we can have the atheist on his soapbox at one end, and the religious tractarian passing out her 'Jesus Loves You' leafiets at the other. Each may feel abused by the other's actions, but each can (legally) continue."
Others believe there's already enough antismut pressure on online services and ISPs. "It's one thing for AOL or the government to impose speech restrictions," says David Sobel, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "That's bad enough. Do we now have to worry about the moral standards of self-appointed, untrained police officers - people who are not subject to public accountability?"
__ Polish PC__
Some folks know all they need to know about the filth on the Internet. They just pick and choose from Net coverage in the country's finest publications: the "Cyberporn" cover story in Time; the front-page article in the New York Post that screamed "COMPUTER SICKOS TARGET YOUR KIDS." This is one of the ways Curtis Sliwa stays informed - the 42-year old commandant of the Guardian Angels and CyberAngels reads the popular press. But unlike most of us, Curtis has never owned a computer, let alone surfed the Net. "I just haven't gotten around to it yet," he says of the purchase he keeps postponing. "I'm stubborn. I don't have a working knowledge of computers. I never use them, but I'm aware of their infiuence." Curtis does have an email address, but an assistant at Guardian Angels headquarters sifts through incoming messages and prints out the most relevant ones for Curtis to read. "Meanwhile," Curtis quips, "I'm relying on my Polish PC." He points to six plastic crates filled with file folders. They take up quite a bit of space in his modest cubicle at WABC, the radio station that employs him as a talk-show host.
As we chat, the angry voice of Curtis's station mate Rush Limbaugh crackles out of the ceiling speakers. Like Colin, Curtis is inseparable from his red beret. The corners of his mouth go up when he cracks a joke - being of Polish heritage, Curtis can get away with the one about the Polish PC - but his eyes never seem to smile. After downing a cocktail of ginseng and maxi energizers ("it fiushes the system and provides a great boost"), he's ready to explain his views about the dangers of modern technology. It boils down to this: "The Internet right now is a license to commit crime without any monitoring. Law enforcement has every right to step in and try to put an end to that, and we have every right, as good citizens, to look for crime and report it."
But Colin's line, I say, is that government ought to keep its hands off the Net. Curtis shrugs. "I guess I'm more conservative than most Guardian Angels. The Internet is a free-market economy, and that implies and requires oversight, penalties, a court."
Don't conservatives usually ask for less government interference? "Sure, but this is an important change we've gone through here. You can just bump into porn now, online. You find it without wanting to. It's like, people have guns in the house, and young kids go exploring, and we ought to protect them."
I tell him that in almost five years online, I have never accidentally stumbled across pornographic texts or images. "That's not my experience at all," Curtis counters. "From the moment the Angels got me an email address, I've been fiamed and bombed. Some of the email I got consisted of doctored pictures with my head grafted onto some porn star's body, making it seem as if I was involved in sexual situations of the worst kind. I never asked for that stuff."
Most online users, however, never experience that kind of vituperation. Doesn't Curtis think he gets nasty mail because he is in a position of some prominence and attacks something dear to scores of people? "Sure, that's part of it," he admits. "But no one is really immune to it. And it's not just what people send you. It could be you're just clicking around to see what's out there, and suddenly this filth pops up on your screen. You can't have public displays of graphic material in the streets of our cities, and I don't see why that should be any different on the Internet."
He pauses, grinning, gleeful, relishing this thought: "There's irony in the fact that a noncomputer guy like me is responsible for setting up the CyberAngels, when most people told me it couldn't and shouldn't be done."
A few weeks after our talk, Curtis engages in a much more pugnacious exchange - online, no less - with pornographer Al Goldstein, who publishes Screw magazine. What was supposed to have been a moderately enlightening debate soon becomes a no-holds-barred slugfest over penis size (Goldstein: "Curtis Š has a cock the size of my thumb") and castration (Sliwa: "The only cure for Al Goldstein's perversions is a visit to the rabbi for removal of his three-piece set"). When the gents get around to discussing smut on the Net, Curtis is more outspoken than ever: "I do not hide behind the fiag, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution in trying to protect the perverts in society." He announces that his "mission in cyberspace" is to "eliminate sleazoids, freakazoids, and cybersluts." Goldstein, not losing an opportunity to get his digs in: "Curtis is the Edsel of thought. The poster child for the brain dead."
__ Innocent images__
So, after more than a year of patrolling and crusading, how many child pornographers have the CyberAngels reported to the FBI?
"Zero," Colin says without blinking. "Because we go through the ISPs. For example, we reported a lot of America Online members who were trading in child porn to AOL's Terms of Service. A couple of months later the FBI did their big bust" - in last September's Operation Innocent Images, the bureau raided 127 homes and businesses and made 12 arrests. "I bet we played our part in that."
Asked if CyberAngels spurred Operation Innocent Images, Peter Toren, a trial attorney with the Computer Crimes Unit at the Department of Justice, declines to comment on "an ongoing investigation." Later, he mentions casually that he wasn't even aware of the group's existence.
Howard Jonas, president of IDT, one of the northeast's largest ISPs, says he's never been contacted by the CyberAngels. If he had, he's not sure he would have pulled out all the stops to help them.
"Let's say there's objectionable - or even illegal - material being piped through IDT computers," Jonas, the father of six children, postulates. "What's the proof that the person whose name is on the message is the real poster? It could be some hacker trying to pull off a joke at someone else's expense. Besides, child porn doesn't originate on the Net. Those pictures are scanned from illicit magazines. That doesn't make it legal to trade in the stuff, but the actual harm happens not so much on the Net as it does wherever and whenever those photos are taken. The manufacturers of that type of smut are the real perpetrators, and it seems more important to nab them."
Of course, Jonas says, if law enforcement asked IDT to cooperate in an investigation, the company would - in a heartbeat. "But I'm not going to bend over backward to accommodate some freelance posse, whose time might be better spent volunteering at a local school or visiting kids in a hospital."
The CyberAngels may very well be welcome there, but law enforcement will not necessarily give them the warmest of receptions. "I don't feel it is appropriate for them to cross the line into investigating child pornography," says Douglas Rehman, a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who frequently goes online looking for lawbreakers. "If the CyberAngels solicit child porn, they commit a crime. If they possess it, they commit a crime. Legitimate law enforcement then winds up wasting time investigating them." The Justice Department's Peter Toren expresses surprise that the CyberAngels profess to have knowledge of countless online felonies. "If that is so," he says, "we would certainly expect them to share that knowledge with legitimate law enforcement, so we can take it from there." (At press time, the Angels claimed to have finally reported certain suspicious activities to the FBI.)
Could the CyberAngels become a cherished ally of law enforcement if they somehow steered clear of soliciting and possessing child porn? Not exactly. The amateur crimefighters may blunder into an investigation that's already under way. "Suppose we're monitoring someone whom we suspect of trading child porn online," posits Rehman. "If the Angels report that same person to the ISP, and the ISP boots the guy off the system, we may not yet have gathered enough evidence to justify a prosecution. The Angels will have blown the best chance we had to put away a known criminal."
But surely, police officers have no objections to alert citizens keeping an eye on the 'hood? "A legitimate Neighborhood Watch uses a passive scenario," Rehman says. "They see suspicious activity, they call us. They don't go out and buy crack and take it to the nearest precinct. They'd be breaking the law. And the CyberAngels are breaking the law the moment they knowingly download illicit pictures."
Paul Kneisel raises the same issue in his Cu Digest article, questioning the logic behind the Angels' "engaging in their behavior to fight the very behavior in which they engage." And another thing, Kneisel says: What's to stop kiddie porn collectors from signing up with the CyberAngels, so that when the police come knocking, these perps can claim a degree of innocence?
Colin scoffs at that notion, saying he's not aware of "some kind of immunity from the law" that the Angels might have.
Special Agent Rehman's thoughts - exactly.
