Cyber-Stalking--Old Crime, New Guise

By a conservative estimate, 1,350,000 Americans each year are victims of some form of stalking. But only within the last few years, according to national and international statistics, has the electronic version known as cyber-stalking taken hold, and with a vengeance.

Frequently, it begins with a person offering too much trust to someone met on the Internet, but that’s not always so. A North Hollywood victim cited in a Times report didn’t even have a computer. The woman was targeted in a chilling fashion, allegedly by a rejected suitor who posted false messages over the Internet in her name. The messages claimed that she wanted to be raped, and as a result six men showed up at her home.

In California, Wyoming, Montana and Illinois, laws have been passed or are under consideration that make cyber-stalking a crime. But a rush to new layers of laws might be unnecessary. A prosecutor, for example, did not need a new law to charge a UC San Diego graduate student last year with stalking, period, after 100 threatening e-mail messages were sent to five victims.

Such threats already are crimes. The seamy side of the Net has merely become the new vehicle with which to commit them.