Olivier Sylvain writes:
On Friday evening, within hours of posting U.S. Marshal Service mugshots of alleged members of Internet “hacktivist” group Anonymous, TalkingPointsMemo.com became the target of a relentless “distributed denial of service” or DDoS attack. According to a statement released by TPM founder and publisher Josh Marshall on TPM’s Facebook page, visitors could not access the site a little after 5 p.m. eastern time. While no one knows for sure, TPM has inferred that Anonymous or people affiliated with the group are probably responsible for the attack. (That TPM turned to Facebook to publish a statement is ironic because Anonymous has vowed to shutdown the social networking site later this fall.)
The TPM site remains down as of this posting.According to Marshall, TPM filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the mugshots earlier this summer, and posted them as soon as they obtained them. For the past six years, according to Marshall, the news site has routinely “published mugshots of numerous people accused or convicted of various crimes” that are the subject of its reporting. As a political junkie and frequent visitor to the site, I’ve clicked through the photos of hypocrites and hucksters in elective office as well as random mugshots of mobsters and celebrities to satiate an admittedly morbid curiosity. TPM, as with many other major news organizations, knows this. The questions for TPM are ethical and legal: what is it about these admittedly alluring photos of the smirks, glares, and shock typical of mugshots that adds to the story, and justifies the ostensible invasion of privacy?
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