They lurk
online, ready to pounce.
Once a target
has been identified, they trawl through various social media sites
to ferret out whatever details they can get and publish it.
Such is how
online vigilantes - who pride themselves on executing "social
justice" - work.
In the latest
episode, the "investigation" went badly wrong. A bank, a woman and
her boyfriend had their names dragged through the mud when keyboard
warriors wrongly identified them as being connected to the abuse of
an old man.
Experts say
such vigilantism or virtual lynching, where netizens take it upon
themselves to exact justice, will only rise, fuelled by the
proliferation of recording devices, social media and a sense that
the authorities may not take adequate action.
Last Sunday, a
video uploaded on Facebook showed a woman and a man quarrelling
with an older man at a hawker centre in Toa Payoh.The police
stepped in later, arresting the pair, but some netizens had already
taken matters into their own hands.
In forums and
on Facebook, they claimed that the couple worked at the United
Overseas Bank's (UOB) Toa Payoh branch and posted photos allegedly
of them. Some threatened to close their UOB accounts if the bank
did not fire the pair.
It forced UOB
to issue a statement refuting the allegations, while the woman
wrongly identified as the one in the video filed a police report.
In a Facebook post, Ms Cherry Tan, 22, clarified that she is a
full-time student who has never worked at a bank, and thanked her
family and friends for standing by her.
And in a
twist, a man who repeated the false claims on a Facebook thread was
himself "CSI-ed" - a term inspired by the TV series Crime Scene
Investigation.
On at least
one forum, netizens posted information about his workplace and
photos of him.
It is hard to
pinpoint who these "CSI-ers" are, how big the group is, and why
they do what they do.
"The motives
could be many and complex," said social media expert Michael
Netzley from Singapore Management University.
"Perceptions
of fairness are a deep and powerful human motivator," he added.
"People may enjoy the feeling of accomplishment of being the one
who solves, or helps solve, the puzzle of identity. Others may wish
to show how clever they are."
CSI-ers often
work with incomplete information - in the Toa Payoh case, the video
was just over a minute long and the footage was blurry - and the
danger of misidentification is real. Even if the truth surfaces
later, the damage has already been done, said social media lawyer
Lionel Tan of law firm Rajah & Tann. "Even if the wrong
identification is corrected, by the very nature of the Internet, it
will be very difficult to remove all mention and association with
the incident."
But there is
an upside: In this case, online vigilantism "helped to catalyse
enforcement action by the police", as it set in motion a wave of
moral outrage at what happened, said National University of
Singapore media studies instructor Gui Kai Chong. Lawyers had said
officers may have made the arrest because of the attention it
received.
Mr Tan said
victims of online vigilantes can turn to the Prevention from
Harassment Act if the vigilantism borders on harassment.
Incorrectly identified individuals "have strong grounds to seek
recourse for defamation and retraction of the wrong
identification", he added.
Dr Netzley
said: "Any time you create an online profile or post, you should
always assume that it can be seen by the entire world... That is
the cold truth about the world we live in."