Cyberbullying is a real issue. It's a multi-faceted problem, really. This new dependence on technology renders many people vulnerable unless they can back away from the medium often used to bully. I think back years ago when I had what I would call a cyberstalker. I was in a rock band and had this nutjob I never met making threats and such. Strange problem to have. The internet is a boon to cowards and nutjobs.

I recently ceased all facebook participation. Zuckerberg called the users "dumb f*ckers". He has a good point...

Its all about my kids. You get one shot to raise them right (according to your ideology - I knew you'd ask abut "right" :) ), if you squander it you cannot recover what was lost and have to suffer watching the consequences.

simple solution, restrict web access, disable Internet on the smart-phone, unplug the computer. Parent need to be more active in controlling what their children see and hear in this mess of a society.

I know what Mrs. Obama means by cyberbullying and that what she has done does not fit the definition of "cyberbullying". Nonetheless her use of social media to enforce her unpleasant campaigns leads me to label her a "cyber bully", as opposed to a "cyberbully".

I don't understand bullying? You're assuming I've never been bullied or have any experience with it at all. Why do you do that? Why are you hell bent on addressing me in here? Oh! Here's a morsel everybody in the gulch might be interested in, you're PM to me that one time might be considered bullying. Do I need to post that again for the world to see? Please do not address me again, MM. EVER!

Unless you have more salient facts, I must disagree. If I say that your vacuous comments here in Gulch are evidence of your two-digit IQ, that is many things, but none of them "cyber bullying." Following your every post here with comments like that would be "cyber bullying." (The "cyber" being merely appended to the "bullying." See my comments here about "postal stalking.") The First Lady might well have her unpleasant campaigns, but the fact that you know those comments to originate with her (or her companions) negate the original claim.

You post here under your own name. So do I. Do does Alan. Should we regard LetsShrug as a "cyber bully"? I think not, but the point remains. What if Shrugger hid behind an anonymous remailer such as Tor, and from that emplacement, she populated all of your posts with out-takes of emails between you and your ex-girlfriend. Now THAT would be cyber-stalking, and it is NOT what the First Lady does. She is just a voice in the wind, listen to her or not as you choose…

You do not understand the mechanisms of bullying and stalking. The "cyber" side of it is just the medium. Sending someone a picture of themselves with a knife drawn in their head is not called "postal stalking" or "letter bullying." The problem is analogous to "date rape." There is no such thing as date rape.

I will say it again: There is no such thing as date rape. There is no such thing as date rape because their is no such thing as date larceny, date robbery, date murder, or date arson. The "date" is irrelevant. So, too, with "cyber" stalking.

You and I have gone a few rounds here in the Gulch. OK, that's fine. What if I sent a dead rabbit to your home -- and you had no way to prove to the police that it was me? See my reply to Alan about Kelley Misata's keynote address to the Lonestar Application Security Conference last October. Then, consider, again, that we are talking about teenagers whose parents have enough of a challenge to put food on the table in a collapsing economy. It lets us feel good about ourselves that we have all the answers. Providing those answers to others who need them could demand that we become social workers. Hopefully, some other solution exists.

… and maybe it does not. Perhaps teen suicides triggered by bullying must remain a reality, along with 40,000 traffic deaths a year.

I am not surprised that your life is in order according to your standards. In fact, I am impressed at the seeming completeness of its execution. Most people do not have your mental acumen and emotional centering. You can say, "Screw them." And that's fine, too, if you really do not care about them. But then why ask what comes down to a rhetorical question.

That is also why I pointed to victimology. In some science fiction utopia, there are no victims: no rapes, no murders, no robberies or burglaries, no art forgeries, or oceanside property … Everyone else is smarter than the smartest predator and predators all died off generations ago…

Here and now, among teens in particular, but with adults, also, predators are real and "cyber" is just the medium they use. They could (and do) send flowers with threatening letters inside. The aggression is the same.

With teens, in particular, the stalkers are anonymous and prove that they can follow you by including facts no one could know, except your closest friends. So, you really have no friends, no one to turn to. These predators excel at singling you out, culling you from the herd, and taking you down.

Last year, at a computer security conference here in Austin, one of the keynote speakers was one Kelley Misata who spoke on behalf of Tor. (Misata is now working with the CERIAS project of Purdue
and Suricata, an Open Source Foundation partner; and she is working on her doctorate at Purdue.) Kelley Misata had been cyber-stalked for eight years. She watched while her computer was taken over and worked remotely. Trashy emails were posted in her name from cuts and pastes from her own Facebook pages. She could not apply for a job without her stalker knowing it and intruding. She figured out who he was. However, the FBI said that they were powerless, and a judge refused to issue a restraining order, both because the stalker hid behind Tor and could not be identified. So, she took her MBA and her experience in marketing to Tor where she advocated for privacy and security. She now helps the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) while working on her doctorate at Purdue. (On my blog here: http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20... This was a woman with an MBA. Imagine if she had been a waitress and the victim was her teenage daughter. The law protects those who cannot protect themselves.

You said that you depend on yourself primarily, the police (in theory), and the government not at all. Again, that is not workable for most people here and now.

My wife (and I) are involved in community outreach programs in computer security, alerting people to the dangers they face and offering solution sets available from other sources. She just went around with a church group that she joined. The sign up on their website was not HTTPS. So, she did not sign up. When she called them, they said that they did not see the problem, since they were not asking for financial information, only your name and address, and some questions about your personal views on different topics…

That we can congratulate ourselves and each other does not make it profitable to condemn those who are still in the dark.

While cyberbullying does exist, nobody does more cyberbullying than President Zero's minions, particularly his wife - not so ironically the one leading the anti-cyberbullying campaign.

Hello Mike, long time.

The trouble is the perpetrator uses Internet anonymity or blatant falsehoods in many cases to attack a victim. The onus is still on the parent to remove the access point to the Internet - the problem need not exist, let alone be allowed to occur.

I...
- have a 6 foot block wall around my property
- have a variety of weapons at my disposal
- have some private, non-commercial devices to alert me if someone is on my property.
- I have Internet restrictions placed in my router
- I've taught my kids never to post their actual names, their photographs, or their location anywhere on the web (they're old enough to do what they want now, but i never had an issue when they were younger.

The fact is the parent has the control and not some feel-good strangers who decree by consensus and are too lethargic to play parent to their developing children.

Te safety of my kids is my responsibility, the police are a secondary line of defense and the government has no role..

Like everything else bullying should be dealt with logically, not emotionally, and I think this is a skill that is severely lacking today. Too many parents don't teach this to their kids anymore. Back in the day (before cyber bullying) you either ignored the bully, confront him verbally, or, if need be, fought back physically if he would NOT leave you alone. (You for sure didn't sit around crying about it for long). That usually ended the bullying pretty fast. Just like any other bully (including our government) if they know you'll fight back then they back off.
As for this cyber bullying, I agree with you. I say either stay off the internet, stop telling the world your every move, or stop allowing anyone to see your facebook page (or whatever). For the love of Pete, kids these days have no appreciation for privacy or expectation of it... if that's how they think then they better learn to deal with the outcome. It's a rough world, everybody is not your friend, and its time to learn to deal with it...LOGICALLY. Crying over someone's unkind words (probably someone you don't like, or even know anyway is a crazy waste of time. If you go thru life trying to please the world you're in for a miserable existence.

Children have been victimized by bullies since before Thibault killed Mercurtio. The "cyber" part of that is just the modern media. Before this, it was the telephone. And those are just extensions of what happens in school. You can keep your kids out of public school, but you cannot keep them from society at large. Bullying is just another kind of assault. And we do not condone assaults, even if the victim left herself wide open to aggression.

(In the 1990s, I lived in a farming village of 3,000 and then about ten years later in a different small town. You could go to the post office without locking your front door. But, in theory, you always have that right. No one has a right to enter your home just because it is unlocked. They could not be charged with breaking and entering, only unlawful trespass. If they steal anything or do other harm, that second crime elevates the first to a felony.)

It may be that victimology is the only fruitful study within criminology. Prevent victimization and crime ceases to exist.

If that is true, why do you care about what you claim is the degradation of your borderland neighborhood? Why not just build a 9-foot wall around your place, have everything delivered, and live blissfully untouched by the Mexican invasion?

The fact is that you do care. You feel victimized - and perhaps rightfully so.

The same applies to the school age victims of bullies. It also applies to the victims of stalkers, robbers, burglars, and swindlers. We do not blame the victim. We punish the perpetrator.

If you have a better theory of justice, I am interested.