We have investigated both the good and the bad aspects of the Internet throughout the duration of this class. This week, we talked about the concept of cyber-bullying and what it exactly meant. We specifically discussed it in terms of teens. However the first thing that popped into my mind was the phenomenon of “Juicy Campus” its founder, Matt Iverson, linked the site as apart of the “gossip 2.0” trend and celebrity gossip sites such as TMZ or PerezHilton.
The site swept universities nation wide. The New York Times article, “Juicy Campus: College gossip leaves the bathroom wall and goes online,” states the subject matter perfectly. It simply provided more harm than good. The site allowed users to operate anonymously, allowing comments to be posted regarding a users school and peers that were cruel and in some cases untrue.
In 2008, Carlos Heurta, a student at Loyola Marymount University posted threatening messages on the site Juicy Campus. Messages such as "I am going to shoot and kill as many people as I can until which time I am incapacitated or killed by the police." By tracking down Heurta’s IP address he was later linked to the post and shortly arrested. This was no long cyber-bullying but had crossed into dangerous waters, cyberterrorism.
Keeping this case study in mind, we can technically call Heurta a cyber terrorist via Maura Conway’s definition “cyberterrorism is the convergence of cyberspace and terrorism. It refers to unlawful attacks and threats of attacks against computers, networks, and the information stored therein when done to intimidate or coerce…”
Cyberterrorism is something that has the potential to impact all of our lives and as more and more people begin to use and manipulate the Internet, I fear it will only become more of an issue.
Although juicy campus was set up as a harmless gossip blog, it definetly turned into a website that focused on cyber-bullying and eventually a cyberterrorism website so I think this is a great example. I have heard of a similiar story like the Loyola Marymount issue were people were threatening to commit suicide because of some of the horrible things that were being posted of them on the website.
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