[Air-L] Jail for Facebook spoof Moroccan

[Sarita Yardi]

I was discussing with my labmate the question of how they tracked him
down? We couldn't find an answer in the pop culture media coverage.
Obviously they can technically find him through his IP address, but I
am wondering if there was a legal process of some sort that took place
for them to do this (as we might expect to see in the United States
and other countries)? Morocco *is* a monarchy, although it is said to
be more progressive in its democratic reforms than its neighboring
countries. Curious how this more generally plays into
country-by-country policies towards what I might arguably characterize
as a playful form of identity theft (paradox?).

Georgia W. has about 500 Facebook profiles, apparently.



On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 12:13 PM, Conor Schaefer
<conor.schaefer at gmail.com> wrote:
> I personally *don't* think Fouad was in the wrong here. It was so
>  obviously satire that I don't think it constitutes as identity theft,
>  fraud, or any of those immoral things. I've course, I'm speaking from
>  within my own cultural paradigm, but please, it's not like anyone
>  actually thought Fouad was who he said he was. This separates the
>  example from Deanya's by quite a distance, I'd say.
>
>
>  Muhammad Abdul-Mageed wrote:
>  > I agree with you and I would feel almost the same if anybody acts under my name. However, I will not be able asking to punish whoever does it in a manner that sets an example for others! I will not hegemonize people in that way. I think that in the Moroccan case, there is much sense of personal pride and royalty! Fouad may be 'wrong', but there is that illusion that the governing people are better than the rest, which I personally do not like. Perhaps that is why I sympathize with the guy.
>  >
>  > --Muhammad
>  >
>  > "M. Deanya Lattimore" <mdlattim at syr.edu> wrote: I wonder if any of you has ever had someone else create an account of
>  > you in this way.  I have an online stalker, and he sets up various
>  > accounts misrepresenting himself as me across the internet.
>  > Fortunately, he is not computer savvy, so it's been a simple matter of
>  > reporting them (as I find them) to the webmasters and they are removed.
>  >
>  > It's still quite a shock to see my name and picture on some account that
>  > I never created though.  And I'm more computer-literate than most; I
>  > wonder how helpless it would feel to encounter one of these if I were
>  > just starting out on the internet myself.
>  >
>  > There's a difference, for sure, between satire and identity theft, but
>  > it lies on a line of misrepresentation.  Not having seen the page that
>  > Fouad constructed, I'm not willing to make the judgment call to support
>  > or condemn him.
>  >
>  > Deanya Lattimore
>  > http://www.deanya.com (really me)
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Muhammad Abdul-Mageed wrote:
>  >
>  >> I think they do understand the variables of the situation, and if not, they could have asked some specialists. I believe the case is that they wanted to punish him so that others do not do the same--"[t]he prosecution had urged the court to impose a sentence which set an example for others", the BBC reports says. I do not think whether we should view Fouad act as anything like identity theft, in the figurative sense, or not, though. In all cases, I believe he should not be jailed for it: he did it for fun, and CMC is in some cases that playful!
>  >>
>  >> --Muhammad
>  >>
>  >>
>  >>
>
>
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-- 
Human-Centered Computing
College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
www.cc.gatech.edu/~yardi