Transcription 2
Tony: Hello, everyone I am Tony and she is Allison. We are the only group of the politics and economies. We are suppose to be in the last presentation, however due to some accidents, we are here today. Thanks William for coming. Our topic today is Can Human Flesh Search become a formal investigating method? Alison is standing on the supporting side and I am the against side.
Tony: Let's give you our introduction.
Alison: User’s information is easily found on the search results from search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Baidu. Human flesh search is not an official search engine. It is a term created by the Chinese netizens. It means that netizens voluntarily to investigate and share the information to find out someone’s real-life identity like his real name, age or pictures.
Tony: Human Flesh Search has become a new tool of investigation as well as finding evidence. However, can it be a formal and legal method contemporary replacing some of the law-investigating tool? This is what we want to argue about.
Tony: And these are our outlines. The first we are gonna to talk about Online Anonymity. Based on Online Anonymity, I am going to talk about the '' net mobs' '' unstoppable attack and Alison is going to talk about people can hide behind the computer and do whatever they want. And the second part is freedom of speech. Freedom of speech bases on how we use it. Alison thinks that based on freedom of speech, everyone can be citizen journalist. And the third part is the legal problem, we will argue about it later. The last part is social status. I am gonna to explain the class pressure, and Alison is going to talk about online populism.
Tony: Okay, before we start, we are going to have a little activity.
Alison: To help you quickly understand what human flesh search is. Now pretend you are netizens. And this is PTT, one of the biggest BBS in Taiwan.
Tony: Do you know what is PTT?
Emma: I know.
Tony: Okay Emma, you can explain to William. He doesn’t know.
Emma: (ask William) You don’t know what is PTT? It is an online board and you can put any question or information on the board. And just like the… (point to the projection screen) The problem is that someone wants to find a pretty girl. And she put a picture on the board. And maybe if you know that girl, you can say that oh I know this girl. She is my classmate and her name is blahblahblah. And you can know the girl.
Alison: OK, then you can help me to find out this girl.
Tony: This girl is cute and pretty. We want to know this girl. And can someone give us some information about her?
Knot: I know! She is Nina. She is my classmate.
Tony: Oh! Really?
Phoebe: I know! She doesn’t have boyfriend.
Tony: Oh William, are you interested in Nina?
William: What? Me?
Tony: How do you think about her?
William: Uh, very pretty.
Alison: Does anyone know where she studies?
Monica: I know! I know! I know!She is in English major. And I know what she lives!
Alison: Where?
Monica: G-14.
Eva: Seven floor!
Tony: Second floor?
Eva: Seven! Seven floor!
Monica: I know her room. 712!
Alison: So we put all this information together. We can know who this girl is. She is Nina and she has no boyfriend. And she lives in G-14. This is human flesh search.
Tony: Knot, what do you want to say?
Knot: I know another girl in the middle, she is Phoebe in our class.
ony: Oh Phoebe, such a lovely girl! So we all know Phoebe is in this class. You can see behind you. There.
Tony: So this is a brief introduction about human flesh search. And first thing we want to discuss is Online Anonymity. Based on Online Anonymity, every person in the society can hide themselves in front of their computer, and see through all the affairs clearly. They won't need to give out their real information like their names on the internet. That is to say, they are not easily to be found out. And Alison will explain her points.
Alison: This picture was published by New Yorker in 1993. It said, on the Internet. No one knows you are a dog. It shows us an important difference between the real world and the virtual world －－Anonymity.
Alison: According to Jacob Palme, a professor of computer science at Stockholm University, He said, anonymity can be used to protect a criminal performing many different crimes, for example slander, illegal threats, racial agitation, fraud, intentional damage such as distribution of computer viruses. Even when the act is not illegal, anonymity can be used for offensive or disruptive communication. For example, some people use anonymity in order to say some nasty things about other people.
Alison: I think, Internet creates a virtual world where anyone can publish his ideasanonymously. They have more courage to do whatever they want on the Internet. Human flesh search can be used to find the people who are hiding behind the computer and it can prevent the Internet crime from happening.
Tony: However, I don't think that Online Anonymity can expose crime and other moral affairs clearly and properly. Moreover, I even think that the ''net mobs'' will cause unstoppable attack on the person's privacy that is being searched. These unstoppable attacks will find out their family members, their homes, their phone numbers and their lovers. They could not be found out. So when exposing one’s personal information, it will undoubtedly violates the Computer-Processed Personal Data Protection Law Unstoppable attacks will do great harm to victim
Tony: So exposing their personal information to the public. Which is more immoral? If you find out that someone has caused some immoral affairs, like Knot bullied Phoebe in the class. And you want to find out who Knot is. But what Knot do might probably not in the law problems. But exposing his personal information to the public is much more immoral. So I divide the situation into two parts. The first part is that because exposing their personal information is illegal thing and violates Computer-Processed Personal Data Protection Law. But if you find out that the person, the thing he or she do might be illegal, too. So the method you find is illegal but the person is illegal. All your method is illegal. Your method can not be a proper method to find a person. And the second part is that the immoral actions from the person being searched is legal. It is just based on the moral problems. Your method of finding people is illegal.
Tony: The next part is the freedom of speech. It is divided into two parts. The pro is that based on the freedom of speech, everyone can be citizen journalist. It is what Alison wants to mention. And What I want to mention is that alien speech cannot be oppressed.
Alison: Do you watch the TV news recently? What do you know from the TV news? The little yellow duck? The cute panda Yuan Zai? Yes, they are cute but I believed we have something else and much important than the duck and panda to be reported like 日月光事件ASE nickel polluction. What kind of information we accept is controlled by the mass media. Not everyone has the chance to convey his idea in a TV program. Now people can use blogs to share their idea with other people all over the world. The professor of law, Glernn Reynolds said that power once concentrated in the hands of a professional few has been redistributed into the hands of the amateur many. Bloggers are the amateur journalists. They can show the information they found on their blogs. They are not professional reporters but they can report something illegal, too. They can publish a series of reports in their blogs and keep update the contents . Netizens can also reply the report. They may provide other information or evidence to help find out the truth.
Alison: Take the bully in Xsin Chu for example. On March,2011, a video was spread quickly on the Inter net. In the video, a girl was bullied by a group of people. With human flesh search, netizens became Journalist to analyze the video. They found that the video was shot in a park in Xsin Chu. And the bullies were the Guang Fu senior high school students. They even found the girl’s Facebook and her pictures. Netizens provided the information to the police and also made the Ministry of Education understand how serious the problem of school bullying is.
Tony: In order to maintain human dignity and the free development of respect for human, freedom and democracy are core values of the constitutional order. Privacy rights enumerated in the Constitution. Based on human dignity and integrity of the maintenance of individual subjectivity and personality development, and for the protection of personal life private areas from harassment of others and self-control of personal information, privacy is considered to be the basic rights not cannot be lack of.
Tony: So, freedom of speech is the most basic right, and privacy should be promised. And law procedure is the very last part to deal with. If one's privacy doesn't bepromised, law procedure won't have a chance to be taken out. So it is not proper to let the majorities to cover the opinion of minorities.
Tony: The next part is the legal problems.
Alison: I wan to talked about the search warrant 搜索令. A search warrant is a courtorder issued by magistrate, judge or Supreme Court official that authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person, location for evidence of a crime and they even confiscate evidence if it is found. However, human flesh search does not have the official approval. Sometimes people human flesh search some just for fun or for the curiosity. Maybe they just want to know a beautiful girl’s name. It easily invades one’s privacy.
Alison: But if the human flesh search is used for the public, why it can not be a formal investigation method? For example, the human flesh search finds the cat-killer in the video. It also help us to catch the venal officials’ corruption. We should not completely prohibit human flesh search. And the authorities also notice the power of human flesh search. In 2010, the Legislature pass the amendments of the Personal Data Protection Law個人資料保護法修正案. It said that for the public interest, collecting personal information on the Internet is legal.
Tony: In addition to the fact that human flesh search invades people's privacy, the long-term harm that has brought to them may not balance with the degree of punishment, violating the principle of ''crime and punishment balance (罪刑相 當原則) '', but may also be in violation of "presumption of innocence (無罪推定原則)" and "due process (正當法律程序)"
Tony: Internet has rapidly become not only a part of our life, but a main channel of passing the information. However, the obtention as well as the usage of the information may affect educational levels and other factors caused by the distribution of social resources on uneven appearance. Whoever gets more information, they were able to become a social media master in the "elite class", and digital gap has been brought out.
We can see that, in many human flesh search issues, people, especially net pals gather actively to take reactions to the people they cannot accept. Although they are not the ones that are in the core authority, they express the desire of gaining the power. That is to say, by searching people, they can get the achievement that they have never experienced before. Once people gains the power much more than they used to be, they won’t stop before getting too far. Therefore, the things they do have great possibility to make things more complicated and worsen. The social gap makes the information unbalanced. Moreover, the media usually stands in the side of people that are in the middle class or even lower class. They will tend to exaggerate the fact in order to meet people’s needs.
Not to mention the people that have no chance to use the internet. Based on the unbalanced information, and the theory ‘’Spiral of Silence’’ The facts will be covered by the majority. And the low class people normally are afraid of the pressure of the upper class opinion, so they won’t tend to give out perspectives. This is considered a improper circulation.
Tony: And the last part is the social status.
Alison: In China where the term “human flesh search” first appeared and became a controversial issue, I think the internet populism網路民粹主義plays an important role in it. It is hard to make a definition of populism. An English political heorist Margaret Canovan stated that populism puts emphasis on the masses’ thoughts and that the society can be reformed by the group power. The Chinese government is on the top of the social status and controls all the distribution of profit which also increases the poverty gap 貧富差距 after Chinese economic reforms. For the masses, the common people, who have complaints about the upper classes of society, the Internet provides a good way to speak for themselves.
Alison: And I want to talk about the Carnivalesque. I think human flesh search provide a stage for the common people to voice for their idea. It is like a carnival on the internet. In Bakhtin’s Carnivalesque theory 狂歡理論, everyone can join the carnival which has no boundary and anyone whether his social status is high or low can play a part in. Carnival is not an official activity. It stands for the civil. In the carnival, the differences between status, property, family background and age do not exist. The judiciary usually takes a long time to investigate a case. Human flesh let everyone has the chance to make sure justice is served. It can improve the judiciary efficiency.
Tony:
Tony: And here are our conclusions.
Alison: Human flesh search is a collective behavior. It is controversial but we can not ignore its contribution for our society. It can be used for the citizen journalism to maintain the public morality and order. It also provides a way for the lower classes to convey their ideas. If we use human flesh search well, it will be a good investigation method to make our society better.
Tony: OK. And here is my conclusion.
Tony: And these are our presentation thank you.
