inside the story with 60 minutes producer henry shuster i was looking over my shoulder a lot
um i was scared for my life because we were getting death threats death threats yes what
did they say we're going to put a bullet in their skull imagine if you are a victim on the internet
imagine if you are matt and mata banasi two people who suddenly discovered that there were
conspiracy theorists who said that maya banassi was patient zero that she had brought coronavirus
first to china and then to the united states and that her husband matt was involved in all this
um they posted our address where we live you were taking all that seriously yes
once my address was posted that that was it for me they go to the state department because of course
china's gotten involved they go to the fbi they go to their local police but federal and state law
enforcement they don't really have any answers because the law is not written that way even
though we were receiving death threats they didn't say we're coming to the bananas to kill them
tonight and that's they want something that they can act on right away they need a crime to have
been committed that's correct and you're trying to prevent a crime from being committed absolutely
did you hire a lawyer probably in the first week i talked to a local lawyer but you quickly realize
there's not much that they can actually do even if we want a defamation case right it would cost us
probably more money than we can even get out of him what are the protections that someone has if
they're targeted on the internet there is very little that you can do actually and even when
you try to do something most of the time it gets ignored nothing gets done now imagine you're any
parson lenny posner is the father of noah posner a six-year-old boy who was murdered along with 25
others at sandy hook elementary school people were saying the vilest things about him
his wife his son and the other sandy hook families and lenny posner decided to fight back as we're
sitting here you're wearing an elaborate disguise and i wonder why you think that's necessary
well there are a number of reasons why death threats have been made against me
and um a woman has gone to prison there isn't any longer a separation between the online world and
the offline world what is said about you will carry over into your personal life into your
career into your relationships into your uh community and it will impact your life it's
really hard to put a stop to this for a lot of reasons you're taking on the internet you're
taking on the worst corners of the internet and suddenly you're getting death threats
what are we about to hear these were uh voice mails that were left by the woman who
was sentenced to federal prison you're going to die death is coming real soon
how do you account for that kind of hate i have no explanation for what compelled her to have that
much hate and then direct it at someone who lost a child she was able to go to the fbi and he was
able to get um charges brought against lucy richard and she went to federal prison for five
months but she's the exception she's not the rule on the dozens of people who've harassed him the
other people who've threatened him none of them have paid much of a price if any price at all
because that's not the way it works the law is really ill-equipped in the cyber age to deal
with cyber harassment and what is this this is a transunion tlo comprehensive background check so
doxing if you're not familiar with it is when your most personal information your address your credit
reports get revealed on the internet and it's just one more way that people who troll you can
harass you part of the way that they stalk me is they get investigators to pull involved background
checks on me we blurred all this out but it includes your name your date of birth is this
actually your social security number that is my social security number yes it then lists uh every
place that i have lived including photographs of apartments that i've lived in dating going back
i think 20 years anonymity is a feature of the internet that makes fighting back so difficult
sometimes you can trace it sometimes you can but that's yet another way in which cyber crimes
and cyber harassment are so difficult to find you know that there are people watching this interview
thinking well we have freedom of speech in this country and any of these people can say whatever
they want online i think that people don't understand the concept of freedom of speech
the internet has now blurred that definition it doesn't give people the right to defame someone
or incite others to hunt someone down or or just generally terrorizing someone is not free speech