Internet Justice vs Privacy

Critical Issues in Writing for New Media

Internet privacy is a topic that got discussed again and again ever since the trend begins.

It is true that one has to face the dangerous of leaking out something that they don't want others to know about their real identity when enjoying the convenience and satisfaction from Internet. And after these years, people are getting more and more of consciousness protecting their personal information online. 

It is almost a closed case that one's privacy should be protected even if it is in a virtual world. But is it always the case? My interest is more about how is it when privacy is facing "Internet Justice".

 

"Internet Justice", I'm not sure if it is appropriate to call it this way. When I say this, I mean the actions towards one or some particular internet users taken by the other internet users because of the judgments that they made based on information gathered online.

This sounds confusing, let's try to strike an example:
On September 2011, it is reported in a lot of website in mainland China that four youngsters throwing a small dog into see for several time obviously for their own entertainment.

The poor dog is rescued by the other tourists later. But that doesn't stop the anger of many internet users. Because the time and venue of this event is in detail reported and the photographs showing the four perpetrators is relatively clear, net-citizens starts trying to find out who exactly they are in reality. 

Some say, "Once they're found, we should protest to their company and let it fire them". And some others proposal the rest to make harassing phone calls to make them apologize.

The four perpetrators are young people about twenties and it's no wonder that they may have their own internet account in different blogs, forums or SNS. As a result there does is a chance that they got recognized by the other net-friends and then their real identity got revealed. So now my question is: Do you think it's right for the other net-citizens to dig out the four youngsters' private information and then punish them in real life because of their wrong behavior?

This situation becomes more and more common these years with the internet grows. We now have new words for example "Social Search" or even "Human Flesh Search", which sounds pretty scary, to describe this type of action taken by net-citizens.

For sure, one's privacy is violated in all these types of "search". Their lives in reality might be affected in a large degree because of something they do in the virtual internet world. But what if what they do in the virtual world do have some negative impact to the whole society as all the other net-citizens believes that it is the only way for 'justice'? Do those net-citizens have the right to take actions as if they're the "low enforcement"?

There is no doubt that as the internet grows, our lives would inevitably get more and more involved / reported online, directly or indirectly. Does that mean another type of surveillance? Given the condition that the information exposed online is often segmental and hard to distinguish, is it fair to assault one's real life based on that? Or even if the net-user is confirmed committing bad things, is it ok for the other net-citizens to take the police's role and 'punish' him by first step digging out his privacy? That really worthies thinking...