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By enabling human interaction without the constraints of physical barriers and with the perception of anonymity, the Internet has become the ideal instrument for individuals who wish to intimidate, threaten, and harass others. A stalker can use the Internet to send alarming messages anywhere, within a matter of moments, under the guise of a fictitious screen name or pseudonym. Understanding how offenders use the Internet to stalk victims in cyberspace can provide law enforcement officers with solutions when they encounter impediments investigating these types of cases.
DEFINITION OF CYBERSTALKING
As the Internet becomes the communication device of choice for millions of people worldwide, news headlines, such as "Killer Keeps Web Pages on Victim, Stalks Her Through Internet"1 and "Penn Opens Hate E-mail Inquiry,"2 have begun to appear more frequently. These headlines depict stories of criminal intimidation, harassment, fear, and suggestive violence where individuals use the Internet as a tool to stalk another person. The term cyberstalking has emerged to describe the use of such technology to harass or stalk.3 Cyberstalking is defined as the repeated use of the Internet, e-mail, or related digital electronic communication devices to annoy, alarm, or threaten a specific individual or group of individuals.
All 50 states and the federal government have enacted statutes aimed at protecting the victims of stalking. Many of these statutes have existed for a long time, while others have originated recently. Some of the older statutes were broad enough to cover any type of stalking behavior, including cyberstalking; others had to be amended to do so. In some jurisdictions, new laws specifically addressing the problem of cyberstalking have been enacted. In adapting general stalking and harassment statutes to cover instances of cyberstalking, legislators have expanded the means by which offenders commit this crime to include electronic communication devices.
Several states currently include specific protections against threatening electronically transmitted communications in their stalking or harassment statutes.4 Additionally, Title 18, Section 875, U.S. Code, criminalizes threatening messages transmitted electronically in interstate or foreign commerce. The use of federal legislation to prosecute cases of cyberstalking, however, is limited, by law, to instances where the harassing messages are transmitted across state lines or outside the United States. Despite the existence of Title 18, Section 875, the federal government historically has...