Blacklisting

“ Some of the men had worked for the company for twenty years, and the only charge against them was that of being members of the American Railway Union and struck in sympathy with the starving Pullman employes.
Their system of blacklisting is so perfect that every avenue of escape is closed against an employe.
They have what is known as the blacklist book. The names of the strikers are entered in the book of which a copy is held by all railroads. When a man makes application his name is taken and the book is then consulted. ”

“ Even the commissioned Watch companies, who were the nucleus of our famous Highland regiments, had the repute of being somewhat discriminating in their protective service. But a “high-toned” blackmailer like Rob Roy made it a point of honour to carry out his contract with subscribers, if sometimes he turned aside to give non-subscribers a plain hint of what they might gain by employing him. They had nothing but his honour to depend upon, a contract of blackmail being strictly illegal—indeed, by an act of the sixteenth century, declared a capital crime in the case of both parties. ”

“ The police courts had taught him the amazing ingenuity of the criminal mind, as well as something of the plots and devices by which the unwary are beguiled into the dark places where blackmail may be levied with impunity. New York, as a matter of fact, just at that time was literally undermined with the secret ways of the blackmailers, the green-goods men, and other police-protected abominations; and the only weak point in the supposition that this was part of some such proceeding was the selection of himself—a poor newspaper reporter—as a victim. ”

“ A friend of mine suffered long imprisonment because the secret police searched his house and there pretended to find compromising papers which they themselves had forged. It is scarcely necessary to add that vile people availed themselves of the system to levy blackmail by threatening denunciation. ”

“ It was just through this love of adventure that cattle-raiding continued during the first half of the eighteenth century, and that is why people on the border line paid ‘blackmail.’ In modern life one of the most valuable resolves to make is never, under any circumstances, to pay blackmail; never, that is, to allow freedom of action or will to pass into the hands of another person. Payment of blackmail once, invariably means payment for always. ”

“ Lockouts are not now as common as they used to be. Another weapon of the employer is the blacklist, which contains the names of workmen who have been prominent in fomenting labor troubles and who are, accordingly, regarded by the employers as undesirable. This list is circulated by the employers from one to another and no workman whose name is on it will be given employment. When a worker’s name goes in the blacklist it means that he has the greatest difficulty in finding employment in his own trade anywhere. ”

“ Of all the methods by which a cowardly government can harass the people who feed it, none is more despicable than the entanglement of espionage with which it surrounds itself. But as to abolition, what would then become of all those swarms of censors, blackers-out, interpreters, letter-openers, secret police, cabdrivers, porters, and provocative agents who seek their meat from Government? Will not all these men struggle for existence like others, being human creatures, though no one would suppose so? ”

“ That the passive homosexualist is a victim of nature, an unfortunate who is generally despised and hounded, seems however not to be enough, for he is also considered legitimate prey of the underworld, who blackmail these unfortunates systematically. This form of blackmail is known under the term of "chantage," and practiced in every large city of the European and American continents. The laws against homosexuality, as at present in force, similar to the Mann White Slave Act, seem to only serve blackmailing crooks, so as to give them an easy living. ”

“ Where the Latin blackmailer has not the leverage of law or of public decorum, he will threaten public social opinion; especially if the stranger be English or American. The victim's name will be printed—will be telegraphed to his native town. In all such cases, the victim's stout personal resistance, or threats of calling up the nearest policeman, will nearly always get rid promptly of the blackmailer. A favourite trick of this blackmailer is an accusation to the victim of pederasty with an "innocent" minor youth. ”

“ I once had a particularly dangerous and unfortunate case where a private client was being blackmailed by a half-crazy ruffian who had never seen him, but had selected him arbitrarily as a person likely to give up money. The blackmailer was a German Socialist, who was out of employment—a man of desperate character. He had made up his mind that the world owed him a living, and he had decided that the easiest way to get it was to make some more prosperous person give him a thousand dollars under threat of being exposed as an enemy of society. ”

“ Radio cops, telco people, whatever—they’re going to try to discredit us. I want to know what they’re liable to say.”
“Christ, you’re dragging me out for that? I can tell you what they’ll say. They’ll drag out the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: kiddie porn, terrorists, pirates, and the mafia. They’ll tell us that any tool for communicating that they can’t tap, log, and switch off is irresponsible. They’ll tell us we’re stealing from ISPs. It’s what they say every time someone tries this: Philly, New York, London. All around the world same song.”
Alan nodded. ”

“ This species of black-mail is not so uncommon as it would seem, even the fathers of young and prepossessing girls are partners in these affairs.
As a fact there is nothing that devilish ingenuity can devise to entice men and women into committing every kind of crime that is not practiced by the blackmailers of this city, and many are the fish that are landed and great the booty that is secured. ”

“ It's more than likely that the letters had been arriving for some time previous to that, because one of the beauties of any blackmailing scheme—such as this one appeared to be—is that 90 per cent of the victims fear to bring the matter to the attention of the law. They much prefer to suffer in silence, kicking in with the amounts demanded, than to risk the exposure of their family skeletons by appealing to the proper authorities. ”

“ As blackmail in France—but not as to England, Germany, America, etc.—the law is so adjusted that the question of the relations of the blackmailed to the blackmailer are not of obligation to be defined clearly in the trial of a blackmailer, no matter how clear ”

“ These people are all outlaws; they deserve what they get, whatever it is.” But the net of the New York police was exceeding wide, and the mesh was exceeding fine, and no class of the community escaped. As the sun riseth upon the evil and the just, so the blackmailer of the Police Department marked as his prey the honest and virtuous as well as the vicious and criminal. The Lexow Committee report:—
The evidence of blackmail and extortion does not rest alone on the evidence of criminals or persons accused of the commission of crime. ”

“ Anyone who uses the Internet or an information technology device to threaten or blackmail another person to carry out an act or to refrain from doing so, even if such an act or omission is lawful, shall be punished by imprisonment or by a fine of no less than two thousand Jordanian dinars and no more than five thousand Jordanian dinars or by a combination of both punishments. ”

“ In our issue for May last we published an authoritative article setting forth the methods and crimes of the "Black Hand," a secret society organized for the purpose of blackmail and murder, which has caused a veritable reign of terror amongst Italian residents in America. ”

“ The profession of the blackmailer in London is perhaps one of the most lucrative of criminal callings, and also one of the safest for the criminal. A demand can cleverly insinuate without making any absolute threat, and the blackmailer is generally a perfect past-master of his art. The general public can conceive no idea of the widespread operations of the thousands of these blackguards in all grades of society. ”

“ Telco officials wanted to punish the phone-phreak underground, in as public and exemplary a manner as possible. They wanted to make dire examples of the worst offenders, to seize the ringleaders and intimidate the small fry, to discourage and frighten the wacky hobbyists, and send the professional grifters to jail. To do all this, publicity was vital.
Yet operational secrecy was even more so. If word got out that a nationwide crackdown was coming, the hackers might simply vanish; destroy the evidence, hide their computers, go to earth, and wait for the campaign to blow over. ”

“ He uses then the arm of only social scandal. But very widely in Europe, the blackmailer has now in his power not merely a man that will be thought disgraced, depraved; for in Great Britain and its Colonies, in Germany, in the United States of America, in the Austria-Hungary States, in the Scandinavian Monarchies, in some parts of the Swiss Confederation, and under certain circumstances or pretexts even in France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Belgium Holland, Luxemburg and other tolerant lands, the victim—as shown early in this book—is a felon. ”

“ In that age of lawless violence, there was so little force in government, everywhere, and so entire a want of co-operation between governments, that the operations of trade were exposed to piracy, robbery, and black-mail, on every sea and in every land. ”

“ A mixed brand of terrorism would soon show its evil head, a mixed brand that would bring every decent citizen [27] to shudder at the mention of BLACK BOLSHEVISM.
In looking into the motives of the men who represented the Sicilian Mafia, or "Black-Hand" Society, in this country, I was fortunate to elucidate not a few particulars that go to show how these criminals actually operate.
The Black-Handers here would terrorize their less courageous countrymen from the provinces of Southern Italy. They had been at this form of blackmail for some years. ”

“ It is a worse stench in Prohibition cases, for here it is becoming a formidable and favorite weapon, not merely in the hands of property-owners who want to put down strikes, but in the hands of criminal Prohibition agents who seek to wring blackmail from their victims. In brief, it has become a dishonest means of oppression for men who are even more dishonest than it is. Certainly it is idle to talk of respect for the laws when such devices have legislative and judicial sanction. No reasonable man, save he be ignorant of their nature and purpose, can conceivably respect them. ”

“ Occasionally the blackmailer has hot been the direct particeps criminis, but, has merely got second-hand possession of facts. Occasionally there has been no felony committed. The ignorant, trembling victim is made to think so. In any case, either by the cynical prostitute himself or by an accomplice, the screw is turned. Much male prostitution is solely for an opening for blackmail. By demands for greater or smaller sums of money, threats, terrorizing letters or visits, week by week, month by month, year by year, can be applied the outrageous art of "bleeding" the victim. ”

“ The police, meanwhile, who had bought appointment or promotion, and the politicians back of them, extended the blackmailing to include about everything from the pushcart peddler and the big or small merchant who wished to use the sidewalk illegally for his goods, up to the keepers of the brothel, the gambling-house, and the policy-shop. The total blackmail ran into millions of dollars. New York was a wide-open town. The big bosses rolled in wealth, and the corrupt policemen who ran the force lost all sense of decency and justice. ”

“ For their deeds military commanders of posts would hold defenseless communities responsible, levy black-mail upon them, sometimes to the full value of their property, and institute a system of espionage that would put an eavesdropper under nearly every man’s window and a detective in every social circle and public assembly. Property and life were thus put at the mercy of unprincipled detectives and spies, selected often from the lowest and most unscrupulous classes of men and women. ”

“ We make war upon them, not for the purpose of fighting the Democracy, but to deliver the city of its tyrants, bloodsuckers, and demoralizers. When I express the hope that under the coming city administration more of the Tammany rascalities, not one-tenth of which have so far become publicly known, will be uncovered and exposed to popular abhorrence, and as many as possible of the blackmailers will be sent to jail, I mean that they should be prosecuted, not as Democrats, but as criminals. ”

“ There the different members of the gang get their orders and stations, and perhaps a few dollars advance wages. It is naturally quite impossible to guess the number of successful and unsuccessful attempts at blackmail among Italians, as the amount of undiscovered crime throughout the country at large is incomputable. No word of it comes from the lips of the victims, who are in mortal terror of the vendetta—of meeting some casual stranger on the street who will significantly draw the forefinger of his right hand across his throat. ”

“ One answer is to simply ignore look-see hacking. Society could decide that it makes more sense to use valuable police resources to catch dangerous criminals—forgers, embezzlers, white-collar swindlers, corporate spies and malicious hackers—than to chase look-see hackers. ”

“ The law must still maintain the capacity to punish hard where someone has strayed into what society deems serious crime. However, almost any serious crime committed by a hacker could be committed by a non-hacker and prosecuted under other legislation. Fraud, wilful damage and dealing in stolen property are crimes regardless of the medium—and should be punished appropriately. ”