next book will be nationalism sucks. join us upstairs for lunch and beer. cheers, everybody. >> you're e you're watching booktv on c-span2. booktv television for serious reader its. >> programs to watch out for this weekend. journalist ben westoff reports on the labs in china manufacturing fentanyl. supreme court justices neil gorsuch and beginnings begins -- ruth bader ginsburg reflect on their careers and jeff merkley of oregon provide his fit hand can't -- conditions of migrant families at the southern border. check your program guide for more schedule information. >> now, on to the event you're here for. carrie goldberg is the kind of attorney he wish we didn't knee.

and specialize inside online puss, stalking and revenge porn and is set on the path with her frightening experten with an ex-body. she represents victims who have had their lives turned upside down by ex-partners and scorned lovers usually in revenge, whether it be real or conceived. this behavior is too common. i'm sure many of you in the room have your own story. i know i do. nobody is victim is a book that gives the sufferers of the crimes a face and a name and an identity. when for so long they have been shrouded in darkness. goldberg gives uss like that of a 15-year-old girl who was sex lull eye assaulted at school and then suspend when she report what happened to her. there's also a woman 'owhose ex-made fake bomb threats in her name and a man whose former boyfriend post evidence his information on dating app, inviting strangers to his home and work for sex. this book is an analysis of victims rights in a time where

digital harassment it getting worst and a warn us call for what is to come if we don't take action now. moderating tonight's event is margaret talbot, an essayist. please help me welcome margaret talbot and carrie goldberg. [applause] >> this it great to be here with you carrie. did a profile of carrie for the "new yorker magazine" and get to spend time in her office and with her wonderful crew, and i have to say that though she does work on some really grim and frightening cases, she brings a real vibrance and fun and the people would work wither are so

committed and it is actually -- it was strangely fun story to do because it was so great so spend the time with you and your group. but one of the things i learned that was knew to me when i started the story was -- i mean a lot of things. ed opened my eyes and one was that revenge porn, term that people use is actually a misleading porn, i is nonconsensual pop is their more accurate term because one motivation for distributing intimate photos that may have been shared in the context of a relationship, is revenge, by an angry ex and that's a common scenario there are people who do this kind of thing just for profit or some kind of sadistic laugh, and there are variety of motivations unfortunately that you have come into contact with. so that is one thing i learned. the other thing i learned which was a shock is the extent, the vicious extent and persistence with which some of these

campaigns harassment by trolls and others are carried out online, and so i just wonder if you could actually tell a story from one of your clients just to give a little more detail and put a little more kind of -- put this a little more into context what we're talking about, i. >> yes. first of all, thank you everyone for coming. this is like -- it is so surreal this thing is in the world and people are coming to listen to conversations about it and margaret being with margaret was a life changing experience for me, and when she -- i first got an e-mail from you saying you -- we're considering doing a profile on me, my mom was, like -- i think -- how many words -- >> it was long. >> what does that mean? what is she talking about?

>> thanks, mom. >> having you there and you were like, just think of me as a fly on the wall, and it was impossible because you brought such a joy to our office, and i was always having to yell at adam, stop talking to margaret, get back to work. >> that was a direction she had to give to adam, a young man whose run of miss jobs wag look was looking at nonconsensual porn. >> let's talk about a story, and in the book we kind of -- i kind of create this -- it's flippant but it's -- we have kind of four main kind of categories of offenders we see over and over again, and it's almost like they're acting from the same playbook, and so one type is

what we call the psycho who will stop at nothing to destroy his target's life, and i use a male pronoun because usually these offenders are male. and they're not afraid of cease and desist letters or order of protection or the law, criminal law even, and it's one of the mose pernicious types of issues we have to resolve, is somebody who is completely lawless and usually they use the internet as a weapon. so, one case we had was a young woman who was a server at a restaurant, and i actually got the call from a college friend of mine who said that this woman she worked with was viciously harassed, and she -- when we first connected she was so scared that actually i was the

offender. that she -- we had to do these things to prove that this -- my website wasn't created by him, and that my phone number wasn't his and i wasn't -- and she was -- she had every reason to be terrified. she met this man when she was posting an ad looking for a roommate. she lives with three people and they needed a fourth roommate, and this nice guy from an academy came to look at the apartment, and little did she know that her computer was on while he was looking and she was out of the room, and in that -- to the fuse communities he gained access to her entire online life and they accepted him to be a roommate and then life started getting really crazy for her. her online diary was suddenly being sent to everybody in her

social circle. her medical records relating to abortion she had had was sent to -- hundreds of people were getting the details of her most traumatic moments, but then it just continued, and she -- she knew that it was this roommate but she thought, okay, i'm just going to leave. and so the moved back home, and then suddenly her father, her mother, was getting hacked. her father's e-mail was being impersonated and looked like he was sending child upon nothing porch until aography speak has creating collages with our client's person and then sending them from impersonates accounts and he was tech savvy we got the feds to come in but he was

really good at log soft marry no anonymize himself. the vpn to mask his ip address and different kinded of overseas e-mail services, and even like the -- the most sophisticated detective couldn't find proof that he could -- and. >> was she going to the police during this time. >> she had been to the police, and then he -- and it was so all-consuming, and then she started impersonating him like juan thompson and sending bomb threats and he started to just targeting the hell out of this town and sending bomb threats to the schools on an almost daily

basis, completely absorbing -- is a though they were her and anonymously. he was blogging -- >> so, swatting is a thing that happens to clients and to a lot of gamers and stuff where somebody basically makes a 9-1-1 call saying that, oh, margaret is holding up her family hostage and she has semi-automatic weapons and is going to kill everybody and creates this emergency and then people -- the law enforcement come with guns drawn, to your home, and it's really dangerous because people have gotten shot and killed from law enforcement's responding to those situations. and it happens a lot on streaming platforms where somebody is playing a video game and then somebody else s.w.a.t.s them and then it plays out in real life. so, this is just a scorched

earth campaign on our client, and ultimately we found a few chinks in the armor and he got arrested and actually he was sentenced to 17 and a half years for cyber harassment but it was cyberharassment pornography, is not -- judges don't give big sentences for that. and really it wasn't -- this wasn't really her -- like, i so many cases, when it was just one woman under attack, it really wasn't a big deal but when communities -- >> became the whole town. >> the town start erred getting targeted, then it got taken more seriously. >> it was in massachusetts. >> yeah little. >> so that's a case where the guy did debt -- get a long sense

and you were able to help the client in a very real way, bring summon to justice but very often that's quite difficult to do and there are a lot of reasons for that. a lot of obstacles to holding internet companies accountable to holding individual accountable, to getting the police involved because police often don't social are -- local officers don't understand the forensics are not able to do the forensics involved in tracing these anonymized people and so on. one of the big ones for you is section 230 of the communications decency act. a big obstacle you have to deal with and i'm sure there are anymore this room, because we're in washington, dc, who know what that is but maybe you can explain what it is do those who don't and or may not be familiar and what obstacles its puts in your way. >> okay. thank you for asking.

>> it's important. >> so, how many people know about -- deal with section 230 or communications decency act? this law that went into effect in 1996. this law that went into effect in 1996, and it was 26 word law that basically says that interactive computer services are immune from liability for information content provide by a third party. so basically it was used when the biggest threat on the internet was defamation. like on prodigy or come pew serve people were tacking trash but somebody else's business, saying your rugs have bed bugs in it, and rather than suing the defamer, instead the plaintiffs would also sue the platform. and so in -- at the time

lawmakers were discovering the threat of pornography on the internet and read it could become this big issue, and there was the law that passed that basically banned pornography from the internet, and the law included this little phrase. and the following year in 1997, the pornography law -- you may have noticed there's pornography everywhere. that was found unconstitutional, but what survived was section 230 of the law. and so over the years, like in the last 23 years, this little law that was -- really intended to protect companies from publication torts like defamation and on cenni. was so bloated by courts that

basically any company that has any sort of relationship with the internet seems to be able to seek protection from liability under it, for any kind of lawsuit. and it's really scary because it basically meanses that these companies which over the years have become the most dat data rich, omnipotent, wealthy companies in he history of the universe and basically beyond the reach of the court system, and people always make fun of how facebook and google are more powerful and wealthier than governments, but in some ways they are that sovereign, where our courts can't even touch them, and i'll talk but harris v grinder.

i talk bows it in this book and real life and nonstop. but our client, matthew harris, in 2016, he was recently out of a relationship with an abusive, controlling man, who went on a scorched earth attack and decided he was going devote his life to destroying matthew's, classic psychobehavior and his weapon was dating apps and would create on grinder and scruff and jacked, profiles of matthew with matthew's picture and then say that matthew was interested in really hard core sex and had rape fantasies and drugs to share, and then impersonating matthew he would set up sex dates at matthew's holm and job and men came in real life to matthew, to have sex with him,

and it wasn't once or twice. is was 1200 times. and it was just showing up at his work and house at all hours of the day and night and eventually he put up a sign on hisfront door saying this is a fake profile. grinder patrons, leave me alone. but didn't work. people thought he was resisting as part of the game. >> the ex-boyfriend was like, i'm going to say that it's part of the game. i'm going to say that it's somebody impersonate me but when i tell you could come away, come back five minutes later. and it was really, really frightening. and the offender would get more and more clever, sometimes he would be homophobic on grinder and racist and people would want

to come and kick his ass or sometimes he would set up sex date friday the bathroom at work so matthew into go to the bath room and somebody would follow him there. and matthew did what anybody would do went to the police, and 12 times done marsh 14 -- and they told -- it's a different kind of humiliation and dismiss simness because we women have our own optical when we're reporting but he was told to just deal -- be a man. take care of it. what is wrong with you? he said, hoping -- just dealing with a guy. man up. and he got an order of protection, and nothing was working. this guy was on a -- just a

rampage. and so really grinder was at exclusive position to help. they controlled the goddamn app. there's geolocate can technology that driving people to night's home. when the people coming were not too scary he would ask to see their phone to take pictures of the text messages so we could use it as prove proo and it would show on the app, 200 feet away, show the distance between matthew and the offend sore there is would technology used in -- to exploit the grinder technology and he. >> and he was contacting grinder and asking him to remove these. >> yes, yes, and so finally -- he came to me. i was like -- i had just worked with facebook and twitter and google on their revenge porn policies and i thought i was really, like, this knight in

shining armor and call up the general counsel at this company and get -- solve this problem for him, and it was go away, a couple hours, and they ignored me. they sent cease and desist letters and so we sued them, and i said i was aware of this law, the communications decency act, and i was like but i'm going outsmart. the it's not going sue them for anything he says. i'm going sue them for negligence and for their product design, and so when grinder's attorney finally went to court, they told us that they didn't have -- their client grinder did not have the technology to identify and ban users, which that is insane. they're a dating app that deal

with -- >> online on that basis they can locate people, the point of it. >> yes, sophisticated stuff, and so -- there's certainty if you have dating app that facilitates real life encounter that certainly from time to time it's going to be abusedly rapists and child predators and if you didn't design into your app a way to control for that, you have released intimate commerce, something that's dangerous and defective, and so this is a case about a product liability, and you're not immune from liability for that. and the judge thought we were full of shit and dismissed it and did it early on, grinder didn't even have to plead

anything, dent have to submit any papers. the judge just said, this an information -- an interactive computer service and it's immune from liability because this is all third-party content. and so -- >> because of this section 230. >> they used section 230. i think by far the most expansive reading of section 230 ever because this -- this was not a publication tort. we weren't suing them for their capacity as publishing third party content. wasn't like they were a website and this is just words somebody had posted. and so -- >> is anyone working to get rid of section 230 or rethink it. >> i'm glad you asked that. we just keep appealing and appealing. my cocounsel who is here, tor eklund, on august 7th we

submitted a petition to the sprem court and and this whole issue was booted up, ready to go and just needs to be one of the 80 or 90 cases out of 9,000. >> fingers crossed. >> and then there's some action on it. there's some draft legislation, some -- like -- i don't support that but there's -- right now over the last six months, there's so much more conversation about it. i can't even keep up with it on twitter. really agrees with me. people are like, oh, my god, with he lose section 230 then free speech on the internet dead forever and what i -- that next -- there's no indication of that. >> sometimes people bring up that allergy; -- argument some of these form of harassment

constitute free expression. what do you say to that? when if did this article i interviewed first amendment lawyers and they've said, no, you can carve out important exceptions by writing good lauds. what do you say. >> i think this is an issue about access to justice, not about free speech. so, it's like we as individuals are the ones who lose out if we can't hold accountable somebody or something, and so tort -- this is all about, like, being able to sue an entity, and so when you sue an entity you already have to show that entity caused the harm, that there were damages, and so that's a really high burden already. but i know that most of us don't plan on waking up tomorrow and suing facebook or twitter or google, but this is really important for all of us because,

like, pressure and fear of being sued is actually what creates -- what motivates companies to devote safety features. it's why car companies put seatbelts in our cars and air bags. it's because of the pressure from product liability tort. so much of the safety features around us, like in every domain, is -- cribs or carseats, is because of lawsuits and if there's no pressure from -- if these companies have no fear that we could -- that we users could hold them accountable they have no rope to give a shit about the way their companies could be weaponized, and it starts with the level of the angel investor and the venture capitalist, because these -- they don't have to ask the companies, what are you doing to

protect women and people from abuse on your platform? because the company doesn't -- it's really exceptional. there's no other industry anywhere that gets -- that is outside the reach of our courts. and these companies defend that. it's a subsidy. they don't deserve it. [applause] >> thank you. i will say something. this is a different legal arena where there has been progress made. how many states have laws out nonconsensual porn. >> 46. new york final he pass thread and have federal legs, the shield act, pending in d.c. when first start mid law firm there war have to states that had it. it's one area where it's really wonderful how the activity of --

it was a relatively few number of activists working on the issue, and just swept the nation, and five years ago, everybody was, like, oh, it's aclu and -- it's free speech, going to freeze all she speech on the internet if you criminal ize revenge porn. >> and that has changed. >> at attitude has changed. >> thesive rights initiative and people working on the issues have pointed out that, no, it's not going to break free speech and break the internet but will protect people from terrible forms of harass: i want to ask you and then we have questions from the audience which i will move on to but i wanted to ask you also, when i was reporting the piece it was in 2015, and it was before the election, and i know that -- i wonder how much of your work has taken on

somewhat more political cast? i know you have done some work with people who are being sort of harassed by white nationalis and others, and i wonder how much -- if you're seeing caseys those sort of forms of harassment may be more interpersonal and more political or emerging a little bit or if it's just changed in general what you -- what kinds of trolls you deal with, what kinds of issues you're facing. >> i guess i think like having, like, rapist harasser troll as a president does -- that's totally empower other rapists and -- >> -- to be bad. i think that the leader of the land is harassing and saying horrible things to people on twitter than everybody else

thinks that's okay, and so -- but i think -- it's no -- it's very true that the internet is causing more radicalization, and we have seen that with some of the mass shootings, where mass shootings are live-streamed or the manifestoes being posted and on the internet and being disseminated there, it and is also related and we have had a lot of cases -- it's so many of the cases are still about exes going on the attack. but we do have people that just say something regrettable on the internet and then are just mobbed for it.

and that is terrifying and scary and they and their families get harassed and their personal information accessed and posted and it's hard and this is another reason why we have to be putting pressure on the platform. it's hard when there's a thousand people thenning and harassing -- threatening and have hassing you on platform because the cops don't want to get involved and it's one thing for one person to make thousand threats because you can go after that one person, but if a thousand people are making one threat you can go every one person and there's still 999 and plus police don't -- if they don't want to go after a harasser on the other side of the country or -- these are small crimes to them. these are misdemeanors. >> there have been a couple

of-diguess they were civil suits or federal -- judgments against, for example, the guy who is the founder of the daily -- reformer -- who in fact one of the people who want won a judgment against him was the first black female student body president of a and one was the -- a real estate person in white fish, montana, who had gotten into some kind of disagreement with richard spencer's family and was jewish and became the victim of during target of incredible anti-semitic harassment and a long judgment heness the wind right now, he's missing. didn't show up for his deposition. >> fancy that. and i think those are -- those are great cases. we have two cases representing abortion providers, and where they've also been the target of

extreme harassment by trolls and then publications have amplified those voices, and in one case, an abortion funder was viciously harassed and then hacked and all these fund ares, material was exposed, and so i think the more cases we can bring against anonymous trolls the better, or the platforms that are amplifying them. >> right. i'm going to turn to some of the audience questions here. here's one. what do you think is the primary trigger that possesses somebody usually a man, to stalk, harass and create fear in a woman or women they target? why?what do you think is the primary trigger? >> oh, i don't -- i mean, just

being like armchair psychiatrist it's usually narcissistic parasite who can't cope with injury, and it's their ego. don't give a shit what their trigger is honestly. i'm dealing with the aftermath of that. and i have no interest in knowing what motivates them. that's somebody else's job. just need them to stop. >> right. here's a segway. [applause] >> what do you do for self-care?all these -- >> awe always laugh. he never gets asked that question. >> i'll ask. >> i'm wondering -- i actually cover this in my book. it's embarrassing.

i should be consistent. >> it's good. >> so, exercise, mow-mobutrin, sex. >> woo-hoo. >> the holy trinity. . >> yes. >> okay. what is his 20 alt accounts don't rise to the level of criminal stalk but go just up to the line. >> 20 -- >> 20 alternative -- maybe -- 20 accounts. >> okay. >> i guess -- >> 20 account they're using to harass. >> but that maybe it's up to the line -- if someone wants to clarify go ahead. >> i need -- that's not enough information for me. okay. because it matters what the

words are, what other stuff is happening. and matters what the relationship of the offender is. some people you can get rid of with a really nasty cease and desist letter and some people you need an order of protection, some people have to good to court and has nor do with who the -- like looking at who the offender is and what they have to lose than it -- the fact of the case. you have to look at both but you know if somebody doesn't have a. >> doesn't have a family, doesn't have a home, their much more inclined to act really -- to good off the deep end. >> right. >> than member oh has anchors. >> and is maybe going fear exposure. >> yes. >> you have had interest good luck with cease and desist orders -- >> not luck. >> host: luck is the wrong word and in fact, tell us the first lines of some of your best cease

and desist letters. it's good. >> i love the cease and desist letter. you have to be careful because sometimes they will really escalate and it's like gasoline on fire. you have to know she sweet spot if this is going to work and maybe somebody go away. >> or make them go wild. >> yes. so, if i were to write a cease and desist letter to art,. >> on your behalf. >> i would say i've been retained by margaret to negotiate on her behalf negotiations just ended. >> association just end it -- negotiations just end it. what would you say have been the pros and cons of start your own

law firm? >> a question that makes me really happy. it's like there's one part of life is being like a lawyer and solving the cases and stuff, and that's so different from being like a business owner. it's completely different thing. the hardest part of starting the law firm, like anybody who started a business, i is it's really lonely and emotional to start something that is so personal. this law firm was really, really personal to me. i was in a very low point when i started it, which -- seems kind of strange because we don't think of doing being things when we're at a low point but i did. and it was -- i wanted it to

succeed and i didn't know how to run a business, and i didn't in the -- >> you became the lawyer that you had needed when you had gone through something like this. >> i did but that's different from becoming the business owner. when i first started i was just so eager to help and to help other people who were in my position and didn't know how to run a business or keep things going, and it wasn't until i started getting bigger cases, representing younger people, where i was just, like, if i don't learn how to run a business, i'm going to betray these very young clients who have already been betrayed by the person who sexually assaulted them, the school that

kicked them out when they reported it, and then their lawyer is going to be out of business by the time they actually could get justice? and so the hardest part was just like learning how to run the business, and expand so that we could help more people and train -- find, like, awesome staff members, which i have. but it's still hard. i don't know if -- then the best part of it is being in charge of the thermostat, real ly. not being cold in the office. i love that. but it's also getting to say what -- getting to write a book and getting to take whatever case you want, even if it is not going to result in money but you think it's really important.

>> you have expanded so much. when i was there in 2015 you had two other people working in the office, adam and your associate and part-time receptionist and now you are saying you have 13, right? >> uh-huh. >> i'm sorry as -- was said she introduction i'm sorry there's the need but i'm glad you're to help because there still aren't that many lawyers doing the work and sexual privacy if you want to give it a umbrella term that you do, and there are others and they're around the country, but you were and are real pioneer in that field. i'm going to skip this one because it says what are the areas you specialize in and we have covered that. this may be is a more general one that maybe we haven't touched on exactly. what motivates you to continue your work advocating for victims.

>> i never would consider stopping. i guess it's the fact that people are hiring us and have really important cases, and that we have to solve and there's so many new iterations of ways to destroy another person that we see every single day in our office, and we don't -- at the lullly have the tools -- this, is an sense of the first question, the best part of having the law firm its people come to us in their most hellish moment, and we actually know what to do, and we can actually solve their problem. we can get them an order of protection, get them a shit ton of money or get the asshole in jail or know how to do it. and that keeps us going. >> sure. okay. well, i think that -- there's

another question behind me. this one? in the introduction tonight, reference was made to the flip when the person who makes the complaint against a harasser is penalized. how often does this happen? >> well, like, really common for harassers to counterclaims or counterpetitions. if you try to get an order of appropriation often the offender will cross-petition. when i was under attack by my ex he was filing false police reports against me and i got arrest. it's really -- it's a -- the legal system is a great tool for offenders and it's one of the most infuriating and hellish parts. if you're being actually

attacked by the system that's supposed to protect you. and we see that so much right now, especially as people are out offing their rapists and going online and saying that this happened to me, or seeing so many lawsuits against the victims. for defamation and it's as if the offenders think that by suing for defer make it's going to somehow make them -- defamation is going to make them more credible as not a rapist, and it's like -- >> there's so many interesting aspects. remember learning something else. if you are trying to take a picture down, an intimate picture that's been circulating online down, and you can sometimes use copyright law, digital millennium copyright

act. >> perfect. >> but you have to have taken the picture. its ail a selfie you own the copyright or some other photograph you have taken but say if somebody took a fraction an upskirting photograph or a photograph of you sleeping naked or if someone else took it, they own the copyright, so, you actually -- so getting a -- trying to use that method to get photos taken down is actually very tricky of, right? unless you can prove you actually took it. >> also some illegal material is not copyrightable which intend depend on the state. i you're very victim of a crime and it's been doing disseminated like child porn -- pornography and you can't take it doubt.

copyright needs to vest with the victim when it's criminal. >> you're saying the copyright is one thing that internet respects. >> yes, and some people disagree but even the sketchiest revenge porn website overseas will respect a copyright takedown notice with some exceptions. because it's also like -- unlike the cda, the website is on notice this is infringing a copyright they can actually be sued if they don't take it down. so the threat of lawsuit does matter, and that is really clear from the dmca. it's just brute force and it is one of the few tools that originally was available to victims of, like, nonconsensual porn. but the criminal laws just

criminalize the offender but what is improved things is that especially with the bigger social media companies have created bans on their platforms, and so now there are reporting tools and google also has a way for it to -- links to be removed from somebody's search engine results. >> have they gotten more responsive or effective? >> no. no. if wrote a mean piece but google recently. i'm sticking by it. >> on that note, i know we probably should be winding up so you can sign books for people. thank you. thank you. >> thank you! [applause] >> just fold up your chairs.