Beijing Law Review, 2012, 3, 64-71
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/blr.2012.32009 Published Online June 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/blr)
Why Monitor Violent Websites? A Justification *
Raphael Cohen-Almagor1, Sharon Haleva-Amir2
1University of Hull, Hull, UK; 2Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Received April 16th, 2012; revised May 15th, 2012; accepted May 26th, 2012
ABSTRACT
The authors argue that the international community should continue working together to devise rules for monitoring
specific Internet sites, as human lives are at stake. Preemptive measures could prevent the translation of murderous
thoughts into murderous actions. Designated monitoring mechanisms for certain websites that promote violence and
seek adherents for the actualization of murderous thoughts could potentially p reven t such unfortun ate events. Our in ten-
tion is to draw the attention of the internatio nal community’s multi-agents (law-enforcement agen cies, governments, the
business sector, including Internet Service Providers, websites administrators and owners, civil society groups) to the
urgent need of developing monitoring schemes for certain websites, in order to prevent violent crimes.
Keywords: Internet Monitoring; Violent Websites; Dawson College Massacre; Jokela High School Massacre; Internet
Governance; Kimveer Gill; VampireFreaks.com; Virginia Tech Massacre; Red Lak e High School Massacre
1. Introduction
When the idea of the Internet was first conceived by vi-
sionaries such as Vannevar Bush [1], Joseph Carl Rob-
nett Licklider [2], Douglas Engelbart [3], Vint Cerf [4],
Robert W. Taylor [5], Ted Nelson1, Larry Roberts2, Robert
E. Kahn3, Leonard Kleinro ck [6] an d Pau l Baran [7 ], they
could not have imagined the present fascinating state of
the Internet. The rich and diversified nature of the Inter-
net and its wide circulation has benefited millions of us-
ers around the world. The Net serves as a communication
medium comprising all other media. It is an arena for a
wide array of public debates, social networks, an infra-
structure for digital commercial activities, and a mega-
sized information bank [8]. The Internet can be used for
positive purposes as well as for negative and wicked
purposes.
One of the ways to confront the dangers of boundless
speech over the web is by monitoring such dangerous,
anti-social websites as well as ones that are likely to be
used for creating social support groups for potential
criminals. The idea is not to implement surveillance of
the entire Internet, something that we oppose on prince-
pled, free speech grounds, but to monitor the areas of the
Internet that are po tentially h armful in o rder to de tect and
forestall crimes. This paper focuses on the story of Kim-
veer Gill, a 25-year-old man from Laval, Montreal who
wished to murder young students at Dawson Colleg e. We
argue that the monitoring of certain sites on which
criminals voice their violent goals could potentially pre-
vent unfortunate events like this particular incident. We
do not support censorship of the Internet, nor do we aim
to induce moral panics4 [9-13] among Internet users be-
cause we do not see the Internet as “a threat to societal
values and interests” [9]. Technolog y is not the problem.
The problem is created by individuals who abuse tech-
nology to advance criminal agendas. Indeed, the Internet
is a useful platform that has changed daily life forever
and is here to stay, but we must devise ways to deal with
its less positive aspects. Our intention is to draw the at-
tention of governments, law-enforcement agencies and
civil society groups—to the urgent need of developing
monitoring schemes for potentially prob lematic websites,
*We are grateful to Janet Spikes, Carly Nuzbach and Nick Mills for
their most valuable assistance. This is an elaborated and updated ver-
sion of “Bloody Wednesday in Dawson College—The Story of Kim-
veer Gill, or Why Should We Monitor Certain Websites to Prevent
Murder,” Studies in Ethics, Law and Technology, Vol. 2, No. 3, Article
1 (December 2008).
1http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_nelson.htm
2Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts, http://www.ziplink.net/~lroberts/
http://www.packet.cc/; Larry Roberts, Internet Pioneers
http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/roberts.html
3Robert Kahn—TCP/IP Co-Designer,
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_kahn.htm; Robert E. Kahn
http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3749
4Moral Panic is a sociological term coined by Stanley Cohen. The
term refers to the reaction of a group of people based on a false or
exaggerated perception that a cultural phenomenon, behavior or group
(mostly minority group or subculture) is dangerously deviant and poses
a threat to society. An important factor in moral panic is the deviancy
amplification spiral—an increasing cycle of media reports on undesir-
able events or behaviors which induce moral panics in society and can
lead to legislation designed to further penalize those established as the
threatening deviants who arethe source of the panic.

Why Monitor Violent Websites? A Justification 65
in order to prevent homicide. Our expectation for inter-
national cooperation by all segments of society is not
based on any existing legal obligations but rather upon
the moral obligations that cross borders and cultures re-
garding the sanctity of life and the urgency to save lives
and prevent crimes. The Internet business sector (Internet
Service Providers, websites administrators and owners)
bears an even heavier responsibility, since the moral ob-
ligations imposed on it may in due course become a legal
obligation as was the case with regard to child pornog-
raphy and Cybercrime5 [14]. By “potentially problematic
websites”, we refer to websites that attract criminals to
post their criminal ideas and criminal intentions. Law-
enforcement agencies are acquiring experience and un-
derstanding of social networking on the Internet. Their
work facilitates flexible schemes for identifying those
websites and how criminals are using them. Analyzing
several case studies, most notably the Kimveer Gill epi-
sode and Vampire-Freaks.com, the site which hosted his
murderous thoughts, we argue that if the police had
monitored this site as well as other su ch kn own sites on a
regular basis, bloodshed could have been prevented.
2. The Murderous Attack
On the morning of September 13, 2006, Kimveer Gill,
dressed in black combat boots, a black Matrix style trench
coat and armed with three guns, drove his black car to
downtown Montreal with the aim to kill. Gill walked past
the Dawson Daycare Center, which daily oversees 48
toddlers, along a busy street—the Maisonneuve. Gill dis-
liked cigarettes, and when he saw some students smoking
outside the college main entrance he shot two of them.
Then he went inside to the atrium. It was lunchtime;
many students filled the cafeteria as Gill began shooting
at random with his semi-automatic weapon [15,16]. He
killed 18-year-old Anastasia Rebecca De Sousa, a Daw-
son college student, and injured at least 20 people (four
of them were hospitalized in critical condition) [17]. The
gunman showed no mercy for wounded Anastasia and
refused to allow a fellow student to help her. Her autopsy
revealed she was shot nine times at close range [18].
Kimveer Gill took hostages and used them as human
shields while the police were pursuing him. During the
gunfire exchange, the gunman was hit in the arm. He
then committed suicide by shooting himself. This dra-
matic chain of events took less than 10 minutes from
beginning to end [19,20].
Gill had no known co nnection to Dawson College, the
largest college in downtown Montreal. Unlike other uni-
versities in the city, it is housed in one vast intercom-
nected building. At noon the students congregate in two
cafeterias [21]. It is reasonable to assu me that Gill delib-
erately chose this location in order to kill as many people
as possible.
3. Kimveer Gill’s Mental Condition as
Reflected through His Blog
Kimveer Gill was a depressed and troubled young man.
He was an unemployed loner who lived in his parents’
basement in the Montréal suburban neighborhood of La-
val [17]. He lived most of his last months in the virtual
world of a website named VampireFreaks.com, dedicated
to Goth culture.
Kimveer Gill’s posts to the VampireFreaks.com web-
site reveal his disturbed nature and provide an insight
into his predictable end:
1) His screen name was Fatality666 [22].
2) His favorite video game was Super Columbine Mas-
sacre. The player becomes Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris
and embarks on a cartoon slaughter, walking through
Columbine High School shooting students and teachers
[23]. “Work sucks...school sucks...life sucks... what else
can I say?” wrote Gill, maintaining, “Metal and Goth
kick ass. Life is a video game; you’ve got to die some-
time” [24].
3) His profile reveals his likes and dislikes, for exam-
ple: Achieve This Year—Stay Alive; How do you want
to Die—like Romeo and Juliet—or—in a hail of gunfire;
[25] Favorite Movie—Natural Born Killers [26]; Favor-
ite Weapon—Tec-9 semi-automatic handgun (Gill noted
that this was an illegal weapon in Can ada) [27].
4) On his profile Gill described himself: “His name is
Trench. You will come to know him as the Angel of
Death…He is not a people person. He has met a handful
of people in his life who are decent. But he finds the vast
majority to be worthless, no good, conniving, betraying,
lying, deceptive” [27].
5) Gill uploaded more than 50 pictures to his page on
VampireFreaks.com. Those pictures depicted him dressed
like his heroes from Columbine, in a long black trench
coat and matching boots, carrying various weapons. In
one of the pictures, entitled “You’re next”, he was seen
pointing a handgun at the camera [28]. In another picture
he held a sign in order to deliver a message—“My Gothic
Princess Leaves a Trail of Tears. God Has Forsaken Her.
God Will Pay” [23]. In his last photo on the Vampire-
Freaks blog, he was wearing his signature trench coat
and holding up an automatic weapon with the text mes-
sage “ready for action” [29].
6) On his virtual tombstone he wrote “Kimveer—Lived
fast. Died young. Left a mangled corpse” [30].
7) Gill sent many posts to VampireFreaks; sometimes
he would po st entries every fifteen minutes. He wrote: “I
love VampireFreaks. This is my new home. I shall reside
here till the day I die” [31]. Reading excerpts from his
5This issue will be elaborated upon in the subsection Internet Service
Providers’ (ISP’s) Responsibility.

Why Monitor Violent Websites? A Justification
66
blog exposes the psychotic person ality of a man who was
obsessed with hate, death, and guns. For example, on
March 15, 2006, Gill wrote:
“I hate this world
I hate the people in it
I hate the way people live
I hate god
I hate deceivers
I hate betrayers
I hate religious zealots
I hate every thing
I hate so much
(I could write 1000 more lines like these, but does it
really matter, does anyone even care)
Look what this wretched world has done to me” [32].
8) His role models were outlaws such as Bonnie and
Clyde, as well as Romeo and Juliet—couples who disre-
garded societal norms and had died tragic deaths as a
result. He admired the Germans, especially Adolf Hitler,
and wrote one entry in German: “I will crush my enemies
and eliminate them” [30].
9) About two hours before the rampage, Gill wrote on
the site he had been drinking whiskey in the morning
(“mmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm, good!!”) and described
his mood the night before as “crazy” and “postal” [33].
In another post he wrote “Give them what they deserve
before you go.” The word “them” referred to a vast array
of people, places and things. Among his most hated
things were comedies, governments, sunlight, and coun-
try music [32,34]. Gill expressed loathing towards au-
thority figures such as police, teachers, and principals; he
singled out “jocks” for high school bullying [32]. Further
more, nine months before his rampage he wrote specifi-
cally that the day in which he planned to seek revenge
would be grey, “A light drizzle will be starting up” [27].
Indeed, such was the weather on the day of his rampage.
Gill did not restrict his violent thoughts to his blog on
VampireFreaks. He posted various disturbing and dis-
tressing comments on other websites as well. Gill’s dark
attitude towards the world was confirmed by personality
tests he took on the Internet: A test named “Evil-O-Me-
ter” rated him as “pure Evil”. Another quiz, “Which dic-
tator are you?” suggested that his personality was con-
sistent with Adolf Hitler’s personality. A personality test
based on one of his favorite video games, Postal, rated
him as having an 84% chance of “going postal” (which is
to say, being involv ed in a violent massacre) and an 86%
chance of killing someone. These outcomes were ac-
companied by a recommendation to seek professional
help immediately [17]. A police source commented in the
aftermath of Gill’s rampage: “It was very obvious his
state of mind was deteriorating greatly over the last three
weeks” [32].
All of the above materials were visible and easily ac-
cessible on the VampireFreaks site. Possibly because of
this openness, Gill thought the police was after him. In
February 2006, on his blog he wrote, “I know you’re
watching me mother f-----s. I laugh at thee. There is noth-
ing you can do to stop me. HA HA HA HA HA…” [35]
Later that month he claimed that officers were pretending
to be “nice little Goth girls” as part of their surveillance.
[36] Unfortunately, the police did not monitor Gill’s ac-
tions. If they had, then the policemen would have un-
doubtedly come across Gill’s explicit threat: “Turn this
f---ing world into a graveyard/Crush all those who stand
in your way/Let there be a river of blood in your wake/
Walk through that river with pride” [36].
4. VampireFreaks.com
The VampireFreaks website was founded in 1999 by a
Brooklyn resident, Jethro Berelson, who calls himself
“Jet”. The site claims to have 600,000 - 700,000 members
and millions of entrances [32]. VampireFreaks relates to
a blood-lusty subculture of would-be vampires who are
distinct from the more pacifist Goths [23,37]. This web-
site features web logs and onlin e journals by people with
usernames such as SuicideOfLove, TeenageOddity, Rot-
tingNails, RazorBladeChris, DrowningInBlood, Wilted-
Blood and LoveInTheBedOfRazors. Apparently, quite a
few of its members share feelings of depression, lonely-
ness and anger mixed with gallows humor [38]. Some of
the website members are obsessed with blood , pain, rape,
S&M and necrophilia [37,39]. One user explains: “It
cannot be denied that many people who share our life-
style are fascinated by blood and death but virtually none
of us would ever do anything to hurt another person”
[40]. This statement is not altogether accurate.
VampireFreaks serves as a virtual meeting place for
Goths, a place where they can share a sense of commu-
nity and belonging. Gill belong ed there more than he did
to anything in his real life. He pledged his allegiance to
Goth culture on VampireFreaks.com, liked the black cloth-
ing, edgy music, macabre poetry, Mohawk spiky hair and
the pervading spirit of social alienation [37].
Kimveer Gill was not the first criminal over the last
few years who was connected to VampireFreaks.com. In
2005, three teens were prosecuted for the slaying of
Jonathan, the 12-year-old brother of one of the three and
attempting to kill his stepfather. The killer brother was a
wannabe vampire with a fetish for blood sipping as sex-
ual foreplay [22]. Jonathan was stabbed 71 times. During
the trial, it was revealed that the 16-year-old former girl-
friend of one of the killers blogged on VampireFreaks.
The girl’s posted profile on VampireFreaks listed among
her likes “blood, pain... cemeteries and knives” [40]. She
was the prosecution’s star witness, and downplayed her
interest in vampire fetishism when she testified at the

Why Monitor Violent Websites? A Justification 67
jury trial [41]. When her VampireFreaks postings sur-
faced later, it was found that she had perjured herself in
court, and the judge declared a mistrial. A second trial
found the men guilty [41,42].
In April 2006, a 12-year-old girl who called herself
“The Runaway Devil” and her 23-year-old boyfriend,
Jeremy Allan Steinke, were charged with the triple mur-
ders of Marc Richardson, 42, his wife Debra, 48, and
their son Jacob, 8 [36,43,44]. They both were part of the
VampireFreaks.com community, where the girl used the
online name of Killer-Kitty-X, described herself in her
profile as “bisexual,” “wiccan” and “insane,” and con-
fessed to like “hatchets, serial killers and blood” [45].
The 7th grade student had abandoned her clean-cut look
for a darker, Goth style, with heavy eyeliner and nail
polish. In one picture on her website, she posed holding a
gun to the camera as she pledged her love for Goth, punk,
dark poetry and death metal music [46]. Her boyfriend
matched her likes as he preferred “blood, razor blades
and pain” [47]. He presented himself as a 300-year-old
werewolf who liked the taste of blood [36]. Steinke and
his 12-year-old girlfriend each had personal pages on
VampireFreaks and made chilling postings prior to the
slayings of the Richardson family [48]. One message,
from Steinke’s souleater52 account, made reference to
“doing morbid stuff to others! ... Which I’m going to do
this weekend,” days before the Richardson family was
killed [49,50].
After the Richardson triple killing, many Goths were
irritated by the subculture’s being portrayed by the media
as dangerous; they took pains to say that their interest is a
harmless one [51,52]. The same month of April 2006,
however, VampireFreaks was once again on the news.
Eric Fischer, a 23-year-old man, described as a Goth
from New York, was arrested after showing up at a
cemetery expecting to have sex with a 13-year-old girl he
met on VampireFreaks. It was the second alleged inci-
dent in which Fischer used the site to lure young girls. In
March 2006, he had been arrested on rape charges after
attacking a 16-year-old girl he had met on the website
[50].
In June 2006, three young men were sentenced for a
deliberate fire that destroyed the 105-year-old Minnedosa
United Church, in Minnedo sa, Manitoba. One had posted
his profile on VampireFreaks. Referring to Jesus Christ,
he wrote: “If he comes back, we’ll kill him again” [36,
53]. In February 2009, 36-year-old Robert Earl Hogan of
Hillsboro, Oregon was sentenced to 10 years in federal
prison for luring a 14-year-old girl met on Vampirefreaks
in order to have sex with her [50]. In August 2009, Derek
Campbell, 28, of Toronto was charged for meting a
13-year-old girl on VampireFreaks and taking video of
her in sexual positions. The same week, the police ar-
rested Arthur Brown of Toronto, a 44-year-old bisexual
vampire freak, for sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl
whom he met on the website [54].
Parry Aftab, head of Wired Safety (a volunteer watch-
dog organization that monitors websites) said the Goth
culture is not at issue in the discussion of Gill’s crime,
but that the role of the VampireFreak s site cannot be eas-
ily discounted. She said her organization has con- tacted
VampireFreaks.com repeatedly and received countless
complaints about its content from parents and from teens
who were harassed and abused. Aftab said: “I think the
site is starting to breed a different Goth…many of the
kids who are highly troubled and those who are making
trouble for others, are gravitating to that site… the major
problem…is that it seems to normalize aberrant behav-
ior” [55,56]. Aftab maintained, “Some of these kids who
are troubled know they’ll only get attention on there if
they do something different than everyone else. You have
to up the ante” [36]. Websites like Vampire-Freaks. com
create virtual communities and put people in touch. On
such sites, when someone brags that he was doing some-
thing outrageous, people around him often congratulate
him, sometimes encourage this sort of behavior [36]. Af-
ter another incident that required police intervention in
which a “Vampire” arranged to meet a teen in a grave-
yard via the VampireFreaks webs ite, Suffolk County Po-
lice Deputy Inspector Mark Griffiths said that Vampire-
Freaks.com attracts people “on the fringe”, people who
are lonely and depressed [57].
5. Internet Warnings
Often, killers do not just snap and start shooting. Kim-
veer Gill was a walking bomb ready to explode, filled
with growing rage and hatred. Kevin Cameron, a trau-
matic stress expert, explained that “Serious violence is an
evolutionary process” [53]. The process begins with bit-
terness, degenerates into anger and rage, and if there are
no mitigating circumstances, the wrath might end with a
brawling explosion. People need to vent their hostility,
their acrimony, their anger. They provide signs, hints.
They find it difficult to con tain all these bo iling emotions
inside them. In the Internet age, it is convenient to vent
into the virtual world. If not stopped, said Canadian an-
thropologist Elliott Leyton, the end result of “those who
had looked upon their own lives and pronounced them
unlivable”, and then decide to exact revenge for which
they were willing to sacrifice their lives, is gore, death
and suicide [58].
The April 1999 Columbine slaughter that left 12 peo-
ple dead set the benchmark for Gill and other killers. It
had also set the tone for them regarding the use of the
Internet to publicize their notorious thoughts and their
intended evil schemes. After Columbine, a pattern has
emerged: boiling criminals are venting their rage and vile

Why Monitor Violent Websites? A Justification
68
intentions on the Internet.
On January 8, 2005 Ricky Rodriguez killed a promi-
nent former member of the Christian sect, The Family
International, and then committed suicide. Rodriguez
recorded a videotape that has been featured on several
Internet sites, including ABC.com and CNN.com. In the
video he said: “Anger does not begin to describe how I
feel about these people. I’ve seen how ugly humans can
get… There’s this need that I have. ... It’s a need for re-
venge. It’s a need for justice” [59].
6. Internet Service Providers’ (ISP’s)
Responsibility
Jet, the VampireFreaks.com owner and operator, res-
ponded to Gill’s murderous rampage almost immedi- -
ately. He relieved himself of any responsibility, saying:
“Just because someone goes around shooting people and
happens to be a member of VampireFreaks, doesn’t mean
that this website has influenced him to do such a horrib le
thing” [60]. Jet also said that the website frowns on ille-
gal behavior and bans nudity, hatred and Nazi parapher-
nalia [36].
In this context it is important to note that after the
murder, Kimveer Gill’s profile was taken off Vampire-
Freaks.com. Jayson Gauthier, the provincial police force’s
spokesman, said that an American police force had de-
manded the shutdown after a request from the Canadian
authorities [61]. This measure should have been taken
before the murder. Gauthier also said that no police de-
partment had been aware of Gill until the sh ootings [62].
Jet of VampireFreaks.com claimed he was doing what-
ever he could to prevent the posting of offensive or dan-
gerous material: “We do monitor user messages and pro-
files for violent, hateful and offensive material. However
on a site with over 600,000 users, it is impossible to
monitor everything on the site” [62]. Let us quote in full
what the site moderator wrote:
Montreal shooting—*September 14, 2006*
So yes there’s been a lot of press lately regarding a
shooting in Montreal, where the person involved was a
member of this site. I offer my condolences to the vic-
tims and their families; it really is a tragic event. Human
life is very precious and it’s sad that there are people out
there who commit such terrible crimes. This is very dev-
astating and I know people are looking for answers,
somewhere to point the finger, trying to figure out why
this has happened. I’m sure the person who did this was a
very troubled and emotionally unstable individual. We
do not condone or influence this type of behavior in any
way. The criminal was actually a member of other sites
such as “MySpace”, yet somehow our site is the only one
being named. Many people do not understand our scene
and would like to point the finger at us, but the Goth
scene is a very friendly, nurturing, non-violent commu-
nity. We are very supportive of our users and do not
condone any illegal activities. Please do not condemn us
for the wrongdoings of one individual. We have an ex-
cellent team of administrators who moderate the site, and
a useful system which allows all users to report illegal
and suspicious activity. Thank you to all the users who
continue to help us moderate the site. I do think this
event is a tragedy, but I feel that this site is wrongly be-
ing associated with the shooting. I’m sure this kid also
had accounts on various other sites, but the media likes to
associate crimes with gothic culture because it makes a
better story for them. So, I just want to ask our members
to really try to set a good example to the world, to show
that we really are caring, responsible, non-violent people.
In fact I believe we are more mature and responsible than
other scenes, in that we value intelligence, part of Goth
culture is thinking for yourself and being more aware of
the world, rather than just following the mainstream
trends. Don’t let a few bad seeds ruin our reputation, we
are a great community. On another note, due to all the
media coverage, the site is slower than usual, but I’m
trying my best to keep the site running smoothly and it
should be back to normal after the media hype dies down
over the next day or two [62].
VampireFreaks.com is a busy site with hundreds of
thousands of postings. Some effort is needed for mod-
erators of such large sites to monitor the heavy traffic. A
web expert who worked for Yahoo! in monitoring Yahoo!
groups told Raphael Cohen-Almagor that a small number
of experts who specialize in social networking could de-
vise batches of programs to look for illegal material and
remove it. The interviewed expert did this for Yahoo! in
its struggle against child pornography [63]. Similarly,
Marc Rotenberg, President of the Electronic Privacy In-
formation Center, said that the capability to monitor the
Internet is greater than what most people assume. It is a
question of will, not of ability [64,65].
Thus, it is possible to monitor traffic on large websites.
It is a question of priorities in allocating resources for
monitoring. At present, VampireFreaks is not excep-
tional in its reluctance to monitor sites and relieve itself
of responsibility. Most ISPs shy away from assuming
such responsibility, as it is the easiest and most profitable
path to pursue, but this attitu de may change. It is already
changing in the spheres of child pornography and terror-
ism.
7. Studying Social Networks
Social networks sites (SNSs) have become a main aca-
demic topic in the last few years. There is a growing
body of research concerning SNSs stemming from di-
verse disciplines and using various methodologies. In

Why Monitor Violent Websites? A Justification 69
2007, JCMC—Journal of Computer-Mediated Commu-
nication has dedicated a special volume to Social Net-
works Sites [66,67]. Still, there is a lot that we yet need
to learn about the way people are communicating via
such sites and what can be done to ensure that social
networks won’t become anti-social.
Boyd and Ellison define social network sites as web
based services that allow individuals to 1) construct a
public or semi-public p ro file within a bounded system; 2)
articulate a list of other users with whom they share a
connection; 3) view and traverse their list of conn ections
and those made by others within the system. Each site is
unique in its platform and uses different nomenclature
[68]. In this context, it is important to distinguish be-
tween networking and SNS. While the term networking
usually refers to the art of creating new relationships,
mostly among strangers, SNS’ primary aim is to enable
users to visualize and display their existing social net-
works [69].
When thinking of social networks we instantly refer to
Facebook, the most well-known social network devel-
oped in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin,
two Harvard undergraduates. Facebook started as an in-
ternal Harvard SNS. In addition to Facebook, there are
hundreds of social networking websites6, which can be
categorized by their target audience, geographic distribu-
tion (some are local, some are national and some are
worldwide) and networking purpose: Business Network-
ing Sites; Common Interest Networking Sites; dating
network sites, etc.
Boyd and Elliso n [69,70] mention four research pivots:
1) Impression Management and Friendship Performance
[69]; 2) Networks and Network Structure [71-74]; 3)
Online vs. Offline Connections [75,76 ]; 4) Privacy Issues
[77,78]. A psychological research area which deals with
risky behaviors people—especially youth—on SNSs is
timely and important [79-81]. Broadening research in
this area can assist law-enforcement agencies as well as
psychologists, psychiatrists and education people identi-
fying risky situations and preventing hideous crimes as
those discussed in this paper.
8. Conclusions
The Internet is a vast ocean of knowledge, data, ideolo-
gies and propaganda. It contains some of the best prod-
ucts of humanity, and some of the worst ones. It has
served killers. It should also serve the positive elements
in society to prevent murders.
The important lesson learn ed from the above tragic in-
cidents is the urgent need to monitor websites which are
known for their problematic nature to prevent prospec-
tive tragedies. The police must develop the ability to
monitor a suspect’s Internet activ ity.
The ascending frequencies in which these events hap-
pen require action on the international level. Since hu-
man lives are at stake, preemptive measures could pre-
vent the translation of murderous thoughts into murder-
ous actions. Such cooperation, through voluntary and
organized operations, must include all sectors: govern-
ments, law-enforcement agencies, civil society organiza-
tions and the business sector (especially Internet Service
Providers, website administrators and owners) as well as
civil society groups in order to be successful.
We suggest monitoring the Internet for problematic
websites that are used to promote violence; devising moni-
toring mechanisms for these websites; publishing over-
views and reports; exchanging information to enhance
the effectiveness of operations; lobbying for international
legislation, helping support groups and institutions that
want to set up tip lines, and raising public awareness by
providing information to interested parties.
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