WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — When former “revenge porn” website operator Hunter Moore appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom last month to answer to charges of stealing nude photos from hacked email accounts and posting the images online, the spectator gallery included a petite, blue-eyed woman who may have done as much as anyone to put him there.
About two years earlier, Charlotte Laws had launched her own investigation of Moore, dubbed “Operation No Moore,” after a topless photo of her 24-year-old daughter Kayla appeared on his now defunct IsAnyoneUp.com website.
Immersing herself in the sleazy subculture of revenge porn, the Woodland Hills, Calif., resident tracked down other alleged victims from around the country and compiled a thick dossier of information about Moore that she passed on to FBI agents.
According to a federal indictment that was unsealed in January, Moore, 27, employed alleged hacker Charles Evens, 25, to obtain nude pictures of seven women, including Kayla Laws, by gaining unauthorized access to their email accounts. If convicted of one charge of conspiracy, seven charges of computer hacking and seven charges of identity theft, they face up to 54 years in prison.
“Revenge porn” is the name given to a subset of pornography specializing in nude photos of women oftensubmitted by spurned or angry ex-lovers. Charlotte Laws, though, estimates that about 25 percent of the images — li ke the one of her daughter posted on Moore’s site — are “selfies” obtained through hacking.
“I was ecstatic,” she told MintPress in an interview, recalling her reaction to the news of Moore’s arrest. “Finally!”
While she waited for Moore to be indicted, Laws lobbied for a bill that made California the second state in the country to criminalize revenge porn. Senate Bill 255, which went into effect Jan. 1, makes it a misdemeanor for a person to take an “intimate” photo of another “under circumstances where the parties agree or understand that the image shall remain private” and then distribute the photo “with the intent to cause serious emotional distress.”
Similar measures have been introduced in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois, among other states. Laws is now hoping California will close some loopholes in its statute — an amended version was introduced last week — and that Congress will enact a federal anti-revenge porn law.
“At least three people have committed suicide as a result of revenge porn,” she said. “Women have lost relationships, they’ve lost jobs. They felt like they had nowhere to hide. The Internet is all-encompassing, it’s forever.”
Laws has been called the “Erin Brockovich of revenge porn” for her activism. “Charlotte Laws is a fighter,” said Erica Johnstone, an attorney who has represented alleged victims of revenge porn. “She doesn’t take ‘No’ for an answer.”
Always an activist
Johnstone and others now see “revenge porn” as a bit of a misnomer. “I think of it as non-consensual porn,” she said.
“People have different tastes,” Johnstone explained. “Seeing someone be turned into a porn star appeals to a subset of people who view revenge porn. The fact that it is non-consensual [is the reason they enjoy it].”
Kayla Laws, an aspiring actress, took several “selfies,” imitating poses in a magazine, in October 2011 and uploaded them from her cell phone to her email account. On Jan. 1, 2012, according to prosecutors, Evens hacked into the account and found the topless image. About a week later, the photo was posted on IsAnyoneUp.com.
“A friend called her [at work] and said, ‘I have to tell you this,’” Laws said. “Kayla was absolutely freaked out.”
Laws, a native of Atlanta who still speaks with a slight Southern accent, had grown up amid the ferment of the civil rights movement. Blacks, she recalled, were not allowed into her family’s country club and when she spoke up against such discrimination, she was criticized for her views. “I’ve kind of always been an activist,” she said.
After moving to California, Laws became an advocate for animals and served on a neighborhood council while pursuing a career as a realtor. Before Kayla told her about the posting of her photo, she had never even heard of revenge porn. But she leapt into action, turning her home office into a command center.
“It was a frenzy, from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. every single day, non-stop,” she recalled. “It was unbelievably difficult … but I had to get this picture down.”
Laws initially sent Moore a notice to take it down in accordance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. When he did not comply, she contacted his publicist, website hosting company, internet security provider and even his mother. Nothing worked — until, nine days after the posting of Kayla’s photo, her husband, who is an attorney, told Moore’s lawyer he would take legal action.
Even though Laws had succeeded in her immediate aim, she didn’t stop there. Her initial investigation of Moore had put her in touch with other women who claimed he had put hacked photos of them on his website. The FBI, she said, originally did not want to investigate her daughter’s case, but after she arranged for several other alleged hacking victims to meet with agents at her home, “They were able to see it was a big case.”
Laws had a confrontation with Moore in April 2012, when they were both interviewed for a segment of the “Dr. Drew on Call” talk show. He said he was sure Kayla sent her picture to “a million different guys and just ended up on my site like everybody else,” but assured her that, “I didn’t want to hurt your daughter or anybody else, really. It was just something that I created that got out of hand.”
By that time, Moore had sold IsAnyoneUp.com to the owner of an anti-bullying website. The following month, the FBI raided his parents’ home near Sacramento, where he was living, seizing his computer, cell phone and other electronic equipment.
First Amendment concerns
The federal computer hacking statute, which prohibits obtaining information by unauthorized computer access, covers the alleged wrongdoing of Moore and Evens. Prosecutors allege Evens accessed the email accounts of seven women between Dec. 8, 2011 and Jan. 7, 2012, obtaining nude photos that Moore then posted on his site. Both defendants have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Laws found the delay in bringing those charges agonizing. “I was wondering whether it was ever going to happen,” she said. But she found another avenue for her activism in trying to persuade California legislators to approve a law that would allow the prosecution of cases involving pictures submitted to websites by third parties.
The New Jersey Legislature in 2004 had passed a first-of-its-kind law that has been used to prosecute several men accused of distributing revenge porn of their ex-girlfriends. In California, the original version of SB 255, which was introduced in February 2013, criminalized the electronic distribution of nude images of a person without their consent and with the intent to cause them substantial emotional distress.
“Cyber revenge and its ugly consequences should not be tolerated,” the bill’s author, state Sen. Anthony Cannella, said.
The bill, however, ran into opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union, which cited the First Amendment’s protections for the “posting of otherwise lawful speech or images even if offensive or emotionally distressing.” The final version of SB 255 was less than what Laws was hoping for, since, among other things, it would not apply to “selfies.”
The measure passed in September, but, according to Laws, the idea was “just get the foot in the door and we’ll amend it later.” On Feb. 20, Cannella introduced SB 1255, which is very similar to New Jersey’s law and does not require any intent to cause emotional distress.
“Non-consensual pornography should be treated for what it is — a form of sexual abuse,” said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law who is an expert on revenge porn legislation. “We don’t only punish rapists who intend to distress their victims. The fact that they engage in sexual activity without consent is all that matters.”
Laws believes revenge porn is not entitled to free-speech protections because it provides “no benefit to society.”
“Posting [private] images … doesn’t help the public discussion in any way,” she told MintPress. “I don’t see any redeeming value in putting up these pictures of people.”
However, that argument might not fly in court. In a recent case involving animal “crush videos,” the U.S. Supreme Court found, “The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits” and that exceptions to the First Amendment are limited to “historic and traditional categories” such as obscenity and defamation, which are “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech.”
Whether or not revenge porn laws survive a constitutional challenge, Laws still has the case against Hunter Moore to focus on. He and Evens are set for trial in April.
“I hope they go to jail [for] a significant amount of time,” she said.