Difference between revisions of "The Amy Boyer Case"
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=== The Internet’s Aid in Boyer’s Murder === | === The Internet’s Aid in Boyer’s Murder === | ||
| − | Youens primarily relied on third party information searcher sites that obtain and sell individuals’ personal information. | + | Youens primarily relied on third party information searcher sites that obtain and sell individuals’ personal information. Liam Youens used Docusearch, an internet based organization to conduct his investigation and information search. It costed him forty-five dollars to obtain documents that included Boyer's date of birth and social security number. Later, Liam contacted Docusearch’s contractor, Gambino, who then falsely impersonated an insurance company representative to acquire more information on Boyer and her family. Using this illegally acquired information, Gambino then called Boyer’s mother to obtain her work location. <ref name="ref3" />. |
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== Day of Murder == | == Day of Murder == | ||
Revision as of 01:02, 19 December 2011
The Amy Boyer Case refers to the murder of Amy Boyer committed by Liam Youens in October 1999. Youens was able to obtain her personal information and determine her whereabouts through stalking on the Internet. This case has severe ethical implications in the real and online world.
Contents
Amy Boyer
Amy Boyer was a young woman from Nashua, New Hampshire. She attended and graduated from Nashua High School and briefly worked in a dentist office before she was murdered at the age of 20 [1].
Liam Youens
Liam Youens also attended Nashua High School in Nashua, New Hampshire. He graduated in 1997, and subsequently enrolled at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He dropped out after one year. From an early age, Youens was described as antisocial and a loner. He was teased excessively throughout high school and immersed himself in violent video games. Youens is the youngest of six children [2].
Pre-Murder Events
Evidence of Psychological Disorder
Youens was constantly teased throughout high school because of his antisocial behavior and believed that he was innately unattractive. At home, he spent most of his time on his computer, playing violent video games and watching pornographic videos. He rarely spoke to or ate with his family. He also collected gun, 5 rifles and one hand gun. [2].
Obsession with Amy Boyer
In eighth grade, Youens met Boyer through a church youth group. He instantly developed a love obsession with Boyer but was never confident enough to tell her. When he saw Boyer interacting with another boy on the school bus, Youens made his decision to eventually murder her. Boyer and her family never knew of Youen’s obsession [2].
Previous Incidents of Violence
Youens believed he was unattractive and desperately wanted to get plastic surgery. In November 1996, when his mother refused such a request, Youens took his mother’s china cabinet and threw it down the stairs in retaliation. Subsequently, he was forced to undergo anger management classes [2].
Youen’s Website Documenting Murder
Youen started a website, documenting his process and plans to murder Amy Boyer. His website ran for almost two and a half years. He would write on his website about committing suicide and other very detailed personally information about himself and his obsession with Amy Boyer. Youen’s website was taken off of the web after the murder and is currently not available. However, a reproduction of his site still remains online. His desires, thoughts and actions are all still documented online [3].
The Internet’s Aid in Boyer’s Murder
Youens primarily relied on third party information searcher sites that obtain and sell individuals’ personal information. Liam Youens used Docusearch, an internet based organization to conduct his investigation and information search. It costed him forty-five dollars to obtain documents that included Boyer's date of birth and social security number. Later, Liam contacted Docusearch’s contractor, Gambino, who then falsely impersonated an insurance company representative to acquire more information on Boyer and her family. Using this illegally acquired information, Gambino then called Boyer’s mother to obtain her work location. [3].
Day of Murder
On October 15, 1999, Liam Youens parked outside of Amy Boyer’s work office and waited for her to leave. As Boyer walked out to her car, Youens yelled out Boyer’s name and shot her, killing her instantaneously. At the end of the shooting, Youens killed himself as well.
Ethical Implications
The Amy Boyer case illustrates how ethical models are complex in the online world. Youens was able to access and obtain Boyer’s personal information without difficulty due to the internet's apparent lack of moral barriers that would restrict such behavior in real life.
Moral Barriers
In real life, there are moral barriers that prevent people from doing harm to others. For example, Youens would have had more difficulty searching and finding Boyer’s information in real life than online. The difficulty and investigational nature of a search help to act as barriers that trigger a moral realization of wrongness in real life. At the time of the murder, there were no barriers online that resulted in triggering a moral realization. The ease of the search for personal information online helped to facilitate Boyer's murder.
“Different” Crimes Exist Online
Tavani describes stalking online as “a different kind of crime from stalking in the ‘offline world’” [4]. The nature of the “same” crime changes because the online environment offers many more opportunities for stalking. These can occur in the form of: instant messaging (to get into contact with the victim), searching for personal information, posting comments about the victim (to further the degree of stalking), and more. Any stalker online “can now stalk a targeted victim without having to leave the comfort of his or her home” [4].
Need for New Ethical Model
It can be argued that real world ethics cannot apply and transfer easily to the online environment due to the fact that there is a lack of moral barriers in place in the Internet that would allow for appropriate moral judgments and decisions to occur, such as in real life. Such a conflict results in “policy vacuums”, described as:
“Because of logical malleability, computing technology enables human beings to do an enormous number of new things that they never were able to do before. Since no one did them before, the question arises whether one ought to do them...one may discover that no laws or standards of good practice or ethical rules have been created to govern them…”policy vacuums”, some of which generate ‘conceptual muddles’” [5]
A lack of morals to guide future actions limits ethical judgments online, resulting in conceptual muddles. Therefore, there is a need for a new ethical model that directly deals with dilemmas encountered in the online environment.
See Also
References
- ↑ http://lubbockonline.com/stories/113099/sci_113099025.shtml
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 http://articles.latimes.com/1999/dec/05/news/mn-40632
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 http://www.davickservices.com/murder_of_amy_boyer.htm
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Tavani, Herman T. The uniqueness debate in computer ethics: What exactly is at issue, and why does it matter?. Ethics and information technology 4.1 01 Mar 2002: 37-54. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- ↑ Bynum, Terrell W. "Milestones in the History of Information and Computer Ethics." The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics. Ed. Kenneth E. Himma and Herman T. Tavani. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008. 27-48.
