Those who are a part of the online world have seen the darker side of human behavior surface. People throw out their manners as flame wars get out of hand, sometimes escalating into threats when opinions sharply differ. The author of the letter tells how she had to file a report with the FBI after receiving death threats via the Internet. These threats upon her person were an outcome of opinions which markedly differed from those of several lurkers in Buddhist and Meditation Usenet groups. Hate groups abound off and on the Internet.
Threats are a form of intimidation and control.
On one hand they feel that law enforcement must be allowed to do their work and that the society and its children must be protected. On the other, they worry for ordinary folks who suffer when the law fails to protect them from quite legal, it appears, invasions of privacy. As this applies to business, some say they would rather not have government regulate commerce any more than it already has. An unusual coalition of the liberal left and conservatives has emerged, each with quite differing agendas and supported in political terms by incompatible groups of people. As a result, the skewing of the debate to the polar extreme has left the middle ground almost without proponents or perhaps more precisely, without an articulated position.