When good trolls go bad. Threats aside, I thought this was amusing. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-arrested-with-help-from-atheists-on-twitter/ Over the years, someone writing as David Mabus made himself known to scientists and avowed atheists across North America in thousands of threatening e-mails and violently profane messages on Twitter. Mabus was, as such pseudonymous people are called online, a troll. But unlike most trolls, who skulk the Web with relative impunity, Mabus appears to have been caught after a sustained online campaign by those he harassed gathered momentum on Twitter last week and resulted in national media attention in Canada. Montreal’s police force announced on Wednesday that they had arrested a man, whose name was not released, in connection with the Mabus messages. He was set to be arraigned on Thursday. The Montreal force had received reports of messages, blog comments and Twitter threats from David Mabus — including some that promised beheadings and mutilation — The Vancouver Sun reported, with some of the messages dating to the mid-1990s. “We’ve had complaints about you blaspheming idiots,” read one recent Mabus message, sent last week to William Raillant-Clark, a science blogger and press attache at the University of Montreal, and scores of others. “Come see our NEW ATHEIST PIGLETS!” The Edmonton Journal said the police had received more than 3,200 e-mail complaints after an online petition began last week urging those who had been harassed to ask the police to look into the matter. Among those focused on was Tim Farley, an Atlanta computer-security expert, who told The Montreal Gazette that he had first filed a police report in January when he started receiving direct death threats. Mr. Farley, cataloging some of the litany of supposed Mabus threats, dissected in a blog post on Thursday how a few of those who were repeatedly harassed banded together online to share information, generate awareness of this one particularly aggressive troll and eventually point the police to the Montreal suburb of Saint-Laurent where they believed the suspect lived. At first, some said that while the messages annoyed them, they felt sorry for whoever was behind them.
