Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones had her personal website hacked this week. The interlopers posted her drivers license, copies of personal information, naked photos and, because this is the Internet, a video tribute to Harambe the gorilla.
The hack is horrific, for sure. Jones’s team was forced to take the website offline, and appears to have contacted the FBI, Homeland Security and allies in Congress.
Jones herself has not commented, but this is the latest in a string of Internet attacks against the comedian. The last one, a Twitter spat with Milo Yiannopoulos, ended with Milo being banned from the social media platform.
A theory has emerged, however, that the attacks on Jones should be prosecuted as a “hate crime“—a “prejudice-motivated” violent crime that carries with it a significant sentence. The term implies a curb on the freedom of speech: that as long as something is personally insulting, and has racist or sexist tinges (as defined by social justice warriors, not textbooks), that language is a second, additional criminal act.
Hacking is, itself, illegal—and possibly, in this case, even a federal crime, as Homeland Security jumped at the chance to investigate the intrusion. But until Homeland Security drags the hacker out from his parents’ basement (or a Russian troll farm), it’s impossible to know the hacker’s motives, even if feminists on Twitter interpret the attack on Jones to be both racist and sexist.
Whoever did this may not have liked Jones, but not liking someone—even being a jerk about it— isn’t worthy of additional jail time. There are a lot of people who don’t like Leslie Jones; if having a problem with her acting, or even her personality was a crime, half of the Internet would have to be rounded up for prison time.