[draft] Protecting Victims of Blackmail

[Magecastle Embassy Building A5]

Believing the coercion of an individual by the revelation or threatened revelation of injurious information to be a heinous act that ought to be universally prohibited as a crime and delictum,

Aware of the difficulty that victims of blackmail often face in some legal systems, due to fear of prosecution of themselves when blackmailed with criminalising information or otherwise the revelation of damaging information during criminal procedures, thus interfering with the right of individuals not to be unduly coerced and instead putting their rights in an unfair dilemma,

Seeking to thus protect due process and the rights of blackmail victims by collectively legislating,

Enacts as follows, subject to relevant past World Assembly resolutions still in force _

1. In this resolution, "blackmail" refers to the coercion of an individual to perform or refrain from performing any action under threat of revealing injurious information – as defined below – about that person or associates thereof, regardless of whether said information is true or authentic.
   
   
2. "Injurious information" refers to true or false information published or revealed to another individual or group as part of an act of blackmail, where the publication or revelation of that information is intended to harm the reputation, wellbeing, or safety of that person or associates thereof.
   
   
3. No member nation may in any way – including denying any service to blackmail victims or failing to provide equal protection under the law to said individuals – discriminate against blackmail victims.
   
   
4. Victims of blackmail shall have the right to report said blackmail without fear of the revelation of the injurious information in question attached to their identity. To that end _
   
   
   1. The identity of a victim of blackmail is to remain confidential within the full scope of legal proceedings or investigations vis-à-vis said blackmail, except with free and informed consent by the victim in question.
      
      
   2. A mere threat to reveal injurious information may not be invoked as evidence of the commission of a lawless act by the victim of said blackmail, or as a reason to investigate the same.
5. Each member nation is to criminalise, prosecute, and penalise all acts perpetrated under its jurisdiction constituting blackmail.
   
   
6. Each member nation is encouraged to provide to any individual under its jurisdiction who lost material posessions as a result of blackmail conducted against that person compensation as is due.

"Discuss."

[Hulldom]

RLM: "We would wonder how this would not fall under existing victims' rights protection or whether this would be better served as a resolution on that instead. While we recognize the plight of victims of blackmail, we fail to see why they require their own resolution especially as compared to other victims of crime or harassment."

[Imperium Anglorum]

C Marcius Blythe. Blackmail probably can’t be reported anonymously, at least in terms of a useful report beyond “there are some blackmailers out there!”. It would basically be impossible to sustain a conviction without also learning substantial information about the victim, which the government would then know. The prohibition on member nations committing blackmail would substantially impair espionage operations and undercover criminal investigations. My nation must therefore oppose.

OOC. Some grammatical stuff. It’s “vis-à-vis”. And use en-dashes < – > rather than double hyphens.

[Magecastle Embassy Building A5]

RLM: "We would wonder how this would not fall under existing victims' rights protection or whether this would be better served as a resolution on that instead. While we recognize the plight of victims of blackmail, we fail to see why they require their own resolution especially as compared to other victims of crime or harassment."

"The issue, ambassador, is that blackmail victims tend to often face problems that victims of other crimes may not. For example, reports of blackmail are very often to require the victim to be incriminated -- protections against self-incrimination do not address this, as that would only apply if the state was requiring blackmail victims to report the blackmail they were subject to. Here, it is that blackmail is effective precisely because the victim may very well be incriminated if they report the blackmail in question. Even if the information is not necessarily incriminating, but still embarassing, if it is revealed in criminal procedures, there was no use to reporting the blackmail anyway. Further, the criminalisation of blackmail in this resolution would make it absurd to apply it to all crimes, due to how prima facie useless criminalising crimes would be. Overall, only one of the binding clauses would actually be reasonable to apply to all crime victims -- and there's no harm to also including it in a protection for blackmail victims."

C Marcius Blythe. Blackmail probably can’t be reported anonymously, at least in terms of a useful report beyond “there are some blackmailers out there!”. It would basically be impossible to sustain a conviction without also learning substantial information about the victim, which the government would then know. The prohibition on member nations committing blackmail would substantially impair espionage operations and undercover criminal investigations. My nation must therefore oppose.

"This is fair enough, and I will ask the mission to rewrite the section about anonymous reporting of blackmail. As to the part about member nations being prohibited from participating in blackmail, um... that was because of a staffer who didn't know about the Ice law and its use of bl-, uh... point being that he will be punished. Duly punished, that is."

~Alexander Nicholas Saverchenko-Coletti,
Senior Staffer of the Ice World Assembly mission,
Temporary World Assembly Ambassador in the absence of Duke Vliet,
The Empire of The Ice States

--

OOC. Some grammatical stuff. It’s “vis-à-vis”. And use en-dashes < – > rather than double hyphens.

Ooc: Done.

[Honeydewistania]

Category and strength?

[Magecastle Embassy Building A5]

Category and strength?

Ooc: Tentatively Civil Rights --> Mild.

[WayNeacTia]

Category and strength?

Ooc: Tentatively Civil Rights --> Mild.

Is it really a civil right not to be blackmailed?

[Magecastle Embassy Building A5]

Ooc: Tentatively Civil Rights --> Mild.

Is it really a civil right not to be blackmailed?

Yes.

[ImperialRussia]

I agree when it comes from diversification of devices such water powered engines that recharge your batteries for your electric cars

[WayNeacTia]

Is it really a civil right not to be blackmailed?

Yes.

Then make that case. You do realize that both governments and the police blackmail people all the time right?

[Attempted Socialism]

Your definition of blackmail relies on injurious information, your definition of injurious information relies on blackmail. Thus, your definitions become circular.

I'm also not sure about the purpose. Using blackmail as a method to, in a way, privilege information that then cannot be used in criminal investigation is not something I think should be incentivised, and I don't know if it's possible to work around and still have an effective policy.

[Imperium Anglorum]

OOC. I think there was a fruitful discussion in the WA Discord last night. EP raised the possibility of blackmail being discovered from an unassociated raid from the blackmailer; there could be conspiracies in which people concoct blackmail schemes to avoid scrutiny; limiting the proposal to covering the production of blackmail evidence at criminal trial only would undermine large portions of the policy basis for the proposal.

In my view, there will have to be something of a rather forthright rethinking of the proposal if it is to receive my support.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

"Blackmail is bad, mmmkay, but I'm not positive the World Assembly is capable of addressing it competently. In particular I see an issue with 4(b), in which a rapist may claim his victim attempted to blackmail him with a 'false' accusaction of sexual assault, and law enforcement is forbidden from even investigating whether the victim may have been intimidated into silence. The problem with trying to treat all cases of blackmail identically is that not all blackmail is identical. Some victims of blackmail really are guilty of the misconduct they're being blackmailed with. Hobbling law enforcement by World Assembly fiat is likely to obstruct more justice than it serves. I presently don't see a way to salvage this proposal."

[Magecastle Embassy Building A5]

Ooc: I probably won't be pursuing this further, as it seems that the current climate would be against this proposal.

[Umoraotmora]

It's been a while since this draft was posted, but the topic of protecting victims of blackmail is still important and relevant.

[Goobergunchia]

Don't gravedig.