It's not right that ebay can have their smooth executive fixers organise special meetings to lobby government prosecutors. Then come away having successfully shifted all corporate blame to individual employees "working on their own".

It's pretty rotten.

I cannot reach the article (paywall) but I found another source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

It seems only the small fishes are caught, the big ones that give directions are not aware of what happens under their direction...

> the big ones that give directions are not aware of what happens under their direction

That's a generous way to put it. I would say that at _best_ they are intentionally unaware, but more likely they know exactly.

I wonder what these people were thinking. This is the kind of stuff an 8 year old would do. If a group of adults, powerful adults even, had these ideas and actually decided to act on them, they must live in some hellish kind of organization.

Well, it worked. These people's lives were successfully made miserable.

It might not have been a bad strategy in some cases either. If you send someone a box of spiders, the cops aren't going to care but it'll have some effect on the target anyway.

Professional targeting is more subtle, deniable, and thus better suited for gaslighting a target.

It's well-known that wealthy individuals and large corporations employ what amount to private intelligence agencies. The most professional ones work in the shadows. Cowboys make their presence known to targets for intimidation or ego. There is a difference between this egregious case, and, for instance, Omidyar employing ex-spooks to work landscaping jobs at Punahou..