I feel like this would be extremely hard to establish, because in a functional blackmail transaction both the transaction and the information remain secret.
It seems like the only kind of evidence available would be the presence of people diligently trying to ruin someone else’s reputation, seemingly without motivation.
That assumes that all people who engage in blackmail have perfect OpSec in the face of making enemies. In the real world people screw up from time to time.
People screwing up is a necessary condition of blackmail; if there was perfect OpSec no one would ever be vulnerable to it.
The thing I am pointing at is more basic, though. For example, how would you distinguish between the case where blackmail is accepted but a few people blow the execution and the case like ours, where a few people will do powerfully stupid and illegal things and then just say they did on Facebook? How would this enter the historical record, with enough examples that we can be confident approved blackmail is taking place?
Hmm. Perhaps if there was a written record of the rules of conduct, like the Victorian-era books for instruction in manners. Or diaries where people keep secret record of their blackmail dealings, and refer to it as a good deed.
I feel like this would be extremely hard to establish, because in a functional blackmail transaction both the transaction and the information remain secret.
It seems like the only kind of evidence available would be the presence of people diligently trying to ruin someone else’s reputation, seemingly without motivation.
That assumes that all people who engage in blackmail have perfect OpSec in the face of making enemies. In the real world people screw up from time to time.
People screwing up is a necessary condition of blackmail; if there was perfect OpSec no one would ever be vulnerable to it.
The thing I am pointing at is more basic, though. For example, how would you distinguish between the case where blackmail is accepted but a few people blow the execution and the case like ours, where a few people will do powerfully stupid and illegal things and then just say they did on Facebook? How would this enter the historical record, with enough examples that we can be confident approved blackmail is taking place?
Hmm. Perhaps if there was a written record of the rules of conduct, like the Victorian-era books for instruction in manners. Or diaries where people keep secret record of their blackmail dealings, and refer to it as a good deed.
Plenty of people write detailed dairies about important events in their lives and those diaries often do enter the historical record.
Many people who deal with money have personal accounting about their own financial flows.
A blackmailed person might ask others for help to deal with the blackmail with results in letters being written.