Creep Catchers must destroy videos: B.C. privacy commissioner ruling

Big setback for Surrey Creep Catchers B.C.'s Privacy Commissioner has ordered Surrey Creep Catchers to take down some of their videos or face a massive fine.

The B.C. privacy commissioner has dealt a big blow to the network of “creep catcher” organizations, ordering the Surrey Creep Catchers to stop spreading information about their targets and destroy their videos in two cases where people they targeted appear to be innocent.

If the videos stay up, the Creep Catchers could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines as well as prosecution in court, observers say, and future videos posted by the group could also breach privacy rules.

Acting Commissioner Drew McArthur ruled the Surrey Creep Catchers weren’t carrying out investigations to protect the public — which is allowed under privacy law — but instead relied on dubious facts to shame its targets widely online.

“The organization was not actually collecting, using or disclosing the Complainants’ personal information for investigative purpose,” McArthur wrote, saying the organization broke the rules by using deceptive chats to get information from targets, and then broke the rules again by sharing that information in posts labelling the targets as sexual predators.

"There is no fair attempt to describe or analyze the facts, or to provide opinion or debate. The purpose of the exercise is to entrap individuals," he said.

One of the targets was a young man with cerebral palsy who was hit by a car at the end of one of the Creep Catchers videos. A lawyer for the other target said the decision is just a first step that could open up the Creep Catchers to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

“Although the decision is limited in scope it sets a precedent that is quite profound, not just for this group but for all the other Creep Catcher groups that use these methods,” said Craig E. Jones of Thompson Rivers University. A single offence could net a fine of up to $100,000, he said.

The Surrey Creep Catcher president told his followers on Facebook that he planned to keep sharing the video in defiance of the order.

“We have 30 days to destroy all information on these predators that lure children out to do sexual things. I told them to go f--- themselves,” Ryan Laforge says in a video while waiting for a target in a video confrontation.

“I will never take these videos down voluntarily. I will fight to the end to keep these videos up,” he said.

The Creep Catchers are a loose national network of people who pose as young people online to lure so-called “creeps” into real-life meetings, where they are confronted on camera.

The groups have had some success, pointing to a handful of charges that have come of their efforts. But their tactics have drawn criticism, especially in regards to how honest they are in telling their viewers what they uncovered.

In both the cases before the privacy commissioner, the judgement found that the organization didn’t make “any effort to provide an accurate and fair description of the facts, opinion and debate at play within the particular context.”

In the first case before the commissioner, Surrey Creep Catchers posted an advertisement under the “strictly platonic” section of Craigslist. When the complainant responded, the decoy said that she was a 15-year-old girl.

When the target met Laforge, Laforge told him that he had broken the law, even though there had been no suggestion of any sexual activity in the chats, according to evidence before the privacy commissioner.

The emails in that case show the target was just interested in showing some of his art.

But the Surrey Creep Catchers posted to Facebook and YouTube that the target “had committed a crime by attempting to lure and meet with a minor for sexual purposes,” and encouraged others to share that video online.

Another complainant had a condition that “affects his cognitive abilities and behaviour,” and posted online to meet a woman his own age.

The Creep Catchers responded with an ad posing as a 20-year-old woman. Then that person mentioned they had a 14-year-old friend, the decision says.

“They arranged to meet in a public place, where the president and two other individuals confronted him and video-recorded the encounter. When Complainant 2 fled, the Organization’s representatives pursued him, in the course of which he appears to have been struck by a motor vehicle,” the decision says.

The young man’s mother told CTV News that people still call her son names where he works. She said she wants the video taken down.

And the young man targeted through Craigslist told CTV News he also wants the videos taken down so he can get on with his life.

The Creep Catchers are an “organization” under privacy law, according to the privacy commissioner, which gives them significant obligations to protect the privacy of the individuals they deal with and the information that they collect. And because they sell merchandise, they may also qualify as a commercial organization, he said.

The Creep Catchers have until Sept. 5 to destroy the videos.