Hacker finds and posts George Sodini’s private online history

in Politics by griffn — August 7, 2009 at 8:06 pm | 1 comment

[Links to Sodini’s online history are below]

The Post-Gazette reported today that a hacker made his way into George Sodini’s Gmail account and from there was able to recover Sodini’s entire online history:

Shortly after George Sodini killed himself following his shooting of 12 women in a fitness club, his diary describing his hatred of women and plans to someday carry out such a tragedy showed up online.  Within a day of the shooting, Web surfers could find benign YouTube videos and Mr. Sodini’s musings about underage girls on online forums.

Finally, someone posted links on the Internet to Mr. Sodini’s receipts from purchases he made online of ammunition and large-capacity magazines for his guns, as well as records of his Google search history — including queries like “mass murderer profiles,” “murder suicide statistics,” and “going to die anyway.”

Sodini’s private thoughts are especially interesting in light of the fact that certain left-leaning bloggers are attempting to politicize this tragedy– quickly labeling Sodini as a white supremacist and a right-wing extremist, and lumping him in with everyone from Rush Limbaugh to the Holocaust Museum shooter.  But his online history tells a different story.

This isn’t a man who spent his time at political rallies or posting to right-wing forums or reading racist literature.  This is a man who spent the overwhelming majority of his time obsessing over his search for female companionship.  The YouTube videos he posted last year, where he tours his house, were exercises for a three-day dating seminar he attended.  The books seen on his coffee table are about dating.

His online search history is mostly about meeting women (with specific searches for white women, black women, Latino women, and teenage girls).  He seems especially concerned about the age of consent in Pennsylvania.  His occasional searches on politics are about where he can find conservative T-shirts and bumper stickers.  I’d be surprised if he ever attended a political function in his life; he just doesn’t seem to be that into it.  The remainder of his searches are about guns, mass shootings, and mental illness.

The online forums he posted to are mostly about dating, with interests in technology, cats, and car repair sprinkled in.  In one forum, he asks other users whether it’s normal for a 48-year-old man to been seen with a teenage girl.  His personal photos are of him, alone, posing next to a bulldozer and around his house.  His personal website has Bible quotes, blonde jokes, and pictures of his cat.

This simply is not the profile of a white supremacist, a right-wing extremist, or a man looking to make a political statement.  This guy isn’t Stormfront.org, he’s Match.com.

Again, I’m not in the business of defending mass murderers.  And I have no problem calling out racism when I see it.  I just want to make sure we’re not squandering our credibility by turning every lunatic into a neo-Nazi Teabagging Ku Klux Birther and turning every tragedy into something that’s somehow Glenn Beck’s fault.  Sodini’s rampage was about mental illness and isolation, not race and politics.  Let’s not pound this square peg into a round hole to fit our own political agendas.

But don’t take my word for it (courtesy of reddit):

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Tags: George Sodini Glenn Beck racism Rush Limbaugh