Elisa J. D'Amico, K&L Gates, Miami (AM Holt/ALM)

The goal behind the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project is relatively straightforward: Provide pro bono legal relief to people who have had nude/sexually explicit photos or videos uploaded to the internet without their consent.

“Revenge porn” is one term for it. A statute in Florida, where CCRLP co-founder Elisa D'Amico practices at the K&L Gates office in Miami, refers to such behavior as “sexual cyber harassment.”

Whatever terminology is applied, the impact tends to be consistently devastating.

D'Amico and her colleagues, who convinced K&L Gates to back this pro bono project, have seen it first hand. And they have also watched their program grow quickly in the years since it launched.

“(Victims) suffer from PTSD, other sorts of emotional and stress disorders. I've had clients who've had skin flare-ups, their hair has fallen out, they've gained weight, they've lost weight, all sorts of physical problems. And there's a higher rate of suicide,” D'Amico said.

For most victims, the top priority is getting the offending material taken down off of the web immediately, but the team of 75 to 90 K&L Gates volunteers spanning three continents is equipped to provide other services befitting the requests that come in from the project's website.

CCRLP can file lawsuits to unmask the identity of anonymous actors, draft cease-and-desist letters and help de-index results from search engines. Sometimes victims just need referrals to counseling.

D'Amico and co-founder David Bateman, a partner focusing on internet and technology law in the firm's Seattle office, pitched the idea to the K&L Gates brass without any income requirements attached. Today they receive between three and five applications a day.

“We believe that this is a violation of civil rights, more specifically someone's cyber civil rights,” D'Amico said.

Bateman wasn't all that familiar with the problem of revenge porn prior to D'Amico approaching him about the project before its launch in 2014. He's since learned that there is no limit to the human imagination when it comes to torturing people online.

Legal recourse is not impossible, but even victims with financial resources can be stymied by the difficulty of locating an attorney with the right skill set to take on a revenge porn case.

“It requires knowing how to deal with online platforms and anonymous online activity,” Bateman said.

As with most things related to the internet, one of the prevailing factors is speed. The sooner the offending material can be taken down, the easier it is to prevent it from spreading to other corners of the web.

Bateman said that it's easier today to get platforms with federal immunity for user-generated content to remove revenge porn content than it was even four years ago. Previously, most of their takedown requests were made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which applied only if the victim was the original author of the photo or video in question.

“There's been a lot of progress over the last several years where many of the mainstream sites are willing to go beyond that and they are willing to take down material, even if it is not copyrighted, if it is revenge porn,” Bateman said.

He's never found there to be great difficulty in seeking legal recourse against the parties responsible for posting the material. On the civil side, there are tracks like intentional infliction of emotional distress or invasion of privacy— but actually finding the party responsible can be more challenging.

K&L Gates' in-house cyberforensics personnel can sometimes use information gleaned from an anonymous threat—or in some cases a subpoena—to build a trail back to the source, even if that source is hiding behind a fake name or profile.

“We've seen even the most sophisticated and industry tech folk engage in this behavior and sort of slip up,” D'Amico said.

D'Amico's work on this issue has garnered her many accolades, including her being named Attorney of the Year in 2015 by Legaltech News' affiliate publication Daily Business Review.