Blackmail

Blackmail occurs when one person threatens another that unless the latter carries out some act, such as paying money or providing some favor for the blackmailer, the blackmailer will reveal information to other people such as family members, friends, or the general public. This information need not concern any criminal act by the person being blackmailed, but will usually be of an embarrassing or socially damaging nature. To succeed, the blackmailer will need information that is substantially true about the blackmailed person and some evidence that the blackmailer can reveal to others, such as tapes, letters, photographs, or video.

The wrongness of blackmail and its criminal nature are normally thought to rest on the demand for payment in order not to reveal the information. Criminal prosecutions might themselves end up revealing the information, if not publicly then to the close family or associates of the person blackmailed, and this gives blackmailers advantages insofar as their victims might prefer to pay to keep the blackmailer quiet.

In many ways, formally speaking, blackmail looks like many other contracts. One party asks for payment from another for services rendered—in this case to keep information that one has to oneself. There is nothing necessarily wrong with revealing the information itself unless it is considered that revealing the information is done merely to spite or hurt others. And there certainly may be nothing criminally wrong in revealing the information to others. What is paradoxical about blackmail is that it concerns two acts, neither of which is illegal, that combine to make a wrong. Revealing damaging information about a person is not necessarily wrong. Asking payment for services rendered is not necessarily wrong. Why then is the combination of the two wrong? The moral wrongness seems to stem from at least two sources. First, if the person has no reason to reveal the information, then promising not to do so for payment seems to be a form of exploitation. Second, if the person does have a reason to reveal the information—say an individual or the public ought to know this fact—then demanding payment to keep quiet seems wrong.

Where the information about the blackmailed person concerns some criminal activity, then blackmail becomes a form of extortion. Here, the blackmailer is also committing a criminal offence in not bringing the information to the authorities and being paid not to do so increases the crime.

One form of blackmail is emotional blackmail. This occurs when the blackmailer understands the [Page 74]vulnerabilities of the victim and plays on these to get what the blackmailer wants. Emotional blackmail might occur unconsciously on both sides; might involve close family members, lovers, or friends; and often involves withholding love or affection, or threatening to do so if the victim does not act as the emotional blackmailer desires. Emotional blackmail is a form of manipulation, and it is often argued that people with weak personalities or psychological problems are most likely to suffer emotional blackmail and therefore require greater recourse to the law.