# 22. Reputation Control ## 22.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 22.5.3. Doxing This is a deliberate attack on someone's political reputation. A common technique, it involves building a case against an opponent by gathering damaging evidence about their ideology or lifestyle. The term is often used among hackers to describe the process of obtaining incriminating "docs" that can be used against the target - hence the name. Another method of digging up "dirt" on one's opponents is to drag the targeted party into court and force them to divulge information to the public or to the prosecuting party, information which can be politically useful to the manipulator. The corruption scandals which rocked the political system of Spain after 2008 was largely based on a pile of hand-written accounting documents from the Popular Party, showing illegal donations to politicians in return for contracts to property developers etc. Not only did these "docs" damn many of the party's grandees as corrupt, they also forced the issue into the courts where more evidence of even greater corruption emerged.