3 months before the Weiner story broke, "a small group of determined, self-described conservatives were warning young women on Twitter... to be wary of him."

The NYT reports:

Calling themselves the #bornfreecrew on Twitter, members of the group closely monitored those whom Mr. Weiner was following, taking it upon themselves to contact young women they believed to be “schoolgirls,” and urging them publicly to stay away from him, according to an analysis of posts on Twitter’s public stream.

Among those warned was Gennette Cordova, the 21-year-old who received the infamous gray-underpants pic. It was the leader of this group Dan Wolfe — @PatriotUSA76 — who caught that pic and passed it on to Andrew Breitbart, touching off all the recent publicity.

In several instances the congressman dropped his online contact with women after they were identified by the crew, suggesting that Mr. Weiner might have been aware of its actions....

Throughout May, [Dan] Wolfe and other members contacted other young women Mr. Weiner was following, including a 16-year-old from California who started a campaign on Twitter to get the congressman to be her prom date.

The next day, [Michael] Stack, posting on Twitter, sent her a message saying in part, “if you’re a minor and he’s following you, well, seems a little creepy if not in ny,” copying @RepWeiner on the post. The next day, on May 18, the girl posted: “Well @RepWeiner unfollowed me.”

The Times characterizes #bornfreecrew as an example "cyberstalkers, who track and criticize [a targeted politician's] every move." That makes Weiner sound like a victim. But monitoring politicians, for the purpose of exposing faults of legitimate interest to the public, has little similarity to following a private citizen for the purpose of horning into her (or his) life.

It would make more sense to say that Weiner was stalking those girls than that Wolfe and Stack were stalking Weiner.