Uganda bandit Kony's inhumanity meets the Internet

Joseph Kony is living evidence of the heartening proposition that, thanks to the digital revolution, it's getting harder to perpetrate atrocities outside of public view.

The Ugandan bandit had largely faded from public consciousness until Monday, when a polished video about his Lord's Resistance Army and its atrocities was released by the advocacy group Invisible Children. It quickly went viral on the Internet, racking up 37 million YouTube views and igniting passionate anti-Kony feeling among young people.

Now practically everyone has been reminded that Kony has forced kidnapped children to fight or provide sex for his ragtag army. In 2005 the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest, and soldiers from several nations, advised by American special forces, are hunting for him even now.

It's great that attention has been focused on the horrors Kony has perpetrated -- and gratifying to think that such outrages can no longer as easily be carried out in secret. We hope the global focus will help bring him to justice, but whether it succeeds or not, at the very least it shows how social media and provocative video can focus attention on such wrongs.

Abuses will still occur, of course; the Internet can't abolish evil. What's more, the viral documentary, titled "Kony 2012," leaves hard questions unanswered. It says little about whether or to what extent the U.S. or the rest of the world should intercede. Instead it urges people to agitate, put up posters and wear bracelets to keep the political pressure on President Barack Obama, who sent 100 American advisers to help in the hunt. (Kony has left Uganda, operating instead in Congo and neighboring countries.)

Foreign pressure may not bring Kony to justice, but the ubiquity of camera-equipped cellphones and digital sharing may give bad guys like him pause -- and empower their victims to better protect themselves.

Perhaps the Rwandan genocide, or the mass murders by the Nazis, will be just a little harder to replicate now that it's likelier somebody, somewhere, will be watching.