A protest, arrest and misidentification: How a Savannah family got doxxed by social media

As soon as an article by the New York Post went live on April 19, Joni Saxon-Giusti, owner of The Book Lady Bookstore, began receiving messages and phone calls, some of them merely unkind, others angry or threatening. Posts and comments on her business’s Facebook and Instagram pages grew increasingly menacing asking if she was the mother of this “disgusting [trash can emoji] excuse of a human,” calling her “vile” and asking, “What hate did you fill her with?”

Her ex-husband Peter Giusti, a retired attorney, and his wife Leanne received similar messages.

By Monday, the messages had grown so unsettling that Giusti sent her employees home, closed her bookstore until further notice, and shut down her social media pages.

What has transpired since last Thursday is a textbook study in how the speed with which unverified information is shared coupled with the absence of guardrails on social media platforms can upend lives. It also is a reminder that international and national politics are never far from the doorstep of Main Street America.

A protest, an arrest and a spiral of misinformation in 72 hours

The Giusti's 21-year-old daughter Isabella, a graduate of Savannah Country Day School and a junior at Barnard College in New York City, was among the more than 100 Columbia and Barnard students arrested and charged with trespassing then suspended on April 18, after Columbia’s President Nemat (Minouche) Shafik asked New York Police to clear what had become known as the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the south lawn of Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, also known as the “quad.”

According to reporting through multiple sources, three groups — Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) — claim to have organized the encampment as part of ongoing and escalating protests at college campuses against Israel’s military response and the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza since Hamas militants invaded Israeli towns on Oct. 7, 2023, killing hundreds of civilians, abducting hundreds of others. Isabella Giusti was part of the contingent from CUAD, which was formed in 2016 and has asked for more transparency regarding Columbia’s direct and indirect investments in Israel and has requested the university to divest in organizations and businesses “complicit in Israeli practices that are illegal under international law.”

Shafik’s letter to NYPD Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber stated that the encampment "and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University." Footage appeared online at some point last week that showed instances of protestors threatening Jewish students as they tried to enter campus facilities, which led to calls for Shafik to take action. According to New York Mayor Eric Adams' press briefing after the arrests, protestors complied with NYPD officers, and no one resisted arrest.

Isabella Giusti will be subject to a hearing for reinstatement to Barnard College in the near future, although that date has not been confirmed and negotiations remain ongoing.

The day following Giusti’s arrest, April 19, the New York Post, a 200-year-old tabloid owned by News Corp., published a self-proclaimed “deep-dive into the backgrounds of the protesters, ”but only four of the 100-plus protestors were featured. Among the four: Isabella Giusti, showing a high school picture pulled without permission from Savannah Country Day’s Facebook page and stating only that her “family owns a $3 million, 3,000 square-foot home in Savannah, Georgia’s posh South Historic District, complete with five bedrooms and bathrooms, according to Zillow.”

On the following Saturday morning, Savannah Morning News received an email from a man named Michael Gates with images pulled from the Post article stating that “she was one of the 114 anti-Israel protesters who were busted at Columbia on Thursday. They were promoting antisemitism and supporting Hamas at this event.”

However, Gates provided no direct video or photographic evidence in the email that showed Giusti had engaged in any of the anti-Semitic rhetoric or harassment of Jewish students that has been reported widely by the New York Times, The Atlantic and other news outlets. To date, Isabella Giusti has been charged only with trespassing.

Late on April 20, however, multiple X (formerly known as Twitter) accounts, including @StopAntisemitism, shared an image and video of a young masked woman with short blonde hair whose head is partially wrapped in a white-and-black keffiyeh standing before a group of Jewish and American students waving flags. In her hands, she holds a handwritten sign that reads, “Al-Qasam’s [sic] Next Targets” with an arrow pointing toward the students. Al-Qassam is the military brigade of Hamas, a U.S. State Department-designated Palestinian terrorist organization that was responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023, incursion into Israel that set off the current Israel-Hamas conflict.

The post asked for help with identifying the “Jihadi Jane” and was shared across the platform more than 5,700 times.

By the following morning, the Instagram account @JewHatedb, a project of the David & Goliath Project, posted the image emblazoned with a yellow banner declaring, “Exposed,” and erroneously identified the person as Isabella Giusti.

A case of misidentification

How @JewHatedb came to identify the woman as Giusti is unclear, and a request for clarification of the organization’s protocols for verifying identity has not been returned.

Savannah Morning News, however, has learned that many of these viral sites and social platforms use commercial off-the-shelf facial recognition software to doxx individuals.

Kevin Bowyer, Ph.D., the Schubmehl-Prein Family Professor at the University of Notre Dame and an expert in facial recognition software, explained that it is virtually impossible to get an “absolute zero error rate” with current technology.

“If both images are really good quality frontal images, the accuracy can be pretty high,” he said, going on to explain that even when law enforcement uses facial recognition, a resulting match is only an “investigative lead” that must be backed up with other evidence.

When presented with the images that have appeared across social media in this instance, Bowyer said making a recognition match is “highly problematic” because a large fraction of the face in one image is covered and a bit blurry.

Without the full face being shown, a match cannot be made, he said. “And a stronger 'no' if the image is also blurry or if the face has low resolution, and this is based on our peer-reviewed research, as well as my opinion. And common sense.”

Bowyer concluded, “It really cannot be, in my opinion, the basis for a certain match, or a highly likely match.”

Although Isabella Giusti had short blonde hair in the high school image used by the New York Post, in the intervening years, Isabella's hair has grown longer and returned to its natural brunette. Multiple posters across X and Instagram disputed that the image was Giusti, and subsequent blurry images showing the individual without the scarf and mask come from outside of the quad and encampment area where CUAD was protesting. Although those images are unclear, they provide enough of the full face shape to indicate in comparison the sign-holder is not Giusti, who has not been to campus since being suspended, according to Joni Saxon-Giusti.

That claim is supported by a fellow Barnard student, who asked to be identified only as “Member of CUAD, senior at Barnard, MS initials,” who shared the following statement with SMN through Giusti’s family:

“I was in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment the night of the incident and can testify to the fact that Giusti was not present. I had been walking around the camp that night as well as keeping an eye on the counter protestors and did not once see Giusti. I also have their location from ‘find friends’ and can attest to the fact that they were at their apartment.”

Still, the damage had been done. The Giustis from New York to Savannah had been doxxed.

On Tuesday evening, Joni Saxon-Giusti and Peter Giusti issued a joint statement to the SMN:

"We are the parents of Isabella Giusti, a junior at Barnard College in New York City who was recently charged with trespassing for participating in a peaceful protest at Columbia University calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Following their arrest, Isabella was misidentified as someone photographed holding a sign advocating violence against Jewish people and Israelis. The person in that picture, which has gone viral, is not Isabella. As a result of that misidentification, our family has been targeted, doxxed, threatened and harassed. We know the Israel-Palestine situation is complex and highly charged, and we understand and respect people’s differing views on the situation. We have raised Isabella to consider such issues with kindness, compassion and respect, which we believe Isabella has done through the exercise of the right of peaceful assembly guaranteed to every American."

There is no date yet when The Book Lady will reopen. The primary goal now is keeping their family safe.

This is a developing story.

Amy Paige Condon is the content coach and Joseph Schwartzburt is the educational and workforce development reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach them at acondon@gannett.com and jschwartzburt@gannet.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannahian arrested during Columbia protest, doxxed by social media