Are Online Threats Crimes or Free Speech?

(U.S.A.)  The Supreme Court of the United States may soon decide whether or not to hear appeals of two cases in with people were convicted and sent to jail for making online threats, even though they later said they didn’t mean any harm.

In one case, Anthony Elonis of Pennsylvania, wrote on Facebook about killing his estranged wife. According to the Associated Press, he said:

 “There’s one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you. I’m not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts.”

The woman testified in court that she feared for her life. Elonis was sentenced to almost four years, and was released on February 14, 2014, according to The Express-Times. 

Email to talk show 

 In the second case, Ellisa Martinez of Florida sent an anonymous email to a talk show host. According to the Connecticut Law Tribune, Martinez said she was:

“planning something big around a government building here in Broward County, maybe a post office, maybe even a school, I’m going to walk in and teach all the government hacks working there what the 2nd amendment is all about.” 

As a result of the email, Broward County schools were locked down for three hours.

Martinez pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced Martinez to two years in prison, and ordered her to pay more than $5,000 as restitution to the police.

In both of these cases, the appellants are arguing that their statements, regardless of the threatening nature, should be protected as free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Threats and custody battle 

A similar case was appealed to the Supreme Court last year. Franklin Delano Jeffries II, an Iraq war veteran from Tennessee, posted a YouTube video in which he played a guitar and sang a song that he wrote about his 13-year child custody battle. The lyrics included:

The best interest ain’t of the child anymore. The judges and the lawyers are abusing ‘em. [Pointing at camera]. Let’s get them out of office. Vote ‘em out of office. . . . ‘Cause you don’t deserve to be a judge and you don’t deserve to live. You don’t deserve to live in my book. 

Watch Jeffries video on Wired.com.

Jeffries posted a link to his video on Facebook and sent links to 29 Facebook users, including a state representative, a TV station. Twenty-five hours later, he removed the YouTube video.

Jeffries was arrested. According to KnoxNews.com, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office determined that Jeffries made “veiled threats” to the Knox County chancellor, his ex-wife and her husband.

Jeffries was convicted for using the Internet to transmit a death threat and sentenced to 18 months in jail, KnoxNews.com stated. Although he had been freed in 2012, he was in trouble again for using cocaine and making threats of suicide and murder on Twitter.

Read: Tweets land ex-soldier convicted in YouTube case behind bars, on KnoxNews.com. 

 Jeffries appealed his conviction for making the YouTube video and lost. Last year he appealed to the United States Supreme Court. His appeal was rejected.

Threatening language online 

In the two new cases, according to the Associated Press, “the Supreme Court is being asked to clarify the First Amendment rights of people who use violent or threatening language on electronic media where the speaker’s intent is not always clear.”

The American Bar Association has published more detail about the Anthony Elonis case, and it’s pretty scary:

After his wife of seven years and two children left him, Anthony Elonis was having a tough time at work, and was even sent home on a few occasions for being too upset to work. He was employed at Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom. One of the employees that Elonis supervised, Amber Morrissey, had filed several sexual harassment complaints against him. Elonis then posted a photograph on his Facebook page, taken at the Dorney Park Halloween Haunt, of him holding a knife to Morrissey’s neck with the caption, “I wish.” A supervisor saw this and immediately fired him. Two days after he was fired, Morrissey began posting violent messages about his former employer on his Facebook page. He also posted Facebook messages about killing his wife. Based on these statements, a state court issued Elonis’ wife a Protection From Abuse order. Ms. Elonis testified at trial that she took the threats seriously, and feared for her own and her children’s lives. Elonis’s Facebook threats kept escalating to a point where he was threatening police forces and elementary schools. By this point, the FBI became involved and, when they went to his home to interview him, Elonis refused to speak with them, and posted a message about it later on Facebook. 

I hope that the Supreme Court understands that online threats can be precursors to serious violence.

By declining to hear the Jeffries case, the Supreme Court let his conviction stand. It could do the same thing with the Elonis case, which would mean his conviction would stand as well.

But perhaps the Court should hear the arguments, and then declare, once and for all, that online threats are crimes.

original article found here

SWAMPED BY COMPLAINTS OF WEB ABUSE & ONLINE HARASSMENT

(U.K.) Chief constables across the region are warning of being swamped by a rising tide of complaints of online harassment and abuse, with South Yorkshire Police alone recording a huge leap to 9,500 reports last year.

With resources increasingly strained and severe cuts being made across all four Yorkshire police forces, it marks an admission for the first time that officers will not be able to fully investigate the bulk of reports of offences on social media sites which barely existed a few years ago.

The warning comes as the Yorkshire Post today begins a three-day investigation into the online crime epidemic engulfing the country, which police forces admit they are struggling to keep a handle on. The Leeds MP Stuart Andrew, who lost a childhood friend to suicide after serious bullying, is also today calling for an urgent parliamentary debate on monitoring the use of the internet.

David Crompton, the chief constable of South Yorkshire Police which investigated accountant Paul Chambers over a supposedly “menacing” tweet to blow up Doncaster Airport that led to him being cleared this summer in the High Court, said the rising demand has prompted the force to look again at the way it responds to social media. Mr Crompton stressed serious complaints would always be investigated fully, though in many cases officers should now just be “giving advice” to victims in spite of national guidelines which say police will assist with any prosecution.

“This is one of the biggest changes that we have seen,” Mr Crompton added. “If you go back 10 years, hardly any of these 9,500 calls about what is being said on social media would have been rung through to the police at all. “When there is such rising demand we have to make a distinction between some of the really serious abuse which can be extremely upsetting. By the same token, a large chunk of this could just be the equivalent of a few remarks made from one person to another in a pub. But because it is in the written form, people take exception to it. I am not waiting for national guidance, we are more interested in what we ourselves need to do in South Yorkshire. There is ultimately going to be less resources out there and greater priorities for us in terms of real antisocial behaviour on the streets or more traditional crimes being committed.

“I am not going to say that 9,500 calls is the straw that breaks the camel’s back in any way, but it does raise the question of us looking at the range of things we are trying to do and ask what our bigger priorities.”

There are currently more than 10 million Twitter users in the UK, while around 30 million are believed to be on Facebook. The surge in activity has led to officers complaining of being asked to police the “digital space” despite a reluctance in the courts to convict. A log of all crimes and hate incidents reported to Humberside Police regarding Facebook and Twitter over the past three years, which has been obtained by the Yorkshire Post, reveals that only a quarter of investigations resulted in a charge.

Offenders behind alleged cases such as fraud, racially aggravated harassment, perverting the course of justice and sexual offences have all gone undetected. Mr Crompton’s comments have been echoed by Tim Madgwick, the acting chief constable of North Yorkshire Police.

“We have got to strike the balance because we could become swamped very easily with complaints,” Mr Madgwick said. “What becomes a policing investigation for me would be the more serious complaints where clearly there is ongoing harassment or racism. Where it is more about just inappropriate use of language and more like an argument online, I don’t think that is the place for the police to interfere. I liken it to the change of tolerance in schools – children always have fights as far as I can remember but at a certain level it needs to be dealt with by the police, and quite rightly. “But we haven’t got an infinite pot, we have got a reducing pot.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE FOUND HERE

(NOTE: In the U.S.A. IC3 of the FBI reports a minimum 7-9 year backlog of genuine complaints to their internet reporting site.)

WHY PEOPLE SEEM ANGRIER ON THE INTERNET

By Makini Brice

When the internet saw its rise in prominence, many worried that people would retreat to their own corners, surrounded by people who believed exactly the way that they did. To a large extent, that has happened, as evidenced by Fox Nation and Daily Kos. But the internet also gave rise to the "troll," so-called for internet users who spout views contrary to the site's readers. And with that has come cyber-bullying.

This week, a 17-year-old teenager was delivered harassment warnings due to his harassment of Olympic diver Tom Daley. Tom Daley stated that he wanted to win the gold medal to honor his father, who died of brain cancer last year. When Daley failed to medal, the 17-year-old tweeted, "You let your dad down I hope you know that."

There has been a lot of analysis of the victims of the cyber-bullying that can run rampant on various internet websites. It has been well-documented that victims suffer from decreased self-esteem. But very little seems to be concluded about the perpetrators themselves. Who are trolls? And why do they do it?

Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist at New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital, theorizes that people feel a freedom of speech that they cannot feel elsewhere, where there are few, if any, consequences. Indeed, the vast majority of people who shout venomous words in all caps on the internet do not face any repercussions. When schools, for example, try to dole out punishment for perpetrators of cyberbullying, some are met with cries of foul play.

Some trace "trolling" to the anonymity of the internet. Maybe that is true to an extent, but certainly not completely. This week, the Real Housewives of New Jersey Facebook page was littered with comments on how much they hated Milania Guidice, the five-year-old daughter of a Real Housewives cast member. All of the vitriol came from people whose names were attached to their Facebook accounts.

Many psychologists believe that the level of attacks is increased when a person cannot see the face of the person that they are attacking. One recent study found that contestants on a game show were more likely to criticize fellow contestants if they were in a different room rather than in the same one. Robert Milgram's 1950s-era experiments shed light on people who were more likely to give people potentially lethal doses of electric shock when they could not see them. Later replications of Milgram's studies found that his conclusion was less likely to be true if people identified more strongly with the student receiving the shocks.

Simon Rego, the director of psychology training at New York City's Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College, explained to Health magazine that our brains are hard-wired to take into account non-verbal cues, like body language, tone, and facial expressions. On the internet, all of those cues are removed, heightening many people's response and level of discourse.

Rego suggests pausing before sending an angry email, or to envision the person on the other side. After all, many states have cyberbullying laws in place – and no Twitter exchange can be worth ending up in handcuffs.

original article found here

ONLINE STALKING & VULNERABILITY

by Greg Voakes

The Internet is typically our go-to destination for gathering information about long lost friends, family, even ourselves. We know our friends and foes do it too, but we tend to think "stalking" in non-threatening ways. Maybe we’ll reconnect with an old friend or co-worker. Perhaps someone we didn’t like in grade school will be jealous of our accomplishments. The truth is that we never think about the dark side of sharing online – identity theft.

Just consider the vast amounts of personal data that gets posted online every day:

• Status updates on Facebook and other social sites
• Tweets about our favorite activities, vacation plans, professional conferences, and other plans
• YouTube videos taken inside and outside our home, about our kids, friends, pets and property
• Our comments on blogs and newspaper websites, where we log in using our Facebook accounts
• LinkedIn profiles about previous jobs and schools
• Every Google+ comment ever made, and link ever posted
• Online petitions you’ve signed
• Wedding gift registries
• White page listings for every address you’ve ever lived at

When you add it all up, this is a pretty comprehensive list of sources where a hacker could find almost any piece of personal information. If you are Facebook friends with your mother, even her maiden name is easy to figure out. Take a moment to search for yourself, and you’ll see that all of this information is online, accessible in seconds.

Why does any of this matter? It matters because we have consistent online habits that hackers love to exploit. We use the same passwords for many websites because we are too lazy to remember unique ones every time. All it takes is one website with weak security and our passwords can become public. Once a hacker has your email address and password, they can gain access to your social media accounts, steal from your bank accounts, scam your friends and relatives, and do some real damage to your life. Identity theft isn’t something you want to experience.

More than 400,000 Yahoo passwords were leaked online a few weeks ago. If it happened to you, even if you’ve changed your Yahoo password, the bad guys – hackers, thieves, criminals and stalkers – can use that same password to break into other accounts. Last month it was 4 million LinkedIn passwords. Last year it was Sony and eHarmony. Data is never 100% safe, no matter how secure websites claim to be.

We need to be more careful about both our personal security and the information we share. Once we post it, it stays online forever. We can’t use passwords and security codes that include addresses, our kids’ or pets’ names, important dates, favorite movies, hobbies, or other things can be easily figured out based on personal information. We also have to make sure that our offline lives, including our homes, cars, and offices, are protected by a reliable security company. All it takes is one careless website to cause a major security breach in our lives, one which can be exploited by criminals online and in the real world. Even though we know our acquaintances will harmlessly stalk us online, we need to make sure hackers and thieves can’t get access to the important data that could be used against us.

original article found here

Harassers Are Losing Their Anonymity...

By Yamil Berard

Imagine waking up one day and finding out that you have been labeled a thief, hooker, pimp, child abuser or tax evader on an anonymous blog.

As people ramp up their trash talk online, such harassment is becoming more common, said Kenton J. Hutcherson, a Dallas attorney who specializes in Internet defamation cases. "I see these cases every day," Hutcherson said. "I have a unique niche."

The Internet has become a Wild West of hooligans apt to besmirch the name of anybody they don't like, because they think they can get away with it under a cloak of anonymity, legal experts say.

"The real difficulties you are going to have is finding who are the John Does who are posting this stuff," said Frank Snyder, a law professor at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth.

Indeed, for a while, the anonymous posters could hide. They counted on Internet service providers to refuse to unmask them.

But now, courts are ordering that they be exposed, opening the way for defamation lawsuits.

Just this week, a Tarrant County. Texas jury awarded a couple $13.8 million in a libel judgment, said to be one of the largest ever in an Internet defamation case. Hutcherson is now trying to unmask other anonymous posters who targeted three area residents, including two from Tarrant County.

He filed a lawsuit this month against "John or Jane Doe" on behalf of the three, who have been named on a Google-hosted blog as "two pimps and a prostitute." The accusations on the blog have caused "severe emotional distress," the lawsuit states.

Hutcherson says his clients are ordinary people. One, a Kaufman County woman, is a homemaker, a PTA member and a mom, he said. "She is scared to death that other people in the neighborhood will see this stuff and see that she's accused of being a prostitute," Hutcherson said.

None of the three have been charged with prostitution-related offenses, according to a check of criminal records. They did not respond to requests for comment.

Hutcherson said his clients aren't looking for a big verdict. They just want the allegations removed from the blog, known as "open secret" and affiliated with an online escort service. The blog identifies the plaintiffs as associated with Dallas brothels, a spa and another agency.

The information is easily accessible on Google, Hutcherson said.

[We are] not identifying the plaintiffs to avoid spreading the allegations.

In most of these cases, clients shun publicity, Hutcherson said. "The client in these cases is put at a difficult position because in order to vindicate their name, they have to go out there and file a public lawsuit," he said. The first goal in many Internet libel cases is to identify the anonymous poster.

To do that, the plaintiff's attorney issues a subpoena to the online service provider that hosts the pages with the defamatory content.

The provider -- Google, for example -- then typically notifies the anonymous defendant, who has 20 days to file a motion to quash the information. If no motion is filed or the court denies the motion, the provider must turn over the information, Hutcherson said. Once it is released, the defendant's real name replaces "John or Jane Doe" in the lawsuit.

Hutcherson's plaintiffs have a slam-dunk libel case if the allegations are false, Snyder said. Under age-old common law rules, it's unlawful to call a "chaste" woman a prostitute. It is called "libel per se" -- or libel that is obviously harmful.

"You're not only impugning a crime to them but implying unchastity as well," Snyder said. "If it's untrue, the common-law rule would be you get damages just by showing someone has falsely called you a prostitute."

The same rule, however, doesn't apply for men labeled pimps or prostitutes, he said. "Go back 150 years, a man who had affairs with other women was kind of admired."

Hutcherson's advice: Be careful what you post.

"People get behind the computer and they think they're anonymous and are not going to be held liable so they do things they normally would not do," he said. "They have this sense of empowerment. ... The way they act on the Internet is different than they way they act normally. The problem is that the Internet is the real world and it affects real people ... causes real damage."

original article found here

Jailed Over Online Blog Post

By T.J. Aulds

(TEXAS) The operator of a popular blog that keeps up with the happenings in Clear Lake Shores was arrested and charged because of a post he made on the site in February.

Allan Batchelor, owner of the Island Drumz blog, said his posting of the email address of the wife of a city council candidate is what got him in trouble.

Interim police Chief Kenneth Cook said Batchelor was charged with online impersonation, a Class A misdemeanor. Batchelor was arrested at his home Wednesday and posted a $2,500 bond.

Online impersonation is the state’s definition of online harassment.

Section 33.07 of the state penal code defines the infraction as, “A person commits an offense if the person, without obtaining the other person’s consent and with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten any person, uses the name or persona of another person ... with the intent to harm or defraud any person.”

The Texas Legislature revised the law last session.

In Batchelor’s case, he’s accused of posting the email address of Barbara Nichols, wife of city council candidate John Nichols, and inviting people to send spam and computer viruses to the email.

“Harm was intended at that point,” Cook said.

Batchelor made the posting on his blog Feb. 21. Nichols filed a complaint March 16.

Cook, noting a tense political atmosphere in the city, said his office took the case to the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office, which agreed to press charges. The Clear Lake Shores City Council has been locked in disagreement mostly about the performance of City Administrator Paul Shelly, who, until recently, also was police chief.

Batchelor said he made the post, which has since been edited to delete Nichols’ email address, because he was upset she had used an email distribution list of his to send out emails to area residents and businesses.

Nichols, who confirmed she got the distribution list from Batchelor, said the email contained the council agenda packet and she sent it to make sure the public was aware of an approaching council meeting.

She also said she was unaware Batchelor had posted his spam comments and her email to his blog. That was until the spam started showing up in her inbox.

Spam is unsolicited email, usually promoting a commercial product or service.

“I got spammed,” she said. “I opened my email and had all this spam.”

Nichols also said she found out she was under attack by posters on the Island Drumz blog page.

“I am uncomfortable with being attacked,” she said. “It got to the point that disagreements are not civil anymore. They come with threats, and I am fearful for what could happen to me.”

Nichols said she suspects she became an online target because she questions how the city was handling federal government contracts for disaster relief funds.

“I was arguing for more transparency,” she said. “Then I was attacked. I feel like this hate mongering is parallel to bullying that we tell our kids not to do. That’s what it is, a lot of bullying.”

original post found here