Is It Stalking To Bombard Someone On Twitter With Offensive Messages?
from the free-speech-wants-to-know dept
Yet another case where technology and the law collide. A man in California is facing criminal stalking charges for tweeting a bunch of nasty and offensive (often violent) tweets at a Buddhist leader in Maryland with whom he'd had a falling out. Apparently he sent thousands of such messages, sometimes talking about ways the woman would die. But the case is raising significant First Amendment questions. There are anti-stalking laws designed to deal with someone sending threatening messages directly to someone via phone or postal mail, but what happens when it's on a public forum like Twitter. Suddenly, the First Amendment questions loom large. A person can stand on a soapbox and say offensive things about another person -- that's their First Amendment right. So the issue is where on the spectrum tweets directed at someone fall. Of course, the other issue here is what happens when you have vague "anti-stalker" laws, which seem to have contributed to the concerns here. The rather reasonable fear is that a ruling here opens up anyone who says anything "offensive" about someone else to possible criminal charges, which clearly would be a big free speech issue. So how do you distinguish between someone making credible threats, and someone just venting in an obnoxious manner? Can you distinguish between the two?
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Filed Under: offensive messages, stalking, twitter
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it's all steps in the same process.
Is the guy sending the bad messages going to show up on your doorstep tomorrow? Your work? Your parent's house? At your kids daycare?
Will he really confine himself to being a keyboard warrior, or will he go further? You don't know, so you live in fear.
Your freedom is limited because you fear the wacko. On a site that argues about free speech and the like on very marginal cases, this one should seem like a no brainer. Freedoms are obviously limited.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Voices in your head
To be afraid for a period longer than a moment is a choice.
If somebody chooses to live in fear that is their right.
Also, killing somebody in self defense is also generally allowed...
The dude yelling "I'm gonna get ya" is an ass to be ignored at best, and a trespasser to be shot at worst. Either way, no fear.
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Also, killing somebody in self defense is also generally allowed...
On the other hand as a re-incarnated Buddhist Lama ... wtf is she afraid of?
It can't be dying ... re-incarnated remember? (presumably she either will be again or she'll reach Nirvana... unless she has a guilty conscience ... Karma IS a bitch!)
Anybody ?
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So assuming changing your account won't interfere with your work or personal life and its no big deal, whats to stop him from finding your new name? How many times should you be forced to change your name before he becomes the problem?
Or if you stop using twitter whats to stop him from following you to facebook or other social media?
I'm not necessarily saying this guy should be charged as a stalker just that a person shouldn't be forced to hide(digitally) because of harassment. There should be some kind of relief, in this case a block feature on twitter seems the easiest solution.
Harassment is not the victims fault and we shouldn't give bullies what they want.
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Further, if he changed accounts and continues to attack, that would be much closer to pure stalking.
Beyond the questions you point out Mike (actually pointed out by the article, repeated by you) would include if the speech is in itself, regardless of location, illegal. Death threats, as an example, might be actionable even if uttered from the proverbial soap box.
I also think you are attempting to use a bizarre absolute to make a point. This guy sent 8000+ messages, not one. One message probably would have been deleted and ignored. This isn't a case of "The rather reasonable fear is that a ruling here opens up anyone who says anything "offensive" about someone else to possible criminal charges, which clearly would be a big free speech issue". This is clearly an extreme case, and any ruling would not be able to be scaled down to a single bad tweet. It's the scale of his actions that are as much key to this as anything else.
I sort of take the "big free speech issue" as FUD.
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Mike's commentary is a little irrelevant here; from what it looks like, the guy wasn't just merely doing a little "obnoxious venting", but rather doing death threats and flat out harassment. It's not a First amendment issue nor some weird "anti-stalker" law issue. The dude is obviously stalking the monk, and it's not something that should be defended.
The article itself does raise an extreme important question though: what is the appropriate response to this sort of puerile behavior? How is one supposed to cope with these type of people? Do you just block them as they come in, even though they can easily make a new account to harass you with? Or can you make a federal case out of it?
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Cann you make a federal case out of it ?
The question here isn't "Is this guy being a creepy jerk?" the answer is obviously "yes". The question is "Is posting on a public forum, (like Twitter) synonymous with standing on a street corner and thus constitutionally protected speech ? (Seems pretty clear to me that it is!)
Or is it private communication covered by anti-stalking laws and thus devoid of 1st amendment protection? Which is what the law enforcement community in Maryland would have you believe! ...
And ultimately do we want the consequences of this method of communication to lose its 1st amendment protections ?
(I say no ... )
To the victim of this abuse I say ... get a restraining order on the grounds of the threatening content ... and have him locked up if he violates the terms of the order.
Trying to stop him from publicly airing his opinion however offensive or disturbing is UnAmerican.
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Re: Cann you make a federal case out of it ?
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Re: Cann you make a federal case out of it ?
It would be perfectly fine if he made only opinions, but when you spell out in gruesome detail how a person "might" die if he didn't watch his back one night, that's definitely not ok, and the right to public speech does not protect you.
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Re: Re: Cann you make a federal case out of it ?
I can tell the RIAA lawyers they probably will get shot someday and those other lawyers trying to extort money from thousands of people would probably end up dead too.
Am I threatening them, not at all, what I am doing is expressing my opinion and firm belief that at some point they will cross paths with some very angry people that they sued and could and probably will not care what the law says.
So the problem is, what constitutes a threat?
For many scared people just the mention of death is enough to elicit a fight or flight response.
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I would think the first step would have been contacting Twitter, directly, to try and block the guy completely from using the service. Hey, then we could have gotten him on federal hacking charges, too.
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Is there any reason to be so confident about that, though? The whole idea of case law is that rulings are applied to other situations that are similar but never completely identical. And it does seem like this process can result in rulings having their scope drastically widened or narrowed over time - sometimes to the point that the original intention of the ruling is corrupted. I'm not sure that would necessarily be the case here, but law is one of those areas where "slippery slopes" are a very real danger - so that concern seems worthy of consideration at least
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The whole idea of case law is that rulings are applied to other situations that are similar but never completely identical.
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You could imaging a case of a single tweet, with the judge going "Citing the case of People V. Cassidy, the prosecution tries to show that harrassement can occur via an online service. While this is essentially true, Cassidy was based not on a single action but on a large body of actions that, when taken as a whole, rose to the point of harrassement. There was no indication in the case of any single online post that was by itself enough to reach the legal bar for harassment".
At that point, it's a non-issue.
Scale is everything, not something you easily understand, I know, but important in a legal sense.
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Your imaginary judge quote is very nice, and I indeed hope that's what the judge would say - but you have yet to give anyone a reason to believe that IS what they would say.
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You can never threeaten violence.
The same way, that person could have tweeted on his own feed a million times about the weather, or what he ate, or how he feels about the double rainbow.
But his right to free speech ends as soon as he threatened to harm another human being.
And that is a fact.
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That right ends, however, if swing my arms into your nose.
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Re: That right ends, however, if swing my arms into your nose.
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simply threatening someone is enough for an assault charge
But I don't know of any jusidictions in the U.S. where reckless of speech = intent to commit a crime.
If there are any, please tell me, so I can avoid them like the fascist plague they are ... thank you !
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Re: simply threatening someone is enough for an assault charge
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Re: You can never threeaten violence.
He swung his arm into her nose? Or are you saying she has a right not to receive offensive speech?
But his right to free speech ends as soon as he threatened to harm another human being.
And that is a fact.
You realize that you saying "it's a fact" doesn't actually make it a fact, right? Most (all?) jurisdictions require there the threat to be credible for it to be a crime. And that's a fact.
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Most (all?) jurisdictions require there the threat to be credible for it to be a crime.
... not to me ...
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http://definitions.uslegal.com/d/death-threat/
I think you'll find that standing on a soapbox and making death threats against someone will still land you in jail. First Amendment doesn't give you the carte-blanche right to threaten someone.
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Free speech
Free speech ? YES!!
Grounds for a restraining order in New York ... probably. Criminal stalking ?? Not really.
my $0.02.
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https://skeptools.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/case-study-notorious-spammer-brought-down-twitte r-tumblr-social-media-mabus/
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With ANY public forum, there's always a report and/or ignore feature. Learn to use them.
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Could Be Terrorism
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Re: Could Be Terrorism
Glenn Beck also comes to mind and a lot of church pastors.
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Re: Could Be Terrorism
Well, in that case I say that this guy be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and then some. I think the "unintended consequence" you mention would be acceptable.
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Re: Could Be Terrorism
... so yeah ... it could be ... it seems to be religiously motivated ... i'd buy that argument sooner than I'd buy the stalker argument ...
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The guy obviously have anger issues and the anecdote facts I gather in my on life tells me most of people who do that are mostly blowing out steam.
What to do?
Order the guy to a psychological evaluation to access the threat level and if appropriate mandate anger management courses.
And depending on what happened the woman may be also need those same things depending on how she triggered the guys rage and how she dealt with it after.
I feel it became to easy to just punish and don't try to understand anything, in some societies when a fight breaks out both parties are punished equally, why? Because people always have a choice, people can always walk away from a fight verbal or physical if they so choose so, but if they want to stand their ground they too are responsible for that fight, for me it makes sense for others it may not, still nobody seems to care about "what happened" and how could we fix this without going directly to the stick approach that doesn't work for angry people it can even trigger more aggression and everyone who watched others raise their kids knows that the most likely to become dysfunctional are the ones exposed to violence the same happens inside society if we use laws as a form of violence to punish and control others eventually that society will become unstable, recently proof of that is the Arab spring and the London riots where discontent emerged violently despite their rulers being oblivious to the growing anger that was building up.
Punishment doesn't work that great, it doesn't solve the problem it makes people hide it and that is bad at some point it will emerge and it will be ugly.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to:
- Access.
- Understand.
- Plan.
- Act.
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people can always walk away from a fight
In that situation your choices become stand there and take a beating (which could be crippling or even fatal) or fight back ... so no choice really.
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The usual resolution for harassment is a restraining order. Unfortunately there are three major problems with using a restraining order in this case. First is the matter that restraining orders are rarely enforced until after the attack. Second is the question of how to phrase an internet restraining order (he isn't allowed within 200 websites of her??). Third is the question of proving that the newest anonymous harassment is coming from the same person (without said proof the restraining order is completely useless).
Personally, I don't blame her for using whatever resources are available to her. But I also see the larger issue here concerning the potential damage to the greater good.
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