Court (Again) Tosses Lawsuit Seeking To Hold Twitter Accountable For ISIS Terrorism

from the that's-not-how-causation-works,-never-mind-Section-230... dept

At the beginning of this year, Tamara Fields -- whose husband was killed by ISIS terrorists -- sued Twitter for "providing material support" to the terrorist group. The actions underlying Fields' lawsuit were undeniably horrific and tragic, but by no means provided any sort of legal basis for holding Twitter responsible for actions or speech undertaken by users of its service.

The lawsuit was dismissed in August, with the court pointing to Twitter's Section 230 immunity and the lawsuit's general lack of argumentative coherence. Perhaps recognizing that Section 230 (and common sense) would prevent Twitter from being held responsible for ISIS's terrorist activities, Fields chose to approach the lawsuit from some novel angles. At some points, Twitter "provided material support" by allowing ISIS members to obtain accounts. At other points, it was Twitter's inability to stop the spread of ISIS propaganda that was the issue.

The court invited Fields to file an amended complaint, hoping to obtain a coherent argument it could address with equal clarity. It didn't get it. The amended complaint may be a bit more structured, but the court has again dismissed the lawsuit [PDF] on Section 230 grounds while also addressing the deficiencies of other arguments raised by Fields. (h/t Eric Goldman)

Fields tries to drill down the "provision of accounts" theory: that the ability of ISIS terrorists to obtain accounts somehow amounts to "material support" -- or, in any case, should result in the removal of Twitter's Section 230 immunity. The court says this argument makes no sense and, in fact, invites the court to engage in restriction of First Amendment-protected activity.

Plaintiffs’ provision of accounts theory is slightly different, in that it is based on Twitter’s decisions about whether particular third parties may have Twitter accounts, as opposed to what particular third-party content may be posted. Plaintiffs urge that Twitter’s decision to provide ISIS with Twitter accounts is not barred by section 230(c)(1) because a “content-neutral decision about whether to provide someone with a tool is not publishing activity.”

The court disagrees. There's no way Twitter can act in a "content-neutral" manner and still deny accounts to ISIS members like the plaintiff believes it should. The only way to discover whether an account holder might be a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer is by examining the content they post.

Although plaintiffs assert that the decision to provide an account to or withhold an account from ISIS is “content-neutral,” they offer no explanation for why this is so and I do not see how this is the case. A policy that selectively prohibits ISIS members from opening accounts would necessarily be content based as Twitter could not possibly identify ISIS members without analyzing some speech, idea or content expressed by the would-be account holder: i.e. “I am associated with ISIS.” The decision to furnish accounts would be content-neutral if Twitter made no attempt to distinguish between users based on content – for example if they prohibited everyone from obtaining an account, or they prohibited every fifth person from obtaining an account. But plaintiffs do not assert that Twitter should shut down its entire site or impose an arbitrary, content-neutral policy. Instead, they ask Twitter to specifically prohibit ISIS members and affiliates from acquiring accounts – a policy that necessarily targets the content, ideas, and affiliations of particular account holders. There is nothing content-neutral about such a policy.

The plaintiff, despite amending her complaint, still takes a cake-and-eat-it-too approach when trying to twist ISIS terrorism into a Twitter-enabled activity. The court notes that the new complaint tries to push Twitter's provision of accounts to terrorists as the linchpin of her case, but still spends far more time complaining about Twitter's alleged moderation failures.

As discussed above, the decision to furnish an account, or prohibit a particular user from obtaining an account, is itself publishing activity. Further, while plaintiffs urge me to focus exclusively on those five short paragraphs, I cannot ignore that the majority of the SAC still focuses on ISIS’s objectionable use of Twitter and Twitter’s failure to prevent ISIS from using the site, not its failure to prevent ISIS from obtaining accounts. For example, plaintiffs spend almost nine pages, more than half of the complaint, explaining that “Twitter Knew That ISIS Was Using Its Social Network But Did Nothing”; “ISIS Used Twitter to Recruit New Members”; “ISIS Used Twitter to Fundraise”; and “ISIS Used Twitter To Spread Propaganda.” These sections are riddled with detailed descriptions of ISIS-related messages, images, and videos disseminated through Twitter and the harms allegedly caused by the dissemination of that content.

[...]

It is no surprise that plaintiffs have struggled to excise their content-based allegations; their claims are inherently tied up with ISIS’s objectionable use of Twitter, not its mere acquisition of accounts. Though plaintiffs allege that Twitter should not have provided accounts to ISIS, the unspoken end to that allegation is the rationale behind it: namely, that Twitter should not have provided accounts to ISIS because ISIS would and has used those accounts to post objectionable content.

Because of Fields' inability to raise one (possibly) Section 230-dodging argument (provision of accounts) without relying heavily on one that specifically invokes Twitter's immunity, the lawsuit is doomed to fail no matter how many times the complaint is rewritten or how many levels up it's appealed.

In short, the theory of liability alleged in the [complaint] is not that Twitter provides material support to ISIS by providing it with Twitter accounts, but that Twitter does so by allowing ISIS to use Twitter “to send its propaganda and messaging out to the world and to draw in people vulnerable to radicalization.” SAC ¶ 41. Plaintiffs do not dispute that this theory seeks to treat Twitter as a publisher and is barred by section 230(c)(1).

Furthermore, there is nothing at all connecting Twitter to the murders committed by terrorists.

Even under plaintiffs’ proposed “substantial factor” test, see Oppo. at 11, the allegations in the SAC do not support a plausible inference of proximate causation between Twitter’s provision of accounts to ISIS and the deaths of Fields and Creach. Plaintiffs allege no connection between the shooter, Abu Zaid, and Twitter. There are no facts indicating that Abu Zaid’s attack was in any way impacted, helped by, or the result of ISIS’s presence on the social network. Instead they insist they have adequately pleaded proximate causation because they have alleged “(1) that Twitter provided fungible material support to ISIS, and (2) that ISIS was responsible for the attack in which Lloyd Fields, Jr. and James Damon Creach were killed.” Id. at 13. Under such an expansive proximate cause theory, any plaintiff could hold Twitter liable for any ISIS-related injury without alleging any connection between a particular terrorist act and Twitter’s provision of accounts. And, since plaintiffs allege that Twitter has already provided ISIS with material support, Twitter’s liability would theoretically persist indefinitely and attach to any and all future ISIS attacks. Such a standard cannot be and is not the law.

No doubt this decision will be appealed but it's unlikely to find a court willing to cede as much ground on Section 230 as Fields would like it to, even with the series of bad Section 230-related decisions that have recently plagued the California court system.

Filed Under: isis, material support, material support for terrorism, section 230, tamara fields, terrorism
Companies: twitter

Appeals Court Affirms NSA Surveillance Can Be Used To Investigate Domestic Criminal Suspects

from the spooks-in-the-federal-cop-shop dept

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals confirms what's already known about the NSA's domestic surveillance: it's not just for terrorism.

The NSA collections -- done in the FBI's name -- are supposed to only gather info related to international terrorism. But that requirement has been phased out. The NSA "tips" a certain amount of data to the FBI for its own use and it has been shown in the past to do the same for the DEA, which it then instructs to obscure the origin of its info.

An opinion [PDF] just released by the Appeals Court, says basically the same thing: although the NSA's surveillance is supposed to be used to sniff out terrorists, there's nothing in the law that prevents it from using its collections to go after criminals.

Gregory Turner was convicted of conspiring with Prince Asiel Ben Israel (both US persons) to provide aid to Zimbabwean "Specially Designated Nationals" -- in this case a group working to block the institution of more democratic processes and procedures in that country.

Turner moved to suppress the evidence, claiming that the government's use of a FISA order to obtain information on his activities violated the NSAs foreign intelligence directives. But the court finds the directive does not limit FISA warrants to terrorism only. The government only needs to "reasonably believe" a target is an "agent of a foreign power."

The government informed Turner it had gathered evidence using FISA-authorized surveillance. Then it refused to turn over information to him with regards to its activities. From the redacted, terribly-reproduced decision:

On February 27, 2014, Turner filed a motion for disclosure of FISA materials and motion to suppress evidence obtained or derived from FISA. The government responded to these motions with a classified brief and a sealed appendix submitted ex parte to the district court and redacted, unclassified version served to Turner. Additionally, the government filed a "Declaration and Claim of Privilege" by the Attorney General that declared, "it would harm the national security of the United States to disclose or hold an adversarial hearing with regards to the FISA materials…"

Both motions by Turner were denied. These denials have been upheld by the Appeals Court. Turner claimed the government failed to meet its probable cause requirements for the FISA warrant and also violated his First Amendment rights with its surveillance.

Much of the court's reasoning is redacted but it does have this to say about Turner's assertions.

Turner contends that "FISA appears to require the communications subject to surveillance of a United States person must related directly to activities involving international terrorism as defined in FISA." Turner misstates the law. FISA is not limited to activities involving international terrorism. FISA authorizes surveillance and searches based on probable cause that the target is an "agent of foreign power," which relates to "any person" engaged in certain activities… on behalf of a foreign power, including "clandestine intelligence gathering activities" and "enter[ing] the United States under a false or fraudulent identity… or while in the United States… assum[ing] a false or fraudulent identity." These activities are listed in addition to "international terrorism."

Not only that, but the laws governing FISA-ordered activities were loosened in 2008 to encompass all sorts of criminal activity not related to foreign powers or international terrorism.

FISA, as amended in 2008, "eliminated any justification for the FISA court to balance the relative weight the government places on criminal prosecution as compared to other counterintelligence responses." [...] [T]he amended FISA statute "does not oblige the government to demonstrate to the FISA court that its primary purpose in conducting electronic surveillance is not criminal prosecution."

As for Turner's First Amendment claims, the court finds the activities he engaged in were not covered under the First Amendment, no matter how "right" Turner may have believed undermining the installation of a democratic government was. As the court sees it, the government established Turner was an "agent of a foreign power," something that strips away protections normally afforded to political activity. Or maybe just political activity the US government doesn't approve of.

Either way, it's very clear FISA court orders can be used to engage in domestic surveillance purely to investigate criminal activity, something the NSA hasn't exactly been forthcoming about. As long as a foreign power is somehow involved, the NSA and the FBI are interchangeable surveillance pieces, even though one of them is assumed to be mostly uninvolved in domestic surveillance of US persons.

Filed Under: 7th circuit, crime, domestic, fisa, gregory turner, nsa, surveillance, terrorism

YouTube Takes Down European Parliament Video On Stopping Torture For 'Violating Community Guidelines'

from the really-now? dept

Back in 2008, then Senator Joe Lieberman went on a ridiculous pro-censorship campaign, demanding that YouTube take down any "terrorist" videos. For reasons I still don't understand, YouTube complied. As a result, watchdogs documenting Syrian atrocities had them censored from YouTube, because YouTube determined them to be in "violation" of its guidelines in publishing "shocking and offensive videos."

That was a few years ago, and it seems like the problem has only gotten worse -- as have the ridiculous calls for YouTube and other platforms to be the giant censor in the digital sky. The latest victim? Would you believe it's the European Parliament itself? Marietje Schaake, a really wonderful Member of the European Parliament (and a Techdirt reader), tweeted that the video she had posted of a European Parliament debate on "anti-torture" was taken down for "violating community guidelines." Really. As you can see, her account was assessed a "strike" for posting a video of a European Parliament debate about torture. And it notes that if she receives two more such strikes, she may lose her account. Of course, it's quite likely that this was some sort of automated system trying to stop videos on "torture" or somesuch, but really, this is the kind of thing that should keep people worried about all these demands to make platforms censors of "terrorism" or other "bad" stuff. You inevitably get these types of errors. And while it's likely that with enough attention, YouTube will magically reverse its ridiculous position on this video, not everyone is able to get that kind of attention. It makes you wonder what other content is getting blocked because some algorithm, or some clueless individual, can't be bothered to understand what's happening.

Filed Under: automated takedowns, censorship, european parliament, marietje schaake, platforms, terrorism, torture, youtube
Companies: youtube

Hillary Clinton To Silicon Valley: To Silence Terrorists, Nerd Harder, Nerds!

from the that's-not-how-this-works dept

With the explosive devices in NY and NJ from this past weekend, Hillary Clinton has decided, once again, that it's time to blame Silicon Valley for not doing more to magically stop terrorists from terroristing.

“The recruitment and radicalization that goes on online has to be much more vigorously intercepted and prevented. I have been saying this for quite some time,” the Democratic presidential candidate said at a news conference Monday during which she responded to the bombings in New York and New Jersey over the weekend.

“The government cannot do this without the close participation of tech companies and experts online who can give us the tools and lead us to those who are attempting to promote attacks like we’ve seen.”

Let's leave aside, first of all, the fact that (as of this writing) there hasn't been any evidence that the individual arrested and charged with this was recruited and radicalized online. Instead, let's focus on what's being asked here: to "intercept and prevent" certain forms of speech online. Not only does this seem... to go completely against American values around freedom of expression, it's also impossible. Sure, you can kick people off of services, but anyone with an ounce of understanding of how the internet works will recognize how ineffective that is.

Not only would such a system fail to stop people who wish to plan attacks from communicating, such a plan would, inevitably, also block perfectly normal and protected speech. Even worse, it would likely block important counterspeech in which people are able to respond to calls for violence and terrorism with arguments as to why that approach is a bad idea.

It remains amazingly troubling that both of the major party candidates for President seem to think that a good response to attacks in this country is to silence people online. Putting the onus on Silicon Valley to magically "fix" this by "preventing" bad people from talking to one another online is not a credible, reasonable or workable strategy for dealing with those who wish to attack the US.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, hillary clinton, nerd harder, terrorism

Twitter Suspends YouTube Phenom PewDiePie For Making A Stupid ISIS Joke

from the giant-circle-of-stupidity dept

Most of the time, you can say pretty much whatever you'd like on Twitter without the company actually bothering to enforce its harassment and online abuse policies. Think it's funny to threaten to rape somebody? Twitter this week informed Medium software engineer Kelly Ellis this was perfectly ok. Want to hurl racist threats like a lobotomized halfwit? Cool! Is flinging anti-semitic insults more your cup of tea? No problem! Over the last year, you'd be hard pressed to find somebody not talking about how inconsistent and arbitrary Twitter's ban hammer is.

Swedish YouTube phenom PewDiePie found this out the hard way this week after his account -- followed by 47 million Twitter users -- suddenly up and disappeared briefly from the social networking service without explanation:Well, not entirely. According to one of his videos he unverified his own account to protest the admitted pointlessness of the verified process, which itself is often arbitrary.But before that video explanation was posted, a parody Sky News account (unverified, for whatever it's worth) proclaimed that the Youtube star had been unverified because he joined ISIS:That in turn resulted in the "star" making the joke that he'd joined the violent extremist group (has this gotten stupid yet or is it just me?):All told, it's believed this Tweet, possibly combined with the parody reference, somehow triggered the suspension at Twitter, which speaks volumes about Twitter's threshold for suspension as it tries to crack down on ISIS' influence on social media. Last month Twitter proclaimed it had shut down 360,000 Twitter accounts for being tied to terrorism, but this latest flub again raises questions about whether the company actually has a solid handle on what it's doing.

Twitter refuses to comment on this or any of its other seemingly-drunk enforcement behaviors, but the company's inconsistency on this front has been on proud display for some time, and the message being sent is anything but clear. Something about how it's ok to threaten to rape and kill women and people of color, but don't joke about ISIS, and whatever you do -- don't post animated gifs of the Olympics:If Twitter doesn't want to begin rivaling some of the great arbitrary shitshows of our age (like oh, Apple's app store approval process) the company needs to get ahead of the problem quickly. Sources told Bloomberg last week that the company was consulting with "an outside council of anti-harassment groups" as it experiments with keyword filters the company hopes gives users more control of violent vitriol aimed in their direction. It also hopes to offer an announcement on improvements to its harassment policy and enforcement.

In the interim, to be safe, you may just want to avoid humor entirely.

Filed Under: abuse, arbitrary, jokes, pewdiepie, suspensions, terrorism
Companies: twitter

UK Gov't Report: Facebook, Twitter, And Google Are Pretty Much Unrepentant Terrorist Supporters

from the a-raging-hate-on,-disguised-as-an-official-report dept

The internet is for porn terrorism.

That's according to a report by the UK's Home Ministry, which claims the medium is inseparable from the message, especially if it's a US tech company.

Facebook, Twitter and Google and are deliberately failing to stop terrorists from using their websites to promote terrorism because they believe it will "damage their brands", MPs have warned.

MPs warned that social media websites are becoming the "vehicle of choice" for spreading terrorist propaganda but websites are policing billions of accounts and messages with just a "few hundred" employees.

I'm pretty sure giving terrorists free rein is more "damaging" to "brands" than the current status quo. Sure, chasing terrorists off the internet is just another form of whack-a-mole, but it's not as though these companies aren't trying. Facebook's policing of content tends to lean towards overzealous. Twitter just removed over 200,000 terrorist-related accounts. And as for Google, it's busy bending over backward for everyone, from copyright holders to a few dozen misguided governments. But the internet -- including terrorists -- perceives censorship as damage and quickly routes around it.

The argument can be made (and it's a pretty good argument) that it might be more useful to have terrorists chatting on open platforms where they can easily be monitored, rather than pushing them towards "darker" communications methods. But it's tough to reason with lawmakers who find big corporations to be the easiest targets for their displeasure.

And, really, their complaints are nothing more than a cheap form of class warfare, one that tacitly asks millions of non-terrorist internet users to sympathize with a government seeking to gain more control over the platforms they use.

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the committee, said: "Huge corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter, with their billion-dollar incomes, are consciously failing to tackle this threat and passing the buck by hiding behind their supranational legal status, despite knowing that their sites are being used by the instigators of terror."

That's what the MPs are really seeking: a way to carve off a slice of these billion-dollar incomes. Vaz fears the "Wild West" internet (one filled with Middle Eastern desperadoes, apparently…) because it's "ungoverned" and "unregulated." If both of those "problems" are fixed, he'll presumably be able to sleep better -- perhaps warmed by the flow of a new revenue stream or soothed by an expansion of his government's powers. Either way, these companies should have to shoulder the blame for terrorism's continued existence.

Some might make the argument that the government isn't doing enough to fight terrorism. After all, "billions" of dollars go towards this battle every year, and every year nothing appears to change.

The report points specifically to the supposedly "low" number of employees policing posted content.

"It is alarming that these companies have teams of only a few hundred employees to monitor networks of billions of accounts..."

Apparently, these billion-dollar companies are expected to move towards a 1:1 ratio of moderators to users. Vaz also claims these companies need to take a "no questions asked" attitude towards law enforcement demands to have content taken down. If so, perhaps the UK government should start hiring more law enforcement officers and move the needle more towards a 1:1 ratio of constables to internetizens… or at least a 1:1 ratio of constables to platform content moderators.

The report also points to various "failures" within the UK government, suggesting anti-terrorism laws just aren't quite strict enough. It notes that police have allowed alleged terrorists to leave the country while on bail because they haven't seized their passports. And an official from Scotland Yard asserts -- with wording that suggests the UK doesn't have quite enough restraints on speech yet -- that existing laws can't shut down the sort of thing the report complains that Google, Facebook, and Twitter aren't shutting down quickly enough: namely, posts by Anjem Choudary, a "hate preacher" who was convicted of supporting the Islamic State.

Richard Walton, the former head of Scotland Yard's counter terrorism command, today warns that existing British laws would not prevent preachers who followed Choudary's example and acting as "radicalisers".

Obviously, the answer is MORE LAWS. That should fix it. That and blaming tech companies for third-party content, something they already police about as well as they can, considering the number of users on their respective platforms. It's always handy to have a scapegoat to beat like the dead horse these arguments are, especially when the scapegoat can mixed-metaphorically be portrayed as fat cats electro-fiddling while social media burns.

Filed Under: free speech, internet, isis, keith vaz, moderation, open internet, platforms, terrorism, uk
Companies: facebook, google, twitter

What It Looks Like When The Terrorists Win: The JFK Stampede Over Fans Cheering For Usain Bolt

from the defeat dept

We've talked a great deal here about what a theater of security our national airports have become. Far from accomplishing anything having to do with actually keeping anyone safe, those in charge of our airports have instead decided to engage in the warm fuzzies, attempting to calm an easily-spooked traveling public through bureaucracy and privacy invasion. The hope is that if everyone suffers the right level of inconvenience and humiliation, we'll all feel safe enough traveling.

But it's quite easy for the 4th wall in this security theater to be broken by the right sort of circumstance. In case you missed it, one such circumstance happened recently at JFK Airport. The fallout was described in a first-person account in New York Magazine by David Wallace-Wells. Following a long plane ride after a delayed departure, Wallace-Wells describes the start of the ensuing chaos as he and his wife waited to get to passport control:

On the right of the hallway was that familiar line of people-movers, each of them stalled, when suddenly somebody realized that you could lap the line by walking down it like it was a highway shoulder in a traffic jam. Risa turned, smiled, and dashed off to take advantage. I made a show of protesting, hanging back for a second, and then followed her, but probably 50 people had swum into that lane between us in the meantime, and I couldn’t even catch sight of her to roll my eyes. Then the screaming began. I can’t remember what happened first — the flashing light of a fire alarm, the yelled warnings of a bomb and a shooter, the people turning around in a mob panic. I thought I saw smoke. I know I saw bags dropped, people falling to the floor and others stomping past them, through them, on them. Everybody was screaming. And I couldn’t find Risa. See her, really. Because there was no moving in the other direction. There was not even time or space to process what was happening, really. People were shouting about terrorism right next to me, as they ran next to me, but I wasn’t thinking about a shooter; I was just thinking, GO!

He goes on to describe being in the middle of one of several literal stampedes that had broken out throughout the airport, with travelers scattering in many directions and trampling one another. Members of the public were escorted out onto the tarmac, then back inside, then back out onto the tarmac again. Airport security alternatively either bolted for the exits when the scare began, or else were ineptly ushering the public in one direction or another. NYPD officers were inside the airport terminals, clearing them, but nobody seemed to be informing or instructing the public as to what to do. It was, in simple terms, chaos. A woman in a hijab called to her family, and everyone around her panicked. Even the set-pieces of the security theater contributed to the bedlam.

When people started running, a man I met later on the tarmac said, they plowed through the metal poles strung throughout the terminal to organize lines, and the metal clacking on the tile floors sounded like gunfire. Because the clacking was caused by the crowd, wherever you were and however far you’d run already, it was always right around you.

There was a second stampede, I heard some time later, in Terminal 4. I was caught up in two separate ones, genuine stampedes, both in Terminal 1. The first was in the long, narrow, low-ceilinged second-floor hallway approaching customs that was so stuffed with restless passengers that it felt like a cattle call, even before the fire alarm and the screaming and all the contradictory squeals that sent people running and yelling and barreling over each other — as well as the dropped luggage, passports, and crouched panicked women who just wanted to take shelter between their knees and hope for it, or “them,” to pass.

I can only imagine the terror one must feel being caught within a panic inside an airport under these circumstances. As the author notes, it was clear to anyone in the airport that day just how silly the idea is that authorities could respond to a threat at an airport in a methodical and organized way. Part of the lesson of this story is just how useless the security theater we've allowed to be propped up before us actually is. Useless as a system for when a terror event actually occurs, but more useless at keeping travelers calm and feeling safe.

Because the cause of this chaos would be laughable if it weren't so terrifyingly frustrating.

When the first stampede began, my plane had just landed. It started, apparently, with a group of passengers awaiting departure in John F. Kennedy Airport Terminal 8 cheering Usain Bolt’s superhuman 100-meter dash. The applause sounded like gunfire, somehow, or to someone; really, it only takes one. According to some reports, one woman screamed that she saw a gun.

That's all it took. A spooked public whose fear is unassuaged by the pretend security the government has set up at the airport, mixed with applause for an Olympic athlete, gets you bedlam. This is everyone's fault, from a public that can't bother to keep the threat of terrorism in perspective, to politicians that decided on a feel-good show at airports that couldn't even achieve that goal, to federal agencies keeping everyone so on edge that simple applause rang as gunfire in the minds of some.

It's hard to think of a more powerful example of how terrorism works than that.

Filed Under: fear, jfk, security theater, stampede, terrorism

Twitter Suspends Hundreds Of Thousands Of Terrorist Accounts, Gives Everyone Its 'Quality Filter'

from the today-twitter-settles-all-its-business dept

Twitter's had a bit of a busy day. It made two big announcements within an hour, first saying that it had suspended 235,000 accounts since February for "promoting terrorism." It followed that up by announcing that it was opening up its "quality filter" for everyone. The quality filter used to only be available to "verified accounts" and was apparently one of the few actual benefits for being a "verified" account. Here's how Twitter explains it:

When turned on, the filter can improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior. Turning it on filters lower-quality content, like duplicate Tweets or content that appears to be automated, from your notifications and other parts of your Twitter experience. It does not filter content from people you follow or accounts you’ve recently interacted with – and depending on your preferences, you can turn it on or off in your notifications settings.

From people who have it, they've indicated that it can do a decent, but not perfect, job in blocking purely trollish behavior. However, I still think that my own suggestion from last week makes more sense: rather than building a universal algorithm like this, give every user the tools to build their own quality filters (and to share the "recipes" of those filters). Not everyone has the same determination of what "quality" is. It's fine if Twitter wants to offer its own such filter, but why not open it up and let anyone create quality filters to use and share?

As for the removal of terrorist accounts, this still feels kind of pointless. Twitter talks about how it's getting faster at removing these accounts, and they're not able to build up many followers before they're shut down again, making Twitter a less useful platform for terrorist or terrorist supporters to use. But, again, if we think about Twitter as a protocol like email or a system like the telephone, this feels... weird. No one's clamoring for "we must stop ISIS from making phone calls." Besides, the intelligence community has said, repeatedly, that they get good intel from watching ISIS' social media activity. Shutting down their accounts may seem like a good thing (no one wants ISIS using their technology...), but what if it's actually making it more difficult for the intelligence community to track them?

Filed Under: abuse, isis, quality filter, social media, terrorism, trolls
Companies: twitter

Did The FBI Get Confused And Arrest One Of Its Own Informants For Helping Create One Of Its Own Plots?

from the wtf? dept

For a few years now, we've been writing about how the FBI has been arresting a ton of people for "terrorism" who were really guilty of little more than being gullible and naive and pushed by FBI undercover agents and informants into taking part in a plot that wouldn't exist but for the FBI itself. These so-called own plots seem to be a huge part of what the FBI does these days. Somewhat ridiculously, courts have (mostly) allowed these, claiming that if, eventually, the accused person expressed some support for terrorism or terrorist groups, it shouldn't be considered entrapment. But, over and over again, you see cases where it's clearly the FBI doing not just the majority of the plotting, but also pushing and pushing targets to "join" the plot, even when they show sustained resistance. The more details you read about these cases, the more ridiculous they get.

However, in just the latest example of this -- the arrest of Erick Hendricks for supposedly trying to recruit people to carry out attacks for ISIS -- there's been something of an odd twist. Hendricks claims he has no idea why he was arrested because he's been an FBI informant for years, helping the FBI find other gullible souls to entrap in these "own plots." As Marcy Wheeler notes, it's possible the FBI lost track of one of its own informants and ended up having him "caught" in one of the plots where he thought he was helping the FBI find possible terrorists. Wouldn't that be something.

Has the FBI simply lost track of who are real and who are the people it is paying to play a role? Or is it possible someone from another agency, claiming to be FBI, recruited Hendricks (don’t laugh! That’s one potential explanation for Anwar al-Awlaki’s curious ties to US law enforcement, a story that wends its way through a related mosque in VA)?

Sure, maybe Hendricks is making all this up (at the very least, it may necessitate the BoP to protect him in prison since he has now publicly claimed to be a narc). But FBI’s network of informants sure is getting confusing.

Either way, if Hendricks really was an informant, it appears that the "plots" he was engaged in may have been all confidential informants or undercover agents (and possibly one mentally disturbed internet troll).

This sounds like the plot to a potentially entertaining movie -- but back in the real world, it seems pretty fucked up. And it's yet another reminder of just how stupid these FBI "own plots" really are. It doesn't seem to really be about keeping people safe from attacks. Instead it seems to be about figuring out ways to push gullible and naive people to agree to do something stupid so that the FBI can get headlines for "keeping us safe" from attacks that would never actually happen.

Filed Under: erick hendricks, fbi, informant, own plot, terrorism, undercover

Judge On Whether Twitter Is Legally Liable For ISIS Attacks: Hahahahahaha, Nope.

from the decision-in-140-characters-or-less dept

This is not a surprise, but the judge overseeing the case where Twitter was sued by a woman because her husband was killed in an ISIS attack has tossed out the case. We fully expected this when the lawsuit was first filed, and the judge was clearly skeptical of the case during a hearing on it back in June. The order dismissing the case comes in at slightly longer than 140 characters, but you get the feeling that was really about all that was needed to point out how ridiculous this case was. As we expected, Twitter pointed to CDA Section 230 to say it's simply immune from such a claim and the judge agrees:

As noted above, courts have repeatedly described publishing activity under section 230(c)(1) as including decisions about what third-party content may be posted online.... Plaintiffs’ provision of accounts theory is slightly different, in that it is based on Twitter’s decisions about whether particular third parties may have Twitter accounts, as opposed to what particular third-party content may be posted. But it is not clear to me why this difference matters for the purposes of section 230(c)(1). Under either theory, the alleged wrongdoing is the decision to permit third parties to post content – it is just that under plaintiffs’ provision of accounts theory, Twitter would be liable for granting permission to post (through the provision of Twitter accounts) instead of for allowing postings that have already occurred. Plaintiffs do not explain why this difference means that the provision of accounts theory seeks to treat Twitter as something other than a publisher of third-party content, and I am not convinced that it does. Despite being based on Twitter accounts instead of tweets, the theory is still based on Twitter’s alleged violation of a “duty . . . derive[d] from [its] status or conduct as a publisher.”

Even if Section 230 wouldn't have resulted in the case being tossed, Judge William Orrick notes a number of other problems with the lawsuit, including that the claims in the lawsuit don't even make sense (that seems like a big problem). The judge first focuses on how the plaintiffs' arguments shift back and forth between whether it's the mere providing of service to ISIS members that's the problem or the failure of Twitter to prevent the spread of ISIS content. These two things are different, but the lawyers for the plaintiff don't do much to distinguish the two from one another.

Plaintiffs characterize these allegations as “focus[ed] on [Twitter’s] provision of . . . accounts to ISIS, not the content of the tweets.” ... But with the exception of the statement that “ISIS accounts on Twitter have grown at an astonishing rate,” ..., all of the allegations are accompanied by information regarding the ISIS-related content disseminated from the accounts. Plaintiffs allege not just that ISIS had approximately 70,000 Twitter accounts, but that ISIS used those accounts to post at least 90 tweets per minute, ... not just that Al-Furqan maintained a Twitter page, but that it maintained one “where it posted messages from ISIS leadership as well as videos and images of beheadings and other brutal . . . executions to 19,000 followers,” ... not just that Twitter failed to stop an ISIS-linked account from “springing right back up,” but that an inflammatory message was tweeted from this account following the shooting attack in San Bernadino, California in December 2015....

The rest of the FAC is likewise riddled with detailed descriptions of ISIS-related messages, images, and videos disseminated through Twitter and the harms allegedly caused by the dissemination of that content. The FAC also includes a number of allegations specifically faulting Twitter for failing to detect and prevent the dissemination of ISIS-related content through the Twitter platform.

That issue is a big part of the reason why Twitter's Section 230 defense works. The lawyers for the plaintiff argued that it wasn't a 230 issue because it's about the provisioning of services, not the content of the tweet, but their complaint focuses almost exclusively on the content, which clearly keeps liability off of Twitter.

And then there's the other big, non-230, problem with the lawsuit: there's nothing whatsoever in the lawsuit arguing that Twitter had anything directly to do with the ISIS attack that killed Lloyd Fields.

The third problem with the provision of accounts theory is that plaintiffs have not adequately alleged causation. Although the parties dispute the exact formulation of the appropriate causal test for civil liability under the ATA, they agree that the statute requires a showing of proximate causation....

Even under plaintiffs’ proposed “substantial factor” test, ..., the allegations in the FAC do not support a plausible inference of proximate causation between Twitter’s provision of accounts to ISIS and the deaths of Fields and Creach. The only arguable connection between Abu Zaid and Twitter identified in the FAC is that Abu Zaid’s brother told reporters that Abu Zaid had been very moved by ISIS’s horrific execution of al-Kassasbeh, which ISIS publicized through Twitter.... That connection is tenuous at best regardless of the particular theory of liability plaintiffs decide to assert. But the connection is particularly weak under the provision of accounts theory because it is based on specific content disseminated through Twitter, not the mere provision of Twitter accounts.

The plaintiff, Tamara Fields, can still file an amended complaint that tries to fix these problems, but it's not clear how she'll get past them. I imagine that the various copycat lawsuits that have been filed against Twitter, Facebook and Google in the past few months will all face similar fates.

Filed Under: isis, lloyd fields, material support, section 230, tamara fields, terrorism, william orrick
Companies: twitter