High Court Hears Arguments in Facebook Threat Case

In the
"Facebook
threat case,"
the Supreme
Court will
consider
whether
posts made
online should
be considered
threatening
based on
their impact
on the
persons
targeted or on
the intent of
the person
making them.
Traditionally,
the way a
reasonable
person would
react has
been the
standard for
determining a
"true threat."
However, the
free-for-all
enabled by
the Internet
may require
an
adjustment.

T he U.S. Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments
in Elonis v. United States , also known as "the Facebook
threat case."
At the center of the case are a number of threats posted in
the form of rap lyrics to a Facebook page created by
Anthony Elonis. The targets of the threats were his
estranged wife and an FBI agent.
Elonis was convicted on four of five counts of making
threatening statements in violation of federal law.
Elonis' attorneys appealed that conviction, saying the wrong
standard was used to prosecute him. Based on that
standard, a threat can be considered true if a reasonable
person would consider it so.
In order to convict their client, his attorneys argued, the
prosecution should have to prove that Elonis intended to
communicate a true threat with his Facebook statements.
Elonis' conviction was upheld by an appeals court, and now
it's up to the Supreme Court to settle the matter.
Not the Wild West
Elonis v. United States has not only free speech
implications, but also online speech implications.
"The implications of the case are huge," Clay Calvert, a
journalism professor at the University of Florida , told
TechNewsWorld.
"Many people don't realize that when they post messages on
Facebook or Twitter that those messages can be found to
constitute true threats of violence and therefore not be
protected by the First Amendment," he said.
"People think that social media is like the Wild West and
that anything goes," Calvert added. "That's not the case."
A subjective standard that takes intent into account is needed
more than ever in the Internet age, argued David Greene,
a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation.
"By the time a message reaches a recipient, it can be very
remote in time and context from when it was originally
made. The issue of subjective intent is more important than
it was before because of the way Internet communication
works," he told TechNewsWorld.
"Today, a significant amount of speech on political, social,
and other issues occurs online, and is often abbreviated,
idiosyncratic, decontextualized, and ambiguous," notes a
brief the American Civil Liberties Union submitted to the
court.
"As such, it is susceptible to multiple interpretations, making
a subjective intent requirement particularly necessary to
ensure that protected online speech is neither punished nor
chilled," it contends.
Protecting Victims
Communication on the Net easily can lose its context, said
Emma Llansó, director of the Center for Democracy &
Technology's Free Expression Project.
"It is so easy online for statements to be taken from one
context and put in another," she told TechNewsWorld.
"The person who makes a statement for one audience may
find that statement placed in front of another audience that
he had no intention to communicate to."
Concentrating on the intent of a speaker is the wrong way
to formulate a standard, argued Michael Lieberman,
director of the Civil Rights Policy Planning Center of the
Anti-Defamation League.
"The impact on a victim of threat speech should be really
important in determining if something is illegal conduct or
protected speech," he told TechNewsWorld.
"You can't say anything you want on the Internet and get
away with it just because it's the Internet," Lieberman
added.
Domestic Violence
If the Court upholds Elonis' conviction, it will be an
important victory in the effort to curb domestic violence.
"The reasonable person standard is vital because very few
abusers or stalkers admit their goal is to cause their victim
fear," said Cindy Southworth, vice president for
development and innovation with the National Network to
End Domestic Violence.
"In this case, it didn't matter where he posted his threats,"
she told TechNewsWorld. "The goal was to threaten his
victim, and he succeeded."
If the court flips the lower court decision, it could be a
serious setback, noted Southworth. "Most stalking statutes
use the reasonable person standard, so if the decision is
overturned, it could have a devastating impact on police and
prosecutors' willingness to take new cases involving the
reasonable person standard."

Source:Technewsworld