The concerns raised in recent months over how social networking sites collect users’ personal information seemed to be eclipsed by news last month of a man being arrested for one of his shared comments.
Paul Chambers, a 26-year-old British citizen, was convicted of sending a “menacing electronic communication” on Twitter that said he would blow up an airport.
As reported by the AP and in his own op-ed piece, Chambers, frustrated by heavy snowfall that was grounding flights in January, posted this message: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”
Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, assured me in an e-mail that hyperbolic speech in the United States is constitutionally protected, with a narrow exception for speech that is “truly threatening.”
“The rest of us should breathe a sigh of relief that we can still blow off steam without running afoul of any laws,” Crump said in her e-mail. “It’s probably best not to do so in an airport security line, however, unless you want to endure hours of extra questioning and the possibility of missing your flight.”
Even Chambers admits the tweet was “ill-advised.” But what concerns me is where the line of “truly threatening” is drawn.
Some who side with the authorities on this issue equate Chambers’ comment to falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater, which is an exception to the U.S. Constitution’s free speech amendment upheld by the Supreme Court. And maybe if Chambers had made his comment aloud, in the airport, that could be a practical argument. But Chambers made his remark away from the airport, into the vacuum of cyberspace, and there was no reasonable suspicion that he intended to follow through on the statement. Was it really worth arresting him at work a month later, imprisoning him, and putting him and taxpayers through a trial?
“Like having a bad day at work and stating that you could murder your boss, I didn’t even think about whether it would be taken seriously,” he wrote.
And it wasn’t immediately taken seriously.
According to The Times in London and other UK publications, Chambers’ Twitter followers weren’t alarmed by the tweet and neither was the airport’s head of security.
“He was told about the cursory, curse-filled message by an off-duty airport manager who happened to come across it a few days after Chambers posted it in early January,” Nathalie Rothschild reports on spiked-online.com. “Nevertheless, the security head, who graded the threat level of the message as ‘non-credible’ and decided not to disrupt airport operations, was obliged to alert the police.”
So the airport wouldn’t have even cared about this posting and apparently neither did any of the people who received Chambers’ tweet.
Shane Richmond, who writes about media and technology for UK Telegraph Media Group, sums up my thoughts on how this interference from law enforcement could easily extend beyond posts that include the word “bomb”:
“As I said – stupid and not funny. But the courts are going to be very busy if they attempt to prosecute anyone who says anything on Twitter that could be considered threatening. During the election campaign, for example, I saw numerous tweets from people saying that they wanted to kill or assault this or that politician or commentator. A quick search of Twitter shows people ‘planning’ to kill cats, dogs, school friends, random celebrities and themselves. Should I call the cops?”
Orayb Aref Najjar, an associate journalism professor at Northern Illinois University who specializes in cyber-communities and freedom of the press, said in an e-mail that social networking users have to consider the post-9/11 environment before they post comments.
“9/11 has really messed up American life in more ways than Bin Laden ever thought possible,” she said. “The fear that prevails has led to the death of irony, humor and exaggeration. Given this atmosphere, people have to be careful about making any seemingly threatening remarks because there is no real privacy on Facebook or Twitter.”
Najjar said she personally would have arrested Chambers for stupidity. But the real response by law enforcement may have been a bit hasty as well, she said.
“No official wants to be responsible for ignoring real or imagined terrorists,” she said in the e-mail. “The problem with this picture is that officials go after the silly stuff, but miss the big dangerous stuff.
“I mean, when someone’s father comes to you and says, ‘I am afraid my son is up to no good’ that is something you should not ignore,” she said, referring to the Christmas Day bomber whose father approached U.S. authorities with concerns about his son. “But when someone makes a silly remark, examine the context before freaking out.”
