The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Facebook

US High Court to decide if online death threats should be classed as free speech

Author

By Jessica Davies, News Editor

November 30, 2014 | 2 min read

The US Supreme Court is set to decide whether death threats posted on social networks such as Facebook should be liable to prosecution or whether they should be protected by constitutional rights to free speech.

The decision, due to be made this coming week, will reportedly involve the High Court determining whether or not police need proof of whether a person who has posted a death threat actually intends to carry it out.

The move follows a string of cases over the last year in which people have made serious death threats on social networks, some of which have led to actual crimes.

Last week it emerged that Facebook had hosted a conversation between the killer and an associate in which he professed his intentions to attack a soldier. This later led to the same man - Michael Adebowale – murder fusilier Lee Rigby earlier this year,

Facebook recently drew criticism for failing to expose the conversation to intelligene agencies after the release of a report from the Intelligence and Secutiry Committee (ISC) in which it lambasted major tech firms such as Facebook for not allowing intelligence agencies access to its data.

However, a former head of MI6 Richard Barnett, defended Facebook from the criticism, adding that he doubted the social network had the resources to detect such posts given the huge volume of content it has on the site.

Facebook

More from Facebook

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +