Retweeting Terrorists Could Be Treated as Terrorism, Says FBI
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| thedailybeast.com |
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| mashable.com |
There’s an ongoing debate about whether it makes sense to
shut down accounts affiliated with terrorist organisations, or leave them to
operate as a way of gathering intelligence. Comey said that ISIS have ‘a highly
sophisticated media effort that utilises all the tools and techniques of
modern-day, social media Internet-based advertising.’ This has led to a ‘temperature
change’ in discussions with the technology sector about whether companies
should break the encryption on their services in order to allow access for law
enforcement officials. ‘Your grandfather’s al Qaeda, if you wanted to get
propaganda, you had to go find it...Now all that’s in your pocket. All that propaganda
is in your pocket and the terrorist is in your pocket.’ This phenomenon, Comey
says, is ‘much more effective at radicalising’ than the older al Qaeda model.
The FBI has pointed to Twitter activity, including retweets,
as credible cause for terrorism charges. In one case, a 17-year-old admitted to
tweeting out links providing ‘material support’ to a designated foreign terrorist
group. In a more recent case, a Virginia teen pleaded guilty to tweeting information
about how would-be terrorist funders could use Bitcoin to sponsor the Islamic
State. Alaa Abdullah Esayed, 22, of Kensington, East London, admitted to
posting 45,600 terror tweets – 127 a day – on one of al Qaeda’s most prolific
jihadi accounts, encouraging women to train their children to become violent martyrs.
In June, another Virginia teen admitted to being the secret
voice behind a similar pro-ISIS group with over 4,000 followers. Ali Shukri
Amin, 17, had forged connections with supporters of IS overseas in order to
help an 18-year-old schoolmate travel to Syria to join IS. The pair allegedly communicated
in a code, with ‘basketball’ representing jihad and ‘basketball team’
representing a jihadist organisation. Amin’s Twitter page was targeted by the
State Department’s counter-radicalisation account Think Again Turn Away
(@ThinkAgain_DOS).
In one exchange, Amin tweeted: ‘IS has flaws, but the moment
you claim they cut off the heads of every non-Muslim they see, the discussion
is over.’ Think Again replied, ‘#ISIS tortures, crucifies & shoots some –
ISIS also gives ultimatums to Christians: convert, pay or die – some flaws u
say?’
Dana J. Boente, US Attorney for the Eastern District of
Virginia, said that the case demonstrates that law enforcement agencies would start
to crack down on online jihadi propagandists. ‘[T]hose who use social media as
a tool to provide support and resources to ISIL will be identified and
persecuted with no less vigilance than those who travel to take up arms with
ISIL,’ he said. Clearly, tweets such as these are different from innocuous
activity that only mentions terrorism or terrorist organisations, so context is
key. Asked if simply retweeting material would be cause for prosecution, Comey
said: ‘It would depend on what your mental state is in doing it. I can imagine
an academic sharing something with someone as part of research would have a
very different mental intent than someone who is sharing that in order to try
to get others to join an organisation’.
Lee Rowland, senior staff attorney for the American Civil
Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, also raised the
question of intent. ‘Repeating speech is not automatically an endorsement,’
said Rowland. ‘There are viral anti-terrorism activists who have reposted or
retweeted speech or images by ISIS, for example, to highlight the group’s
cruelty.’ But Comey said that it was sufficiently clear where the line was. ‘The
government is required to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you acted with a
criminal intent to violate the statute. That is how we know people don’t stumble,
fall into, accidentally end up with a criminal violation.’
Aaron Waterhouse
Aaron Waterhouse
Aaron is a recent English graduate from Durham University who is now working as a content writer intern. An enthusiastic traveller, he hopes to become a journalist and report from around the world. Follow him @AaronAtSMF.
Retweeting Terrorists Could Be Treated as Terrorism, Says FBI
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Wednesday, August 12, 2015
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Reviewed by Unknown
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Wednesday, August 12, 2015
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