{"id":10975,"date":"2023-06-18T14:49:02","date_gmt":"2023-06-18T14:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=10975"},"modified":"2023-06-18T14:49:02","modified_gmt":"2023-06-18T14:49:02","slug":"the-supreme-court-decides-not-to-break-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=10975","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court decides not to break the internet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Both Justice Clarence Thomas\u2019s unanimous opinion in Twitter v. Taamneh<\/em><\/a> and the Court\u2019s brief, unanimous, and unsigned opinion in Gonzalez v. Google<\/em><\/a> show admirable restraint. The justices add clarity to a 2016 anti-terrorism law that, if read broadly, could have made tech companies whose products form the backbone of modern-day communications liable for every violent act committed by the terrorist group ISIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, the Court\u2019s Twitter<\/em> and Google<\/em> decisions largely ensure that the internet will continue to function as normal, provided that websites like Twitter or YouTube<\/a> do not actively provide assistance to terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cases involve similar facts<\/a>. Google<\/em> concerns a wave of murders ISIS committed in Paris \u2014 one of the victims of those attacks was Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old American student who died after ISIS assailants opened fire on the caf\u00e9 where she and her friends were eating dinner. Twitter<\/em>, meanwhile, involves an ISIS attack on a nightclub in Istanbul<\/a>, in which 39 people were killed including Nawras Alassaf, a Jordanian man with American relatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, you\u2019re probably wondering what these horrific acts have to do with tech companies like Google or Twitter. The answer arises from the US Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which permits lawsuits against anyone \u201cwho aids and abets, by knowingly providing substantial assistance<\/a>\u201d to certain acts of \u201cinternational terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plaintiffs in both cases, relatives of Gonzalez and Alassaf, essentially allege that Twitter, Facebook<\/a>, and YouTube (which is owned by Google) provided substantial assistance to ISIS by allowing it to use the companies\u2019 social media websites to post videos and other content that promoted ISIS\u2019s ideology and sought to recruit individuals to their cause. In effect, the plaintiffs argued that these tech platforms had an affirmative duty to stop ISIS from using their websites, and that the tech companies could be held liable if ISIS terrorists use a service that is freely available to billions of people across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a breathtaking legal argument. As Thomas writes in the Twitter<\/em> opinion, \u201cunder plaintiffs\u2019 theory, any U.S. national victimized by an ISIS attack could bring the same claim based on the same services allegedly provided to ISIS.\u201d The three tech companies, in other words, would potentially be liable for any American or relative of an American who is killed by ISIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The JASTA statute, moreover, authorizes a successful plaintiff to recover three times the loss inflicted upon them by a terrorist<\/a>, which in a case similar to Twitter <\/em>or Google<\/em> could mean three times the cost of a mass murder. So even a corporate behemoth like Google could potentially be brought to its knees by the amount of money they would have to pay out in future cases if these lawsuits had prevailed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Court\u2019s unanimous opinion, however, rejects that outcome. Though the plaintiffs\u2019 theory rests on a plausible reading of the vaguely worded JASTA statute, the Court\u2019s decision establishes that, at the very least, a company has to do more than provide its product to any customer in the world \u2014 including customers who may use that product for evil purposes \u2014 in order to be held liable for a terrorist act.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/2023\/5\/18\/23728529\/supreme-court-google-twitter-clarence-thomas-isis-taamneh-gonzalez<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Both Justice Clarence Thomas\u2019s unanimous opinion in Twitter v. Taamneh and the Court\u2019s brief, unanimous, and unsigned opinion in Gonzalez v. Google show admirable restraint. The justices add clarity to a 2016 anti-terrorism law that, if read broadly, could have made tech companies whose products form the backbone of modern-day communications liable for every violent act committed by the terrorist group ISIS.
\nInstead, the Court\u2019s Twitter and Google decisions largely ensure that the internet will continue to function as normal, provided that websites like Twitter or YouTube do not actively provide assistance to terrorism.<\/p>\n

The cases involve similar facts. Google concerns a wave of murders ISIS committed in Paris \u2014 one of the victims of those attacks was Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old American student who died after ISIS assailants opened fire on the caf\u00e9 where she and her friends were eating dinner. Twitter, meanwhile, involves an ISIS attack on a nightclub in Istanbul, in which 39 people were killed including Nawras Alassaf, a Jordanian man with American relatives.<\/p>\n

At this point, you\u2019re probably wondering what these horrific acts have to do with tech companies like Google or Twitter. The answer arises from the US Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which permits lawsuits against anyone \u201cwho aids and abets, by knowingly providing substantial assistance\u201d to certain acts of \u201cinternational terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs in both cases, relatives of Gonzalez and Alassaf, essentially allege that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (which is owned by Google) provided substantial assistance to ISIS by allowing it to use the companies\u2019 social media websites to post videos and other content that promoted ISIS\u2019s ideology and sought to recruit individuals to their cause. In effect, the plaintiffs argued that these tech platforms had an affirmative duty to stop ISIS from using their websites, and that the tech companies could be held liable if ISIS terrorists use a service that is freely available to billions of people across the globe.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a breathtaking legal argument. As Thomas writes in the Twitter opinion, \u201cunder plaintiffs\u2019 theory, any U.S. national victimized by an ISIS attack could bring the same claim based on the same services allegedly provided to ISIS.\u201d The three tech companies, in other words, would potentially be liable for any American or relative of an American who is killed by ISIS.<\/p>\n

The JASTA statute, moreover, authorizes a successful plaintiff to recover three times the loss inflicted upon them by a terrorist, which in a case similar to Twitter or Google could mean three times the cost of a mass murder. So even a corporate behemoth like Google could potentially be brought to its knees by the amount of money they would have to pay out in future cases if these lawsuits had prevailed.<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s unanimous opinion, however, rejects that outcome. Though the plaintiffs\u2019 theory rests on a plausible reading of the vaguely worded JASTA statute, the Court\u2019s decision establishes that, at the very least, a company has to do more than provide its product to any customer in the world \u2014 including customers who may use that product for evil purposes \u2014 in order to be held liable for a terrorist act.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[612,528],"class_list":["post-10975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-internet","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10976,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10975\/revisions\/10976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}