Mexico Twitter “Terrorist” Arrests Raise Free Speech Concerns

Social Media Again Raises the Question ‘When Is Free Speech Too Dangerous?’

by Branford Lyles on September 7, 2011

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a working parent. You have just dropped the kids off at school and are currently wandering about the shopping mall running errands. Suddenly your smartphone vibrates because another parent at the school has tweeted something new. “They took 5 kids, armed group, total psychosis in the zone.”

A bit disturbing, isn’t it? What if was followed with, “my sister-in-law just called me all upset, they just kidnapped five children from the school.” What would you do? If you are like residents of Veracruz, Mexico, where gang violence has made child abduction a very real threat, you would drop everything to try and get to your children as fast as humanly possible. Luckily, the information was completely fabricated, and the tweeters arrested. However, the rush en masse of parents to the school resulted in dozens of car accidents and traffic jams throughout the city, not to mention the emotional strain of the parents, many of whom fled their jobs to get back to the school.

The government of Veracruz now faces a difficult situation. Having arrested the two people who tweeted the disinformation, what do you do with them? Government officials have accused the pair of committing terrorist acts, a charge which comes with a possible 30-year prison sentence. This has raised the hackles of free speech advocates the world over. After the recent controversies in London and San Francisco, the range of what people can say on social media has become a hot topic worldwide.

In a tweet following the attacks, Governor Javier Duarte of Veracruz gave his opinion on social media, ”Social networks are an excellent way to communicate, but sadly there are cowardly people who hide behind them only to hurt.”

Professor Raul Trejo Delarbre of the National Autonomous University of Mexico responded by saying, “It is absolutely disproportionate to say that a Twitter post can be an act of terrorism.” Many others appear to feel much the same way, though the anger of the community for those who cried wolf remains.

“I think that it is appropriate to mete out some punishment for this behavior. … If it’s a clear-cut case where there was actual harm, then I could see why the government would act,” says Ryan Calo of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, “But they can’t go overboard and they can’t paint with too broad a brush, precisely because it will compromise a free-speech environment.”

The cases are still pending.

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