This piece is co-authored by Trevor Timm.
In its six years of existence, Twitter has staked out a position as the most free speech-friendly social network. Its utility in the uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa is unmatched, its usage by activists and journalists alike to spread news and galvanize the public unprecedented.
As Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently boasted at the Guardian Changing Media Summit, Twitter is “the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
But at the same time, some governments — in both not-so-democratic and democratic societies — have not taken such a positive view of Twitter and freedom of expression. Instead, they’ve threatened, arrested and prosecuted their citizens for what they express in 140 characters or less.
Not surprisingly, in a number of authoritarian-minded states, journalists are often the first targets. And as bloggers and pundits take to the ephemeral style of Twitter to criticize rules, the government has been — in a number of cases — one step ahead. While some countries, such as Bahrain and Tunisia, have chosen to block individual Twitter accounts, others prefer to go straight to the source.
Crackdown in the Middle East
In February, Saudi blogger and journalist Hamza Kashgari fled the country after threats on his life. His crime? Tweeting a mock conversation with the Prophet Mohammed, an action which many called blasphemous. Though Kashgari was on his way to a country that would have granted him asylum, he transferred in Malaysia where, upon his arrival, he was detained, and finally extradited back to his home country, despite pleas from the international community to allow him to continue onward.
Kashgari remains in detention in Saudi Arabia, while outside of prison, members of the public continue to call for his murder. Nearly as chilling is the threat to his livelihood: Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Abdul Aziz Khoja has banned Kashgari, a journalist by profession, from writing in “any Saudi paper or magazine,” meaning that even if he walks free, he’ll be prohibited from continuing in the only profession he has ever known — and all for a tweet.
In the United Arab Emirates — no stranger to Internet censorship — political activist Mohammed Abdel-Razzaq al-Siddiq was arrested in late March for criticizing one of the country’s rulers on his Twitter account. Earlier in the month, blogger and activist Saleh AlDhufair was arrested for criticizing repressive actions by state authorities on Twitter as well.
According to one source, UAE authorities also detained three other people in recent weeks for postings on social media, including one young citizen who faces charges for commenting on uprisings against autocratic rulers in the region on Twitter. All are free on bail for now, but their ultimate fates have yet to be determined.
In Oman, police arrested prominent blogger Muawiya Alrawahi in February after he posted a series of tweets in which he criticized the country’s rulers on a variety of issues. Alrawahi’s arrest directly followed that of two journalists charged with “insulting” the Minister of Justice. And in nearby Kuwait, writer Mohammad al-Mulaifi has been held for more than a month over accusations of “insulting the Muslim Shi’ite minority,” a charge which for another activist, Mubarak Al-Bathali, whose “crime” was also committed on Twitter, resulted in a prison sentence of three years (later commuted to six months). His detention was not the first of its kind in the country either; in the summer of 2011, Nasser Abul spent three months in prison for criticizing the Bahraini and Saudi royal families on Twitter.
Outside the Gulf, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) has taken a similar approach. Last summer, SCAF court-martialed young activist Asmaa Mahfouz and charged her with inciting violence, disturbing public order and spreading false information via her Twitter account. Tunisia and Morocco have also cracked down on social media punditry of late and have arrested Facebook users for expressing themselves politically.
Facebook is as likely a target as Twitter. In the West Bank, Palestinian authorities arrested two Palestinian journalists, which may prove to have a self-silencing effect on other local reporters. Two journalists and a university lecturer were recently detained for comments made on Facebook that offended the Palestinian Authority. The lecturer remains imprisoned.
Democracy?
Arrests and prosecutions based on tweets is not relegated to Middle Eastern countries, however. A string of cases in otherwise robust democracies have raised questions by using the legal system to attempt to jail citizens who many would say are engaging in free speech.
South Korea — one of a handful of democracies that justifies online censorship on the basis of “national security” — has used its National Security Law to mete out harsh punishments to those who “praise, encourage disseminate or cooperate with anti-state groups, members or those under their control.” The law applies to “affiliation with or support for” North Korea, and allows the government to censor websites related to North Korea or communism.
As reported by the New York Times in February, authorities arrested Park Jung-geun, a 23-year-old photographer, who re-posted content from North Korean government site Uriminzokkiri.com to his Twitter account. Ironically, South Korean media regularly cite the government-run website in news reports. Though Park claimed that his Twitter posts were intended sarcastically, prosecutors disagreed, countering that the Twitter account “served as a tool to spread North Korean propaganda.” If convicted, Park could face up to seven years in jail.
In the United Kingdom, where the prime minister already floated the idea of censoring Twitter accounts during the London riots last year, a judge sentenced 21-year-old college student Liam Stacey to 56 days in jail for tweeting racist remarks about a prominent footballer for the Bolton Wanderers. While the tweets were certainly “vile and abhorrent” as the judge concluded, his statement that “there is no alternative to an immediate prison sentence” is misguided. By making an international case out of the tweets, the prison sentence ended up giving them more reach than if had they been ignored.
In the United States, strong free speech protections under the First Amendment have kept Twitter users out of jail for expressing their opinion, but increasingly, the federal and local governments have been going after Twitter users in a different way — by subpoenaing their Twitter information in criminal investigations. Most notably, this tactic was used against three former WikiLeaks volunteers, who saw their Twitter and email information subpoenaed in a Grand Jury investigation into the publishing of classified information — a practice normally protected by the First Amendment.
But more recently, a series of subpoenas have been issued by the Boston and New York district attorneys offices in response to Occupy Wall Street protests. At least four accounts have been targeted, and often the subpoenas come with requests for months of information for minor crimes such as disorderly conduct that often don’t rise to a felony, require jail time, or even show up on one’s permanent criminal record. Critics have seen it as an intimidation tactic against protesters who are engaging in legitimate First Amendment-protected speech.
While social media sites like Twitter will continue to proliferate in the coming years, governments — whether they are fearful of the power of communication, because of existing strict speech laws, or a combination of both — will find ways to “fight back” against increasing venues for expression. Journalists — whose livelihood is increasingly bolstered by social media — must continue to call attention to them.
Occupy image by asterix611, CC BY-NC-ND-2.0
Jillian C. York is the director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She writes regularly about free expression, politics, and the Internet, with particular focus on the Arab world. She is on the Board of Directors of Global Voices Online, and has written for a variety of publications, including Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Bloomberg.
Trevor Timm is an activist and blogger at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. Previously, he helped the former general counsel of the New York Times write a book on press freedom and the First Amendment. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic and Al Jazeera.