More Violations Of The YCJA
Yet another case of the YCJA being broken on Facebook (for more info on this, read my previous post) has occurred in Canada recently. This time, four teenagers who are accused of microwaving a cat to death were named in a Facebook group, which led to threats of retaliation and violence against the accused.
The person who originally posted the names wrote, “They will all get their faces smashed in by January 6th.”
Someone on the website wrote, “I think people like that should be shot.” “I would say these monsters should be tortured, let society at them,” another poster wrote on a separate webpage. “As their parents, I would not be sleeping. They would not be welcome back to my home or my life, and I am a parent of a 13- and 15-year-old myself. My motherly love would be gone.”
By publishing the names outside court, the writer on Facebook was breaking the law and potentially jeopardizing the teens’ rights to a fair trial.
One Facebook poster wrote: “You might have just caused them to walk free. … The last thing I want is a mistrial that could have been prevented.”
Arthur Schafer, director of the University of Manitoba’s centre of professional and applied ethics, said, “Publishing of the names together with threats is itself bordering on shameful and is as worrying for society as the original act.“We know they have been charged, we don’t know whether they’re guilty.”
This is really starting to become a problem here and I don’t see it going away any time soon. Even we here at Facebook Talk have been contacted by authorities recently asking for help in complying with laws that protect the identification of youths. WIth more and more people joining Facebook every day and the rate of violent crimes showing no sign of declining to zero, it won’t be long before we see a major legal case against Facebook. The question of whether or not Facebook should or could be held accountable for allowing such information to be leaked on it’s site is an important one. Because if they are held accountable, then what’s to stop Google or Yahoo from being sued? How about web hosting companies that host a blog that “reports” on a crime. What about the bloggers themselves?
