http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/ne...-harassing-michelle-rempel&pubdate=2016-01-29
Michelle Rempel was alone in a Winnipeg hotel room in the dark depths of winter when a stream of violent threats started filling her Twitter mentions.
The message was so vulgar it has since been expunged from the Internet; so dangerous that the Conservative MP — then a Cabinet minister traveling for work — called the police.
“It was really quite frightening and the appropriate route was to take it to the RCMP,” says Rempel. “It doesn’t matter if somebody is making a threat to someone or proposing violence to someone to their face or in a different medium, it’s still unacceptable.”
Damany Skeene, a 40-year-old Toronto man, was convicted of criminal harassment and uttering threats last October. Skeene was sentenced to six months of house arrest and ordered to stay away from Rempel, the Conservative party and Parliament Hill. At least half a dozen accounts attached to him have been purged from Twitter.
Surprisingly for such an outspoken MP, the case went unreported. So when a Toronto court last week acquitted a man of harassing two women on Twitter, the ruling was hailed as a Canadian first. The judge’s foray into the Twitterverse to draw the line between boorish behaviour and what constitutes criminal harassment was widely misreported as a precedent.
Activists swiftly denounced the ruling as tantamount to declaring “open season on women.”
But as Rempel’s case and a review of others reveal, the anonymity of a Twitter handle is no shield from the law.
“I think anybody who thinks it’s open season on women online is taking (an) overly simplistic view of things,” said Boris Bytensky, a criminal lawyer with Adler Bytensky Prutschi Shikhman. “If you engage in direct threats through Twitter on women or anybody, you’re going to get charged with uttering threats.”
Skeene’s conviction serves as an example of tweets that cross into criminality, while Gregory Alan Elliott’s acquittal demonstrates the high bar for proving criminal harassment in the courts. Not only does the complainant need to feel threatened, but their fear must be deemed objectively reasonable.
“What the judge (in Elliott’s case) basically was saying is if the two of you want to use Twitter to engage in a consensual exchange of insults, it’s not going to be a crime,” he said, referring to part of the reason why Elliott was found not guilty. The judge in that case ruled that the women in question, Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly, did not have a reasonable fear of Elliott because they continued to engage with him online.
In Skeene’s case, Justice Edward Kelly “found the tweets to be overtly threatening both physically and sexually in nature,” according to Luka Rados. Rados represented Skeene — who could not be reached for direct comment — and argued in court that his tweets amounted to political speech.
“I think it’s so important that we not criminalize distasteful speech on the basis that the recipient is offended. To do that would have a real chilling effect on our ability to be heard and to express ourselves online,” Rados said.
Canadian law has always balanced freedom of expression against criminal or defamatory speech, just because it’s online doesn’t really change that, according to Cara Zwibel, a lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
“This case really hasn’t changed anything in terms of the law. It’s a particular application of the law to a particular set of facts,” Zwibel said of the Elliott verdict. “There are still limits with what you can do on Twitter.”
The fact Rempel’s harasser was found guilty of uttering threats, and not just criminal harassment, is also important. They 140-character missives sent to the Calgary MP weren’t mere political disagreements, but explicit threats of rape and murder.
“I know there are going to be people that disagree with my political philosophy or say things to me that are sexist or even name calling, whatever. To me it’s a different fear when you’re actively threatening my person with violence,” Rempel said.
The 35-year-old MP is a rising star in the Conservative party and rarely shies from the limelight or controversial views. Her Twitter feed touches on everything from partisan attack to policy debates to gender issues. But she kept the case and the ordeal of being on the stand to herself, slipping into court to testify in the spring of 2015 while balancing her duties as an MP and minister.
She only agreed to speak last week after being approached by the National Post so Canadian women would know there is some protection by the courts from digital threats.
“Even though I am a public figure… I didn’t feel that this… (case was) about anything other than me as a private citizen pressing charges against someone who had made threats for me,” Rempel said of the trial.
In reality, Elliott’s case was not the first Twitter-based accusation of criminal activity, and nor was Skeene’s. Last year in Montreal, a man pleaded guilty to uttering threats against atheists on Twitter; in 2014 a woman was found guilty of criminally harassing then Quebec premier Pauline Marois on the social network.
“I think the message people should take away (from the Elliott verdict) — if they are rational — is that this case actually shows the criminal law does apply on Twitter,” David Fraser, a Halifax-based lawyer who specializes in cyberbullying and privacy law. He said in many ways it “was always open season” on women — and other marginalized groups — when it comes to hateful, vitriolic trolling online. But that doesn’t mean the courts are always the best recourse.
“The criminal law is a very blunt instrument… which is why we need to be always very careful,” he said. “Our justice system is structured in such a way that you have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Many experts have suggested that Twitter and other social networks can continue to do a better job cracking down on trolls and online hate — something all have expressly worked on.
There’s also a competing logic that, like in a public square — an analogy used in the Elliott case to describe the lack of privacy Twitter affords — views you don’t like may be shouted loudly, but you don’t have to stop and listen.
Yet, women, people of colour and other minorities do experience more and intense online blowback.
“Difficulties of this nature tend to accrue disproportionately to those who are already marginalized in our culture,” said University of Waterloo associate professor Aimee Morrison. She called incessant trolling “this drip drip drip of acid into your soul and it eventually pushes people away from participating on the internet.”
There’s also something troubling about the fact judges have to deem a woman’s fear reasonable, Morrison said, given that “throughout much of history, women have not been considered reasonable people” and have long been told they are “being hysterical” when upset.
What the courts can’t, likely won’t — and probably shouldn’t — deal with is speech that’s odious but not criminal. Unless the high threshold from the distasteful to the criminal is crossed, Morrison said, “that’s not a legal thing, that’s a societal thing.”
Michelle Rempel was alone in a Winnipeg hotel room in the dark depths of winter when a stream of violent threats started filling her Twitter mentions.
The message was so vulgar it has since been expunged from the Internet; so dangerous that the Conservative MP — then a Cabinet minister traveling for work — called the police.
“It was really quite frightening and the appropriate route was to take it to the RCMP,” says Rempel. “It doesn’t matter if somebody is making a threat to someone or proposing violence to someone to their face or in a different medium, it’s still unacceptable.”
Damany Skeene, a 40-year-old Toronto man, was convicted of criminal harassment and uttering threats last October. Skeene was sentenced to six months of house arrest and ordered to stay away from Rempel, the Conservative party and Parliament Hill. At least half a dozen accounts attached to him have been purged from Twitter.
Surprisingly for such an outspoken MP, the case went unreported. So when a Toronto court last week acquitted a man of harassing two women on Twitter, the ruling was hailed as a Canadian first. The judge’s foray into the Twitterverse to draw the line between boorish behaviour and what constitutes criminal harassment was widely misreported as a precedent.
Activists swiftly denounced the ruling as tantamount to declaring “open season on women.”
But as Rempel’s case and a review of others reveal, the anonymity of a Twitter handle is no shield from the law.
“I think anybody who thinks it’s open season on women online is taking (an) overly simplistic view of things,” said Boris Bytensky, a criminal lawyer with Adler Bytensky Prutschi Shikhman. “If you engage in direct threats through Twitter on women or anybody, you’re going to get charged with uttering threats.”
Skeene’s conviction serves as an example of tweets that cross into criminality, while Gregory Alan Elliott’s acquittal demonstrates the high bar for proving criminal harassment in the courts. Not only does the complainant need to feel threatened, but their fear must be deemed objectively reasonable.
“What the judge (in Elliott’s case) basically was saying is if the two of you want to use Twitter to engage in a consensual exchange of insults, it’s not going to be a crime,” he said, referring to part of the reason why Elliott was found not guilty. The judge in that case ruled that the women in question, Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly, did not have a reasonable fear of Elliott because they continued to engage with him online.
In Skeene’s case, Justice Edward Kelly “found the tweets to be overtly threatening both physically and sexually in nature,” according to Luka Rados. Rados represented Skeene — who could not be reached for direct comment — and argued in court that his tweets amounted to political speech.
“I think it’s so important that we not criminalize distasteful speech on the basis that the recipient is offended. To do that would have a real chilling effect on our ability to be heard and to express ourselves online,” Rados said.
Canadian law has always balanced freedom of expression against criminal or defamatory speech, just because it’s online doesn’t really change that, according to Cara Zwibel, a lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
“This case really hasn’t changed anything in terms of the law. It’s a particular application of the law to a particular set of facts,” Zwibel said of the Elliott verdict. “There are still limits with what you can do on Twitter.”
The fact Rempel’s harasser was found guilty of uttering threats, and not just criminal harassment, is also important. They 140-character missives sent to the Calgary MP weren’t mere political disagreements, but explicit threats of rape and murder.
“I know there are going to be people that disagree with my political philosophy or say things to me that are sexist or even name calling, whatever. To me it’s a different fear when you’re actively threatening my person with violence,” Rempel said.
The 35-year-old MP is a rising star in the Conservative party and rarely shies from the limelight or controversial views. Her Twitter feed touches on everything from partisan attack to policy debates to gender issues. But she kept the case and the ordeal of being on the stand to herself, slipping into court to testify in the spring of 2015 while balancing her duties as an MP and minister.
She only agreed to speak last week after being approached by the National Post so Canadian women would know there is some protection by the courts from digital threats.
“Even though I am a public figure… I didn’t feel that this… (case was) about anything other than me as a private citizen pressing charges against someone who had made threats for me,” Rempel said of the trial.
In reality, Elliott’s case was not the first Twitter-based accusation of criminal activity, and nor was Skeene’s. Last year in Montreal, a man pleaded guilty to uttering threats against atheists on Twitter; in 2014 a woman was found guilty of criminally harassing then Quebec premier Pauline Marois on the social network.
“I think the message people should take away (from the Elliott verdict) — if they are rational — is that this case actually shows the criminal law does apply on Twitter,” David Fraser, a Halifax-based lawyer who specializes in cyberbullying and privacy law. He said in many ways it “was always open season” on women — and other marginalized groups — when it comes to hateful, vitriolic trolling online. But that doesn’t mean the courts are always the best recourse.
“The criminal law is a very blunt instrument… which is why we need to be always very careful,” he said. “Our justice system is structured in such a way that you have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Many experts have suggested that Twitter and other social networks can continue to do a better job cracking down on trolls and online hate — something all have expressly worked on.
There’s also a competing logic that, like in a public square — an analogy used in the Elliott case to describe the lack of privacy Twitter affords — views you don’t like may be shouted loudly, but you don’t have to stop and listen.
Yet, women, people of colour and other minorities do experience more and intense online blowback.
“Difficulties of this nature tend to accrue disproportionately to those who are already marginalized in our culture,” said University of Waterloo associate professor Aimee Morrison. She called incessant trolling “this drip drip drip of acid into your soul and it eventually pushes people away from participating on the internet.”
There’s also something troubling about the fact judges have to deem a woman’s fear reasonable, Morrison said, given that “throughout much of history, women have not been considered reasonable people” and have long been told they are “being hysterical” when upset.
What the courts can’t, likely won’t — and probably shouldn’t — deal with is speech that’s odious but not criminal. Unless the high threshold from the distasteful to the criminal is crossed, Morrison said, “that’s not a legal thing, that’s a societal thing.”
