The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday from Twitter, the US government and the family of a Jordanian citizen killed in a 2017 terrorist attack, in a case that will decide whether the social media platform can be held liable for the actions of those who use its services.
Much of the hearing was devoted to a careful parsing of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), the law under which the Tammneh family brought their lawsuit. Their argument, essentially, is that Twitter is liable for providing a platform to terrorists who used it to communicate and plan the attack. Twitter, for its part, argued that it couldn’t be held responsible without a demonstration that it had been informed of a specific attack and failed to do anything about it.
The Tammneh case’s hearing came one day after another hearing —Gonzalez v. Google, a case that turns on a similar issue of whether a major tech platform can be legally responsible for bad actors using its services for malicious ends. But while arguments in that case centered heavily on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that provides extensive immunity to internet companies from liability for user-created content, Taamneh focused more heavily on the JASTA law.
“The plaintiff’s claim that because defendants were generally aware that among their billions of users were ISIS adherents who violated their policies and, therefore, defendants should have done more to enforce those policies does not constitute aiding and abetting an act of international terrorism,” said Twitter counsel Seth Waxman, a partner at WilmerHale and a former US Solicitor General.
Justices skeptical of Twitter’s arguments
Some legal observers were surprised by the apparent skepticism with which some justices treated Waxman’s arguments, given the way the issues were treated in the previous day’s hearing.
“I thought the indication from Gonzalez was that [the court] was skeptical…
2023-02-24 19:00:02
Source from www.computerworld.com
The US Supreme Court just recently weighed in on the future of an anti-terrorism law that allows US courts to hold Twitter and other social media companies accountable if they fail to turn over the personal information of their users. On Monday, during oral arguments in the case of a Palestinian activist challenging the law, several justices made their positions clear as attorneys for the different sides presented their arguments.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned the government’s ability to monitor the communications of foreign nationals living overseas, arguing that the law is being too broadly interpreted by the administration. Justice Samuel Alito raised concerns about the possibility of “forum shopping” under the law, whereby foreign activists could use social media outlets to evade US courts.
Meanwhile, Justice Stephen Breyer voiced support for the government’s case, noting that when the executive branch chooses to turn to US courts, Twitter and other companies would be bound to comply. He also asked whether someone with a strong political opinion could be granted an exemption from the law if they declared an affiliation with a particular foreign power.
At the heart of the dispute is a decades-old US law, the Stored Communications Act, which allows US courts to force technology companies to disclose foreign nationals’ private communications. The US government has sought to use the law to force Twitter to turn over the private tweets and account information of a Palestinian activist living in the West Bank, in a bid to investigate potential connections with foreign terrorists.
Following the three-hour hearing, a decision on the case is expected later this year. How the Supreme Court ultimately rules could have major implications for the global privacy of social media users, and could also influence how the US government prosecutes and investigates accusations of foreign terrorism.