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Social Networks Crime Facebook The Courts

Facebook Sued for $1 Billion for Alleged Use of Medium for Terror (bloomberg.com) 204

A group of Israelis and American lawyers are suing Facebook for a sum of $1 billion in damages for allegedly facilitating deadly Palestinian militant attacks on their loved ones. The application accuses Facebook of helping Hamas militants plot attacks that killed four Americans and wounded one in Israel, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Bloomberg reports:"Facebook has knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas in the form of Facebook's online social network platform and communication services,â making it liable for the violence against the five Americans, according to the lawsuit sent to Bloomberg by the office of the Israeli lawyer on the case, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and Israel. The suit said the group used Facebook to share operational and tactical information with members and followers, posting notices of upcoming demonstrations, road closures, Israeli military actions and instructions to operatives to carry out the attacks.
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Facebook Sued for $1 Billion for Alleged Use of Medium for Terror

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  • Throw these clowns in jail for a while for filing frivolous lawsuits. Then put them in the town square (of NYC or something) with a vat of tar and a pile of feathers, let passers by apply liberal amounts of each.

    • Re:Contempt of Court (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Derekloffin ( 741455 ) on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:08PM (#52490903)
      I'm not so sure it is frivolous. FB opened this can of worms itself by engaging in censorship and control of its pages. Now, if they can prove in court that it is just a false perception of censorship and control, they can get away with this. But, if they are filtering their content manually at all, they become legally responsible for all of it.
      • Re:Contempt of Court (Score:5, Interesting)

        by SeattleLawGuy ( 4561077 ) on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:21PM (#52491039)

        I'm not so sure it is frivolous. FB opened this can of worms itself by engaging in censorship and control of its pages. Now, if they can prove in court that it is just a false perception of censorship and control, they can get away with this. But, if they are filtering their content manually at all, they become legally responsible for all of it.

        It is worth noting that Facebook's reporting system appears to be designed more for hate speech and nudity than for terrorism, and they made design decisions in the reporting system. For example, there are thousands of shares of terrorist hoaxes every day that they don't appear to even try to stop. E.g. the meme about all the stolen UPS uniforms (http://www.snopes.com/rumors/upsuniforms.asp)

        • by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:27PM (#52491083) Journal
          The israelis consider everyone who isn't ardently pro-israel/anti-palestinian as terrorists. Most people are getting pretty fed up with this shit, especially the crap going on in the west bank which violates international law and may be a crime against humanity and/or genocide.
          • and/or genocide

            Typical propaganda and typical Anti-Semetic bullshit. The actual charter for Hamas calls for actual "Genocide". You know, the "peaceful muslims".

            I want to know what "crap" is going on in West Bank, other than Israel Pull out and Hamas promptly started violence towards Israel.

            And as for support for Palestine, fine, and dandy, but you should know, that they are REALLY not very nice to all kinds of people, who aren't just like them. People like women, gays, christians, jews .... just about everyone who isn't a

            • by nbauman ( 624611 )

              Typical propaganda and typical Anti-Semetic bullshit. The actual charter for Hamas calls for actual "Genocide". You know, the "peaceful muslims".

              Well look at what your founding documents say:

              Deuteronomy 20:16-17 New American Standard Bible (NASB)D

              16 Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 But you shall [a]utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you,

              • You go back 3500 years ago to get that? Wow, that is IMPRESSIVE! Never mind the nearly 2000 years where Israel didn't exist due to attempted Genocide of the Jewish people, and the whole WWII thing that caused the world to give Israel a small piece of land surrounded by Peaceful Muslims (who promptly invaded).

                Yeah, ignoring anything between 3500 years ago, and now is PERFECTLY acceptable.

                And if you're white, you exterminated the peaceful Neanderthals, you piece of shit.

                • by nbauman ( 624611 )

                  You go back 3500 years ago to get that?

                  OK, here's something more recent.

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                  Yitzhak Shapira is an Israeli rabbi who lived in the West Bank Israeli settlement Yitzhar[1] and is head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva.[2]

                  In 2009 he published a book (The King's Torah) in which he writes that it is permissible for Jews to kill non-Jews (including children) who threaten the lives of Jews.[3][4] The book states "There is a reason to kill babies [on the enemy side] even if they have not transgressed the seven Noahide Laws becaus

                  • You know what, I am totally with this line:

                    In 2009 he published a book (The King's Torah) in which he writes that it is permissible for Jews to kill non-Jews (including children) who threaten the lives of Jews.[3]

                    The rest of that seems to veer into crazyland. As this isn't a published work of the Israeli government, I am not sure why you would think it applies in this case though.

            • by nbauman ( 624611 )

              I will NEVER understand why any Jew is a liberal.

              https://youtu.be/BUh-djbgRx4?t... [youtu.be]

              Mir vern gehast un getribn
              mir vern gepflogt un farfolgt.
              un alts nor derfar vayl mir libn
              dos oreme shmakhtnde volk.

              We are despised and driven away,
              We are tortured and dispersed;
              And why? For only one reason:
              because we love the poor.

              We are shot and hanged,
              robbed of our lives and our rights,
              and for only one reason:
              because we demand freedom for downtrodden slaves.

              Put us into iron chains,
              tear us apart with blood;
              you can only kill our bodies;
              not our ideas.

              You can murder us, tyrant

        • Terrorism isn't hate speech? What worse form of hate speech is there than "I want everyone who isn't like me dead and will take actions towards those ends"?

    • First Amendment meet frivolous lawsuit. Frivolous lawsuit meet the dumpster.

    • As much as I hate the cancer that is Facebook and wish it would just die and go away (along with most all so-called 'social media'), it's more or less impossible for them to prescreen and censor every single post, even assuming they're speaking 'in the clear' and not encoding their content somehow. I'd more likely assume this 'lawsuit' is just to generate publicity, and that they don't expect it's going to actually get any legal traction.

      Mod parent up.
  • by T.E.D. ( 34228 ) on Monday July 11, 2016 @01:49PM (#52490769)
    Before Facebook, did they used to sue paper and pencil manufacturers for the same thing?
    • by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Monday July 11, 2016 @01:58PM (#52490821) Journal

      Before Facebook, did they used to sue paper and pencil manufacturers for the same thing?

      No, they don't have the fat loot FB has. If they're suing FB though, why stop there? Why not sue the ISPs for providing connections to Hamas. They couldn't use FB if they couldn't connect!

      • Why stop there? I bet a bunch of terrorists use cell phones to communicate with each other - why not sue both the cellular providers and the phone manufacturers while you're at it.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:11PM (#52490933)
        ISPs don't filter content. Once you start filtering content, like Facebook does, people start asking why you didn't filter other terrible content.

        This is probably the reason Twitter doesn't ban the neo-nazis that are running wild on their system.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:06PM (#52490891)

      Paper and pencil manufacturers can't censor things that their customers write. Facebook can and has censored content already.

      IMHO everyone on the internet should have to declare if they're a common carrier or if they accept responsibility for what they allow on a platform they control. One can't censor copyright infringement but then turn a blind eye to terrorism.

    • by mi ( 197448 )

      did they used to sue paper and pencil manufacturers for the same thing?

      A better analogy would've been phone companies and then the Internet Service Providers.

      And it would still have been an invalid analogy, because neither the phone companies nor the ISPs filter based on contents. You may be too young to remember, but this was frequently an argument over Usenet censorship during early-to-mid 1990ies — that by censoring some posts an ISP may lose their Common Carrier [wikipedia.org] status and have to sensor all post

      • by Zalbik ( 308903 )

        You may be too young to remember, but this was frequently an argument over Usenet censorship during early-to-mid 1990ies — that by censoring some posts an ISP may lose their Common Carrier [wikipedia.org] status and have to sensor all posts from then on.

        You may be too old to remember, but ISP's were dragged kicking and screaming into being classified as Common Carriers just last year. The FCC forced this status upon them in order to enact net neutrality rules. I'd give you a link, but you helpfully already did...see the last sentence under "Telecommunications".

        In the early to mid 1990ies, ISP's most certainly did not have common carrier status.

        • by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Wasn't it '96 when the Title II provisions that the telecommunications industry operated under were repealed? Luckily the link was already posted and you even pointed out the section that says

          In the United States, telecommunications carriers are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission under title II of the Communications Act of 1934.[5]

          The Telecommunications Act of 1996 made extensive revisions to the "Title II" provisions regarding common carriers and repealed the judicial 1982 AT&T consent

    • Bah, everyone is thinking too small. Sue any government who's money has touched the hand of a terrorist. Start with suing the US government for all it is worth... erm wait... 19 trillion in debt. Well we can work out a payment plan.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11, 2016 @01:52PM (#52490787)

    These schmucks are thumbing their noses at the International Criminal Court and UN findings of war crimes, systematic abuses of Palestinians decried by the international community at large, a peace plan based admittedly in LIES, and are constantly ratcheting up attacks on civilian areas while complaining that people there are being radicalized into terror by their very actions. For Israelis to feel they have standing to sue FACEBOOK for FACILITATING TERRORISM?

    It takes more than a little chutzpah. It's ridiculous.

  • I suppose they also sued the phone company for aiding and abetting also? Maybe the stores where the terrorists bought their burner phones, the electric company for supplying the power they used to charge their phones, the grocery store for feeding them, and the water company for slaking their thirsts....

    • by clonehappy ( 655530 ) on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:05PM (#52490887)

      Phone companies are common carriers. Common carriers are shielded from liability if someone uses their network to plan or commit nefarious activities. They even lobbied to be common carriers so they specifically aren't held liable for the content of the conversations that traverse the telephone network.

      Internet companies are NOT common carriers. They have lobbied to NOT be common carriers specifically so they have the power to control and and disallow speech they personally disagree with. By NOT censoring terrorist groups, they have shown that they are giving de facto support to those groups and that they effectively agree with the speech of terrorists, thereby they can absolutely be held liable for the content of the conversations and speech that traverses their networks.

      • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

        Internet companies are NOT common carriers. They have lobbied to NOT be common carriers specifically so they have the power to control and and disallow speech they personally disagree with. By NOT censoring terrorist groups, they have shown that they are giving de facto support to those groups and that they effectively agree with the speech of terrorists, thereby they can absolutely be held liable for the content of the conversations and speech that traverses their networks.

        Turn in your law license, now.

        The [cornell.edu]

        • Did you even read that? The first part releases them from liability for CENSORING things. English is hard, isn't it?
          • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

            The second part (sec. 230(c)(1), which is actually the first part of that subsection) says that they are not liable for not censoring things. Did you read that? Did you read the part that of my post that specifically discussed it?

            Were those parts too difficult for you to understand? How do you propose to get around 230(c)(1)? Shall I drag out the ever growing canon of CDA caselaw that puts the concept in even plainer terms for you?

            The first part addressed the bad argument that because they choose to cen

            • You have certainly tried to superimpose things to look that way.. the liability part comes AFTERWORD. Agenda perhaps? I will post the whole thing...


              (c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

              (2) Civil liability
              No provider or user of an interactive
              • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

                I don't see a blanket statement releasing them from liability for what they publish...

                That's funny, because you've quoted it.

                47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1)
                Treatment of publisher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

                Not liable for publishing third party content [ericgoldman.org]
                over [ericgoldman.org]
                and over [ericgoldman.org]
                and over again [ericgoldman.org]

                • Hosting illegal materials is still illegal. The CDA doesn't exonerate someone who knowingly and willfully continues to make content available that is illegal regardless of who is considered the "publisher". Ever seen the operator of a child porn site get raided? Yeah, it's like that except with terrorists. Just because Facebook is Facebook doesn't make them above the law, and trying to cling to your weak/twisted interpretation of the CDA doesn't change that.

                  • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

                    Hosting illegal materials is still illegal. The CDA doesn't exonerate someone who knowingly and willfully continues to make content available that is illegal regardless of who is considered the "publisher". Ever seen the operator of a child porn site get raided? Yeah, it's like that except with terrorists. Just because Facebook is Facebook doesn't make them above the law, and trying to cling to your weak/twisted interpretation of the CDA doesn't change that.

                    Prevailing interpretation of the CDA [arstechnica.com] to you.

                    It's n [courthousenews.com]

                • There is a big difference between civil libel cases and ignoring criminal conduct being enabled by your service.
          • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

            It helps if you read everything that I wrote. Then again, the original poster did not say that Facebook could be sued for not censoring something, so I didn't emphasize that point.

            If you want to take that position, you should research the CDA [arstechnica.com] as well. We've seen it before [courthousenews.com], we will see it again, and I for one do not expect to see a different result.

      • Common carriers are shielded from liability if someone uses their network to plan or commit nefarious activities.

        One should not need a special common carrier status to avoid liability for a crime that one did not actively and knowingly participate in—if only to the point of willful negligence. Common carrier status is nothing more than a way for the government to exercise control over neutral service providers by threatening them with unjust punishment for the crimes of others unless they comply.

        Did Facebook have positive knowledge of these specific terrorist activities? No! Is Facebook's service used primary fo

  • by Rob MacDonald ( 3394145 ) on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:02PM (#52490859)
    Should come around, might as well sue FB over all those violent settlers groups inciting violence and planning attacks. but that would be antisemetic some how.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Pro-Israel pages get removed on a regular basis. Ant-Israel pages and antisemitic pages live long and strong. I'm fully in support of taking down violent pro-Israel pages. I think you'd be hard pressed to find one. Meanwhile, in Arabic, Facebook is filled with pro-stabbing, death-to-Jews messaging.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        > death-to-Jews
        Please stop lying. Anti-Israel posts predominantly advocate against Zionists and occupiers NOT Jews. Your attempt to conflate Jews and Zionists/Israelis is offensive and anti-Semitic. Please stop. If you are having trouble understanding the difference between these groups maybe an analogy will help:
        Israelis/Zionist are to Jews as Mafia members are to Sicilians.
        Mafia member make a big deal about their Sicilian heritage however even decent law abiding Sicilians regard them as what they are;

  • Regardless of this specific lawsuite, we should ask ourselves, are Facebook and others doing enough to stop terrorists for leveraging their platform?
    Consider the great effort by Youtube and others to stop copyright infringements. Both internally and by use of DMCA notice and take-down.

    The effort in stopping not only incitement to racial violence but also operational planning of such acts seems meager.

    I think lawmakers are almost inherently behind the times on this, and we seem to not have an anti-terror lobby anywhere as strong as the stronger-IP lobby. It would be nice to see Facebook get their act together and do more, setting standards for others to follow and if necessary become law.

    • One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. This is not a cut and dry issue, you start censoring something and you will be censoring everything in no time at all.

  • by clonehappy ( 655530 ) on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:16PM (#52490991)

    Has no one ever heard the term "common carrier"? You don't get to pick and choose what speech you allow on your little safe space AND be free from liability if someone commits crimes or otherwise does "bad things" on your services. This is why telephone companies have been classified as common carriers for nearly a century. If you allow all speech, unfettered, then you're free from liability for what anyone does on your service.

    I'm honestly shocked it took this long for someone to call these hypocritical companies out on their bullshit, and I support it 100%. They want to be able to control speech, but only speech "they" dislike. That's fine, but when you open up that can of worms, you'd better be ready to make sure you're keeping the walled garden free of ALL vermin (and apply your policies equally, which we all know these scumbags don't) or someone's eventually going to call you out on it.

    • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      Has no one ever heard the term "common carrier"? You don't get to pick and choose what speech you allow on your little safe space AND be free from liability if someone commits crimes or otherwise does "bad things" on your services. This is why telephone companies have been classified as common carriers for nearly a century. If you allow all speech, unfettered, then you're free from liability for what anyone does on your service.

      I'm honestly shocked it took this long for someone to call these hypocritical co

      • The CDA clearly states that the service won't be held liable for actions taken TO RESTRICT access to the things mentioned.

        It doesn't say ANYWHERE that they won't be held liable for illegal activities that they fail to restrict. In fact, I believe that if you were to go in front of a judge and point out the fact that a service deletes and restricts extremely mundane content they disagree with while continuing to allow jihadi training videos and unfettered communications between terrorists (that, you know, i

    • Has no one ever heard the term "common carrier"? You don't get to pick and choose what speech you allow on your little safe space AND be free from liability if someone commits crimes or otherwise does "bad things" on your services.

      One should not need a special common carrier status to avoid liability for a crime that one did not actively and knowingly participate inâ"if only to the point of willful negligence. Common carrier status is nothing more than a way for the government to exercise control over neutral service providers by threatening them with unjust punishment for the crimes of others unless they comply.

      Did Facebook have positive knowledge of these specific terrorist activities? No! Is Facebook's service used primary fo

  • for not smiting the Palestinian people and allowing hem fight back? Wouldn't that mean your god doesn't like you or likes the Palestinians more?

  • for use of their airplanes as a medium for terror.

    Better sue FedEx and Amazon also. And Google, but then, everyone's already suing Google.

  • Spread the new meme. Maybe this will affect the idiots in HR who refuse to hire job applicants without facebook accounts.

  • I have to admit, I did not deem it possible. If someone had told me, I would have said he is a liar and that this is completely unpossible.

    Me, siding with Facebook on something.

  • While they're at it, why not sue the inventors of all forms of communication for ww1, 2 and whatever crime comes to mind: I mean you could sue Tim Berners-Lee for this, all cyber heists ever made, all online-mandated murders. He definitely knew people would do good and bad with such a powerful technology. Let's sue God/the Big Bang/Darwin for knowingly envisioning the antics of a being so powerful with his free will for the unethical. Now seriously, grow up and stop blaming society for society - we're all t
  • this lawsuit is retarded. They might as well sue the manufacturers of pens and paper for facilitating terrorism too.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:39PM (#52491181)

    This lawsuit is actually brilliant, and it should succeed rather easily.

    Here's why. Telecommunication services like Facebook, Google, and the Phone Company, are either classified as common carriers or as media providers. The difference between the two is that the former carries any content someone wishes to transmit, and the latter picks and chooses the content it will transmit.

    The former is immune from lawsuits over the content that it carries because it takes no part in deciding what that content is. They are a neutral carrier with no interest in the content. The latter, however, does pick and choose the content that it carries, and because it does so, it is responsible for the outcome of that decision.

    So, since Facebook knowingly censors and curates content, controls speech, and otherwise acts as a content provider and not a common carrier (and indeed I am not aware that Facebook is considered by the government to be one), they are responsible for the content they carry, even if they did not themselves put the actual content on the site.

    I'm looking forward to the outcome, but I imagine these activist CEOs will have to find a way to shove their agendas down our throats another way.

  • Sorry no car analogy. But I can imagine the outrage if a gun forum let it's users plot a bombing on an abortion clinic or something. Their would be a call for blood and lawsuits.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11, 2016 @02:43PM (#52491225)

    Anything that even hints at criticizing Islam is immediately censored as "hate speech." No matter how innocuous, or true, the criticism may be.

    But the same Facebook is just fine with allowing Hamas to use Facebook to plan terror attacks.

    I don't know about the merits of the lawsuit, but Facebook's behavior seems suspicious.

  • Section 230. That is all. But even with that, I bet you that lawmakers will try and work around it and find a way to make social networking services liable for terrorists using their services, unknowingly or not;
  • Sue the Road Department for facilitating every crime which involved the use of a motor vehicle on a road or highway. Those guys aren't going to get away helping terrorists so easily!

    Why, in my town they built a road that runs right past the bank, and some bank robbers used it when they held up the branch. Tell me that those road-building bastards aren't complicit!

  • Why didn't they sue The Internet? It's bigger and has more money.

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