He was fired after co-workers interpreted one of his Facebook postings as a threat to them. He responded: “Someone once told me that I was a firecracker. Nah, I’m a nuclear bomb and Dorney Park just f----- with the timer.” That brought a visit from an FBI agent, and the prolific Elonis later recalled that with this posting: “Little Agent Lady stood so close Took all the strength I had not to turn the b---- ghost Pull my knife, flick my wrist, and slit her throat”A number of people watched Elonis’s news feed with growing alarm during a two-month period in 2010. His wife had left with their two children, and Elonis, then 27 and working at Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom amusement park in Allentown, Pa., grew increasingly despondent and angry.
In other postings, Elonis suggested that his son dress as “Matricide” for Halloween, with his wife’s “head on a stick” as a prop. He pondered making a name for himself by shooting up an elementary school and noted that there were so many nearby to choose from — “hell hath no fury like a crazy man in a kindergarten class.”
This is a really interesting case, I"m glad you posted this. What's your take on it? For many of them, I would guess that they see the Internet as a tool, whereas increasingly the population sees it as a "place." We are living in some extremely interesting times.I wonder how many of the nine justices have ever been to facebook.com?
-That there is a great question. It's going to be increasingly difficult for SCOTUS to rule on cases involving technology that we all see as ubiquitous and they likely don't even use.
How do you differentiate the bullshit from the legitimate threat?
That's the judge or jury's job. I hope they will err toward very stringently disallowing people from saying hateful and stupid things on the internet (especially social media, which is more personal than a message board), but then I don't really give a damn about the insane obsession with free speech. EDIT: incidentally, there are currently guidelines in place for differentiating threats and non-threats, because various legal questions already turn on that issue. (Presidential threats and so on.) I'm not sure if those rules are any good, but the procedural precedent is there.