This Ruling Could Change Online “Free Speech” Forever

2015/07/21 Leave a comment

On internet harassment and hate speech, and the Canadian court case that is attracting attention:

The law itself is still trying to understand how the Internet works. Consider a recent case in Canada that’s about to get a ruling. It may be the first case in the country of alleged criminal harassment solely via Twitter.

While we don’t have the full details, previous articles on this case convey that women expressed concerns of harassment when a man they blocked continued to interact with them. Regardless of being blocked, his comments at and about them continued, escalating to the point of concern when he commented on locations they apparently visited.

What’s interesting to note, however, is how The National Post phrases this:

“The graphic artist and father of four lost his job shortly after his arrest, which was well-publicized online, and if convicted, could go to jail for six months…These are astonishing repercussions given it’s not alleged he ever threatened either woman (or any other, according to the testimony of the Toronto Police officer, Detective Jeff Bangild, who was in charge) or that he ever sexually harassed them.”

Notice what the Post thinks are the only reasons worth being punished for: threats and sexual harassment. This is a thorough misunderstanding of what constitutes online harassment and the many ways it can and does occur. Worse, it completely ignores the effects it has on targets.

Consider, for example, the teen hacker who recently pleaded guilty to 23 charges relating to online harassment. More importantly, consider his targets. As Wesley Yin-Poole writes:

“[The teen hacker] would…post personal contact information [of victims] online and repeatedly call victims late at night…Victims ranged in location from B.C. to states across the US, including Minnesota, Utah, Arizona, Ohio and California.

One woman, a student at University of Arizona in Tucson, was forced to drop out of her course due to the teen’s continued harassment. Armed police were called to her house twice within the same week, and family members were removed from the home at gunpoint.”

None of this required sending threats or expletive-filled messages directly to the targets. But we already know this: Stalkers leave letters filled with adoration; catcallers shout out what they consider to be compliments to women.

And harassers are the ones often protected by the current nature of the Internet. As WHOA (Working to Halt Online Abuse) notes: “The very nature of online crimes means that we have little information regarding the harassers, as most victims either don’t know their harasser or do not know enough information about them for us to record.”

This Ruling Could Change Online “Free Speech” Forever – The Daily Beast.

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2013 Hate Crimes Statistics

2015/07/14 1 Comment

Hate Crimes Comparison.001

Interesting that in 2013, the number of hate crimes fell by 17 percent, reflecting a 30 percent decline in non-violent hate crimes (mainly mischief-related). For most groups, the per capita rate remained relatively constant, with the most notable decline with respect to Canadian Jews.

B’nai Brith statistics (2014 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents) however show an increase compared to earlier years (their statistics are always higher than police-reported hate crimes).

The National Council of Canadian Muslims recently launched a similar initiative to report on anti-Muslim incidents (NCCM Launches National Hate Crimes Awareness Project) to encourage more reporting (hate crimes against Canadian Muslims increased in this year).

The explanation for the overall decline in reported hate crimes is not clear beyond that it is the minor hate crimes that account for most of the decline.

While self-reporting by different groups is important to raising awareness of, and improving confidence within groups to report hate crimes to the police, there is merit to the consistent reporting  across different groups and categories contained in this report by Statistics Canada.

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Chart of the Day: Hate crimes – Five-Year Trends

2014/07/14 1 Comment

Source: StatsCan Police-reported hate crimes in Canada (2008-12)

Source: StatsCan Police-reported hate crimes in Canada (2008-12)

Thanks to New Canadian Media, the Statscan 2012 hate crimes report is getting some attention (reporting Share News):

There were 82 more hate crime incidents in Canada in 2012 than in 2011. Some of the increase is partly due to improvements in reporting by some police services.

The study lists Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Peterborough as having the highest incidents of hate crime in Canada.

And the majority, or 82 per cent of hate crimes, occurred in major cities with Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver leading the way.

Of the hate crimes reported and examined, 75 per cent had been confirmed by police as hate-motivated; and the remaining 25 per cent were recorded as suspected, Statistics Canada said.

Looking at the report, and comparing with the previous four years, some observations:

  • the overall level of hate crimes is remarkably stable (about 1,400 per year);
  • mischief continues to be the most common hate crime;
  • race and ethnicity continue to account for around 50 %;
  • black victims consistently account for about 40 %;
  • Jewish victims range from 53 to 71%, with no trend line ;
  • Muslim victims range between 9 and 15%, similarly with no trend line; and,
  • while victims of hate crimes, save for sexual orientation, are relatively distributed in terms of age, those accused of hate crimes are overwhelmingly young. In both cases, males are predominant.

Some of the disparities in reporting rates (these are police reported hate crimes) reflects the comfort different communities have in reporting to the police.

Muslim hate crimes are likely relatively under-reported given the newness of the community to Canada and likely trust issues with the police.

In contrast,  Canadian Jews are more well established and comfortable reporting to the police, in part given the work of B’nai Brith.

Hate crimes increasing against Blacks and Jews – StatsCan | Share News.

Direct link to the StatsCan report (worth reading):

Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2012

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Finding a cure for hate | Toronto Star

2014/04/15 Leave a comment

Interesting and lengthy article on trying to understand the psychological and medical reasons behind hate, an initiative by Dr. Izzedin Abuelaish, of U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, who became famous after most of his family was killed by an Israeli rocket in Gaza, and became the basis for his book, I Shall Not Hate.

For his part, Abuelaish likes to think of hatred as a disease or mental disorder. It certainly works, metaphorically — hatred spreads from person to person, like an infection, he says. It can metastasize, like cancer; it can be chronic, like diabetes. People are not born with hatred, he believes; they acquire it from the environment, just as people are exposed to bacteria or second-hand smoke.

Others at the workshop were hesitant to brand hatred as a disease or disorder. Much controversy has come from the “great tendency of psychiatry to turn issues that are popularly in the human condition into mental disorders,” noted Dr. Alexander Simpson, chief of forensic psychiatry with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto.

“To hear a universal human experience — an expression of negative emotion like hate — being someway turned into a disease is the sort of thing that psychiatry’s been told off for doing for the last 30 years,” Simpson said. “I have some reluctance to consider that.”

He raised the possibility that perhaps hatred can be likened to blood pressure; we all have it but when it reaches a certain level, we get sick.

Finding a cure for hate | Toronto Star.

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Protester gets 9 months for promoting hatred against Muslims | Toronto Star

2014/04/04 Leave a comment

An example of a hate crime, Eric Brazau’s distributing leaflets and harassing a Muslim man:

Outside the court, Brazau said he will appeal his sentence. He says he is aware the flyer was “problematic” and “would offend.”

But his voice won’t be silenced, Brazau added, though he will keep in mind the hate speech laws, which he says he has learned to navigate over the past few months.

“Hatred is the harvest he wanted to gather,” [Judge] Clements said in his conviction decision, quoting William Butler Yeats. “I find this is true of Mr. Brazau.”

Protester gets 9 months for promoting hatred against Muslims | Toronto Star.

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A. Alan Borovoy: Going to court with Ernst Zündel

2014/02/22 Leave a comment

An excerpt from Alan Borovoy’s book, recounting his experience on some of the more thorny free speech issues when he was head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA):

In 1990, a few years later, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on the Keegstra case, and upheld the constitutionality of Canada’s anti-hate law by a narrow margin. When the press asked me for a comment, I noted that, by the time the case reached the Supreme Court, Keegstra had been removed from the classroom, disqualified from the teaching profession, and ousted as mayor of Eckville, Alberta. By then, he was working as a garage mechanic. And so, in addition to the free-speech-chilling implications of the Court’s Keegstra decision, it was gratuitous given all that already had happened.

“In my view,” I said, “he should have been allowed to wallow in the obscurity he so richly deserves.”

A. Alan Borovoy: Going to court with Ernst Zündel | National Post.

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UK Use of ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Orders – ASBO’ in case of Muslim Extremist

2014/02/18 1 Comment

One application of quasi-anti-hate speech measures, the case of a Muslim extremist calling his neighbourhood a ‘sharia controlled zone’ with vigilante patrols etc:

The Met said: “Waltham Forest is one of London’s most culturally diverse boroughs with almost half of its 235,000 residents being of a minority ethnic origin and from a multitude of religious backgrounds.

“Discrimination and persecution based on a person’s cultural or religious background is something the police or council will not tolerate.

Chief Superintendent Mark Collins – Waltham Forest borough’s commander – said: “The granting of an asbo against Jordan Horner sends a clear message that extremist behaviour will not be tolerated on our streets.”

The asbo will run for five years and be in effect throughout London.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/15/sharia-law-campaign-muslim-groundbreaking-asbo

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Why Himmler letters deserve closer study: Mallick | Toronto Star

2014/01/30 Leave a comment

Heather Mallick, who usually writes to the left on issues, has a good column on the Himmler letters and the nature of evil:

The truth is that evil exists, that it has to be confronted, and people will do anything not to. We don’t like hard truths. When I hear about murder, I’m curious about what built the killer. Tell me about child abuse, blows to the head, adolescent shocks and adult lies. Don’t tell me we can treat conditions that we can’t even yet identify because psychology is still a young science. What makes a person evil?

If there’s a thread that runs through all these histories, it’s a bizarre attachment to family. We see it all the time, mothers speaking kindly of their serial-killer sons, siblings defending the indefensible, the idea that everyone has something lovable in them and only families can see it. But is it true, even if Heinrich had pet names for Marga and Hedwig, even if evil has its apologists?

Here is the verdict of Katrin and her co-author in a new book about Heinrich: “These letters show the deformation of normality, violence masquerading as harmlessness, cold-bloodedness that goes along with ostensible care, and the unswerving moral certitude even while committing mass murder.”

Why Himmler letters deserve closer study: Mallick | Toronto Star.

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Jonathan Kay: Even some Zionists should find the Tories’ Israel zeal to be disturbingly manic | National Post

2014/01/23 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary by Jonathan Kay of the National Post on the messaging of PM Harper and the Conservative government. Ironically, it is possible that such unqualified support may, over time, undermine support for the Government’s activities and initiatives against antisemitism, given the relative silence of the important linkages with other forms of discrimination that impact on a wide range of communities in Canada:

Perhaps the best adjective I can use to describe the Conservatives’ zeal for Israel — and, indeed for all things Jewish — is manic. In interpersonal terms, it reminds me of a couple that professes their status as soul mates — loudly, and very repeatedly — as they bask in the bloom of first love (as opposed to the occasional bickering that characterizes the long, solid marriage between Israel and the United States). In my email inbox, I have lost count of the number of messages from Jason Kenney advertising his government’s support of Israel, its steadfast opposition to anti-Semitism, and its diligent observance of some anniversary or memorial day honouring a figure connected to Judaism. Many times, whole days pass in which this is the only type of message I get from his office. In each individual case, the spirit is admirable. But the overall effect comes across as a sort of monomania.

This fixation is beginning to express itself in somewhat reckless gestures. One of the members of Harper’s official delegation in Israel, for instance, is a Rabbi who has offered public support to Pamela Geller, an anti-Islamic conspiracy theorist. When taken to task for the Rabbi’s inclusion, the PMO shot back with the lazy, apparently baseless, and possibly libelous charge that the Muslim group raising the objections has “ties” to Hamas. This is the not the way a serious government responds to the legitimate concerns of its citizens.

The Harper government is to be lauded for the overall tendency of its foreign policy — which is to offer full-throated support for democratic nations that share our values. But where the Jewish state is concerned, our support is crossing the line into a sort of emotional mania. And it has never been on fuller display than this week, during the Prime Minister’s trip to Israel.

Jonathan Kay: Even some Zionists should find the Tories’ Israel zeal to be disturbingly manic | National Post.

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Les conflits religieux sont en hausse dans le monde | Le Devoir

2014/01/23 Leave a comment

A reminder that religious conflicts are increasing, with Christians being under greater danger:

Parmi les 25 pays les plus peuplés, l’Égypte, l’Indonésie, la Russie, le Pakistan et la Birmanie sont ceux qui ont connu le plus de conflits religieux. C’est au Pakistan que les minorités religieuses souffrent le plus au monde. Ces derniers mois, les chrétiens pakistanais ont été la cible de nombreuses attaques, dont une survenue dans une église qui a fait 80 morts. En Égypte, il y a aussi eu une série d’attaques commises contre des églises coptes et des entreprises chrétiennes….

Dans de nombreux pays, les gouvernements continuent d’ailleurs d’imposer de nombreuses restrictions religieuses, dont l’interdiction même de pratiquer une religion, de se convertir ou de donner accès à des services essentiels et d’accorder des emplois à certains groupes religieux. Dans cette étude, la Corée du Nord n’a pas été prise en compte, alors que le pays est considéré comme étant le « plus répressif du monde, y compris en ce qui concerne les libertés religieuses ».

Les conflits religieux sont en hausse dans le monde | Le Devoir.

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