Planning to make a joke on Twitter about bombing something? You might want to reconsider: according to a report from Britain, two British tourists were detained and then denied entry into the U.S. recently after they joked
about destroying America and digging up Marilyn Monroe. The fact that
the Department of Homeland Security and other authorities — including
the FBI — are monitoring social media like Twitter and Facebook isn’t
that surprising. But the fact that Homeland Security is willing to detain people based on what is clearly a harmless joke raises questions about what the impact of all that monitoring will be.
Leigh Van Bryan, a 26-year-old bar manager from Coventry, told The Sun that he
and friend Emily Bunting were stopped by border guards when they
arrived at Los Angeles International Airport and questioned for five
hours about messages that Van Bryan had posted on Twitter saying he
planned to “destroy America.” After the questioning, during which the
Irish traveller said that Homeland Security threatened the two, they
were put in a van and taken to a holding cell overnight, along with some
illegal immigrants. After being held overnight, they said they were
forced to take a plane back to England.
According to a report in The Daily Mail, the Homeland Security officers gave Van Bryan a document that detailed why he was refused admission to the United States, and it reads like a bad joke itself, saying:
He had posted on his Tweeter website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe… Also on his tweeter account Mr Bryan posted that he was coming to destroy America.
Van Bryan told the newspaper that he tried to explain to Homeland
Security officials that the term “destroy” was British slang referring
to a party, and that his comments about “digging up Marilyn Monroe” were
an attempt at humor, but that the officers didn’t listen. The
authorities even searched their luggage looking for shovels and other
tools, he said.
Monitoring social media makes sense — within reason
This isn’t the first time that someone has gotten in trouble for
making a joke on Twitter: a British businessman named Paul Chambers was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for more than seven hours in 2010 after making a joke on Twitter
about blowing up an airport, a joke he said he made because he was
frustrated about the airport being closed due to bad weather. He was
tried and found guilty and fined a thousand pounds, and eventually lost
his job as a result of the publicity.
The fact that Homeland Security is monitoring social networks like
Twitter and Facebook for certain keywords isn’t that surprising: the
department said during a security review earlier this year that it has been monitoring those networks and a list of blogs
and other sources (including WikiLeaks) for information about potential
security hazards and what it called “situational awareness.” The
Federal Bureau of Investigation also recently revealed that it is trying to develop a service that can monitor social-media sources and automatically create alerts based on the information it finds there.
To me, it makes perfect sense for security officials to be monitoring
social networks and even blogs. This is all public information that could contain useful signals about real terrorism or threats to national security of some kind,
and it should obviously be part of the normal intelligence process. But
doing this properly also requires some sense of proportion about what
constitutes a real threat and what is clearly a joke. Did Homeland
Security really think that a 26-year-old bar manager was a serious
threat?
We all know that we are likely being monitored in even more ways now
than we have ever been, whether it’s by security cameras or algorithms
that comb through tweets and Facebook posts. But that’s not the scary
part — the scary part is what can happen when that information gets
misinterpreted and it escalates into a major crisis for no reason.
