Toronto man found not guilty in Twitter harassment trial | Hacker News Reader

Toronto man found not guilty in Twitter harassment trial

theglobeandmail.com

82 pointseigenvector47 comments

Some of the allegations made in this trial border on the comical; although it is somewhat scary it took them so long to throw the case out.

"He continued to contact them, they said, in part through the use of hashtags he knew them to be involved with." Let me get this straight – imagine two people, Alex and Bob, who are both comics fans. Alex doesn't like Bob and has blocked him on Twitter. Now Bob tweets something like "I like Marvel #comics". Can you seriously say that he is "harassing" Alex because Alex is specifically searching for Tweets with that hashtag and sees Bob's Tweet?

In my opinion, people wasting the court's time with such cases should be fined a hefty amount.

I wouldn't be surprised if the defendant files a civil suit against the plaintiff.

Can he get compensation for all the bad things that he endured because of this trial (lost job, was not able to work because he was banned from the internet, etc..)?

He crowdfunded some of the legal fees https://www.generosity.com/fundraising/gregory-alan-elliott-...

Unsure if it's even worth incurring more lawyer fees pursuing the loss of employment as the women will likely have no money to pay him, file endless appeals and delays, ect.

If it was the USA the judge could have always choosen to brand them a vexatious litigant, which as Jason Scott said, "Basically means you are an asshole in the eyes of the court."

It also sets up certain requirements to use the legal system (like paying a certain amount of the defendants attorney fees up front iirc)

Is there a record of his and their tweets anywhere? (I would need both to see to what extent he stalked their hashtags). Or is everything still up?

There are many of the substantive tweets preserved in the legal record of the case.

Here is a link to a court doc.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/296325188/2016oncj35

Edit:

TL;DR

1) Mr. Elliot and Ms. Guthrie met in person to discuss design work. Elliot is a graphic designer. Guthrie thought he was creepy and they don't agree on stuff. But relationship is not yet hostile.

2) Guthrie publishes on Twitter the info of the person who made the Anita Sarkiesian game. Elliot disagrees and gets blocked.

3) Elliot makes comments about AIDs and uses slurs. "His language is vulgar and sometimes obscene, and once inexplicably homophobic."

After reading this I give up.

On the same day, Ms. Reilly tweeted with a period before Mr. Elliott’s handle so that not only his followers but the“ whole world”would see it, according to her evidence:“.@greg_a_elliott Just couldn’t ignore me, huh? Leave me the fuck alone.” However, the space between the period and his handle, perhaps a typographical error, may mean that it did not have this effect.

Twitter scares me.

>once inexplicably homophobic

The explanation is that the tweet in question is from a different account with a similar looking handle. There are multiple news outlets which have been informed of this inaccuracy, which have not yet issued corrections or retractions for reporting this false info.

The homophobic one about AIDS was from a troll / parody account. Look at the spelling of the surname.

What's interesting to me is that in America, which does have pretty strong First Amendment protections, also has statutes for phone harassment:

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/telephone-harassment-sta...

> Telephone harassment is defined in many different ways. For example, while most states require some level of intent to harass or annoy, a few require only that the communication in fact harasses or that a reasonable person would expect it to harass...Telephone harassment often includes the following actions: calling repeatedly, anonymously or at inconvenient hours; causing the phone to ring continuously; using obscene language; or failing to hang up the phone. It can also include falsely stating that a family member of the recipient is injured or dead, or threatening to injure the recipient or a family member.

I support the non-guilty verdict here, but would someone be able to allege harassment over Twitter on the basis that it is similar to the statues on phone harassment (at least in America)? The argument is less about the content of the message and more about the annoying nature of repeated "notifications".

Phones are not a pub-sub system like Twitter is. Once you block someone, there is no way they can contact you directly. You have to go and read their Tweets in some manner to see what they are saying.

Stephanie Guthrie was appears to have been literally trying to sue this guy because he called her mean names (for which she blocked him), and was using a hashtag that she liked to search on. Apparently, Tweets from people you have blocked are still visible if they are using a hashtag that you search on. This could possibly be a technical limitation – it's not like Google gives you an option (apart from SafeSearch) to filter sites you may be offended by. Come to think of it, this is literally like trying to sue someone for putting up a site indexed by Google that may come up for search terms you use.

So I would say the case for being similar to repeated phone calls is invalid.

> Once you block someone, there is no way they can contact you directly.

Most carriers allow you to blacklist phone numbers (although that very well may not have been the case when those laws were written).

And all of them allow you to set your number to private, so that the receiver doesn't see it.

Well consider this example (idk how similar it is to the case in the article)

    @abc, 11:10  Yay football #superbowl #football
    @xyz, 11:11  abc sucks #superbowl #football
    @abc, 13:20  I just had potato soup for breakfast #soup #breakfast #goodmorning
    @xyz, 13:21  Wow I really don't like abc #soup #breakfast #goodmorning

Imagine months of that

so ?

not only you can block but you can also mute

block and mute someone on twitter and whatever the hashtag they use, or if they reply to you, even trough other persons

you will not see a single line of theirs

Could you mute back in 2012, when this case started?

Doesn't matter you are using Twitter you don't like the content stop using it, 99% of the Internet is offensive to some one that doesn't mean it's harassment this is like sueing Google for presenting you results which you might not like.

Previous (short) discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10954709

Ridiculous, Canada. The "Language Police" literally exist.

Except the verdict was not guilty, thankfully.

It shouldn't have even gone this far.

He lost his job, was banned from using PC and internet during the trial, etc..

He was jailed, forbidden from using the internet, subjected to a multi-year legal nightmare, left with a six-figure legal fee, and made a target of aggression for rabid feminists worldwide.

The article doesn't say any of that - cite please?

"He had more problems than a charge of criminal harassment. According to Gregory Elliott’s son, Clayton, the Canadian courts initially sought to detain him for the duration of his trial. This would have seen him jailed for more than three years. Eventually, the Crown was persuaded to grant bail, although, as part of his bail conditions, Elliott was prohibited from using “the internet and any device with access to the internet.” A graphics designer by trade, this was crippling to his career. Before he even had a chance to figure out how to continue doing his job of 17 years with these restrictive bail conditions, he was fired without cause. Forced to withdraw his pension early, the 55-year old father of four has spent more than $50,000 in legal fees, and still owes a further $40,000."

Also they falsely accused him as pedophile (while they knew he was not guilty for what they were accusing him).

One of many sources : http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/11/19/a-life-ruined-by-fe...

Christie Blatchford's coverage of this case is essential reading, IMO: http://news.nationalpost.com/tag/gregory-elliott

The briefs and the decision themselves are also worthwhile to read, here's the decision: http://www.canlii.org/en/on/oncj/doc/2016/2016oncj35/2016onc... Interestingly, there are a few mistakes regarding how twitter functions, and a tweet was falsely attributed to Elliot. This was noticed by the blogger over at genuinewitty.com, which also has more depth and detail in its research and coverage of the case (also essential reading, IMO).

Check your privilege shitlord!

Just kidding, but seriously, this kind of accusation has really terrible ramifications for the accused even if they're cleared. There really needs to be consequences for frivolous accusations to prevent things like this.

Yeah. For this kind of thing the process is the punishment. It should have been quashed at the outset by the first judge, leaving him out $500 or so in attorney's fees.

No more ridiculous than Ellen Pao's allegations of sexual harrassment.

Ellen Pao never claimed sexual harassment. She claimed workplace discrimination because of her gender. Being discriminated against after breaking off an affair is common. Think of how much most people like their exs. However, according to my lawyer friend, Pao had zero chance of legal victory.

>Ellen Pao never claimed sexual harassment

From her court documents:

"Plaintiff experienced continuing retaliation after she complained about sexual harrasment to the highest level of management at KPCB".

(in addition to discrimination at work because of her gender).

Feminist persecution.

Reminder that this has nothing to do with "free speech," and that celebrating the outcome of the trial for that is flawed reasoning.

Only if you have a narrow, pinched, legalistic definition of "free speech" which would be unrecognizable to any of the philosophers and statesmen who created our modern understanding of the concept.

If, for getting into an argument with certain people, you can be punished with being ostracized, fired, prevented from earning a living, demonized by the news media, and put through a years-long wringer in the courts, your freedom of speech is harmed even if at the end of it a judge says not guilty.

And still, nothing you said has anything to do with free speech.

> ostracized, fired, prevented from earning a living

…and if you force people to be in your company regardless of what you say does to those people, you've taken away their freedom of assembly.

Then it's a good thing that's not what I said, isn't it?

Not everything that's legal is right. A company that fires someone because they got in a Twitter argument on their own time is behaving legally, and an attempt to make such an action illegal would probably cause more problems than it solves. But a company that does such a thing would not be right.

That would depend on how what that person said affects their relationships with co-workers (e.g. someone went on a racist Twitter tirade that all their co-workers read, some of whom belong to groups they were disparaging)

Are you comfortable with your employer having the power to control what you say, in your free time, and not about said employer? Because that's what this boils down to. I would expect people who are skeptical about the great power that large corporations hold to oppose that kind of behavior.

I'm comfortable that my employer can terminate my employment should I alienate the people I work with to the point I can no longer carry out my job.

I hope for your sake that the political winds never blow a little differently, then.

An employer can already fire you for saying something in your free time. An employer can fire you for ANY reason, ANY, that doesn't violate civil rights. This is well known and no one is fighting for any laws to change this. This lawsuit is about harassment, not free speech, and celebrating (legal) "harassment" on the grounds of "free speech" is again, flawed reasoning.

"An employer can already fire you for saying something in your free time. An employer can fire you for ANY reason, ANY, that doesn't violate civil rights. This is well known and no one is fighting for any laws to change this."

Literally five replies ago in this very same comment chain, I stated that it was indeed completely legal for employers to behave in this fashion, and should continue to be so; I merely pointed out that it was not right.

"This lawsuit is about harassment, not free speech, and celebrating (legal) "harassment" on the grounds of "free speech" is again, flawed reasoning."

But this comment chain very definitely is about employers firing people for exercising their free speech, on their own time, not related to their employer. I don't think they should do that. What do you think?

I think you need to keep going with that train of thought. Is it morally right that an employer can fire someone they don't like? If it doesn't violate civil rights, it's 100% fine to me. What's the alternative? Should an employer NOT be allowed to fire someone they don't like? That sounds like very bad constraints on the employer. Should there be some protection system against specific reasons for terminating employees? It's not possible from a legal perspective, because you'd have to implement a law to protect every possible reason an employer would want to fire someone, all of which would trample the rights of the employer. Any employer is as free to fire someone for hate speech as the person is for supplying hate speech. It doesn't mean that either are free of consequences.

The employer controls the company. If keeping someone on board who has opposing views will lead to a worse company and more suffering, it would make moral sense to fire them.

Hopefully we've moved past the strawman of trying to make such political discrimination illegal. That being said...

You need to consider the long-term consequences of being comfortable with such behavior on the part of employers. If it's considered admirable to fire people with political views the employer does not approve of, as it is now, that simply makes the country's political divisions ever more extreme. If you work for Google you have to be a Democrat, if you work for McDonnell Douglas you have to be a Republican. Soon enough you won't be able to live in certain places if you have certain political opinions, because you won't be able to find anything more than menial employment. At best, we have two angry and completely distinct political sides, with absolutely no understanding of the other or willingness to compromise, staring at each other over state borders and fighting dirty for every nationwide policy. At worst... well, there's no limit to the "worst" part.

Now, consider the alternative philosophy: employers explicitly do not care about their employees' behavior on their private time as long as it doesn't involve the employer. Not only do we avoid political segregation, but under this scenario, you can hold whatever opinions you want, and you can get into endless meaningless flamewars with the other side on social media without worrying about retribution. I really have trouble understanding why anyone wouldn't prefer this to constantly having to look over your shoulder, wondering what your employer might think of your opinions.

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