Think Before You Tweet
A former teacher turned radio commentator and a math tutor who lives with his mother sit in a prison in southern Mexico, facing possible 30-year sentences for terrorism and sabotage in what may be the most serious charges ever brought against anyone using a Twitter social network account.
Prosecutors say the defendants helped cause a chaos of car crashes and panic as parents in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz rushed to save their children because of false reports that gunmen were attacking schools.
The interior secretary for Veracruz state, compared the panic to that caused by Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.” But he said the fear roused by that account of a Martian invasion of New Jersey “was small compared to what happened here.”
“Here, there were 26 car accidents, or people left their cars in the middle of the streets to run and pick up their children, because they thought these things were occurring at their kids’ schools.”
The charges say the messages caused such panic that emergency numbers “totally collapsed because people were terrified,” damaging service for real emergencies.
In the state’s largest city, and the neighboring suburb were already on edge after weeks of gunbattles involving drug traffickers. One attack occurred on a major boulevard. In another, gunmen tossed a grenade outside the city aquarium, killing an tourist and seriously wounding his wife and their two young children.
On Aug. 25, nerves were further frayed when residents saw armed convoys of marines circulating on the streets, making some think a confrontation with gangs was imminent.
That is when a low-paid tutor at several private schools, allegedly opened the floodgates of fear with repeated messages that gunmen were taking children from schools.
“My sister-in-law just called me all upset, they just kidnapped five children from the school,” was tweeted.
In fact, no such kidnappings occurred that day. Defense lawyer said the rumors already had started and that she was just relaying what others told him. She said he never claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the incident.
But in a subsequent tweet about the kidnap rumor, he said, “I don’t know what time it happened, but it’s true.” He also tweeted that three days earlier, “they mowed down six kids between 13 and 15 in the neighborhood.” While a similar attack occurred, it didn’t involve children.
Prosecutors say the rumors were also sent by a person who has worked as a teacher, a state arts official and a radio commentator. She says she was just relaying such messages to her own Twitter followers.
“How can they possibly do this to me, for re-tweeting a message? I mean, it’s 140 characters. It’s not logical.’”
Online petitions are circulating to demand her release, and the pair’s cause has been taken up by human rights groups that call the charges exaggerated. Amnesty International says officials are violating freedom of expression and it blames the panic on the uncertainty many Mexicans feel amid a drug war in which more than 35,000 people have died over the past five years.
“The lack of safety creates an atmosphere of mistrust in which rumors that circulate on social networks are part of people’s efforts to protect themselves, since there is very little trustworthy information,” Amnesty wrote in a statement on the case.
In violence-wracked cities in the northern state, citizens and even authorities have used Twitter and Facebook to warn one another about shootouts.
She said her 48-year-old son still lives at her house with his girlfriend. She said he told her that had posted his messages after the panic had already started.
“He told me “Mom, I didn’t start any of this, I just transmitted what I was told.”
“He used the computer, but I swear that my son never wanted to do anybody harm, or start a revolution, like they say he did.”
Twitter users must learn “not to believe everything, and simply take the Twitter messages as an indication that some (report) is making the rounds.”
But the real problem appears to be that governments cannot prevent drug cartel violence or even accurately inform citizens about it. Local news media are often so battered by kidnappings and killings of reporters that, in many states, they are loath to report about it.
“These Twitter users had accounts with a few hundred followers. If these lies grew, it is not so much because they propagated them, but because here as in most of the rest of the country, there is such a lack of public safety that the public is inclined to believe unconfirmed acts of violence … The government doesn’t make clear what is happening.”
It appears one of the most serious sets of charges ever brought for sending or resending Twitter messages.