Court rules Twitter can’t be blamed for ISIS attacks

Islamic State may have used its access to Twitter to spread its message of terrorism and recruit new members, but that doesn’t make the social media company legally responsible for the deaths of two Americans in an ISIS-linked attack in Jordan, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Wednesday.

Lawyers for the widows of the two men argued in their lawsuit that Twitter had been essential to the emergence of the terror group and bore some responsibility for the deadly consequences.

“Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the suit said.

The Americans, Lloyd Fields Jr. and James Creach, were former police officers working for U.S. companies training law enforcement officers in Jordan. They were among five people shot to death in November 2015 by a Jordanian

police captain, later identified as a member of an Islamic State terror cell. Islamic State said it was responsible for killing the “American crusaders.”

Their wives, Tamara Fields of Florida and Heather Creach of Virginia, sued Twitter in its home city of San Francisco, saying the instantmessaging company had knowingly allowed ISIS to thrive through its service and should be held responsible for attacks it could have foreseen.

As an example of the Twitter activity, the women’s lawyers showed a snapshot of an undated tweet, allegedly from Islamic State, that declared “there is no life without jihad.” As of December 2014, the suit said, the terror group had 70,000 Twitter accounts, of which 79 were “official” Islamic State accounts. Only recently, the lawyers said, had Twitter changed its rules to prohibit threats of violence or terrorism and ordered the suspension of accounts promoting terrorism.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the suit failed to show a direct connection between Islamic State’s use of Twitter and the fatal attack.

“At most, the (suit) establishes that Twitter’s alleged provision of material support to ISIS facilitated the organization’s growth and ability to plan and execute terrorist acts,” Judge Milan Smith said in the 3-0 ruling, which upheld a federal judge’s dismissal of the suit earlier.

“But the (suit) does not articulate any connection between Twitter’s provision of this aid and (the women’s) injuries” from their husbands’ deaths or any connection between the gunman and Twitter, Smith said. He said a federal law allowing suits against those who aid in terrorist acts does not apply to a communications network whose use might make such attacks “foreseeable.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online privacy organization in San Francisco, filed arguments supporting Twitter, saying that Internet users “have a First Amendment right to receive information, including speech about terrorism.”

Joshua Arisohn, a lawyer for the two women, criticized the ruling.

“Twitter knowingly provided social media accounts to ISIS, and ISIS used those accounts to recruit thousands of new members, to fundraise millions of dollars and to spread its vile propaganda around the world,” he said.

Requiring proof of a more direct connection to a particular attack, he said, contradicts the law’s goal of “holding enablers of terrorists accountable.”