Of Tweets, Twits and Threats

Last Friday the Globe and Mail carried a piece about how authorities here in Canada are dealing with threats made using the internet. In a somewhat confused article the question was raised as to whether our Criminal Code should distinguish between threats made using the internet and those conveyed elsehow. Currently the applicable provision is s.264.1 of the Code:

(1) Every one commits an offence who, in any manner, knowingly utters, conveys or causes any person to receive a threat

(a) to cause death or bodily harm to any person;
(b) to burn, destroy or damage real or personal property; or
(c) to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that is the property of any person.

(Since when is a bird not an animal?)

A thought in the article seemed to be that because the internet makes it easier to disseminate a threat (and perhaps because people seem to feel less responsibility when communicating via the internet) this section is somehow inapt to deal with the rising number of complaints about threatening behaviour. Are there features of this provision that you find to be incompetent to deal with threats delivered via social media or email?

Clearly some jurisdictions have felt that the medium is at least as important as the message. Britain, for example, has the Communications Act 2003, section 127 of which makes it an offence if a person

(1) (a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character;

This is the section under which the man was charged recently who tweeted “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I am blowing the airport sky high!!” Understood by pretty much everyone to be a (bad) joke, the man was nevertheless prosecuted and convicted. As it happens, the Divisional Court in England reversed the conviction a month ago (Chambers v. D.P.P. [2012] EWHC 2157 (QB)), finding that

on an objective assessment, the decision of the Crown Court that this “tweet” constituted or included a message of a menacing character was not open to it.

Simply put, no reasonable person would — or did — regard this as a seriously meant.