By Johanna Kaiser, Development & Communications Associate
In this day and age, you’d be hard-pressed to find many people who don’t have a digital presence. Sure, you may not be on every social media network or even know what exactly your teens are using to chat with their friends constantly, but you probably email, catch up with old friends through Facebook, and maybe write a comment on a news story now and then. With just those activities, you spend enough time online to be concerned about a set of “computer crimes” bills moving through the General Assembly.
These bills aimed at "cyberharassment", online threats, "revenge porn," and unauthorized computer access do not aim squarely and narrowly for black hat hackers. Instead, these broadly worded bills have the potential to send the police knocking on your door for something as simple as retweeting a photo.
As our executive director Steven Brown points out in an op-ed in Sunday’s Providence Journal:
"Criminal activity conducted via computer should not be tolerated. But routinely turning to the criminal law and threatening people with prison to address all the issues raised by the new digital age is a dangerous mistake. These bills exemplify how it can chill freedom of speech and give the police vast discretion in determining who will and will not be subject to the long arm of the law."
You can read the full op-ed here and learn more about these bills on our Legislation page (H 5068; H 5458, S 0567 as amended; H 5467). Once you do, contact your legislators to tell them you don’t want your online speech criminalized.
