Mexican citizens held for ‘Twitter terrorism’

Two Mexican citizens were arrested in Veracruz for  reporting on Twitter something they heard,  that a drug gang had attacked a primary school and conducted a kidnapping. It turns out that the report was untrue and caused a panic and over twenty car accidents as parents rushed to get their kids out of class.

The government blamed the two for causing the panic and charged them with terrorism that carries a sentence of two to 30 years. As Arthur Bright points out in a commentary for the Citizen Media Law Project, criminalizing citizen reports on the social media is not a wise thing to do especially in a country that suffers from lawlessness and a dearth of accurate reporting. -db

From a commentary for the Citizen Media Law Project, September 8, 2011 by Arthur Bright.

Full story