Widow of American Killed in Jordan Sues Twitter for Aiding ISIS

According to the lawsuit, the Islamic State took responsibility for the attack.

A Florida-based woman has filed a lawsuit against the micro-blogging site Twitter, accusing the firm of supporting the global spread of Islamic State (IS) by enabling its followers to recruit on its social media platform.

A law professor at the University of Notre Dame and former US Treasury Department official, Jimmy Gurule said that it is quite sure that social media do play a significant role in helping ISIS recruit foreign fighters.

Arab Bank settled its case in August. This material support has been instrumental to the rise of ISIS and has enabled it to carry out numerous terrorist attacks. Or that the defendant’s conduct led directly to an extremist attack? He concluded the causation standard isn’t as high as Arab Bank argued it was. Fields has filed a lawsuit at the California federal court claiming undetermined sum of money as compensation for the damages.

Tamara Fields wrote that she and her husband believed his assignment in Jordan was safe because the country is a USA ally.

Twitter said the lawsuit is meritless.

There’s no evidence that Twitter software or networks were used in the planning of the attack, and Shields’ lawsuit does not make that claim. “Plaintiffs are not required to prove that defendant’s alleged unlawful acts were the sole cause of their injuries; nor do plaintiffs need to eliminate all other possible causes of injury”.

“But Congress did not intend to give companies like Twitter a get out of jail free card when they knowingly hand over powerful communications tools to designated terrorist organisations so that they can recruit, fundraise and spread propaganda”.

In an e-mail too Bloomberg, the micro-blogging firm said it believes the lawsuit is without merit, but also expressed grief on hearing about the family’s bad loss.

It’s against Twitter’s policies to “make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism”, and the social network regularly suspends accounts that support the terrorist organization – including at least 1,000 accounts between September and December 2014, according to a Brookings Institution paper.

“But at the end of the day, is there a sufficient nexus between ISIS’ use of Twitter and acts of terror?”

Anneliese Mahoney is Lead Editor at Law Street and a CT transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues.

Twitter was recently accused of “racism” after allegedly suspending the account of an innocent man after they mistook him for ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. No one in social media or government is thinking about our future generation, our children.