The state of Tennessee has been working hard recently to make their laws more applicable to the internet age, but the latest revision to legislation regarding electronic communications is raising the eyebrows of constitutional scholars.
Last week, Tennessee governor Bill Haslam signed a bill that makes it illegal to intentionally post an image that will “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” without having a good reason to do so.
And the transmission doesn’t have to be one-to-one communication, like email. The image posting could take place on a social network, web forum, or on any web page.
This basically means that all of those people who like to visit social sites to post dead animal pictures or religious and political satire which is often construed as offensive might want to put their lawyer on speed dial. Even posting an embarrassing picture of a friend on Facebook could conceivably get you into legal trouble, as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh note in a post about the legislation.
In fact, the revised bill is so broad that you don’t even have to be looking to harass a specific person in order to be charged with a crime.
“[F]or image postings, the ‘emotionally distressed’ individual need not be the intended recipient. Anyone who sees the image is a potential victim,” Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica points out. “If a court decides you ‘should have known’ that an image you posted would be upsetting to someone who sees it, you could face months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.”
How anyone decided that this legislation is a good idea is a complete mystery to me. There is such a broad spectrum of what any given human being can potentially find frightening, intimidating, and distressing that it is inconceivable to me how this could ever work.
As one commenter on Volokh’s blog says, the law itself is so distressing and offensive to constitutional rights advocates, that a posted image of it could be a violation.
