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Jefferson County Sheriff Reggie Marinelli is on a mission to head off shootings like the one at Evergreen High School in September, when a student gravely injured two classmates before killing himself. Marinelli wants a new Colorado law that requires social media companies to respond more quickly when authorities want digital information on users posting violent or threatening content.
In July, well before the shooting, the Anti-Defamation League, which investigates and tracks disturbing online content, spotted posts from a user that included violence, gore, and extremist ideologies. As is often the case, the group wasn’t able to identify the person behind the posts, who turned out to be the Evergreen shooter.
“The reality is, a lot of some of the sort of most explicit threats that we may come across online, we don't always know specifically who it is to be able to reach out,” said the ADL’s Oren Segel.
The group passed the tip on to the FBI’s New York office, which deemed it a viable threat and issued search warrants to social media companies to obtain the user’s IP address, a unique number that links a person to online activity.
The problem was, according to Sheriff Marinelli, companies have up to 35 days to respond to warrants, and often multiple warrants are needed to trace the user, which can drag out the process for months. Marinelli wants Colorado lawmakers to pass a new law that requires social media companies to respond to warrants in a matter of days, not weeks or months.
“Had the process [been] sped up and we actually were able to identify the shooter, could we have actually saved him from himself?” Marinelli thinks so. “But at this point in time, we weren't given that opportunity.”
The Jefferson County sheriff said there’s already a high bar to obtain these search warrants, which makes quicker response times imperative.
“When we put in a search warrant, we have to have probable cause … and then a judge has to agree with us to actually issue the search warrant,” Marinelli noted. “It's not just a whim that we go and start asking for people's information. There has to be a reason we're asking for it.”
While Marinelli is advocating for a new Colorado law, she doesn’t intend to stop there. The Jefferson County Sheriff plans to advocate for a national law, which she said would be far more effective.
“It doesn't do us any good if Colorado changes our law and we have a 24-hour turnaround, but the state of Utah or the state of New Mexico or even New York still has that 30 to 35 day turnaround,” Marinelli said. “It's not gonna benefit the totality of it because we don't live in a society anymore that is bordered by your state lines.”
Colorado lawmakers considered a similar approach last spring as part of a larger bill to regulate social media, which Governor Jared Polis ended up vetoing because of other provisions in the bill that he objected to. California recently enacted a similar law to the one Marinelli is advocating for.
