Cyber-assisted suicide prevention law is needed
By Dr. Frank Kardasz
The tragic story of a 19 year old Miami man who committed suicide while others watched via Internet web cameras was not an isolated incident. A nearly identical situation occurred in Phoenix, Arizona several years ago.
Occasionally the police receive information that someone in cyberspace is threatening suicide. Often the information is provided anonymously and with no follow-up information other than the screen name or email address of the suicidal person. Fortunately, while many people on the Internet contemplate suicide as a cry for help, only a few actually complete the sad act.
Law enforcement is unable to investigate all of the many cyberspace suicide threats. Police are hampered not only by the shortage of investigators but also by the lack of a law that gives them jurisdiction. Some states laws require that a criminal act must be under investigation before a subpoena can be issued to trace through the Internet service provider to the computer connected to the Internet. Suicide is not a crime in many places and many people believe that suicide by an adult is a personal choice that should not be legislated. In the case of adults it is difficult for law enforcement officers to prevent a determined person from suicide. Many suicidal persons are convinced by authorities to voluntarily surrender themselves to mental health counseling for treatment.
The situation is different when the person threatening suicide is a minor. Because of immaturity a minor is legally incapable of making an informed decision to end his or her life. For minors, law enforcement has a legitimate interest in preventing the suicide but still sometimes lacks the legal ability to investigate.
Suicide-prevention cyberspace emergency law is needed
In threatened cyber-assisted suicide cases investigators are caught between the mandate to preserve human life and the lack of legislation allowing them to effectively investigate. I recommend the creation of a law that would help the police locate and assist suicidal minors by mandating cooperation from Internet service providers.
Here is some draft language for legislators to consider:
Electronic Communications Emergency Exception Regarding Threatened Suicide Involving Minors
If, while using electronic communications a person identifying himself as a minor threatens suicide, law enforcement may request subscriber information about the person from electronic communications service providers (also known as Internet service providers). The electronic communications service providers will provide subscriber information about the person threatening suicide when law enforcement states that there is reasonable suspicion to believe that the suicidal person is a minor. Internet service providers and electronics communications providers doing business in (name your jurisdiction) are required to comply.
Although the law probably would not have helped in the Miami nor Phoenix cases it may help law enforcement officers in the future when they are confronted with calls from citizens informing them of minors threatening suicide on the Internet.
-----------------------------------------------------
Kin outraged, distraught over teen's cyber suicide
By Rasha Madkour, Associated Press, 11/2/09
Miami, Florida – The family of a college student who killed himself live on the Internet say they're horrified his life ended before a virtual audience, and infuriated that viewers of the live webcam or operators of the Web site that hosted it didn't act sooner to save him.
Only after police arrived to find Abraham Biggs dead in his father's bed did the Web feed stop Wednesday — 12 hours after the 19-year-old Broward College student first declared on a Web site that he hated himself and planned to die.
"It didn't have to be," said the victim's sister, Rosalind Bigg. "They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours." Biggs announced his plans to kill himself over a Web site for bodybuilders, authorities said. He posted a link from there to Justin.tv, a site that allows users to broadcast live videos from their webcams.
A computer user who claimed to have watched said that after swallowing some pills, Biggs went to sleep and appeared to be breathing for a few hours while others cracked jokes.
Some members of his virtual audience encouraged him to do it, others tried to talk him out of it, and some discussed whether he was taking a dose big enough to kill himself, said Wendy Crane, an investigator with the Broward County medical examiner's office.
Some users told investigators they did not take him seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before. Eventually, someone notified the moderator of the bodybuilding site, who traced Biggs' location and called police, Crane said. The drama unfolded live on Justin.tv, which allows viewers to post comments alongside the video images.
As police entered the room, the audience's reaction was filled with Internet shorthand: "OMFG," one wrote, meaning "Oh, my God." Others, either not knowing what they were seeing, or not caring, wrote "lol," which means "laughing out loud," and "hahahah."
His father, Abraham Biggs Sr., told The Miami Herald he didn't want to watch the video. "We were very good friends," he said. "It's wrong that it was allowed to happen."
An autopsy concluded Biggs died from a combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, which his family said was prescribed for his bipolar disorder.
"Abe, i still wish this was all a joke," a friend wrote on the teenager's MySpace page, which he described himself as a goodhearted guy who would always be available for his pals, no matter what time of day.
In a statement, Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel said: "We regret that this has occurred and want to respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time."
It is unclear how many people watched it happen. The Web site would not say how many people were watching the broadcast. The site as a whole had 672,000 unique visitors in October, according to Nielsen.
Biggs was not the first person to commit suicide with a webcam rolling. But the drawn-out drama — and the reaction of those watching — was seen as an extreme example of young people's penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the Internet.
Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said Biggs' very public suicide was not shocking, given the way teenagers chronicle every facet of their lives on sites like Facebook and MySpace.
"If it's not recorded or documented then it doesn't even seem worthwhile," she said. "For today's generation it might seem, `What's the point of doing it if everyone isn't going to see it?'"
She likened Biggs' death to other public ways of committing suicide, like jumping off a bridge.
Crane said she knows of a case in which a Florida man shot himself in the head in front of an online audience, though she didn't know how much viewers saw.
In Britain last year, a man hanged himself while chatting online.
Miami lawyer William Hill said there is probably nothing that could be done legally to those who watched and did not act. As for whether the Web site could be held liable, Hill said there doesn't seem to be much of a case for negligence.
"There could conceivably be some liability if they knew this was happening and they had some ability to intervene and didn't take action," said Hill, who does business litigation and has represented a number of Internet-based clients. But "I think it would be a stretch."
Condolences poured into Biggs' MySpace page, where the mostly unsmiling teen is seen posing in a series of pictures with various young women. On the bodybuilding Web site, Biggs used the screen name CandyJunkie. His Justin.tv alias was "feels_like_ecstacy."
Bigg described her brother as an outgoing person who struck up conversations with Starbucks baristas and enjoyed taking his young nieces to Chuck E. Cheese. He was health-conscious and exercised but was not a bodybuilder, she said.
"This is very, very sudden and unexpected for us," the sister said. "It boggles the mind. We don't understand."
Associated Press Writers Jessica Gresko and Lisa Orkin Emmanuel and the AP News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.
Retrieved November 22, 2008 from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081122/ap_on_re_us/webcam_suicide