A 19-year-old Ottawa man has been arrested for “posting numerous threats on Twitter,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police say.
According to a press release Tuesday, the arrest comes after the RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) was told on Nov. 8 about “death and terrorism-related threats” that a Twitter user was posting.
“The threats targeted Parliament Hill, the Department of Defence, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, as well as the Embassy of the United States of America in Ottawa,” the release said.
The RCMP press release identified the accused as Daniel Houde, adding that he was “taken into custody” and later “released on conditions.”
Court documents, which were obtained by Global News, detail the threats Houde is charged with making on Twitter.
The documents allege the Ottawa man threatened to cause death or bodily harm to members of Parliament, as well as U.S. and Chinese embassy staff.
In addition to that, he allegedly threatened to use homemade dirty bombs to destroy the Department of National Defence building in Ottawa and the U.S. embassy building. Houde is also charged in relation to threats to use explosives to destroy Parliament.
Finally, the documents allege the man threatened to burn and destroy the Chinese embassy using jet fuel and a single match.
“All threats” are “taken seriously” — and this includes “tweets on social media,” according to Staff Sgt. Pascal Herbert of INSET.
“This file demonstrates how communication between departments plays a key role in keeping our communities safe,” Herbert added in the release.
The Ottawa man has been charged with four counts of a “terrorist hoax,” four counts of knowingly uttering a threat to “cause death or bodily harm to a person,” and knowingly uttering a threat to “burn, destroy and damage real property.”
Terrorism charges in Canada are “rare,” according to Stephanie Carvin, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) analyst who now teaches at Carleton University.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out,” she said.
Overall, Carvin said it is “positive” to see the police take online threat activity “more seriously.”
However, she noted that recent changes at Twitter with its blue subscription feature, which allows anyone to pay US$8 a month to have their content featured more prominently, could breed more misinformation online.
“So if anything, Twitter has moved backwards rather than forwards in terms of its actual hosting of misinformation, disinformation. And it’s going to be interesting to see how this works in terms of criminal content.”
Houde is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 18.
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