U.K. police struggle to curb internet trolls despite tougher laws

Sitting in a quiet Brighton pub, Nicola Brookes brushes back her hair, cautiously glancingdown at her phone in anticipation of the next cruel message.

For five years, the 48-year-old says, she has experienced constant abuse frominternet trollswho attack her on everything from her age to the way she looks.

She says that someone even stole her Facebook profile photo and personal information tocreate a fake profile that accuses her of being a pedophile.

As a result, she says she received death threats.

"People were saying they would find me and cut me open," says Brookes. "People wantedto burn me alive because they thought I was a pedophile."

The harassment began in 2011, after Brookes commented on a Facebook post about thepopular U.K. talent show The XFactor, telling a young contestant named Frankie Cocozza toignore the hateful comments from the "scum" online after he chose to leave the show.

Within a few short days, the aggressive comments aimed at Brookes spread from the XFactor page to hundreds of other Facebook pages.

"There were some pages I flat-out refused to go on because of the stuff they were sayingabout me. It overwhelms you."

According to new figures from the U.K. Ministry of Justice, Brookes isn't alone. In fact, Britishpolice are struggling to cope with a growing number of crimes perpetrated on Facebook andTwitter.

There were more than 16,000 crime reports involving the two social media giants last yearalone, according to statistics obtained by the U.K. Press Association under the Freedom ofInformation Act.

The numbers suggest the government is cracking down on internet trolls who maliciouslyabuse social media users. In 2014, there were 1,209 court rulings related to Section 127 ofthe Communications Act, as well as 694 people convicted under the similar MaliciousCommunications Act.

Offences under the two acts can range from sendinggrossly offensive or menacing messages to persistently causing anxiety via an electronicnetwork.

The U.K. has seen several high-profile trolling cases in the past few years. One of the mostinfamous involved PeterNunn,a 34-year-old Bristol man, who was sentenced to 18weeks behind bars after criticizing a social media campaign to replace Charles Darwin's facewith Jane Austen's on the 10 bank note.

Nunn retweeted rape threats while at the same time tweeting his own comments about thewomen leading the campaign, British member of Parliament Stella Creasy and activistCaroline Criado-Perez.

Nunn called feminists "witches," and his most infamous tweetdescribed the "best way to rape a witch."

Nunn told CBC News that he regretted that "some of my tweets could have been seen asmisogynistic," but added that he made the comments to defend his free speech.

In order to preserve freedom of speech online, Nunn says the internet should be beyond thereach of the law.

"I think historically, the internet has done a really good job at policing itself," Nunn says.

Difficult to define

He also believes that online harassment is difficult to define. "I think all too often, peopleare too quick to kind of become a victim and say, 'Well, I'm being harassed.'"

Nunn saysabsolute free speech should exist online, and social media users should use the tools at theirdisposal to avoid harassment.

"On Twitter, you have a block button. If you come into contact with someone who you feelthreatened or harassed by, you can block them."

A decade ago, someone like Nunn might not have been charged, considering therewere only 143 convictions under Section 127 of the Communications Act in 2004. Thatnumber has increased greatlyover just 10 years.

Lillian Edwards, professor of internet law at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, saysthisrise in trolling convictionscan be attributed to an increasedawareness of online crime and not necessarily to the laws in place.

"Online harassment, online trolling, revenge porn, all these kind of things, people are moreaware of it, they're reporting it more, they're not tolerating it as much," Edwards says.

Edwards says the increased awareness about online harassment can be compared to that ofdomestic violence. She says it doesn't mean that there is more of it now, just that it's being recognized more frequently as a crime.

No Canadian statistics

Unlike the U.K., Canada doesn't keep statistics about convictions related specifically to onlineharassment. According to Allen Mendelsohn, a specialist in Canadian internet law, Canadadoesn't have specific laws aimed at combating online harassment, either, although it may inthe future.

"There have been attempts to enact such a law," says Mendelsohn. "That said, it doesn'tmean these cases do not proceed. They proceed under existing laws."

The U.K.'s anti-harassment laws have created a wealth of complaints ofcriminal acts, making it difficultfor the police to prosecute everyone. But the British government has shown its commitment todeterring trolls by increasing the maximum prison sentence from six months to two years.

This hasn't had an impact, however, on cases like that ofBrookes.

Facebook forced to open up

In 2012, before the explosion of reported Facebook-related crime, Brookes took legal actionagainst her trolls, winning a landmark case against Facebook and forcing it to releaseinformation about the accounts involved.

She has submitted hundreds of pages of evidence to the police. However, not one of herattackers has been convicted. And the trolls still torment her.

The lack of action has made her question the police and government's handling of onlineharassment. "It raises serious questions about the justice system, and about the way policegather evidence, and the way they ignore evidence," says Brookes.

Mendelsohn says the problem is that the law is always several years behind the technology.

"As soon as you write a law that's sort of working on Facebook and Twitter harassment,there is going to be a new type of online harassment in five years or even a month later."