Sex offender asks Norway’s Supreme Court to declare social media access is a human right

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STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — A convicted sex offender is asking Norway's Supreme Court to declare access to social media a human right.

The case before the court on Thursday involved a man who molested a minor and used the messaging app Snapchat to communicate with young boys.

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The unnamed perpetrator was sentenced last year to 13 months in prison and banned from using Snapchat for two years.

His lawyers say depriving him of his account is illegal under the European Convention on Human Rights.

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The case revolves around how important social media is to freedom of expression, although the court must decide the issue through the laws that preceded such sites.

Defense lawyer John Christian Elden said: “The case raises important questions about the extent to which the state can restrict access to social media platforms, which are important tools for exercising the right to freedom of expression and maintaining social connections.”

A November 2023 appeal against the ban failed, with the state successfully arguing that the ban was “measured proportionately to the fact that the defendant used Snapchat to sexually exploit children.” The Court of Appeal added that he was still entitled to use other social media. If the Supreme Court also upholds the decision, the offender can try to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

The European Convention has been used before to test the limits on Norwegian justice. Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in 2011, lost a court appeal in February in which he argued that holding him in solitary confinement while serving a prison sentence amounted to inhuman punishment under the convention.

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Signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights agree to abide by 18 articles that guarantee the rights of citizens including life, liberty and freedom of expression. Norway was the second country to ratify the Convention in 1952, after the United Kingdom.

Snapchat, run by Snap Inc., allows users to send and receive messages that disappear once they've been read. Users can also physically locate other users who have subscribed to location tracking.

Snap prohibits the sexual exploitation of children on the app but allows the creation of anonymous accounts. “When we disable accounts for sexual exploitation and grooming behavior, we also take steps to prevent the associated device and other accounts associated with the user from creating another Snapchat account,” an email said.

Snap disabled 343,865 accounts linked to child sexual exploitation in the second half of 2023. It imposed sanctions on 879 accounts in Norway although it is not clear how many were permanently disabled.

The Norwegian court is scheduled to issue its ruling in the coming weeks.

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