What if the law could hold social media giants accountable? 

This week, I’m joined by Yair Cohen, the social media lawyer and founder of Cohen Davis Solicitors, who spent 25 years fighting online abuse and harassment. From making history with a Facebook disclosure order to representing the victim in the infamous Sweet Bobby catfishing case, aired on Netflix, Yair shares how he’s reshaping internet law to protect victims of online anonymity.

If you care about justice in the digital age, this episode is a must. Listen now to hear how he’s shaping the future of the internet.

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Yair discussing:

– The First Facebook Disclosure Order

– Representing Victims of Catfishing Such as the Sweet Bobby Case

– Yair’s Perspective and Vision of Future Internet Policing

– Achieving Personal Growth Through Changing Environments

– AI and How it Factors Into the Future of the Legal Industry

Connect with Yair here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/cohenyair

Transcript

Yair Cohen  0:00  

How do we want society to function now and in the future, particularly with AI, we need to have a police station on the internet. The police need to move online and take it very, very seriously. I’m really, really hoping to be able to influence the future policing of the Internet if we want to reduce the amount of crime or the amount of offensive and abusive or unlawful behaviour, let’s make it easier for people to find out who’s behind those poses on today’s

Robert Hanna  0:31  

legally speaking podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Yair Cohen. Yair is a leading expert in internet law with 25 years of experience protecting victims of online abuse and harassment. The founder of Cohen Davis solicitors, Yair has been exposing and challenging the failures of the criminal justice system. He made history as the first lawyer to obtain a disclosure order from Facebook, settling a legal precedent in the fight against online abuse in the widely publicised sweet Bobby case on Netflix. Yaya represented the victim of a cat fishing scandal spanning over a decade. Yaya is also the author of the net is closing birth of the E police. So a very big,

Yair Cohen  1:10  

warm welcome, Yaya. Nice to meet you, Rob. Nice to be here. Oh, it’s

Robert Hanna  1:15  

an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. And before we dive into all your amazing experiences and what you’re getting up to in and around the legal community. We do have a customary icebreaker question here on the legally speaking podcast, which is on the scale of one to 1010, being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of reality of the law? If you’ve seen it, I have

Yair Cohen  1:37  

seen it. Fife. Has it happened? I have a lot of dealings with the attorneys in the United States, because a lot of our work is done over there. Yeah, it’s about five to six, yeah, and

Robert Hanna  1:52  

that’s what I rate it, and I like that. And so we’re aligned, we can move swiftly on to talk all about you. So would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey?

Yair Cohen  2:01  

Yeah, I actually became a lawyer by almost an accident. I came to the UK, having travelled the world for a few years, met my then wife in Guatemala, and I was living with an Indian tribe there for nearly six months. Yeah, I decided to go and study law. At one point I realised how expensive things were here, and I mean, we’re talking about 30 years ago, so I was thinking, how can I pay for my education? And somebody bought me a said, Look, you know, you’ve got to buy a personal computer, which was a bit of a novelty at the time. We had some computers at university, and about got his computer, and he bought me a present coding it was, if you if anyone is old enough to remember the dummy series, it was HTML coding for dummies and one of those things. And I learned how to code websites. They were absolute rubbish at the time, but they were good enough for back then. I started to knock on doors of restaurants and hotels, particularly the Jewish and Israeli. Gold is green, where, naturally I landed, coming from Israel, and convinced them, try to convince them they needed a website. And it was a hard sell. Creating those websites created a little e commerce. E commerce wasn’t even invented by then, the phrase didn’t exist. So I remember taking orders from Brooklyn to a kosher hotel in gold is green. I had to buy a fax machine to get this whole does anyone know what a fax machine

Robert Hanna  3:35  

either? I remember having a fax machine because at my grandfather’s law firm when I was a very, very young. There were faxes coming in, and I was in charge of sort of circulating them around. But I love the message you mentioned in there, because I always say Done is better than perfect. Perfect never gets done. And like you said, regarding those those websites and getting on with it. So I guess fast forward then from there, you are a social media lawyer. We can’t live in a world where we can’t really be engaged in some capacity when it comes to social media, so that’s why we’re keen to really have the conversation today. What really inspired you to focus your career on internet law, online disputes and defamation? Yeah,

Yair Cohen  4:11  

so one point I had to make a decision whether I continue pursuing my legal career or keep focusing on on web design and things like that. To continue with the with the law, I trained up as a criminal defence lawyer, and four or five years later, broadband became widely available, and people started to have problems on the internet, and nobody knew how to deal with them. Nobody really understood, no lawyers really understood how the Internet worked. And our friends from university were getting clients, were having all sorts of problems, also issues on the internet, and they remembered me as one, as a geek, you know, knew all about coding in that and I started to solve people’s issues in the very early days as a lawyer. And then 12 years ago, I decided to open a niche law firm just dealing with, not just dealing, but mainly for. Focusing on internet and social media, which was a bit of a novelty back then, was internet law focused. No, I mean, people didn’t really understand what it was about. You a lawyer on the internet. So no, I’m a lawyer dealing with internet problems. And from there, thing just kind of grew and developed. And one of the first cases was the very first disclosure application against Facebook. It was the very first time that Facebook or any other social media had to give out users information case that I worked on, and from there, it just, you know, through mainly word of mouth, I became that person that people go to with problems they were having online, internet, social media, pornography, harassment, all those sort of things. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  5:48  

and you touched on it there Facebook, when it was obviously called Facebook, you know, you made history as the first lawyer really to obtain disclosure order compelling Facebook to actually hand over user information, which is just, you know, staggering, if you think about it. And the velocity of that and this I understand, sets a real sort of significant legal precedent in the fight against, actually, the abuse of online anonymity, if I get my words out. So could you tell us more about that case as much as you can? Because I think our listeners be super interested. A

Yair Cohen  6:17  

lady called Nicola Brooks made a comment on Facebook about an X factor candidate, Frankie cocosa, his name was the allegation that he misbehaved, and she just defended him, and she started to get a barrage of abuse. I mean, she was a single mom, she was disabled, couldn’t leave home. Facebook was her entire life, pretty much, and she went to the police, and they just wouldn’t help her. And she tried to find someone to assist her, and no one was willing or able to do so. And I can agree to take on her case, and she had, like, folders full of printed versions of the abuse she suffered. And so I helped preparing the case, and the case went to the High Court. I think it was, if I remember today hearing with QC, as they were called back then, and Facebook was was ordered to, eventually to to provide this information. And as it turned out, one of the main abuser was the very same police officer that initially took the victim’s complaint in through the information received from Facebook, IP addresses, etc, it was possible to track him down.

Robert Hanna  7:33  

Yeah, no. And thank you for sharing that and all the great work you have done. Let’s move from Facebook now to Netflix. You know, a lot of our listeners, no doubt, are keen watches of Netflix. We’ve actually had Carol Baskin from Tiger King, which was huge during the lockdown. Days come on the show. But I want to talk about the sweet Bobby case. And so folks who may have seen that on Netflix, I’ve certainly seen it. You represented someone on that a victim of a sort of catfishing scam spanning over decades, is my understanding. So what was your reason behind representing them? And tell us as much as you can about that case, please. So

Yair Cohen  8:12  

the victim turned up in my office one day a company with with another lawyer, and found out later on that was in order to give us some credibility, because again, she came to the opposite boxes. This time wasn’t just a few folders, in a sense, with his bag, it was boxes of evidence. And she started telling me this story about being a victim of catfishing. I don’t think she actually used that phrase at the time, but she told me the story that she was being misled over a period of 10 years, somebody created an alternative reality for her. She was communicating with that person, believing that individual was, in fact, 30 or 40 or 50 different people, extraordinary. Unfortunately, the victim was was in a pretty bad shape at the time. Her confidence was very, very low. She spent 10 years believing that she was having a relationship with another man. And I said, Look, you know, I’ll take on your case. I mean, if there’s anything we can do, anything we can help here, we spend months going through the evidence. We began dealing with the case, and eventually the perpetrator accepted the liability and the case was eventually settled through legal proceedings. Yeah, and I

Robert Hanna  9:25  

want to kind of break that down as much as we can for our listeners, because, you know, there will be a keen interest here. People will probably either go and what sweet Bobby after this, or have seen it. And so, you know, we obviously have the jokey question at the start of the show about suits, but people actually would like to know sort of maybe a road map of the the case as much as you can. So, is it possible to sort of break down the case from that beginning like you did to ultimately outcome? What was the work up, I guess, involved in securing justice, which is what we obviously advocate for, for the victim,

Yair Cohen  9:55  

sort of, it is the victim. Uh, her name is kirat. She had the. Very good relationship with her cousin. Her name is Simran, who was, who was, I think, 10 years younger or 15. Simon was working Barclays Bank. Is very serious lady as an investment manager. And Simran, for some reason, started to create all those fictitious characters that were communicating with, with, with kirat, and you’re talking about people were getting shot and dying and being under police protection. I mean, it was, I mean, even, I mean, EastEnders could not have made something like this up. And the thing about this was that Simran, being the very being a very close friend of kirat, she was kind of supporting Kira through the process. And whenever Kira had any sort of doubt, she said, Look, something doesn’t really add up here, Simon would say, No, it’s okay. You know, the important thing about it, this all happened within the Sikh Indian community, with a very, very unique culture, and as I found it, you know, very close to kind of Jewish culture, in a way, a strong families, some some expectations that you get married. And eventually Simran pretended that she was this man called Bobby, and somehow she induced Kira into a relationship with Bobby, who was actually in America, and they were having, they’re having, a relationship that went on for a really long time. Eventually, kirat became very suspicious, and she hired a private investigator to go and see in, find out who this Bobby really is. And the private investigator came back. It’s, you know, this Bobby actually lives in Brighton. He lives in the UK. She said, wow, you know, that’s incredible. So she drove all the way to Brighton. She knocked on the door of this man with Bobby, and she said, Hey, Bobby, it’s me. Kirat. He said, What? Who are you? I’m going to call the police. I mean, this mad woman said, Don’t you remember me? I mean, come on, we’ve been talking for a decade now in Ivan, he’s threatened to call the police, and at that point, Kira realised that something really, really didn’t add up, and she went to the police station herself with the cousin, who kind of supported her, but eventually, as the police became involved in The matter, the cousin made a confession. It said, look, it was all me. And Kira was like, What do you mean? It was all, you know, 10 years of my life. It was you making all those sounds, all those voices, all those websites. That’s basically the story. It’s a story about the ability of the Internet to to create alternative reality for people. And sometimes this alternative reality is a good thing because it gives people somewhere to escape and company friendships. But at the same time, you could get a little bit nasty, as it happened in that case where the ability to create alternative reality, or parallel, almost parallel universe for people, could be abused and result in a decade wasted for the victim. Quite a unique case in that sense. But there are other cases of what we call catfishing, as someone pretend that they are somebody else in order to kind of hook the the victim. One of the unique things about is that the perpetrator created 30 or 40 different characters, and did manage to convince the victim that

Robert Hanna  13:32  

it was all true. And, yeah, I mean, I remember watching it, it was just shocking, really like that, like you say, the the voices and some of the intimate conversations that were just fictitious. And, you know, it’s crazy. And always say when it comes to being online, and for parents, you know, do your due diligence, stay safe, you know, really make sure that you are keeping as safe as possible. And obviously that’s something we strongly advocate for on the show, obviously, being on the social media streets, if you like. Let’s stick with catfishings. It is a big topic. You know, what’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced on a case like that, the sweet Bobby case, or others that you could share with us, particularly when it comes to catfishing, in terms of challenges, some

Yair Cohen  14:12  

of those cases are almost unbelievable. Literally. People just don’t believe that something that this could happen. So that’s a starting point to convince that this is actually a real thing. So the second thing is, there is a lot of victim blaming in those type of cases. How could you be so naive? How could you be so stupid? Sometimes people are saying but the thing is, anyone is susceptible to fraud, and catfishing is a form of fraud. Yeah, we’ve had cases where, one case, a school girl believed that she was having a relationship with someone in Spain, and she just, she just, she was so she got so involved, and she travelled all the way to Spain without her parents knowing about it, and when she turned up, there was no one there. And the next thing. It happened to receive the message say, haha, you know, victim blaming is a big thing. People, people don’t realise that they themselves could become victims, maybe not to this particular fraud, that people become to victims to all sorts of scams and all sorts of financial fraud and things like that. It’s getting those cases through the courts, yeah, the courts, particularly the high court, they it’s very kind of traditional you bring a case such as this, and you really have to get through this hurdle and convince the court that these things are actually real. Judges don’t always use social media. They don’t always understand how it works. They don’t always understand the emotions that are involved in those sort of things, but I have to say that they’ve been, you know, I’ve been very pleased with the way in most cases, courts have dealt with those type of cases, the open mindedness, the willingness to listen, the willingness to accept ideas that perhaps are not as traditional as one would have thought,

Robert Hanna  16:00  

yeah, no. And look, I appreciate you giving us real context to that, and I know something you’re also very passionate about is changing the sort of public perception when it comes to catfishing. You know, I think you quote, change the public narrative around victims of catfishing and online scams. We need to stop blaming the victims and start focusing on holding perpetrators accountable, and we’re absolutely here for that. So I guess to sort of really get a message across, what would you like the public to know about catfishing? And it’s ultimately its impact.

Yair Cohen  16:32  

One of the things that I’m seeing a lot now is that, you know, the old concept of dating has changed a lot, yeah, so we can lead away with the traditional dating methods of just going out, you know, meeting someone, going out, perhaps being introduced by friends and families and things like that, is suppose so many marriages and relationships for people my age occur this way. And a lot of reliance on online dating, and online dating is probably the most dangerous place for victims, particularly a woman. There are many predators there, and you could pretend you are whoever you want to be. Now bear in mind that you know, naturally, I think human beings are optimistic we want when we want something, we want to and we want to believe it could actually happen. And when it does happen, we are willing to overlook things that don’t really add up. We’re willing to have a look all sorts of, you know, other issues that otherwise we might have, and that in that obviously is a very dangerous thing to do, and the thing that we got to be much more careful how we assess each other, perhaps going back a little bit and having having more conversations, more offline conversations, having people meeting each other in kind of more traditional ways. And that would be my advice to many, you know, socialise more, go out more, join activities, join book clubs. You know, ask your parents. Ask your parents, what did you do when you were my age? And the parents, you probably say, No, I had some obese I used to go and play tennis, so I was in this club, or using the theatre or drama club, or whatever it may be, try and find interest that are not necessarily linked to the internet, and this is where you go out. I tell you what. I cannot remember what the podcast was, but, but, but it was a bit with a very successful person. And the interviewer asked him, you know, how come you so successful? And his answer was geography. He said, What do you mean? He says, success or failure is all about geography. If you stay where you are, it is very unlikely the things will actually happen to you. So when you sit in front of your computer, you’re in the same place, same geography. But once you change geography, once you start going to places, when you start associating with other people, once you go different countries, different cities, different parties, differently things will suddenly start to happen. And the reason for this, of course, is that you are placing yourself in new environments. In your placing yourself in places where you give a chance for new people to be introduced, for new situations, for new things to happen. And I like that, actually. And I do, I mean, you know, I met my wife, my first wife through geography, right? I went to Guatemala. I would not have met, I mean, I would not be where I am. Now, had I not done it. I’m not saying you have to go to Guatemala and live with the Indians. But changing geography is really, really important, even if you just go to a different town, if you just go to a different community, if you just do something different to what you’re doing. Usually, today’s

Robert Hanna  19:54  

episode is brought to you by Clio the all in one. Legal Practice Management software does. To help solicitors like you save time, stay organised and deliver outstanding client experience. Clio is trusted by 1000s of legal professionals worldwide, offering a user friendly interface, seamless time recording, automated billing and secure cloud storage so you can manage your practice from anywhere. With Clio, you’ll get award winning support available 24, five by live chat, phone and email. So help is always there when you need it most. It’s no wonder Clio consistently receives five star ratings for its ease of use and top notch service. If you’re ready to experience a better way to manage your practice, visit clio.com forward slash UK, to learn more and see why Clio continues to be the go to choice for solicitors across the UK. Now back to the show. Nothing changes if nothing changes. And I remember a mentor said to me, very early, go as you grow, you know, as you go on your journey, you’re growing. So, like you say, going and growing in different environments, different geographies. You know, the comfort zone is great, but nothing grows there. And so I think you gave some really good context to that.

Yair Cohen  21:01  

They asked Albert Einstein, once, you know, if you could just summarise his entire work in one sentence, he said precisely what you were saying. He said, nothing changes until something moves, yeah, something needs to move to create that traction, and then all sorts of things suddenly happen. You’re absolutely right, yeah, yeah.

Robert Hanna  21:19  

And it’s been, you know, testament to our show as well. You know, we’ve taken our show to to Austin, Texas, we’ve been to Nashville, we’ve been other parts of the UK, Dubai, you name it. Did

Yair Cohen  21:29  

you find that taking your show to all those different places actually created different opportunities and changes for you, things you would not have even contemplated Absolutely,

Robert Hanna  21:38  

whether it’s access to legal tech entrepreneurs that are changing the future of the way legal services are delivered. Where it’s different cultures, access to new, you know, new fans of the show, fun, entertainment, you name it. It’s been, it’s been brilliant, talking of sort of, you know, long and journeys and geography. You were part of one of the longest harassment cases in the UK, I believe so you traced the harasser and finally and brought them to justice. How did you go about tracing that particular harasser again, as much as you can share, and how did you obtain the evidence to support the case?

Yair Cohen  22:16  

The thing with long term harassment is quite often the victim, know, I mean mostly women, right? Let’s be honest about it. They know who their rasa is. It just they cannot prove it, yeah, yeah, because they are as being clever, the thing they’re being clever. So there are two ways that we do it, first, through disclosure applications all over the world, from the UK to America, some really good network all over the United States, Canada, nearly in every state, we got someone like me. We have a small network of about 180 lawyers and attorneys. We meet up once a year in Las Vegas, as you do, for updates, for networking, for conversations. So we know each other very, very well. There are very similar setups, and we support each other with those subpoenas and applications and things like that. So one way of doing this is just getting those disclosure orders, either here or whenever we need to do, and we can normally find out the person is another matter. We use in my law firm I created in Austin. So it’s open source intelligence department. We use open source data to trace down individuals. I mean, it’s not Google, because you do need special licences. You need to go through very rigorous processes in order to have access to those licences, to those databases, which you do have. I mean, quite often you will get some information through disclosure, but it’s not going to be quite enough to track down an individual, and then we use the open source intelligence in the firm to give us a little bit more information, it could just a picture, it could be a telephone number, it could be an email address, it could be it could be all sorts of things. You’d be surprised how much, how much you can find out about people through the use of open source information that is available, not widely to general public because of sensitivity, but, but, but is available to professional people?

Robert Hanna  24:25  

Yeah, no. And again, it’s great that you’re kind of going to that level to to ensure that you can try and seek justice for your for your clients, because again, online defamation is is a growing concern. So what advice would you give to someone whose reputation has been attacked online, and what are the first steps they should perhaps take to make sure that they’re no longer a target in the future? Defamation

Yair Cohen  24:48  

in harassment, they’re quite linked sometimes when it comes to the internet, because quite often people will go and defame someone in order to harass them, right? So they will. Post so you cannot look at information. Just is just okay. This is the formation could be used to harass. And a lot of people are doing that as well. The first thing we say, Don’t engage because once you start engaging with that individual, it becomes almost a banter. So they said, Well, I wasn’t harassing, you know, we were having a conversation. Don’t engage with them. The second thing is, you really got to seek legal advice, and the way we deliver the initial legal advice a little bit different to many other lawyers. We do charge for the service, but, but it is a comprehensive service. So you send us the documents, and you have an experienced lawyer reading through everything and considering it, and then we offer an unlimited, unlimited in time, initial consultation. So it’s not the case. Give you a 15 minute screen. We don’t do that unlimited in time, initial consultation. And then we consider the material again. We send a very thorough, very detailed letter with strategy and everything else how to deal with the situation. So seek legal advice, even if if you don’t think that’s going to resolve the matter, it is really, really important that you know that, at least you understand where you stand, and then you can start considering all your different options. There is a 12 months limitation period for defamation cases. Now in America, they are very strict about it. So if you wanted to subpoena information from a website. Who owns this website? Who, who created this horrible hate site against me? You have to do this within the 12 months limitation period, otherwise you may not be able to ever find out who it is. So you have to be quick, you have to be precise, and you have to do it the right way. Because if you don’t do it the right way, you could actually make things much, much worse for you. So don’t engage. Seek legal advice and be prompt. Yeah, simple.

Robert Hanna  26:47  

Take action. Okay, loving, loving the conversation. Thank you for giving such practical and tactical things for people to take away and for people to learn. I want to talk also now about we’re in the AI revolution, deep fakes and AI generated content. You know these are going to present LAW and are presenting new risks for information and again, reputational harm. So how should the law be adapting to the rise of these new technologies? When we

Yair Cohen  27:13  

talk about the law, I think the important thing is talk about us as a society first, because ultimately, we elect members of parliament, and they represent us, and it is their job to reflect through law the way that people feel and want things to be done. So we really need to have an open conversation about, how do we want society to function now and in the future, particularly with AI? Do we want to have two separate societies, one which is, say, offline and very heavily regulated. And if you call someone a name or you swear with them on the street, you police will come and have you arrested, but on it you could do that and far, far more, and nothing’s going to happen to you. Do we want that? I don’t know. Let’s have the conversation. Same with AI. We need to make a decision how we want society to function, what type of rules we want to apply and have a far less reliance on social media and internet companies, because they just companies. You know, they have their financial interest. It is us Members of Parliament need to create the laws and have a way of enforcing them. So we do need to have that conversation, and we do need to have the laws that tell people what they can do, what they cannot do. A lot of the time, particularly with deep fake people don’t realise. They just don’t realise that, you know they are not allowed to do certain things they may not be allowed. Are you, for example, can you create the fake of a woman and then just store it on your phone, say, say, annuity, and you store it on your phone. Do you think that is okay? Do you think that is legal? Do you think that is illegal? We need to be much more precise, or the law need to be much more precise. But for the law to be much more precise, we need the people who making the law to understand it, to understand the implications, to actually live in that world and have full understanding of it. And I think that over, over the past, you know, 25 years or so that I’ve been doing this. What I’m saying is a lot of laws that are really disconnected from reality. I see laws that the centre of which is, is the desire. So we want to do this, and we want to do that, but without giving any consideration to the practical aspect of it, without really this is what we have in so many laws. But then when you go to the police and ask them to investigate, we can’t investigate other we don’t have the resources, or whatever it is people, not just academics, but people in my firm, for example, and there are other law firms that do this type of work that really, really understand it, and have the daily interaction with. Victims and with all sorts of different situations that are happening on the internet, I’ve never been approached, for example, about about any law, or never been asked for my opinion, I think that I’m one of the most, most with all modesty, you know, probably one of the most experienced legal professional in the country in this field, and when I look at some of the laws that are being created, they’re not really fit for purpose. And my concern with AI is that is also going to be the case here. We’re going to have some law, we’re going to have some regulations. We’ve got lots of paperwork that nobody understands and nobody knows how to enforce

Robert Hanna  30:40  

very, very, very important points. And yeah, absolutely. There’s a reason you’re sat in the seat today because, you know, we’ve been following your work, and you know, it’s been tremendous. And I think you give some really good starting points there, starting with some people in society. I really like that, and then making it actually work and be useful. I always say specific is terrific, and like you say, having that expertise, that precision is only going to help. But let’s talk about the role of social media platforms in preventing harm. Are they doing enough to ensure accountability? In your opinion, it’s

Yair Cohen  31:10  

a good question, but it’s a sort of example of general misunderstanding of that, because when we say, Oh, you’re not doing enough, what is enough? What do we actually expect them to do, and how are they going to do it, and what is their role? So this is my view. My view is a little bit is a little bit different to, I think, the what is in the consensus, I think that it is not for social media companies to to police, necessarily police the what is happening on the platforms. And I don’t think it is possible. I don’t think you can, you can, you know if you meta, for example, but if you think about it, if, if something is happening which is unlawful on social media, that is almost like, like a crime scene, isn’t it? It’s a crime happening. I mean, think about it as a restaurant, for example, the murder happening in a restaurant? Would you say, oh, is the restaurant’s responsibility to prevent them? I don’t think so. But even if it is, is it for them to investigate? Is it for them to impose the fines? Is it for them to sentence? I think it is, again, it is something that we need to think about, that it’s not for social it’s easy to say social media companies, you don’t do enough. You need to prevent this. You need to do that. No, I don’t want social media companies to to decide whether what I’m posting is is offensive or not, because the people around these companies and we could see it. I mean, recently, I don’t know if anyone watched this brilliant interview of Mark Zuckerberg with Joe Robin, people who run those platforms, they have political views. They have their political affiliations. Quite often. They donated to to political parties. Now, do I really want social media companies to decide what is offensive? Who can post something? You cannot post something, what is true, what is no I don’t want that. It’s not the role, because that will only restrict, in fact, it will kill free speech. What I do want, I want people to know what the law is. I want them to know what is offensive, what you can post. I was in in a football match the other day Tottenham arsenal. There was a big locker there about, you know, telling, telling the fans, if you hear anyone chanting, any offensive comments, you have to report it on this number. And I was thinking, what does it mean? An offensive chant? What is actually mean? What is offensive? Who is to decide? Do I first chant and then somebody makes a decision? Oh, these words are offensive. Very, very difficult, isn’t it? Now, imagine you are on a social media platform and subsequently somebody say, actually what you wrote the other day was offensive. So we do need the law to be very clear. We need to have a police station on the internet. The police need to move online and take it very, very seriously. No social media companies. They are they are the vicinity. They are the platforms. It’s for the police to enforce the law, and it’s for the people to be aware what the laws are. And if we want to reduce the amount of crime or the amount of offensive and abusive behaviour or unlawful behaviour. Let’s make it easier for people to find out who’s behind those posts, because mom, I mean, I would say 80% 85% just, just a rough kind of estimation of those unlawful, terrible posts. I’m talking about unlawful as opposed to offensive, are done by people who use anonymous accounts. Let’s make it easier for victims of crime to find out who’s beyond okay. You can go you can go anonymous, no problem. You don’t have to tell us who you are. But if you are committing a crime, or if someone suspects that you commit a crime against them, give them the opportunity to find. Who’s behind the post without having to spend so much money with on lawyers. You know, I’m actually, I’m actually doing myself away with work. I’m saying, you know, I don’t want people to come to me and having to pay like, 1000s of pounds to find out who’s beyond this and who’s behind that. This should be a system, a simple system, where, if you are a victim of ongoing harassment. You can present evidence, on the face of it, to some sort of committee or something, and they will say, Yeah, Facebook or meta now needs to give you that information, and that would be it. Now, when people know that, it is far easier to find out who they are. Same is up and offline, they will be far more reluctant to engage in unlawful conversations on the internet if they know that the chance of anyone finding out who they are is remote. It’s very simple, you know, you know, Rob, the solutions are really, really simple. Yeah, it’s a no brainer. If you think about it, police officer can stop you in the street and say, you know, who are you? I want to know who you are. And if you don’t want to give the information, you gotta you get Nick they put the handcuffs you get nicked for obstructing a police officer or something like that. Right? Easy, yep. I’m not saying get people arrested straight away and put handcuffs on them, but the idea of this law is that people will need to identify themselves to a police officer because they are suspected of having committed a crime. So why is on the internet? It’s a way, if it is on the internet, you’re gonna go and pay a lawyer, 5000 pounds or sick or whatever it is, just to find out who’s abusing you. Yeah, it’s ridiculous.

Robert Hanna  36:38  

It’s so true, and as we spend more and more of our time online, we should have the you know, authorities, like you say, the police there to hopefully be able to help and really resolve things far quicker. And like you say, at less cost. And yeah, ultimately place a better place. I want to talk about your your authoring as well, because you also authored the net is closing. Birth of the E police. You detail the impact of the CPS policy for not prosecuting individuals who post harmful content online. So what was your own inspiration behind wanting to write a book, and ultimately, what is the impact on the victims who have received harmful content when individuals are not prosecuted for their actions,

Yair Cohen  37:20  

they self authored the book, and self published the book about 667, years ago. And at the time, I was building up my my fame, and I didn’t really have the opportunity to promote it or do anything with it by it is there on Amazon, but it was, it was something burning within me all those simple solutions. So through case studies, you showed the lack of policing on the internet. I mean, I mean things such as, for example, a woman was was complaining to the police that she was receiving all sorts of offensive pornographic material to a phone and to her emails by someone who was effectively harassing. It was terrible stuff, horrific stuff. So she went to the police, and the police said, okay, you know, send us the material. So she tried to say to to send the evidence, but the police computer wouldn’t accept it, because the filters so, so if the world pornography is there, the police computer would just so she said to the police, why don’t you go and look, I’ll give you the links. You look at the material yourself. You say, Well, I can’t do it because there’s only one computer, and I need licence, and I need special permission, and I need this. I need that, you know, not fit for purpose at all. And it was a series of cases of, I think, seven or eight or 10 different cases where it was so obvious that we are getting it wrong, and it took, really now, six or seven years for some of the of my, of my suggestions there, when you look at where we are now, thinking, you know, I was a little bit ahead of the time back then, and I wish even today, you know, someone will actually look, look at the book and look at those case studies and understand where we go wrong and how we can actually improve things for us. And so it came out. It came it was really something that was was written out of out of a pain and out of a real desire to change things for victims, to improve things and to make life a little bit easier. I think that, as a lawyer, you know, you know, it’s like, like the beauty, instead of digitally, you say, oh, you know, I want to bring peace to the world. And you ask guys, oh, I want justice, and I want to support this. The reality is, we do. We do need to work, and we do need to make a living, and we do want to be as best as we can in what we do and in that cost money. But at the same time, particularly when you have, when you have a niche that you, that you work in on a daily basis, on almost, almost every day, all day, you do develop that passion to the cause that you are. You are you are working toward. But hence the reason, you know, some of the of the best cases, Nicola Brooks, the Harker Kates and things like that, we did them on a no win offy basis. We didn’t even, I mean, they were so complex that no other lawyer wanted to touch them. But as soon as we had this opportunity, you know, you do need the space as a lawyer to take on those type of cases, you do need to have those resources and because, because these are very complex cases. So those cases we took corners is, you know, in a no we no fee thinking, you know, even if we, if we invest hundreds of hours dealing with this case, at least we, you know, we trying to do good at this. We’re trying to create awareness, and that’s why we

Robert Hanna  40:43  

you know, we wanted to have the conversation today, because we wanted, you know, we’re pro doing good, you’re trying to do good. And you know, the more that we can educate people so they can stay safe or have access to justice or just more information about what to do, the better. I guess. Before we close, it’s been a fascinating conversation. How do you hope your work will shape the future of the internet and social media for future generations just before

Yair Cohen  41:08  

that? Because, because, you know, we were talking about the AI and the information, and, in fact, how to shape so, so. So, one way I thought of doing this is because I’ve dealt with hundreds of cases so far, we try to put out almost every case we dealt with on one of our websites. We have a number of websites, one dedicated to harassment, one to, you know, journal that, and then we use AI so we have an AI board there where you can actually go. Then they all up to date. And we invest a lot of results in that so anyone who’s got an issue, they can go, they can go on a website, and they can start a conversation with the boat, and the boat will find so we fed the boat with all those case studies, and the boat will actually find the a case similar to their or problem similar to the problem they are facing, and will engage in a conversation with them and give them those links to the articles to the support. This is one way that we really try to help people so they don’t even need to pay for the consultation, in a way, unless they, of course, in this general advice we give there, it’s not, you know, every case is specific, and you have to speak to Allah in order to find out what is right for you, but it can get a lot of general advice for that just using AI on the website. It’s fantastic. We’re getting really, really, really good feedback for that. Back to your question. I’m really, really hoping that through what we do and putting it all out there, of course, we change names and details and things like that, people can really understand the real issues that public is facing on the internet. Because obviously, before we can even think about solving a problem, before we can think about reshaping the landscape, we need to understand it. And the more people understand the issues, the better we are placed in in actually shaping it. I’m really, really hoping to be able to influence the future policing of the internet, because that is really the key to good policing, for a start, good and effective policing, so facilitating opportunities for victims to either go to the police or take civil action or do whatever it is, but also understanding how the law should be shaped, and what, what type of of changes we need to make to the law. I mean, I would absolutely love, and I hope this is not too much to hope for, to leave something, something positive behind, even a tiny little influence about the way the internet, or the way we as a society handle the internet AI in the future? Yeah,

Robert Hanna  43:43  

and, you know, I’m very pro legacy. It’s why we started the show. We want to kind of, you know, help people and inform and it’s very clear through the work that you’re doing that’s so important, because we live in this online, you know, digitally connected, fast moving world, that we do put things in place to try and protect people. And, look, this has been brilliant. Really enjoyed it. If our listeners want to follow you, learn more about your career or the work that you’re doing at Cohen Davis solicitors, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to shout out any website links or social media handles. We’ll also share them with this episode for you too. Yeah, my

Yair Cohen  44:14  

my blog is Yair Cohen, just my full name, Yair cohen.co.uk my ex account is cyber law expert. You can find me. It’s not a common name, you know, there we go.

Robert Hanna  44:28  

Easy enough. Well, so much fun today. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah. Appreciate all the important work you’ve been doing as well. But from all of us from the legally speaking podcast sponsored by Cleo, over and out, thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and Collaboration Hub, the legally speaking club, over on Discord. Go to our website, www.legally speaking podcast.com, for the link to join our community there over now.