TORONTO - Canadians are still absorbing the shocking revelation that an American accomplice was reportedly involved in the Tumbler Ridge massacre that left nine people dead earlier this year.
Jesse Van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old Canadian, and James Cody Bryant, a 30-year-old American, were separated by a border, but the FBI alleges the two were united in a plan to carry out a mass murder on Canadian soil
Earlier this week, FBI special agent W. Mike Herrington shared that Bryant, a resident of Bellingham, Wash., was charged with conspiracy to murder a person in a foreign country.
Roughly three years ago, Van Rootselaar and Bryant met online. Investigators say six months before the mass murder in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., their online discussions began to escalate through the social media platform Discord.
On its website, Discord pitches itself as a “group chat that’s all fun and games.”
However, the FBI claims the two shared thousands of messages, many of which were chilling and disturbing. Outlined in a 41-page indictment, investigators claimed Bryant and Van Roostelaar talked about the pending shooting in a casual, calculated way.
In their chat, Van Rootselaar discussed carrying out “the deadliest school shooting in all of Canadian history.”
“I really wanna avoid doing a school shooting but it really seems like that might be a possibility, there’s just so many reasons why it’s ideal,” Van Rootselaar allegedly wrote.
At one point Bryant replied, “hate to say it but I think we should find a way to delete all our messages.”
The case has raised questions about whether Discord have a legal obligation to notify the authorities when its users are discussing plans to carryout a mass murder. Stateside, authorities have been vague.
“I’m not going to get into that at this point, because it could be an issue when we get into trial,” Nick Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney in Seattle, said Tuesday.
Discord came forward and reported the concerning messages to the RCMP after the shooting. An email from the company said, “in this case, the activity took place in 1 on 1 private direct messages, and similar to other communications services, we don’t proactively scan every private message.”
Cybersecurity watchers believe platforms like Discord can and should do more.
“The tech companies have to get better at identifying this leakage to prevent these events from happening,” said Liz Repking, president of Cybersecurity Consulting.
“They absolutely have the capabilities. Years ago, they used to have human beings reviewing posts looking for certain key word identifiers. Today, there are AI moderation tools that can sift through massive amounts of information that are being put through these platforms.”
In Ottawa, federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree suggested the government’s online safety legislation could be part of the solution.
“It speaks to the broader issues around the use of social media, the use of collaboration online, issues that we’re trying to address through Bill C-34,” Anandasangaree said Wednesday.
Introduced in June, the federal government hopes to pass Bill C-34, known as the “Safe Social Media Act.” However, the pending legislation clearly states that “the bill does not create a mandatory reporting duty to police.”
The FBI’s report followed the revelation that Van Rootselaar used ChatGPT to research mass killings before the attack. The B.C. government and community members are now suing OpenAI for failing to alert authorities, leaving some to ponder what price society is willing to pay to keep private messages and searches truly private.
