In April 2022, Ellen Roome found her 14-year-old son Jools dead in his bedroom in Cheltenham, England. She didn’t know what had happened. Two years later, she still doesn’t. Roome has been fighting for months to get big tech companies to be quicker and more transparent about sharing the data of her son, a minor, because she believes his online activity may have played a role in the decision he made. Her case could now change British laws on privacy and data retention.
With the shock After the death, Roome didn’t even consider that social media might have played a role: “We let the police do their investigation,” he told EL PAÍS over the phone. But that police investigation was unsuccessful. They didn’t classify the death as suicide because they couldn’t establish that he was in a “suicidal mood.” On the night of the death, Roome asked the police to use Jools’ face to set a new pin and gain access to the phone. The officers responded that they weren’t going to tamper with the evidence. The police have forensic machines to break security and gain access to mobile phones. But, according to Roome, the machine in his district was broken. They only accessed the phone months later, when a friend of Jools guessed the password.
The agent in charge of the investigation concluded that after “reviewing some of the elements [del móvil] “There’s nothing to worry about.” But Roome still doesn’t believe that statement puts to rest all the questions she has about what might be inside Jools’ phone: “I don’t feel it was done properly or that all the accounts were checked,” she says.
Jools’ family only discovered over time that the young man had accounts on apps they didn’t know about, such as Discord (a messaging app focused on video games) or that he had secondary accounts on Instagram or TikTok. This case illustrates the increasingly dominant role of big tech in our lives and how legislation has not yet managed to adapt to all the possibilities related to their influence.
After the police failure, Roome’s battle began, and she still doesn’t understand why it’s so difficult for Meta and TikTok to give her what she needs to clarify the possible motives of the death. “I was immensely surprised,” says Roome, when they didn’t give her the information she asked for. For her, a mother grieving for a dead son, the choice was easy: “If I had been the owner of Meta or Tiktok, I would have said, ‘What information do you want? Here you have everything and I hope you find some answers,'” she says.
That’s not what happened: “I don’t understand how a company can have no morals,” she continues. “As parents, we just want to understand why our son, who was completely normal, wasn’t bullied offline, didn’t show signs of depression that anyone noticed, and didn’t have mental health issues unless he hid them. There were 500 people at his funeral; he was a popular, intelligent kid. I just want to understand why he decided to hang himself one day.”
Neither TikTok nor Meta have clarified to EL PAÍS what their position is in this case. A spokesperson for Meta He told the newspaper The Independent in June that they are “in direct contact with Ellen Roome and will fully cooperate with any police investigation, including responding to any requests for data.”
Meta has finally given him data, he explains, but in an incomprehensible technical format. Now a forensic expert is reviewing it and then a clinical psychologist will try to detect something that could explain Jools’ behavior: “But they didn’t give me his messages or his browsing data. There are things that he marked with I like and I have not yet received the full report,” he says.
He even had a video conference with TikTok, but to no avail: “It was useless,” he says. They told him that they deleted the data after a year or that, other times, it was during the year. “I told them that a company of their size should have a policy about when they delete data like that,” he says. Roome adds that a insider He contacted him to say that the company kept everything in a place with a “different type of access.” The law requires big tech companies to delete personal data that is no longer necessary for their operation: that would be a reason to hide it with a “different access.” “I don’t believe anything they tell me,” he concludes.
Following the lack of response from the companies, he turned to politics. In England, Parliament must discuss a citizens’ petition if it reaches 100,000 signatures. In two weeks, the proposal Give parents/guardians the right to access their children’s social media accounts Roome, reached 126,000. On August 20, the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology He answered in detail about the changes they have included in its new Online Safety Act: it includes the obligation to retain data when an authority requests it and, above all, agility and transparency in responding: “They must establish policies on the disclosure of information to parents regarding the online activities of a deceased child in a clear, accessible and sufficiently detailed format in their terms of service,” says the English Government’s text.
But that’s not enough for Jools anymore. His only option is to go to a higher court to force the police to restart the case and for a judge to ask the tech companies for that information. But that will cost them a lot of money. They have started a Gofundme fundraiser to raise more than 90,000 euros: “Jools decided to end his life at 14. It may not be because of social media, but as a mother, I feel I should have a human right to explore all options to seek answers as to why my son is no longer here. This includes forcing social media companies to hand over all data about children. How can our children sign terms and conditions at 13 when we are the adults responsible for them, and yet we still have no right to see anything?” she explains.
Roome also asked to see the data of a minor when he or she is alive, but he believes that there should be more limits in this regard: “I accept that there are certain rights of privacy for children who are alive, and that needs further discussion with experts on the subject,” he says.
Spanish legislation
European and Spanish legislation already provides that technology companies must provide all personal information to the relatives of a deceased person if they ask for it and have the documentation to justify it. But it is a complex and tedious process that, as in the case of Jools, few people are prepared to start the day after the death of a loved one.
Searching for how to request information about a deceased relative on the Meta and Tiktok help pages is a bit of an odyssey today. TikTok doesn’t even clarify this in its help center. As if that weren’t enough, in repeated and different searches to find that information, Google constantly returns several TikTok videos with the headline: “He talks to his deceased son thanks to AI.” It’s not the best mood for such a serious moment.
In Meta they have the petition in English, on their Spanish help page, and they already warn that it will not be easy for them to respond “because of Covid”; no one has had time to change the excuse, apparently: “Keep in mind that we have fewer people available to review the reports due to the coronavirus pandemic, which means it may take us longer memorialize or delete the account you request.”
The Spanish Data Protection Agency can force technology companies to request such information, but says it has never received such a case. It is possible that a judge, at the request of the police, has requested such information in some cases in Spain, but the Agency has no record of this. In France, a group, Algos Victima, emerged this year. to initiate legal proceedings against TikTok for harm to minors.
Big tech companies have little incentive to collaborate if they are not required by law. Why would they reveal that they may have played a role in the death of a teenager? In 2022, a court already targeted Meta and Pinterest in the case of the suicide of young Molly Russell, also 14 years old. “Networks are very careful about their health: they will ask for death certificates, family books or the will (if the person is of legal age),” says Sergio Carrasco, a lawyer specialising in technology. “If they see something strange, the network’s legal department will tell you to go to a judge and I will do what they tell me. They will ask you for a lot of justification,” he adds.
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