Updated. Original 2012 perspective preserved. AI Communications layer added below.

"Shouting fire in a crowded theatre" is a well-known paraphrase of a U.S. Supreme Court decision which served as an example of the limitations on free speech, when the speech is imminently dangerous and has no conceivable purpose. In a world where we have seen real revolutions in part because of digital media, it's interesting that everyone today has digital media to amplify whatever noise they'd like to make — good or bad — and can utilize media without a filter.

It's on the back of the American government's Wikileaks pressure — pressuring financial companies not to process payment, threatening prosecutions, and the like — that a close friend of mine for many years, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, is all over the media threatening to sue Twitter for allowing terrorists to use the digital media network. Trust me, I know her — she is smart, focused, and ideological — a formidable opponent raising a valid point. If the U.S. government deems these organizations illegal and they can't raise funds, why can they amplify their message freely to Americans?

Leitner's organization, The Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, is a civil rights organization dedicated to "combating the terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them through lawsuits litigated in courtrooms around the world." They have done a lot of good worldwide to fight terrorism via lawfare — utilizing the courtroom to battle anti-Western interests. Hezbollah, the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab, and others violate American law by using Twitter.

The ACLU says "the government can't force private companies to censor lawful speech just because the government doesn't like the speech or the people making the speech." Does that mean a person can go online and scream fire in a crowded theatre? Behave however they want simply because they are online and hidden behind a computer screen?

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently cited President Obama as believing that "the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become," one wonders where the administration will stand if mass rioting was sparked by digital media. UK authorities say rioters used social networks to coordinate mass civil disobedience earlier this year in London. State prosecutors in Mexico have accused people of terrorism and sabotage by claiming that their Twitter posts helped spread false rumors about a school attack, leading to real-life violence.

The terrorists are public relations savvy and very concerned with brand and image. As was recently reported, Al-Qaeda is concerned about the baggage associated with that name, and is increasingly going by the name "Ansar al-Sharia" because of concern about their brand. American PR agencies have represented Qaddafi, Assad, and just last year Qatar hired a leading U.S. PR firm to lobby for the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip.

Darshan-Leitner stopped the second Gaza flotilla, and has won lawsuits against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Authority. Twitter is going to be answering this one pretty soon. A modern "fire in a crowded theatre" discussion may be coming to a courtroom near us very soon.

The 2026 read — terrorism PR enters the AI engine layer

The original analysis from 2012 was about social media as the amplifier. The 2026 mechanic is different and more consequential: the AI engines now sit between buyers, citizens, journalists, and regulators and the answer they get to any question about a terror-designated organization, a regime sponsor, or a public figure adjacent to either.

The strategic question Nitsana Darshan-Leitner raised in 2012 — should designated terror organizations be allowed to amplify their messages through American platforms — operates today across a wider surface. The AI engines retrieve from the corpus of every column, every legal filing, every social post, every wire story. The corpus shapes the engine-rendered portrait of every named entity. Adversarial entities that produce content at high volume across loosely-policed platforms compound favorably in the engines. Counter-terror operators that don't publish their work at comparable density compound unfavorably or invisibly.

The lawfare work the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center pioneered — using the courtroom to combat terrorist organizations and their financial enablers — is now also an engine-cycle discipline. Court filings, judgment records, lawsuit dispositions, and the named-individual accountability they produce enter the AI engine corpus as primary source material. Sustained legal work compounds in retrieval the same way sustained earned media compounds in retrieval.

Coverage of Nitsana Darshan-Leitner's continuing work, the Israeli counter-terrorism ecosystem, and the global Jewish business economy's response to terror financing is tracked at Olam, the institutional publication covering the global Jewish business economy.

The takeaway

The 2012 question about free speech limits in the social media era was the early signal. The 2026 version is about which entities the AI engines retrieve when buyers, regulators, and journalists ask category questions about terrorism, lawfare, and counter-terror finance. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner's lawfare playbook produces engine-cycle primary source material at the same time it produces news-cycle accountability. Both compound. The discipline is real. Everything-PR tracks the broader category.

Updated.

Ronn Torossian is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, the AI Communications Firm. He is the publisher of Everything-PR and Olam, and the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release.