Facebook, 8% to Twitter, and the remainder were sent to other internet platform operators (e.g.,
YouTube, Instagram, and Google).
Arguments of the parties in the petition before the Court
18.
This petition was filed after the requests sent by the Petitioners over the course of the last
few years to bring about the cessation of the Respondents’ voluntary enforcement mechanism did
not succeed. In the framework of the petition, the Petitioners argue that the manner in which the
mechanism is employed can potentially infringe the constitutional rights to due process and
freedom of expression, while not meeting the conditions of the “Limitations Clause” established
in sec. 8 of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. Their main argument in this regard concerns
the lack of express statutory authorization to act in this manner, such that the voluntary
enforcement mechanism operates, in their opinion, in breach of fundamental principles of
constitutional and administrative law. In this regard, it is further argued that we are concerned
with a mechanism that grants the prosecution (the State Attorney’s Office) broad authority to
delineate the bounds of freedom of expression, in that it is the Department that decides that certain
content is unlawful, without turning to the courts and without granting a right to be heard.
In the Petitioners’ view, it is uncontestable that a referral initiated by the Respondents to
the internet platform operators for the purpose of removing content is, in fact, governmental
activity that requires express statutory authorization, inasmuch as even if the Cyber Department’s
action does not amount to a coercive order, every action by the Department constitutes a
governmental action that requires authorization. In the absence of such authorization, the Court
must order the cessation of the Cyber Department’s activity, even without a showing of the extent
of the violation of the protected rights and the activity’s conformance to the other conditions of
the Limitations Clause established in sec. 8 of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.
In the support of their arguments, the Petitioners referred to two petitions that, in their view,
treated of related subjects, as follows:
The first is AAA 3782/12 Tel Aviv-Jaffa District Commander v. Israel Internet Association
[3] (hereinafter: the Israel Internet Association case), which held (per Justice U. Vogelman,
President A. Grunis concurring, Justice N. Sohlberg dissenting) that the authority of a police
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