Slashdot Mirror
Guatemalan Twitter User Arrested For "Inciting Panic"
talishte points out (with a snippet from BoingBoing) that "Amid protests in the streets and on social networks calling for
Guatemala's president to step down after the assassination of a
whistleblower attorney, Guatemalan police have arrested a Twitter user
for 'inciting
panic' through tweets. In the capital city today, police
raided his home and confiscated his computer."
While you are at it, make some arrests for people boring others to death with a flood mundane tweets.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
...is apparently non-existent in Guatemala.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
He should have been Tweeting through TOR.
What a Twit.
Twidiots always assume they invented everything.
What's the difference? None.
I suppose Tweeters can be proud their chosen technology joins the illustrious ranks of the telephone, the fax machine, and the mimeocopied bill pasted on a telephone pole as agents of protest.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Calling a suggested boycott of a bank inciting a panic is so stupid it'd be funny if the poor guy wasn't actually arrested for it. A bank panic is when people run to withdraw funds because someone told them their money was unsafe in that bank. Suggesting a boycott on ethical grounds does not even remotely relate to causing a panic.
He suggested breaking the bank. He did not say the bank was going broke. Anyone who called this a bank panic must have assumed that everyone who reads a sentence or two on Twitter will immediately do whatever they are told.
In that case, hopefully those people who think it's necessary to do whatever suggestions they read (like the officials who brought this trumped-up charge) are also reading Slashdot. I suggest that anyone calling this causing a bank panic go swimming in a piranha-infested river while tied to an anvil.
is not inciting a panic, even if everyone panics. You can get charged for shouting "fire" if there is no fire. If there really is a fire, you should not be charged even if there is a stampede and someone gets crushed.
On the other hand, if the government has already killed 2 people, one quite obviously because of what he was saying, I wouldn't be doing anything that might land me in jail.
That's a good way to "accidentally" shoot yourself in the back, jump off your cell's balcony, shoot yourself again with a different gun, and then trip into a wood chipper.
Some electoral institution is attempting to block a YouTube video that criticizes a politician.
Damn.
NO SIG
Any more proof required that Anonymity is required for a working free society? Not because without it, a society ceases to be free, but because an oppressive government requires a complete lack of it.
Quite frankly, every time I hear someone say "but I'm not hiding anything", I have to add "yet". People might not hide anything now, but that's largely because they're part of the majority that makes laws. They don't understand how quickly their position can evaporate and how quickly they can find themselves on the wrong end of the long arm of justice.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
But this and stories like this remind me that we've still got it pretty good by comparison. That doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to push for more reform and systemic changes that remove opportunities for corruption.
It seems stereotypical that central and south american governments are all overtly corrupt. The U.S. government would already be hopelessly corrupt if it weren't for the wide range of obstacles the founders of the U.S. intentionally placed in the way of such HUMAN tendencies. Those obstacles are gradually being stepped on, over and around, eroded and ignored and that's a growing problem here in the U.S. It won't be long before we are as bad as so many other governments and I believe it is quite evident that we are in far worse shape than many other nations.
That the Guatemalan authorities had the ability to find the guy at all? Is it possible that technologically speaking, with the marked exception of my mother's house, that there is no such thing as an "IT Third World"?
Anybody else read that as 'inciting panic' through the tweets (streets)? I was wondering if it was submitted by a poster with a speech impediment.
It would be cool if you could bypass the computer and "tweet" directly from a mobile device like a phone...
Twits should be no different than getting an email about how Microsoft is offering to pay you for forwarding an email. I fail to see how a virtual message could have incited a "panic" unless the ratio of gullible e-idiots per capita is around 1:1 in that country.
Trust, but verify.
Anyone who called this a bank panic must have assumed that everyone who reads a sentence or two on Twitter will immediately do whatever they are told.
(emphasis mine)
Wow. You must be new to the internet. Here, let me show you this great new toy called "Twitter" and how some of its rabid users treat it...
It would be cool if you could bypass the computer and "tweet" from a mobile device. Like a phone.
More likely, that was just the closest thing to a plausible charge that they had laying around to hit the guy with.
By all accounts, this bank, along with the president and some of his buddies, is Very Bad News. Corruption, money laundering, assasination, real banana republic and/or major western democracy stuff. A noted lawyer was assasinated a couple of days ago and left a youtube message just before that happened(in link) discussing the matter.
This isn't because some dumb jobsworth actually thinks that the guy is inciting panic.
That poor guy was arrested because of this:
-In Guatemala all banks are in control of a few very powerful families (republica bananera way
-that control is of course close tied to congress campaigns and policy making.
-since a couple bank panics in the last few years, they pushed a law that makes illegal say anything bad about a bank.
-the guy twitted.
Suppressing free speech: bad.
Ridding the world of Twitter, one twit at a time... hmm.
they are going to arrest all of the fox news anchors as well?
And so did you. No XKCD strip can free you.
The neo-con view explicitly describes itself - bizarrely - as "post History", and evidently its proponents and executives (Bush, Cheney, etc) believed this, or claimed to. It was one of the hallmarks of their generally insane and bloodthirsty credo.
But this also ties into the general "exceptionalism" that Americans still cling to about their own place in History - "can't happen here," even though it already is.
you had me at #!
I find the list rather ridiculous. Cuba is rated 7. Why? I presume because it locked up a bunch of independent journalists, many of whom had contact with the US mission in Cuba. So why is Cuba 7, but Guatemala 3.5? This journalist was KILLED - in Cuba they arrest, but do not kill journalists. So why are they rated so much lower? Also, Saudi Arabia is rated 6.5, as is China. So Saudi Arabia is more free than Cuba? That is completely ridiculous.
Thought crime actually translates nowadays to Tweet Crime. Any time a person attempts to incite a little chaos against the people who inflict it upon common people daily, the forces of power sweep in to quiet that voice. Perhaps toppling a powerful bank would hurt more in the short term. But maybe that which takes its place will be better for everyone. Bravo, anarchy.
Nobody has the right to peace and quiet. Getting people upset is a vital part of the political process. Obviously the current government of Guatemala needs to hit the bottom of the garbage can.
LOL