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."

Comments

Good advice

[Zerth]

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.

Re:Good advice

[Zerth]

Unless you think personal martyrdom to be more effective in achieving your goals, avoiding government assisted suicide is hardly cowardice.

Anonymity

[NeutronCowboy]

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.

Re:Anonymity

[causality]

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.

And if they don't understand that by now, with the numerous examples history has provided, then unfortunately it's probably because they don't want to. Just read any decent history book and what you see is that most of recorded history is the story of the most violent, egomaniacal, psychopathic and murderous segment of the population trying to assert control over everyone else with varying degrees of success. It's as though we think that all of history stopped applying to us in the last 50 years or so, like state power is your friend and has given up its dream of absolute control merely because it has learned that it will encounter less resistence if it puts on a smiling face and tells you it's all for your own good. The smallest foresight can prevent the Orwellian police state that's coming and is becoming more prominent, but not when people think that burying their heads in the sand is any sort of prevention.

What you said above reminds me of that saying: "it's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

I don't know how to feel about this...

[jeffb (2.718)]

Suppressing free speech: bad.

Ridding the world of Twitter, one twit at a time... hmm.