Slashdot Mirror
Police In Britain Arrest Man For Bomb-Threat Joke On Twitter
An anonymous reader writes "A British man was arrested under anti-terrorism legislation for making a bomb joke on Twitter. Paul Chambers, 26, was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006). His crime? Frustrated at grounded flights over inclement weather, he made a joke bomb threat on the social networking site Twitter."
We don't want to get slashdot in trouble.
Their they're doing there hair.
"Police in arrest man for Joke on Bomb-Thread Joke on Twitter."
I think you're missing the point. If he knew this would happen, he probably wouldn't've done it at all. It was just him venting in a moment of frustration. How the police responded so quickly is beyond me, though...
SQL programmer goes to a bar. Walks up to two tables and says 'Excuse me, may I join you?'.
I don't think the most troubling part of what happened is that this guy didn't try to ensure his anonimity.
He didn't intend to make a bombthreat, hell, he didn't even make one. The fact that all hell breaks loose over something silly as this shows that the terrorists have won. Western society lives in fear, whether you like it or not.
Of the way the world is heading. As I keep harping on about, and wish the politicians (and the police) would understand. Orwell's 1984 is a warning, not a "HOWTO manual".
By the standard they've set on this, most of the populace should be under arrest by dint of the anti-terror laws, which over here in the UK are draconian, misguided and completely over the top.
It really comes to something when we need to worry more about our own police and politicians than we ever would about a terror attack.
It is depressing as hell to be a British citizen.
You get arrested then released without charge, the police take and store your DNA. The EU human rights court says this is illegal and wrong, Labour say they don't care.
You get accused of a sexual offence, it gets recorded. Even if the accusation is entirely baseless and the person who made it is jailed for making it, you'll still have it on your record. Good luck getting a job with children when that accusation is revealed to a potential employer. Even worse, the government can put a court order on these that make it illegal for an employer to reveal why you failed a background check. You're given no legal recourse to this, even if a mistake has been made and you're accidentally added to the register.
You can have (consensual) kinky sex, but if you video it, you're a sex offender. You can be 18 and have sex with a 17 year old legally but videotape it, you're a sex offender. Draw two stickpeople having sex, label one of them as being 17, you guessed it, you're a sex offender.
Organise a protest criticising against soldier in Afganistan and Iraq? That'll be declared illegal and you'll be arrested on public decency charges.
Being held 30 days without charge? Not enough! We must change the law to make it 90 days! After all, you wouldn't have been arrested it you weren't guilty!
It's rather depressing that Labour are supposedly the left leaning of the two main parties. I would hope that the Conservatives would cancel some of these laws when they're in power but I doubt it. Removing laws is pretty hard and the tabloids would crucify them.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html
Ehmm, no offense, but what happened to the Burden of Proof, which the D.A. should present to within certainty show that you were about to commit a felony?
I mean, I'm sure you once shouted something akin to "I'm gonna kill you" to some drunk idiot on a Saturday night. Not a nice thing to say, granted but that doesn't make you immediately want to kill that person. Frustration has a tendency to make you say things you don't mean and/or would never do, that's why in most western countries it's very rare for someone to be trialled for something they did not (yet) commit.
Manuals are your last resort only
How very, very sad. How can anyone think for one second that his tweet was serious ? What a bunch of idiots. Not only the authorities but also the person who reported him.
It seems we're slowly moving to a state where only correct thinking is allowed. No joking, no sense of humour, irony or annoyance.
Shit like this makes me wanna blow up Parliament
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoPPvPbe-SM :)
They really like to "ground" people in the UK who make a fuss
All this web 2.0 stuff is watched by NSA, CIA, FBI, GCHQ, state task forces and your local PD.
So if your having a lol, remember who provided the seed cash to many of more 'effortless' web 2.0 sites.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Obviously the police didn't take the threat seriously at all:
If it takes the police to find Paul J Chambers when there a PICTURE of him on his Twitter profile AND it tells you he's from Doncaster, England.
Now, I'm not the police, but I think that if I had access to a phone book of Doncaster, I could probably find the guy in a few hours. Given that he's 90% likely to have a drivers license, it's not like it'd make it any more difficult to find him.
Geez!
They always claim that they have to take all jokes seriously. But really these events are about punishing people who heckle during performances at the security theatre.
Anyone who wants to blow up an airport is going to have more f*cking sense than to announce their intentions to the world on Twitter first.
IIRC the IRA used to give warnings to the police a few minutes before a bomb was set to explode.
I guess they found out that "terrorism" is not identical with "killing people".
Terrorists want to spread fear. Ironically, thats what most gouvernments do in their "fight against terrorism".
bickerdyke
My car tyres are flat and I have go to the garage to blow them up. what should i do ?
Could be worse, for me it's just the left hand rear tire, aka LHR. Could you imagine how lazy pigs fishing for leads (on twitter, FFS[1]) would react to "I need to blow up the LHR"?
[1] "Yeah sarge, just found out about 'da bomb'. It's going down at chelle97's mum's flat this weekend. It was on that Al-Taliban site, myspace".
Car analogies break down.
Stolen from the comments in the Independent: Why do British police go about in threes? One can read, one can write, the other keeps an eye on the 2 dangerous subversive intellectuals.
Seems appropriate. Although I would say that French police aren't any better, they just go about in pairs.
I would make a fake bomb threat in an airport, and then... just leave.
Millions of dollars wasted, millions of dollars more airport security theater implemented just because, and to top it off no actual bomb needed.
I agree with the Slashdot opinion that Britain tends to go overboard with police action lately, but honestly in this case I'm not so sure they were wrong. The man wrote:
Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!
Sounds like a bomb threat to me. I didn't see any context indicating that this is merely a joke.
I was taught by my parents, many many years before 9/11, that making bomb threats, even jokingly, is a bad idea because if anyone mistakenly takes you seriously, it WILL get you in trouble and possibly arrested. Maybe this guy's mom should have taught him the same thing.
Offense taken!
We're not the USofA so we don't have a D.A. or felonies, and he was arrested and questioned - he has not yet been trialled and indeed has not yet even been charged with anything.
He *may* be charged with "conspiring to create a bomb hoax" - that he did not intend to actually bomb the place is irrelevant.
Of course it is all a bit of an overreaction, but we might at least get the facts/terms right or it cheapens us all. It might also prevent him being a douche in future :-)
You seem to be confusing the UK with somewhere that has guaranteed and protected rights. And if you were drunk and shouted "I'm going to kill you", you'd almost certainly be charged with a Public Order offence if the target made a complaint against you.
Interesting a lot of people defending this guy - but threatening to blow up an airport is just stupid. this is nothing new with bomb threats though , even pre-9/11 when in primary school somebody called our principal and made a bomb threat, and the whole school had to be cleared for the day while it was searched, and even though no bomb was found the police still spent some effort to find the prankster, because even as a joke there is a necessity for such threats to be investigated, and is a waste of police resources and time. don't even bother with proxy, just don't make bomb threats, it's not smart or funny.
Well, don't be so lightly touched man, I'm from the Netherlands, we don't have a D.A. here either, but I can't be arsed to look up how exactly law is upheld in every country I make a comment on, and how court is ran. I sometimes watch Law & Order, so I know the term D.A. to be someone working for "the people" aka, the government, and is the one responsible to provide the proof that suspect John Doe is the actual person to have committed the crime. You probably have something similar over there, perhaps a person, perhaps a committee, or whatever, I don't care, but something or someone has to present the evidence in court. Fill in the blanks.
Manuals are your last resort only
Do I feel strongly enough about it to emigrate? The law as it stands in terms of freedom of speech has been much the same for centuries.
Please don't emigrate just yet—you may be in luck. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of speech for all EU citizens. It was enshrined into UK law by the Human Rights Act in 1998; this was the biggest fundamental change in the law regarding freedom of speech for centuries.
The problem is, the way it is enshrined into UK law also introduces a significant number of restrictions, mostly around the areas of security, crime, and morals. But the government has to actually pass specific legislation to limit speech in these areas, and if these national laws fall short of the European Convention then they can be challenged in the European Court of Human Rights.
One of the weaknesses of the British constitutions is that most people—even most British people—seem to have been persuaded that we don't have one, so few people are willing to stand up and fight against unconstitutional laws.
Far from free speech not being a vote winner, it looks likely that reform of our libel laws will become a significant issue at the next election, for example with campaigns like libelreform.org causing a lot of unrest in political circles.
The IRA gave coded telephone warnings a few minutes in advance.
This was NOT to allow civilians time to escape, or reduce the number of civilian casualties.
It was to verify that the IRA were the ones responsible for the attack, because after an attack there was usually a RUSH of extremist groups stepping forward to claim responsibility. The IRA wanted to make sure they got appropriate "credit" for the attack.
If the editor decides not to publish an article for fear of his own life or security, it is too late to start worrying!
If you don't fight these forces/tendencies all the time, suddenly you will wake up in a situation that you cannot change, or is much, much harder to change peacefully.
It should be easier to defend against this stuff than to let it happen and then try to change it back.
This battle requires constant vigilance, not complacency until the point where you suddenly have to revolt or migrate to keep the same level of freedom/security. btw, how do you format paragrap
One idiot under arrest is hardly "all hell breaking loose".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
think about this for a second. here's a list of many of the more famous British historical figures: Robin Hood (local thief and gang leader), Guy Fawkes (Terrorist), Henry VIII (Killed 2-3 of his wives), Jack the Ripper (Serial Killer)
It is for him.
Slashdot needs a "Troll +1" mod, so people can learn to recognize such wonderful red herring mastery.
... is the man telling you to be afraid.
Well done on inflating the situation.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I think you're missing the point. If he knew this would happen, he probably wouldn't've done it at all. It was just him venting in a moment of frustration.
How the police responded so quickly is beyond me, though...
Firstly, it implies that the fuzz over in the UK are listening pretty much non stop to Twitter to be able to react so quickly.
Secondly, it implies that they are showing utterly no concept of applying common sense to what they do when they take what is clearly that sort of vent "oh fuck it, I am so sick of this weather!". Seriously guys, use your heads, can anyone really be that pissed at the WEATHER that they blow something up? I doubt it. I really fucking doubt it.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
In the UK we don't use "trialled" as a verb like that - it should be "he has not yet been put on trial".
A new product might be trialled, not a person in court.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
At eWEEK Europe, we have spoken to his employers, and confirmed that he is suspended from work for the next couple of weeks. The damage to his work prospects may be the most serious aspect of the story. We await any comment from the company concerned. Peter Judge
While the police action did not speak for much common sense and understanding of modern communication, neither does the Twitter posting speak of intelligence of the poster. Saying "You got one week to get your shit together or i will blow you sky high" can be interpreted wrongly and IMHO you have to be quite dumb to make such jokes in public.
I think both parties involved have trouble with Twitter. The police had no method of putting that posting into a context. They interpreted it as a standalone message. The poster did not care, how that statement looks as a standalone message. For him his own Twitter context was applied automagically.
While i put quite some blame on the police, i do not think the poster is free of it. Been questioned for several hours seems to be fair for that. But being suspended from the job and banned for life from that airport is very excessive IMHO.
CU, Martin
The civil libertarian Tessa Mayes, an expert on privacy law and free speech issues, said: "Making jokes about terrorism is considered a thought crime, mistakenly seen as a real act of harm or intention to commit harm. "The police's actions seem laughable and suggest desperation in their efforts to combat terrorism, yet they have serious repercussions for all of us. In a democracy, our right to say what we please to each other should be non-negotiable, even on Twitter."
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
It was reported by a member of the public.
The police acted on information that someone had made an internet threat to blow up an airport. Chinese Whispers anyone?
They couldn't risk not arresting the guy. And it took a week for them to get to him (maybe a week to report the threat, the article isn't clear).
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Advocates of the Crown Prosecution Service, FYI. All criminal cases in the UK are Regina V. Defendant. Transgressions of criminal law are tried by representatives of the Queen, as it is her Law which has been broken.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The IRA gave coded telephone warnings a few minutes in advance.
This was NOT to allow civilians time to escape, or reduce the number of civilian casualties.
No, since the IRA did bomb and kill civilians and were pretty unrepentant about it. Coded warnings can amplify the effect of an attack - or even make an actual attack unnecessary. Why bother with a real bomb when a simple telephone message can shut down 40 train stations and cause an estimated £34 million damage? For every real bomb you can call in many times that number of coded threats, causing huge economic losses.
So, you're saying the Chinese are behind all this?
rewriting history since 2109
The UK showed what it could do during the Boer war, Alien Civilian Internment camps in WW1 ect., The Mau Mau Uprising, Malayan emergency, H-Blocks in the 91970-80's, Iraq, Afghanistan re board groups. :)
The GCHQ/NSA can digitally "tag them all" via sloppy ip use
Your life can then get difficult if you want paper work for a job outside the UK ect.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think you're missing the point. If he knew this would happen, he probably wouldn't've done it at all. It was just him venting in a moment of frustration. How the police responded so quickly is beyond me, though...
Firstly, it implies that the fuzz over in the UK are listening pretty much non stop to Twitter to be able to react so quickly.
Or somebody who read the tweet reported it. In fact, from the Telegraph areticle (linked from the RA), police acted on "a tip-off from a member of the public".
Secondly, it implies that they are showing utterly no concept of applying common sense to what they do when they take what is clearly that sort of vent "oh fuck it, I am so sick of this weather!". Seriously guys, use your heads, can anyone really be that pissed at the WEATHER that they blow something up? I doubt it. I really fucking doubt it.
Can any normal person? I agree. Are there psychos out there who just might? Sadly, yes. And "You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!" does sound rather like a psycho. Britain has been the subject of extended terror campaigns, and I suspect that the British police are more familiar with what a genuine terror threat sounds like than the average /. reader. Unfortunately any measurement system is going to suffer type 1 errors (I hope innocence is still the null hypothesis). What matters is how they're dealt with if they're subsequently identified. That's not yet the case here: "He has been bailed pending further investigations." The police are not yet convinced if it was a joke, or if it was whether it was a harmless one (too many people think that hoaxing the emergency services is a "joke"; I expect that some think that real bomb hoaxes are), and it has not yet been tested by a court (as it should be if reasonable doubt remains). The real test will come if it does all turn out to be a misunderstanding. Wil he just be taken on one side and told not to be such an asshole (er, sorry, "will it be explained to him that the police need to investigate such matters, because after all, how would it have been if the threat had been real and he had carried it out? It would be helpful if he kept that in mind in future"), or will things like the airport ban remain in place?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
But then coded phone call AFTER the attack would have been enough. But I guess doing that BEFORE the bombs exploded had two beneficial (for the terrorists!) effects:
1) Increase Panic, spread fear. (And bring more "military" targets closer to the bomb)
2) Actually save "civilians" or at least give the terroists themselves the illusion of trying to save civilians.
From what I remember from interviews and documentaries I saw about that, they had the self-image of an army in a war against another gouvernment and its military, and to a lesser extent against the people of that country.
And don't forget the image. Thats even important to terrorists. It's much easier to convince an unsuspecting young guy when you can say "He, we're the good guys! We're at war, but we try to avoid civilian casualties". And it may help yourself to justify your feelings of guilt.
bickerdyke
Quoting the Daily Mail does not give you any credibility whatsoever in political debate. Also note that the author of your article worked for the Daily Express, an even more hate-mongering and populist rag between 1977 and 2000.
Plenty of cops must be twats (twits are the messages; twats are the users) so they must know what Twitter is like; small, irrelevant messages from people too uninteresting to post long comments.
So, unlike someone calling up a talk radio station in what way?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Have you ever lived in the UK? When I was growing up, the IRA (you know, the terrorist organisation that was very active in the UK for much of the last century) phoned in bomb threats fairly regularly. Some were real bombs, some were not. It was effective, because the police had to evacuate and send in the bomb squad for every scare. Even if the bomb was diffused, and no one was killed, they still caused massive disruption, and they got slightly better PR by warning people first.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Nowhere in TFA does it state that the Twitter feed in question was private, so how exactly would you know that? Either you have access to information not in TFA, or you DON'T actually know that it was private. If in fact it was private, then why didn't you support your argument with proof of that? If it wasn't private, then your entire expletive-ridden diatribe is baseless.
Or just be on the NO FLY LIST.
They couldn't risk not arresting the guy.
Indeed - I'm not too concerned over the arrest because it can be hard telling real threats from jokes when something is said in public.
But what concerns me far more is that, even though it's clear it's a joke now, he still faces problems:
* He's on bail.
* He may be charged with "conspiring to create a bomb hoax".
* He's been suspended from work - apparently we're guilty until proven innocent now.
* They've confiscated "his iPhone, laptop and home computer".
That last one is a particular concern - whilst totally unnecessary, it now seems standard for people to lose access to items which are fast becoming essential items in today's society, for communication and in some cases their livelihoods. Sometimes they're taken for searches, but there's apparently such a backlog that you can kiss goodbye to your equipment for many months.
No doubt they'll be scanning the hard disk to find if there's any other random "crime" that they can get him on too.
More generally, there's also the problem of blurring the lines between statements intended for friends, but that can be read by anyone.
Consider, if someone made the same joke in a pub, even though that's a public place, would it make sense for the person to go through that ordeal, because a random member of the public heard them and phoned the police? (Although I guess at least you could deny ever having said it in that instance...)
This guy was simply arrested, questioned, and released.
From the original article http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html :
* He's on bail.
* He may be charged with "conspiring to create a bomb hoax".
* He's been suspended from work - apparently we're guilty until proven innocent now.
* They've confiscated "his iPhone, laptop and home computer".
Yep, you left a few things out of your "simply".
Not to mention that these days in the UK, an arrest means your DNA and fingerprints are kept on file, even if you're found innocent or never charged.
I don't see the humor in saying [snip] That's the equivalent of saying [snip]
I didn't quite catch that, could you repeat it please? Something about you making a threat?
No one has any problem with the police investigating it.
The problem is when the "investigation" results in totally messing over his life, even when it's now clear it was just a joke, and that he may still be charged for the privilege of it all.
RTFA - unfortunately the Slashdot link contains few details, you have to read The Independent story that it was taken from, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html .
Perhaps it would help if the other side made a distinction between military targets and civilian ones. As it is, any attack by any bunch of extremists is considered by the established order as "terrorist". An idiot walks into a mall with a suicide-vest and blows himself/herself up. The verdict of politicians, the media and the general populace: he/she is a terrorist. A few dudes get on a rickety, inflatable rubber boat loaded with explosives, waddle up in plain view to a sophisticated, armed-to-the-teeth, multi-hundred-million-dollar destroyer, salute to the crew on board and blow themselves up. Verdict: terrorists.
Then you have dudes with rusty rifles hiding in mountains and engaging in sporadic fire fights with an overpowering foreign occupation force -- complete with heavy armor and utter air superiority -- that overrun their country. They too apparently are "terrorists", albeit of the "cowardly unlawful combatant" type (whatever nonsense that is supposed to mean).
As you can see there is absolutely no incentive for any of these to aim at military targets exclusively, especially in that last case where the occupying force has a very long record of blowing up everything that moves, including thousands of women and children.
No mod points left, but yes. At this point in history we need some sense of personal responsibility.
It's interesting that in this thread you posted an actual THREAT.
"We will use illegal detention and questioning to harass you." sure sounds like a threat to me. If a law officer had made it, he'd be an ex-officer, because I WOULD KILL HIM.
Now someone do me.
The terrorists have finally succeeded in making it possible to arrest someone for being an idiot! Maybe there's a silver lining to this cloud....
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sometimes you think there's no hope for humanity. Then there's a post like this.
Hear, hear, radtea. I wish I could mod up your entire philosophy.
Britain has been the subject of extended terror campaigns, and I suspect that the British police are more familiar with what a genuine terror threat sounds like than the average /. reader.
IRA terror threats were made by phone directly to the police or army. The point is to be able to blame the authorities for being too slow to evacuate people if your bomb kills someone. Throwing out a message on Twitter doesn't fit the profile of previous bombers in the UK.
Wil he just be taken on one side and told not to be such an asshole (er, sorry, "will it be explained to him that the police need to investigate such matters, because after all, how would it have been if the threat had been real and he had carried it out? It would be helpful if he kept that in mind in future"), or will things like the airport ban remain in place?
I would guess that they will try to get him to accept a caution. That saves the hassle of a trial, but still looks positive on the statistics.
#88575 +(9158)- [X]
I should bomb something ...and it's off the cuff remarks like that that are the reason I don't log chats
Just in case the FBI ever needs anything on me
I'm sure they can just get it from someone who DOES log chats.
*** FBI has joined #gamecubecafe
We saw it anyway.
*** FBI has quit IRC (Quit: )
http://www.bash.org/?88575
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Having by and large abandoned sexual taboos, we now have a whole new range of taboos having to do with our physical security.
"Don't ride your bicycle without a helmet"
"Don't smoke"
"Don't mention bombs in airports"
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
If he sent the message to the airport or the cops or the news media, then it's a hoax. Sending a message to your friends is different. Completely different. Maybe in these times it warrants somebody following up to make sure there aren't any dots to connect - but after the facts are gathered and the police decide to press charges as if this guy was a terrorist? Had intended to shut down an airport? Irresponsible at best. How much time & effort, how many tax dollars are funding this miscarriage that could be better spent? Police actions in this case are diverting resources and making us all less safe.
The clues they had in that case were, IMHO, considerably more substantial.
But you seem to be falling into a fallacy that government agencies often do: that somehow, if you're pathetically lax in one case then you can average it out by being ridiculously overzealous in another.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As I understand it, it's originally English upper class slang. The "soc" comes from "association" football. Rugby football = rugger. It's a very distant cousin of what the Americans refer to as football.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'll tell you what, if I hear another case of the Police overreacting like this I swear I'll ... ...
ummmmm
I'll write a strongly worded letter to my MP.
Unless they've banned that too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Actually true Rugby Football fans refer to Rugby as Football at times, and refer to Football as Association Football.
It can get complicated :)
but rather by far left Stalinists and Trotskyists
If you want to spread FUD that is at least remotely truth-like, you should at least avoid obvious self-contradictions - like, for example, Stalinists working alongside Troskyists, when those two factions quite literally fought to death in the past, and consider themselves on the opposite ends of the spectrum even today (FYI, as far as Trotskyists are concerned, Stalinism is essentially imperialistic fascism masquerading as a worker's state).
My mother survived the Birmingham pub bombings of the IRA in '74. She was in the theatre next door, where the wall collapsed, creating a stampede, which accounts for a few of the 21 people dead. As a fifteen year old, she very intelligently crawled under her seat, but still had to climb over two dead bodies in order to get out of the theatre.
She will tell you that economic damage does little to strike fear in the hearts of the public than the threat of life. Deep down (she says) we all want to survive, even if that means as cave men.
I'm just happy that I've never had to live through an experience like that.