Slashdot Mirror
Essex Police Arrest Man Over Blackberry Water Fight Plan
An anonymous reader writes "Under the banner headline 'Police reassure residents they are working to keep county safe,' Essex police proudly proclaimed that they arrested a 20-year-old man from Colchester who 'allegedly sent messages from a Blackberry encouraging people to join in a water fight.' Having also made a number of arrests of people sitting at home on Facebook, Acting Assistant Chief Constable Mason wrote: 'Police will continue to monitor social networking sites for unlawful activity.'" That's some good police work there, Lou.
This is an age-old debate but in my opinion there needs to be significant compensation for arrests that don't lead to convictions. Even more so if the arrest doesn't even lead to a charge.
The way things are at the moment, people who are wrongly arrested are expected to see their eventual release as a "relief" and be thankful for it. That's not how it should be. Otherwise the police had might as well arrest and hold everyone, take their time investigating all of them, and then release everyone who didn't do anything wrong.
In the venn diagram of arrests and convictions the target intersection is 100%. Currently it is nowhere near 100% and that is not entirely due to a flawed court system, it is partially due to too many innocent people being arrested.
The debate in the British Parliament was scary. It was endless calls for more police officers, more cameras, allowing police to use tactics like water cannons, more cameras, sending everyone even tangentially involved to jail for the absolute maximum possible, and more cameras. The sadly few occasions an MP would mention looking for the root causes of this social unrest, the British PM would ignore that part of the question.
Airstrip One now has telescreens everywhere with MPs crying out for even more of them, and an incestuously close relationship between government, law enforcement, and the media. (News of the World scandal? What News of the World scandal??)
So this storiy is basically a tacit admission either that:---
Blackberry and Facebook are doing realtime or near-realtime surveillance of users and sending suspicious information to the British police; or
The British police are capable of, and are, listening in on Blackberry or Facebook* without the co-operation of these corporationsi i.e., they're surveilling network traffic or similar. Facebook is entirely conducted through HTTPS nowadays, so if this be the case, that the bobbies can listen in is an even more significant revelation.
* This conclusion wouldn't hold of course if the police are merely trolling through what people post in public on Facebook, which is entirely a possibility considering how ignorant many people are about discretion and privacy.
Well, there is a third possibility. It is entirely possible a friend of a friend got invited to the water fight, and decided to fuck over his mate by showing the local constable selected bits of the original invitation. No need to postulate that level of surveillance by the police when simple human maliciousness is available...
How many deaths were caused by people crossing the street at appropriate crosswalks and with the traffic lights? Better make that illegal. How many deaths playing football in after work leagues? Better make that illegal. How many deaths falling out of bed? Better make that illegal!
I don't say this often, because I try to be generally polite even on the internet, but your logic is retarded. It is what leads to kids not being able to play tag during recess. It is the levels of paranoia that makes an adult male hesitate to help a terrified child because someone might think that they are trying to kidnap them. It is a significant portion of what is wrong with our society: the idea that everything and everyone can, and should, be made as completely safe as possible, regardless of the consequences.
And just so we're absolutely clear, I'd rather live in a world where one or two people die having a water fight than live in a world where someone can arrest an adult for planning a water fight.
Unfortunately the police have figured out how to deal with peaceful protests. All they have to do is surround a small group of protesters, force them into a corner, and keep them there until someone does something stupid. Then wait for the media to get a few juicy shots of the "violence" which can be repeated over and over on TV.
This is partly the reason why the riots got so out of hand: These tactics don't work *at all* if everyone shows up looking for trouble.