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Tasmanian Cops Decline To "Censor Internet"
aesoteric writes "Tasmania's police force has taken the unusual step of asking the public to stop alerting it to every 'abusive or harassing' comment posted to Facebook or other social media sites. The force said it was 'increasingly receiving complaints' about material posted to the sites, but sought to clarify that 'the use of technology to undertake some conduct does not in itself create an offense.'"
What a devilish insult, it really bugs me. You must be daffy spreading this FUDD.
Good-bye
Saying that "Tasmanian police decline" to do something implies that they are actually empowered to do so as a matter of course. I suspect the Tasmanian police cannot censor the internet, and even if they were given a court order only limited censorship could be attempted (likely with even more limited success).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
THATS IT IM CALLING THE COPS!
What really spins my head here is the concept that someone would report trolling on the internet to the police. The kind of person that would do such a thing is surely the worst on earth.
Yes, I'd report them ... oh wait.
Does this smack anyone else as really immature? It reminds me of siblings threatening to tell your parents about something. Or telling the teacher if someone is picking on you in school. Do they honestly think this is a worthy use of their police resources by having a thin skin and crying to the police about every random person that says something about them on the internet?
As an intermittent reader of some of the unofficial/unsanctioned police blogs that have sprung up in the UK over the last few years, I was entirely unsurprised by this story.
Complaints to the police regarding rude messages on face-book are absolutely nothing new. Most of those in the UK seem to come from the lower rungs of the social ladder and are normally couched as complaints of "harassment" (though as in Tazmania, most of the complaints fall well short of the level needed for the behaviour to be criminal).
The real story here isn't about technology or Facebook or Twitter or whatever at all. It's about the fact that large numbers of people are so bad at managing their own lives and so used to having other people (usually some agency of the state) sort everything out for them that they think it's appropriate to bring the police into mundane arguments and disputes.
Without being to specific, I can give you some context here as an actual Tasmanian.
Right now Tasmania's police force is being forced to make such strict budget cuts. The budgets are so razor-thin that some outer-metropolitan police stations are having their staffed hours cut back to 10am-4pm on weekdays.
Beyond that, anyone with a finger on the pulse of the Tasmanian community will tell you that while there is a great deal of respect for the job our Police do, there is a broad lack of community confidence in our state court system. As an all-to-common example, last month someone received a wholely-suspended sentence for ripping the heads off of two kittens in front of their owners. No I'm not making this up.
When you look at these in context and take a step back, it's pretty obvious that all Tasmanian Police are saying is that they don't have either the resources or the legal power to do anything about online harassment. Unless an actual violent crime linked to online threats take place there's nothing material that they can do anyway, so people are far better off taking their complaints further up the chain to someone empowered to actually do something about it.
Bloody mountains from molehills...
This basically boils down to something we have seen countless times over the years.
A new law came in, in response to something awful happening, someone who is being harrassed (via the internet) to the point that they commit suicide.
The police were doing what I think was the appropriate thing, realising that it was probably youths that were more at risk, started a campaign to educate them about the fact that online harrassment can be criminal. So far so good...
But society doesn't change overnight. It takes time. Right now we are at the point where we are accepting of the fact that it is indeed wrong. We are accepting of the fact that there is some line that when crossed makes it criminal. If it does not reach that line, it is still frowned upon but we should not report it to law enforcement. In people's mad dash to be politically correct and overly sensitive, they are reporting stuff that should merely be frowned upon and gotten over. Eventually they will find the appropriate equilibrium and in the mean time the police have told the public they need to push that line towards the more serious occassions of cyber-bullying.
Other examples are when sexual harrassment gained widespread acceptance people would threaten to call police over once off jokes, or a glance held for a second too long. We as a society have now (MOSTLY) worked this out, using other means of punishment, in that sexual harrassment is still frowned upon but police aren't deluged with frivolous instances.
The only bit I don't understand is that we already had harrassment laws. Why do we need a seperate law for "harrassment on the internet"? But then again I don't understand why we need separate patents for "(existing process) on the internet" either