UK Man Arrested Over "Offensive" Tweet

mooterSkooter writes A 19-year-old Uk man has been arrested over an "offensive" tweet about an accident in which six people died. From the article: "The tweet, which has since been deleted along with the account that posted it, joked about the tragedy, in which the driver lost control of the vehicle and drove on the pavement, hitting Christmas shoppers 'like pinballs.' The tweet said: 'So a bin lorry has apparently driven in 100 people in Glasgow eh, probably the most trash it's picked up in one day.'"

Comments

WTF UK?

[Stargoat]

It's like the damn island hasn't heard of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. "Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,"

Mario Balotelli, a black football player with a Jewish mother is suspended a game and fined 25k pounds for posting an anti-racist picture about a multicultural Super Mario.

Luis Suarez was essentially forced out of England for using the word negrito while speaking Spanish because it happened to sound like nigger. (While John Terry was given a sentence of half the time for using the word nigger in English.)

Crazy arse porn rules.

A man is threatened with life in jail for swearing too much.

And what the fuck is an Anti-Social Behavior Order?

How can the nation that brought us Locke also be bringing us this?

Re:WTF UK?

[Richard_at_work]

John Terry was suspended because the FA had a grudge against him, he had already been cleared in an actual judicial court of the same offence but the FA decided that they were better than the Crown Court and found him guilty - but he had been subject to a long running series of issues with the FA regarding captaincies etc.

The Suarez case was totally different.

Also you seem to be deliberately mixing up actions by private bodies (the FA) with judicial court actions. Private bodies can do whatever they damn well please, within reason - there is a zero tolerance approach to racism in English football, hence the action against Suarez and Balotelli.

And the "man threatened with life for swearing too much" had a slew of breached orders behind him, so he escalated that himself.

Re:WTF UK?

[malkavian]

From the article, the guy turned himself in, from the sound of it, most likely because he had threats against himself. It's unlikely the police would have even heard of this if he hadn't gone to the station and said he'd done something stupid. It had the benefit (to him) of exposing the threats against himself, which also fall under the anti-troll and cyber bullying laws, so the people who'd threatened him will also be lined up for a big slap on the wrist.

If this had been randomly picked up by a police trawl, I'd have been worried.. As it stands (someone turning himself in and admitting he'd be stupid, and asking for protection), it's looking like far less.. Good tabloid fodder.

Re:WTF UK?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother taking anyone who derps about "social justice warriors" any more seriously than the folks who derp about "socialism." They're the less advanced segment of the population, and will never get up to speed, though their children might.

Re:WTF UK?

[fahrbot-bot]

Ignorance and/or poor education? People, corporations, politicians trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator?

So you're saying that the various people in say...san fran which is a mecha of sjw's are ignorant and/or have bad education? These aren't folks with a lack of education, many if not all are university grads. I believe the problem stems from a lack of real world experience.

You and I actually agree... There's book learning and learning. Having a degree doesn't make one educated in all, or even many, things. One can know a lot about one or several things and not really know much at all. For the enlightened, this means: The more I know, the more I realize what I don't know. Sadly, many people are not that enlightened and many take what they hear on outlets like Fox News (to name *one* egregious source - don't get bent out of shape Fox News fanbois) as gospel w/o any further serious thought or research.

Most people on the planet range from ignorant to very ignorant (in the non-derogatory sense of simply not knowing) including myself.

Tree of liberty

[Firethorn]

Well, as they say, the tree of liberty needs to occasionally be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. It appears that their tree is in need of some watering.

Besides that, top gear's Stephen Fry:
“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

And from Salman Rushdie:
“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.

If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”

Re:Tree of liberty

[cyber-vandal]

It was Stephen Fry but he's not on Top Gear. Jeremy Clarkson is on Top Gear and he's very fond of offending people.

Re:Tree of liberty

[AmiMoJo]

Actually European human rights do give people some right not to be offended in certain, very limited circumstances. For example, someone who has just been bereaved has a right to a certain amount of peace, e.g. not having people standing outside their homes screaming abuse all day. See, in Europe there are both positive and negative freedoms, i.e. your right to scream abuse vs. everyone else's right not to listen to it in their own homes.

Arresting someone for posting something on Twitter is way, way, way beyond what little protection people have though. The victim's families are not forced to read these tweets, and in fact it's somewhat doubtful if they would ever have heard about them if the police hadn't turned it into a media circus by being their usual moronic selves.

Re:Explanation for us non-UKians?

[wosmo]

Is Glasgow filled with some sort of protected class? Lot of Africans, or Muslims? Was the joke meant to be racist?

No more than any other major city. Anecdotally I'd say far less so than the south of the UK, but I don't have numbers to hand, so take that as opinion rather than fact.

Or just anti-life?

Basically, this. It could be construed as "classist", as Glasgow's primary reputation is being something of a rough city (or a tough/hard city from a local's point of view). - however the irony isn't lost on me that Sunderland (where the 'tweeter' resides) isn't exactly god's kingdom either. An argument could also be made that Scots themselves are a minority, having only ~10% of England's population. (Easy to miss, the accident occurred in Scotland but the accused is in the north of England).

But mostly, he just seems to be a dick. And that's much less protected here than it is in the US.

This is one of the biggest differences between the US & UK legal cultures. While basically similar systems (they share the same "common law" roots), they're exercised entirely differently. The US deals very much with absolutes, and the letter of the law. Most of your primary rights are the right to dissent - and understandably so, since it's what your nation was built upon. To this end you have free speech, press, assembly, firearms, etc. That is, the right to have a dissenting opinion, to share/publish this opinion, to vote on it, to protest, etc. All the way up to having enough guns around that the govt should be wary of the people - although personally I'd argue this one's now a futile effort given the govt clearly won that arms race ...

But I digress; In the UK the law is very much more intent based. So we don't have free speech as an absolute - we judge each on its merits. So political speech, satire, etc are essentially protected speech - very much in line with the intent of your first amendment - but public disorder, breech of the peace, hate speech, etc, very much less so - which runs contrary to the letter of your first amendment.

This one falls into an odd gray area though. We have no obligation to provide a platform for free speech. So while this wouldn't have been seen has malicious if shared as a joke between friends, it falls foul of the Malicious Communications Act, which allows for something like;

Section 1 of the Act covers the sending to another of any letters, electronic communications, photographs and recordings that are indecent, grossly offensive or which convey a threat (which may be false), provided there is an intention on the part of the sender to cause distress or anxiety to the person who receives them.
The offence refers to the sending, delivering or transmitting, there is no requirement for the communication to reach (or be read by) the person who is intended to read it.

( http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/c... )

So this is where we end up with situations which can appear absurd. Someone makes a complaint to the police. The police satisfy themselves that there's reasonable grounds that such a communication has been sent. But it's not up to the police to judge the intent ("provided there is an intention on the part of the sender ..."). This ends up in essentially a three-step process, where the police may find sufficient rounds to make an arrest, then the CPS ("Crown Prosecution Service", roughly a public prosecutor or attorney general) may find sufficient grounds to press charges, and then a judge/court may find an actual offence.

So far, only the first of these steps has happened.

Re:Offense:

[Baloroth]

You are free to express you opinion no matter how nasty but it must be expressed as an opinion.

In the UK, this is simply and completely not true, and the entire point of the news story. The UK "Communications Act 2003", section 127 (1) states (and I directly quote):

A person is guilty of an offence if he—
(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or
(b) causes any such message or matter to be so sent.

So yes, sending an offensive message in the UK is a crime, no matter if the message is true or not.