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UK's Chief Troll Hunter Targets Doxxing, Virtual Mobbing, and Nasty Images (arstechnica.co.uk)
Some bad news for trollers on the internet who use sophisticated techniques to hurl abuses at others. The UK's top prosecutor has warned that they are introducing new regulations to take these matters carefully and punish offenders with jail time. From an ArsTechnica report:New guidelines have been released by the Crown Prosecution Service to help cops in England and Wales determine whether charges -- under part 2, section 44 of the 2007 Serious Crime Act -- should be brought against people who use social media to encourage others to harass folk online. Over the past four years the CPS has repeatedly tweaked its guidelines on offensive behaviour on social media sites. The latest overhaul, among other things, addresses doxxing, where a person's personal information such as bank details or home address are published online; violence against women and girls such as "baiting" -- which labels someone as sexually promiscuous and can include the use of humiliating photoshopped images; and online harassment campaigns that encourage the use of derogatory hashtags. "Social media can be used to educate, entertain, and enlighten but there are also people who use it to bully, intimidate, and harass," said director of public prosecutions Alison Saunders. "Ignorance is not a defence and perceived anonymity is not an escape. Those who commit these acts, or encourage others to do the same, can and will be prosecuted."
Gotta punish that wrongthink. How much you want to bet they'll vigorously prosecute those who say mean things about immigrants or women, but gosh just never find the time to investigate someone who bashes white people or men...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
but more than just a little bit difficult to enforce.
harassment is already illegal.... so just add some bits to include "...on the internet" and call it a day. the law will be there for when its needed.
I predict the Anonymous Cowards aren't going to like this one bit, no sir. Not one bit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Part 2, section 44 of the 2007 Serious Crime Act :
"Intentionally encouraging or assisting an offence (1)A person commits an offence if— (a)he does an act capable of encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence; and (b)he intends to encourage or assist its commission. (2)But he is not to be taken to have intended to encourage or assist the commission of an offence merely because such encouragement or assistance was a foreseeable consequence of his act."
It's not a crime to label someone with a #UnfitForJobAtCPS hashtag, and thus not a crime to ask people to label someone as such. Trying to silence free speech is clearly a breach of a core freedom.
If someone says something that upsets you, get a thicker skin.
When these people talk about "trolls," they're not talking about your garden-variety asshole that stirs up trouble for his own amusement. They're talking about the other kind of troll, the one that hides inside the term and uses the harmless ones for cover. These people are a menace. Stalking and harassment are just the appetizers for these psychos -- swatting is more their style. They want to hurt people and the internet exports that misery all over the world.
There are some kinds of speech that can be criminalized, or at least made into civil matters. Shout fire in a crowded theater, urge on a violent mob, or, on the civil side, call your neighbor a pedophile because he dog craps on your lawn, and you'll find out awfully fast that freedom of speech is not limitless, and that like any liberty, there are edges.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What happens if the Internet troll is threatening to rape or kill you?
Believe it or not, it has never been acceptable to threaten bodily harm against people, and "on a computer" is not a defense.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Threatening a person with violence is criminal behavior already covered in the penal code.
That's where I see this going: They'll hunt down these nasty trolls, only to find they're just '2edgy4u' 12-year-olds who aren't supervised in their internet usage. What do you do then? Can't put them in prison. Do you put their parents in prison? Huge fine? LOL. I think the best you could do is ban their household from the internet for some period of time, and inform the kids school that he's not to be allowed to use the internet except when 100% supervised. This does not even address the problem of trolls outside the jurisdicton of the UK, for which there's basically nothing they could do about it; do they really think Timbuktwoistan's government is going to give a damn about someone posting mean things on the internet? I think this is, once again, a case of politicians and government workers who don't understand the technology of the internet, and how unenforcable things like this really are because of that. What they ought to be doing is working to educate people that they should not be posting personal information on the internet in the first place, so no doxxing can happen.
violence against women and girls such as "baiting" -- which labels someone as sexually promiscuous and can include the use of humiliating photoshopped images;
Wow, so now the definition of "violence" includes mean tweets? Having been through actual violence, from beatings to robbery, I'll take mean tweets any day.
"Violence" is not a thing that can happen through the internet. Oh, sure, you can incite it, but that's already a crime, no special "on a computer" law needed. I can see the point in making "doxxing" explicitly a kind of harassment, but really, don't these people have any real crime to chase? You know, the kind that leaves people with actual injury?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sounds like a great time to start an American VPN company. Let's see them try to extradite for enabling free speech.
Our police state will know everything about everything said using it, but doesn't care. They think the masses should be allowed to vent, knowing it has as much meaning as the squeals of puppies in a box. It's a little surprising the UK doesn't seem to understand how effective the 2 Minute Hate is considering it was invented by a British author. Perhaps they think undirected hate undermines its effectiveness.
Let us know when the list of allowed hate targets is released in Britain. Then we'll know for certain that they're using 1984 as a manual.
Brandenburg v. Ohio gives the police and prosecutors the power to charge someone if their speech leads to imminent danger. In other words, you incite a riot, you'll be charged.
And if you call your neighbor a pedophile because his dog shits on your lawn, he'll likely own your law after the civil trial is over. Ever heard of slander?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I haven't seen a law yet that explicitly states that it is illegal to yell "fire" in a theater. So you can toss that out. Common sense says not to do it, but there are no laws prohibiting it.
.
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know all the laws in the US, so I can't say for sure. What I can say for sure is that falsely yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre is not protected speech under the 1st amendment, so if you do that you're likely to be prosecuted for something.
It's a shitty summary that does not accurately describe the law. Obviously, baiting is not violence. However, photoshopping someone into porn and distributing it on social media as part of a campaign of harassment is illegal in the UK. For men as well as women.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You people are so overreacting to this. All he's saying is that anyone who harasses SJW's by openly disagreeing with them or challenging them in any way will face jail time for it. Perfectly reasonable stuff.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
>labels someone as sexually promiscuous
>violence against women and girls
Uh, isn't spreading slut rumors a pretty common girl-on-girl "violence"? They've been doing it without the intertubes for a few years now. Decades. Centuries.
Whatever, have fun chasing down every bugger that spawns goaste bots.
The really crazy thing about all this, the underlying reality, the more it happens, the less impact it has, it becomes the norm and becomes mostly ignored. Of course inflating the impact, making it seem more and more severe, actually hugely increases the perception of harm and resultant psychological harm.
So the real truth of what they are doing because they know they will be making it worse, screw the majority, this is all about a tiny minority being able to censor the entire internet from any negative mention of them. The focus of this plutocrat exercise, straight up political and corporate censorship.
They can not exercise the old premium based exclusion from access to the public mind space (if you could not pay for idiot box or print or radio advertisements your message did not exist), so they are going with the corruption of the legal system and court based premium ie you can say anything you want as long as you can afford long drawn out legal fights in court but if you can not, then you will be destroyed by those courts with spurious charges, censorship under threat.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
and a very sophisticated fuck you to you too
got to watch the unsupervised 60yrlds as well
Go well
It's so simple really:
"WHITE MEN ARE EVIL! BURN ALL THEM MOTHERFUCKERS DOWN!" = free speech
Actually, yes it is.
Now, is it a PROTECTED form of free speech?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's my right to call things like I see them, just as it is yours. If I want to call a woman a slut, or a man a queer (both descriptive terms that're seen as pejorative) it's their right to call me a chauvinist or a breeder. The answer to "bad" speech isn't censorship. It's more "good" speech. Anyone who can't withstand mere words has no business going outside their doors. I suppose it's hate speech to say that, too.
Bingo! You nailed it in one paragraph
Until recently? Did they change the law or something?