Look at his posting history. He makes meaningless, trollish threats like this all the time - as do a thousand other trolls on the Internet at any one time. A threat which is "ridiculous banter" is not necessarily "menacing", thus not necessarily illegal.
He was arrested this time because he criticised an Olympic swimmer. And the indecent/obscene nature of this and other tweets are grounds for arrest.
I'm not sure why everyone is so confused. Ask yourself a) What's different this time? b) What's the simplest explanation?
Answers are a) he attacked an Olympic swimmer; b) The policemen observed indecency/obscenity in his tweets (which, unlike menacing threats, are unquestionably present). At worst, the indecency/obscenity strengthen the grounds for arrest - can you not see why that alone is a bad thing?
It's possible that they took account of them, but it seems that there are stronger grounds for arrest on the basis of indecency/obscenity rather than being menacing.
I am looking now at his entire posting history rather than specifically the ones at Daley. The threats seem to be un-menacing "ridiculous banter", but the indecency/obscenity is evident.
Show that the arrest was based entirely on the "menacing" aspect of the provision, with the indecency/obscenity aspects not applied to strengthen the grounds for arrest. Or at least why the police would do that, when he has obviously been indecent/obscene but not obviously menacing.
No, we should assume all threats are credible until proven otherwise.
Do you realise that this would produce so much work that it would stop the criminal justice system from being able to achieve anything for the rest of time?
If you are in the business of threatening people online with violence, then you deserve your privacy violated and your real life looked into, potentially up to arrest and incarceration. Do you disagree?
It's not about what people "deserve". Criminal justice is for the benefit of society, and it doesn't work like civil law.
But why, when we defend those principles, must we be in the business of defending a**holes who threaten real world violence?
We do not need to do anything about people who simply fail to express themselves decently - unless they are also a threat.
Regardless of "credibility", whatever that means, since it doesn't take anything except being a hate-filled douchebag or insanity to deliver on a threat.
His threats were probably not (legally) menacing because they were "ridiculous banter". But they almost certainly were indecent/obscene, and this contributes towards grounds for arrest.
It may be that the police only took account of the former. But there is no evidence of it, and it would be absurd to risk making an unlawful arrest by specifying that which has high profile and recent case law to raise the bar on what is relevant. So the indecency/obscenity element has strengthened grounds for arrest, which will simply be "under section 127". Surely you see why that's a problem?
Yes. That's the problem. It's one of those laws which make outlaws of tens of thousands of people, even though it's usually only going to be used to protect high profile individuals. How often does someone get arrested the following morning for suspicion of a Communications Act offence? BT+regulator have spent decades doing next-to-nothing to help people who receive nasty 'phone calls.
The Chambers ruling has certainly raised the bar for what counts as "menacing". Not so much for indecency + obscenity.
"@HazelBergeron i'm going to find you and i'm going to drown you in the pool you cocky twat your a nobody people like you make me sick" - is that jokey banter now?
I know there is a message like this one to Daley which has been quoted in various places, but I'm not sure it was ever posted from his account. FWIW someone (Mathemagician?) helpfully provided to me this link to retrieve all his tweets.
It seems he has made a few stupid i'm-gonna-kill-you style Twitter posts to various people over a period of time, though I'm not sure that one was directed specifically at Daley. In the context of his behaviour, it seems evident that they are ridiculous banter.
Even ignoring context, the above sounds like the typical message of a stupid teenage troll everywhere - almost always ridiculous banter.
Focus on the wording of the provision and on the case law: even if the boy might (I don't think so) be menacing, he clearly demonstrates indecency and obscenity, and those would be the sound grounds for arrest. And that is the problem.
There was a debate in the original submission comments about this. Perhaps the other tweet allegations should have been mentioned, but I strongly concur with the submitter's position.
Per Chambers para. [30], the guy who jokingly "threatened" to blow up an airport:
if the person or persons who receive or read it, or may reasonably be expected to receive, or read it, would brush it aside as a silly joke, or a joke in bad taste, or empty bombastic or ridiculous banter, then it would be a contradiction in terms to describe it as a message of a menacing character.
Therefore the sort of "ridiculous banter" which might be uttered by a serial troll (as this guy is - he has made several threats in the past to lots of people) does not seem on the face of it to be unlawful. The police would be acting overzealously, or possibly illegally, to arrest him on this basis.
But the question of what is indecent/obscene is far more vague, and would be a valid reason for the police to make an arrest.
So because you choose to have Google profit from your work, you declare everyone else must have the choice taken away from them?
I shan't speak in defence of copyright or "intellectual property" but I shall speak in defence of rule of law. And while there is copyright law then the largest corporations in the land must obey it as much as the man on the street. The worst possible progression of copyright is for big businesses to either sidestep it with lawyering or (as seemed to be happening with some recent lobbying of Cameron in the UK) changing of the law specifically to advance particular corporations' business aims.
If we are to have an alternative to copyright then it must balance rights and obligations. For example, a Stallmanesque philosophy would require Google to release the source for its digitisations so Google is at no advantage over any other individual or organisation which wishes to redistribute works. Google isn't even offering this.
No, there is nothing good about what Google is doing, except to the very short sighted.
If I use any modern mobile 'phone then I assume anything I put on it and where it is can be read by the OS vendor and the carrier. The environment is too tightly controlled and lacking in openness for me to be able to come close to verifying otherwise. We can assume that the facility is only used on rare occasions because one significant revelation of data transmission will put people off buying the product, IOW the only thing keeping anyone safe is the "you're not important enough to matter" card.
But if you're doing anything remotely interesting, whether that's in industry or activism, you'd be a fucking idiot to use the routine features of a smartphone.
If you think some stranger on the Internet is going to provide exclusive "evidence" of people who were taken on or had some hand in recruiting then you're a fool.
This isn't a recruitment exercise. It's a behaviour observation exercise.
Any submitted solution is likely to be collaborative and/or copied from the guy who first posts it.
My experience is that the British intelligence services tend to hand pick people starting with informal chats at the elite universities. If you've spent the last decade awake and seeing how the government uses the services for particular special interests subsumed in politics then you'd have to be lacking completely in moral fibre to pursue.
Conjecture: People who have the money to buy "commercial real-estate and mult-unit dwellings" aren't stupid enough to be swayed by a bit of retouching of pictures and the only person being conned is the Realtor[tm] who pays the photographer. "It took me all that time to make all these changes!"
I would love to see them ban computers and cellphones because that would effect frequent business travelers, and perhaps cause some pushback against the insanity of airline security.
Modern government could be summarised with the tagline: "The infrastructure exists for the corporation."
Seems like Randall has predicted the future again!
If spending 30 seconds illustrating something which has been well-known for years to anyone with half a clue is "predicting the future", then yes, once again xkcd is at the forefront. Are you also impressed by the number of innovations in Apple products which have never been seen before?
The fact is that batteries in portable electronic devices have the potential to start fires if they fail in various unlikely ways. I don't know of any failure mode in a smartphone battery will explode with enough force to blow a hole in an aeroplane - any regulatory tests done by a window mock-up? Directly against the metal fuselage? But they're all sufficiently dangerous that there certainly needs to be the means to extinguish an electrical fire.
The lack of extra shielding on Apple unreplaceable batteries is going to make things a bit more interesting, but you knew that when you bought the product.
Are you proposing that unemployed people, like squirrels, should not have to be subject to the rule of law?
Without rights granted by society there are no responsibilities to be enforced by society. And the poor can simply take all your stuff indiscriminately.
Assuming you regard Google as the best possible search engine with no room for improvement.
As was made clear at the end of the 19th century, anything that could possibly be invented already has been, so we don't need to bother trying any more.
Slashdot Mirror
Evidence = for "This is what has happened".
I argue in other posts that this is not a likely scenario, even though it might be the one that seems least bad.
Look at his posting history. He makes meaningless, trollish threats like this all the time - as do a thousand other trolls on the Internet at any one time. A threat which is "ridiculous banter" is not necessarily "menacing", thus not necessarily illegal.
He was arrested this time because he criticised an Olympic swimmer. And the indecent/obscene nature of this and other tweets are grounds for arrest.
I'm not sure why everyone is so confused. Ask yourself a) What's different this time? b) What's the simplest explanation?
Answers are a) he attacked an Olympic swimmer; b) The policemen observed indecency/obscenity in his tweets (which, unlike menacing threats, are unquestionably present). At worst, the indecency/obscenity strengthen the grounds for arrest - can you not see why that alone is a bad thing?
It's possible that they took account of them, but it seems that there are stronger grounds for arrest on the basis of indecency/obscenity rather than being menacing.
I am looking now at his entire posting history rather than specifically the ones at Daley. The threats seem to be un-menacing "ridiculous banter", but the indecency/obscenity is evident.
Evidence for your argument, please. See my other posts to this thread for why I think it's unlikely.
Show that the arrest was based entirely on the "menacing" aspect of the provision, with the indecency/obscenity aspects not applied to strengthen the grounds for arrest. Or at least why the police would do that, when he has obviously been indecent/obscene but not obviously menacing.
No, we should assume all threats are credible until proven otherwise.
Do you realise that this would produce so much work that it would stop the criminal justice system from being able to achieve anything for the rest of time?
If you are in the business of threatening people online with violence, then you deserve your privacy violated and your real life looked into, potentially up to arrest and incarceration. Do you disagree?
It's not about what people "deserve". Criminal justice is for the benefit of society, and it doesn't work like civil law.
But why, when we defend those principles, must we be in the business of defending a**holes who threaten real world violence?
We do not need to do anything about people who simply fail to express themselves decently - unless they are also a threat.
Regardless of "credibility", whatever that means, since it doesn't take anything except being a hate-filled douchebag or insanity to deliver on a threat.
Read the judgment in Chambers.
His threats were probably not (legally) menacing because they were "ridiculous banter". But they almost certainly were indecent/obscene, and this contributes towards grounds for arrest.
It may be that the police only took account of the former. But there is no evidence of it, and it would be absurd to risk making an unlawful arrest by specifying that which has high profile and recent case law to raise the bar on what is relevant. So the indecency/obscenity element has strengthened grounds for arrest, which will simply be "under section 127". Surely you see why that's a problem?
Yes. That's the problem. It's one of those laws which make outlaws of tens of thousands of people, even though it's usually only going to be used to protect high profile individuals. How often does someone get arrested the following morning for suspicion of a Communications Act offence? BT+regulator have spent decades doing next-to-nothing to help people who receive nasty 'phone calls.
The Chambers ruling has certainly raised the bar for what counts as "menacing". Not so much for indecency + obscenity.
"@HazelBergeron i'm going to find you and i'm going to drown you in the pool you cocky twat your a nobody people like you make me sick" - is that jokey banter now?
I know there is a message like this one to Daley which has been quoted in various places, but I'm not sure it was ever posted from his account. FWIW someone (Mathemagician?) helpfully provided to me this link to retrieve all his tweets.
It seems he has made a few stupid i'm-gonna-kill-you style Twitter posts to various people over a period of time, though I'm not sure that one was directed specifically at Daley. In the context of his behaviour, it seems evident that they are ridiculous banter.
Even ignoring context, the above sounds like the typical message of a stupid teenage troll everywhere - almost always ridiculous banter.
Focus on the wording of the provision and on the case law: even if the boy might (I don't think so) be menacing, he clearly demonstrates indecency and obscenity, and those would be the sound grounds for arrest. And that is the problem.
On the contrary, recent case law has established that threats of violence are sometimes clearly not menacing.
Consider: I'm going to force my cock so deep into your throat that I burst your appendix.
There was a debate in the original submission comments about this. Perhaps the other tweet allegations should have been mentioned, but I strongly concur with the submitter's position.
Per Chambers para. [30], the guy who jokingly "threatened" to blow up an airport:
if the person or persons who receive or read it, or may reasonably be expected to receive, or read it, would brush it aside as a silly joke, or a joke in bad taste, or empty bombastic or ridiculous banter, then it would be a contradiction in terms to describe it as a message of a menacing character.
Therefore the sort of "ridiculous banter" which might be uttered by a serial troll (as this guy is - he has made several threats in the past to lots of people) does not seem on the face of it to be unlawful. The police would be acting overzealously, or possibly illegally, to arrest him on this basis.
But the question of what is indecent/obscene is far more vague, and would be a valid reason for the police to make an arrest.
So because you choose to have Google profit from your work, you declare everyone else must have the choice taken away from them?
I shan't speak in defence of copyright or "intellectual property" but I shall speak in defence of rule of law. And while there is copyright law then the largest corporations in the land must obey it as much as the man on the street. The worst possible progression of copyright is for big businesses to either sidestep it with lawyering or (as seemed to be happening with some recent lobbying of Cameron in the UK) changing of the law specifically to advance particular corporations' business aims.
If we are to have an alternative to copyright then it must balance rights and obligations. For example, a Stallmanesque philosophy would require Google to release the source for its digitisations so Google is at no advantage over any other individual or organisation which wishes to redistribute works. Google isn't even offering this.
No, there is nothing good about what Google is doing, except to the very short sighted.
If I use any modern mobile 'phone then I assume anything I put on it and where it is can be read by the OS vendor and the carrier. The environment is too tightly controlled and lacking in openness for me to be able to come close to verifying otherwise. We can assume that the facility is only used on rare occasions because one significant revelation of data transmission will put people off buying the product, IOW the only thing keeping anyone safe is the "you're not important enough to matter" card.
But if you're doing anything remotely interesting, whether that's in industry or activism, you'd be a fucking idiot to use the routine features of a smartphone.
Look, it's an open secret. Even college newspapers routinely cover it.
If you think some stranger on the Internet is going to provide exclusive "evidence" of people who were taken on or had some hand in recruiting then you're a fool.
My experience begins and ends with observing that exercise. Otherwise I wouldn't be here making the criticism.
I can't say the same for some of my ex-schoolchums. :-(
This isn't a recruitment exercise. It's a behaviour observation exercise.
Any submitted solution is likely to be collaborative and/or copied from the guy who first posts it.
My experience is that the British intelligence services tend to hand pick people starting with informal chats at the elite universities. If you've spent the last decade awake and seeing how the government uses the services for particular special interests subsumed in politics then you'd have to be lacking completely in moral fibre to pursue.
So the CPU can't keep up with routing? Really? (As in, evidence please?)
Sorry, which activity is CPU bound here?
Conjecture: People who have the money to buy "commercial real-estate and mult-unit dwellings" aren't stupid enough to be swayed by a bit of retouching of pictures and the only person being conned is the Realtor[tm] who pays the photographer. "It took me all that time to make all these changes!"
Micro-soft shill!
To treat him exactly as any other criminal would be necessary, sufficient and unlikely.
I would love to see them ban computers and cellphones because that would effect frequent business travelers, and perhaps cause some pushback against the insanity of airline security.
Modern government could be summarised with the tagline: "The infrastructure exists for the corporation."
So that won't happen.
Seems like Randall has predicted the future again!
If spending 30 seconds illustrating something which has been well-known for years to anyone with half a clue is "predicting the future", then yes, once again xkcd is at the forefront. Are you also impressed by the number of innovations in Apple products which have never been seen before?
The fact is that batteries in portable electronic devices have the potential to start fires if they fail in various unlikely ways. I don't know of any failure mode in a smartphone battery will explode with enough force to blow a hole in an aeroplane - any regulatory tests done by a window mock-up? Directly against the metal fuselage? But they're all sufficiently dangerous that there certainly needs to be the means to extinguish an electrical fire.
The lack of extra shielding on Apple unreplaceable batteries is going to make things a bit more interesting, but you knew that when you bought the product.
Are you proposing that unemployed people, like squirrels, should not have to be subject to the rule of law?
Without rights granted by society there are no responsibilities to be enforced by society. And the poor can simply take all your stuff indiscriminately.
Assuming you regard Google as the best possible search engine with no room for improvement.
As was made clear at the end of the 19th century, anything that could possibly be invented already has been, so we don't need to bother trying any more.