Police In Britain Arrest Man For Bomb-Threat Joke On Twitter 577
An anonymous reader writes "A British man was arrested under anti-terrorism legislation for making a bomb joke on Twitter. Paul Chambers, 26, was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006). His crime? Frustrated at grounded flights over inclement weather, he made a joke bomb threat on the social networking site Twitter."
Nobody in here make any cracks (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What if some hypothetical person was to threaten he would blow Slashdot sky high?
Just a second, there's someone at the door...
Who was it?
Re:Nobody in here make any cracks (Score:5, Funny)
Naturally, it was 'The Spanish Inquisition' whom nobody expects....
Re:Nobody in here make any cracks (Score:5, Interesting)
Twitter is the megaphone of social networks. I'm surprise this is the first such arrest being reported. He's gonna get a background check and will probably need to take some anger management courses. Airports do not like being intimidated.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't antropomorphize airports. They don't usually tell it to your face but they really don't like it.
Re:Nobody in here make any cracks (Score:5, Funny)
Depends on the airport. I was once told by an airport to get lost. When I refused to comply, it made my luggage do what it couldn't make me do.
Or just be on the NO FLY LIST (Score:3, Insightful)
Or just be on the NO FLY LIST.
Re:Or just be on the NO FLY LIST (Score:5, Insightful)
He doesn't deserve to get anything. A quote from the article: "On 13 January, after apparently receiving a tip-off from a member of the public, police arrived at Mr Chambers' office...I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they'd never heard of it." So now there's a new recipe to be an asshole. Find any piece of written evidence of someone you hate that they "intend" to do ANYTHING harmful, and mail it to the police. Then anonymously report it and watch the police go ape-shit.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Anonymous reporting isn't as easy as you might think in the UK.
I once called in to report a particularly gruesome fight that was happening right outside my building. It took 5 minutes of them collecting information on *ME* (that was in no way particularly related to the call) before they would even start listening to the problem. And apparently that's protocol.
One other time, a friend and I saw someone walk into a house (he didn't spot us) and seconds later we heard glass smashing, so we called the police
Bash.org reference (Score:3, Funny)
#88575 +(9158)- [X]
I should bomb something ...and it's off the cuff remarks like that that are the reason I don't log chats
Just in case the FBI ever needs anything on me
I'm sure they can just get it from someone who DOES log chats.
*** FBI has joined #gamecubecafe
We saw it anyway.
*** FBI has quit IRC (Quit: )
http://www.bash.org/?88575 [bash.org]
Re:Nobody in here make any cracks (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, just great.
First in the US we have a guy whose father turned him in and who was on several other countries no-fly-list and yet he's able to board an airplane and try to set off a bomb. Now we have a guy who made only one remark and the authorities are all over him.
These 2 items are related by the failure of authorities to see the whole picture. In the Christmas day bomber case they didn't put the evidence together to realize he was a threat. In twitter-threat case they over-reacted to only one piece of evidence.
I would hope that if authorities looked at the entire picture in both cases the proper course of action would have been self evident. So why aren't authorities looking at the WHOLE PICTURE before reacting?
I see another headline . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
A twit is someone who tweets on Twitter.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I propose the past tense:
Did you see my twat yesterday?
Typical.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of the way the world is heading. As I keep harping on about, and wish the politicians (and the police) would understand. Orwell's 1984 is a warning, not a "HOWTO manual".
By the standard they've set on this, most of the populace should be under arrest by dint of the anti-terror laws, which over here in the UK are draconian, misguided and completely over the top.
It really comes to something when we need to worry more about our own police and politicians than we ever would about a terror attack.
Gah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gah (Score:5, Interesting)
Shit like this makes me wanna blow up Parliament
Remember, remember the 5th of November, the gun powder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.
Re:Gah (Score:5, Informative)
Guy Fawkes was a revolutionary.
Re:Gah (Score:5, Funny)
You could always ask him [slashdot.org].
Re:Gah (Score:4, Informative)
Then they're morons. Guy Fawkes Night isn't a celebration of Guy Fawkes; there's a reason why the central element of the night is lighting a large bonfire and placing an effigy of Mr Fawkes onto it. At least, where it's observed correctly and not used simply as an excuse to let off fireworks, but as with most festivals the original meaning is lost pretty quickly.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gah (Score:5, Informative)
That's probably because we think it would have been a good thing for someone to blow up the houses of parliament and take down a corrupt government. At least that's what I thought until I was about 20. It never occurred to me that the government wasn't corrupt and that Fawkes wasn't a 'freedom fighter'. I suppose that just goes to show the quality of our historical education at school and the faith in the current government (the one I've grown up with) from a average lowly commoner.
Whether Fawkes was a 'freedom fighter' or not depends on your point of view. Fawkes was a Catholic, and Catholics at this time were a persecuted and oppressed minority deprived of many rights others took for granted. Being a Catholic was in many cases enough to be guilty of treason and many were executed and many more were exiled and/or had their property taken away. While King James I was originally more moderate than previous monarchs, he became harsher in the years before the Gunpowder plot.
The gunpowder plot aimed to kill the king and the government (the people actually responsible for the oppressive legislation). You could thus argue that they weren't 'innocent civilians'. Furthermore, it is hard to envision any non-violent and democratic way which British Catholics could have used at the time.
So there may be nothing wrong with your historical education giving you the impression that Fawkes was a freedom fighter who aimed to take down a corrupt government.
But as often happens when using violence to get your way, the opposite happened. The violent reactions by the conspirators led to even harsher treatment of Catholics in Britain.
It seems to me that the whole ordeal was a sad mess with little to be proud of on either side.
Re:Gah (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, it is hard to envision any non-violent and democratic way which British Catholics could have used at the time.
As Barbie might have said, "Thinking of non-violent means of political change is hard. Let's go kill people!"
Fuck that and the horse it rode in on. Sure it's hard to come up with non-violent means of influencing governments. But y'know what? It actually is known to work pretty well when people take the time to think about it, whereas killing people is pretty much an epic fail. As you yourself point out:
But as often happens when using violence to get your way, the opposite happened
Indeed, this happens so often that anyone who continues to opt for violence today, after centuries of idiots pretending to use violence for change and failing pretty badly, is clearly killing people because that's what they like to do, not because they have any genuine belief that violence will bring about their purported political ends.
Violence is the end, whether it's the US bombing Iraq or the 19 nitwits blowing up the twin towers.
The Basque, the Tamils, the Sikhs, the Irish on both sides, the Scots in the 1700's, the Palestinians today... all these people tried to use violence as a means of effecting political change, sometimes for decades--the Basque have recently come up on the half century mark. They've all killed hundreds of people, at least. None of them have gotten even close to what they claim to want, which is an entirely predicticable outcome of political violence.
It's not that it never works, but it is demonstrably inefficient and ineffective. Whereas intelligent, adaptive, non-violent political action of the kind Gandhi used in India is demonstrably effective and efficient (efficiency is measured by the number of peopled "freed" by the "freedom fighters" divided by the square of the number of people they kill.)
So given that the entirely predictable outcome of violence is usually the opposite of what the perpetrators nominally intend, we should look at anyone who advocates "war" of any kind as the equivelent of someone who is going to cure cancer with blood-letting and prayer. We can't prove it won't work ever, but we can be pretty damned sure there are other approaches--some of which are HARD, and require actually reseach and intelligence to implement--that will work a hell of a lot better.
The mystery is why anyone anywhere thinks anyone advocating or using poltical violence is anything but an idiot.
Hear, hear. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hear, hear, radtea. I wish I could mod up your entire philosophy.
Re:Gah (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorism has been successful in several instances. First I can think of is the creation of the United States. There are more recent examples such as Afghanistan in the 90s. Terrorism and revolution are two sides of the same coin, as others have already stated.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Typical.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
His tweets are protected. [twitter.com]
Re:Typical.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Typical.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly this is no different to making a threat against someone's life or any other kind of threat that would entail crime.
But he didn't threaten anyone, unless you have the reading comprehension of a child and cannot see a joke when one is presented to you.... oh yeah, this is the same police that recently had to lower their testing pass mark as they weren't getting enough recruits. Looks like that policy's working!
The guy from TFA made the mistake of saying something that allowed the pigs to use powers that if they don't use, they might lose!
"Can't have that training be wasted" said police PR spokesman H. Himmler.
Re:Typical.. (Score:5, Insightful)
For a long while, the police in the UK has been set targets for number of arrests/convictions, number of crimes within certain categories and other such targets.
The natural change of the behaviour of the police officers as a followup of these targets was:
- The police started arresting people for things that previously were dealth with informally, for example, if a kid throws a stone and breaks a glass window he can now end in court: in the past, the local copper would typically have a serious talk with him, take him to his parents, get them to pay for repairs and that was it.
- The police started pushing people to accept "Cautions" which are a formal admission of guild for minor crimes which does not require going to Court: this does create a Criminal Record for a person which might very well ruin their lives (for example, a Nursing Student got one of those because she was drunk and misbehaving, which resulted in her not being able to find any work as a nurse since she now had a criminal record).
- The police started misreporting crimes (as being in a less serious category) or even avoiding reporting them altogether (I know of a at least one case where a bag was snatched from a baby-buggy which was left unattended and the police refused to file the case because "nobody saw the bag being taken from the baby-buggy, so how do we know you didn't lost it").
At the same time, the increased bureaucratic overhead of keeping track of all those targets meant more time behind the desk and less time on the beat of the cops.
This resulted in people loosing trust in the Police. The familiar, well-liked and trusted local "bob" (the police officer that does the rounds in a neighbourhood) that knew and was known by the people in his beat (usually having a "fair but firm" image) was replaced by a group of guys in uniform which don't know you and you don't know them, with most people not wanting to interact with unless they really have to (they way the law is now, they can pretty much arrest you for not being properly polite). The cops themselfs have become distant and distrusting in reaction - they adopted a Us vs Them mentality.
The cops were taken out of the community and the community was taken out of the cops.
Under this environment, is hardly surprising that most good people don't want to join the Police Force anymore: while
in the past police officers were respected and trusted as wise users of the power they had (mostly prefering persuasion rather than force), nowadays they're mostly feared, distrusted and disliked.
The sad bit is that the old soft target of "making people fell safe" was much better than whatever hard targets they set for the police nowadays.
Re:Typical.. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm s clod, you insensitive plod*!
*(british slang [wikipedia.org])
Re:Typical.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Because we all know, everyone is serious on the internet.
Nobody should be arrested because the authorities don't have a sense of humor.
Robin Hood airport (Score:2)
Celebrating 800 years of political violence in the Nottingham area!
sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
You get arrested then released without charge, the police take and store your DNA. The EU human rights court says this is illegal and wrong, Labour say they don't care.
You get accused of a sexual offence, it gets recorded. Even if the accusation is entirely baseless and the person who made it is jailed for making it, you'll still have it on your record. Good luck getting a job with children when that accusation is revealed to a potential employer. Even worse, the government can put a court order on these that make it illegal for an employer to reveal why you failed a background check. You're given no legal recourse to this, even if a mistake has been made and you're accidentally added to the register.
You can have (consensual) kinky sex, but if you video it, you're a sex offender. You can be 18 and have sex with a 17 year old legally but videotape it, you're a sex offender. Draw two stickpeople having sex, label one of them as being 17, you guessed it, you're a sex offender.
Organise a protest criticising against soldier in Afganistan and Iraq? That'll be declared illegal and you'll be arrested on public decency charges.
Being held 30 days without charge? Not enough! We must change the law to make it 90 days! After all, you wouldn't have been arrested it you weren't guilty!
It's rather depressing that Labour are supposedly the left leaning of the two main parties. I would hope that the Conservatives would cancel some of these laws when they're in power but I doubt it. Removing laws is pretty hard and the tabloids would crucify them.
Re:sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
(Leftist party is kind of expected to make such draconian laws in order to "protect" public: it is the very essence of being nanny state.)
You know what is actually depressing about this?
People do nothing about it. Chances are, joe sixpack is not going to be bothered by it because chances are he is not going to be bitten by such law. Because as long as you sheep your way throught life and spend evening watching telly, you are safe. All it takes is to simply allow some freedom taken away - freedoms which ordinary people rarely make uses of it is not surprising they are not bothered by disappearance of them.
Re:sigh (Score:5, Informative)
(Leftist party is kind of expected to make such draconian laws in order to "protect" public: it is the very essence of being nanny state.)
I think you're projecting the American situation on another country.
What it means to be 'liberal' or 'conservative' can be vastly different depending where you are. In mainland Europe 'Liberals' tend to favor more freedom (hence the name liberal) at the expense of having less order and safety, while conservatives tend to favor more order and security at the expense of more repression.
You might find that the conservative vs liberal divide is (as far as I'm aware) uniquely American.
Some anecdotal evidence:
In Turkey, conservatives struggle to protect the strict separation of religion and state against liberals who wish to relax it. Where I live, conservative Christian politicians find their natural allies in the Green party, both wanting to roll the country back to some mythical idyllic past when it looked the way either God or Mother Nature intended, homosexuals join extreme right wing parties (because they feel threatened by Muslim immigration), liberals aim to restrict government interference in people's lives while conservatives wish the government to protect us from every real and imaginary threat conceivable.
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I just boils down to the fact that a one dimensional, or even binary, way of measuring political points of view does doesn't work.
Well, it works for one group: the American ruling class.
Whilst the electorate are busy slagging off the other side, the ruling class pretty much get all they want. They might have to bring things in slowly, or policies might need a few attempts at bringing in (lip service to democracy), but sooner or later they'll get their way.
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Quoting the Daily Mail does not give you any credibility whatsoever in political debate. Also note that the author of your article worked for the Daily Express, an even more hate-mongering and populist rag between 1977 and 2000.
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but rather by far left Stalinists and Trotskyists
If you want to spread FUD that is at least remotely truth-like, you should at least avoid obvious self-contradictions - like, for example, Stalinists working alongside Troskyists, when those two factions quite literally fought to death in the past, and consider themselves on the opposite ends of the spectrum even today (FYI, as far as Trotskyists are concerned, Stalinism is essentially imperialistic fascism masquerading as a worker's state).
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It's rather depressing that Labour are supposedly the left leaning of the two main parties. I would hope that the Conservatives would cancel some of these laws when they're in power but I doubt it. Removing laws is pretty hard and the tabloids would crucify them.
Even when the Conservatives are elected, the tabloids will still be in power.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What are the odds of Britain having a revolution?
I'd settle for a moderate political party to vote for. Take a look at the major choices in England at the next election, and some of the minor parties that have attracted significant public attention:
The story is actully on the Independent.co.uk (Score:3, Informative)
Dissent (Score:4, Insightful)
How very, very sad. How can anyone think for one second that his tweet was serious ? What a bunch of idiots. Not only the authorities but also the person who reported him.
It seems we're slowly moving to a state where only correct thinking is allowed. No joking, no sense of humour, irony or annoyance.
Lucky he did not end like (Score:4, Interesting)
They really like to "ground" people in the UK who make a fuss
All this web 2.0 stuff is watched by NSA, CIA, FBI, GCHQ, state task forces and your local PD.
So if your having a lol, remember who provided the seed cash to many of more 'effortless' web 2.0 sites.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/mar/13/surveillance-police-protest [guardian.co.uk]
VERY slow response (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously the police didn't take the threat seriously at all:
If it takes the police to find Paul J Chambers [twitter.com] when there a PICTURE [twimg.com] of him on his Twitter profile AND it tells you he's from Doncaster, England.
Now, I'm not the police, but I think that if I had access to a phone book of Doncaster, I could probably find the guy in a few hours. Given that he's 90% likely to have a drivers license, it's not like it'd make it any more difficult to find him.
Geez!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you know how fast they responded? It was seven days after he made the post that he was arrested, but we don't know how long it was before the police were aware of the post.
Why the securithugs do this (Score:5, Insightful)
Figure of speech? (Score:2)
"I'm going to eat at until I explode"
Why do British police go about in threes? (Score:4, Funny)
Stolen from the comments in the Independent: Why do British police go about in threes? One can read, one can write, the other keeps an eye on the 2 dangerous subversive intellectuals.
Seems appropriate. Although I would say that French police aren't any better, they just go about in pairs.
If I were a terrorist... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would make a fake bomb threat in an airport, and then... just leave.
Millions of dollars wasted, millions of dollars more airport security theater implemented just because, and to top it off no actual bomb needed.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You need to remember that thanks to the situation on the island of Ireland almost all terrorism legislation in the UK predates 9.11 As a result it has been an offense to make false bomb threats for quite some time. The guy was an idiot.
I'm not convinced the police was wrong here (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the Slashdot opinion that Britain tends to go overboard with police action lately, but honestly in this case I'm not so sure they were wrong. The man wrote:
Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!
Sounds like a bomb threat to me. I didn't see any context indicating that this is merely a joke.
I was taught by my parents, many many years before 9/11, that making bomb threats, even jokingly, is a bad idea because if anyone mistakenly takes you seriously, it WILL get you in trouble and possibly arrested. Maybe this guy's mom should have taught him the same thing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was taught by my father to joke when you're frustrated.
When my parents went on their honeymoon in Jamaica, my mother broke her neck after looking under a small waterfall. After some time in a run down hospital, they cut their honeymoon short and headed home. Unfortunately, they were redirected to Chicago. My father insisted that there had better be medical personnel on the ground. When they landed, the plane didn't approach the airport. Instead, it sat on the runway while police and ambulances surrou
Re:I'm not convinced the police was wrong here (Score:4, Insightful)
it sounds unmistakably like a joke,
No, you're quite wrong. Jokes are funny, they make people laugh.There's nothing even remotely joke-like in the statement. Stupid, ridiculous, ill-advised and correctly punctuated maybe but if you said those words to a million people, even drunk ones, not a single one would laugh. In my book, that makes it a failure as a joke.
Next question: were the police right to overreact like that? Obviously no, though if making unfunny jokes on an internett site was a crime, we'd all be in chokey.
Next question: don't the cops have anything better to do than goof around on twitter? Again, apparently not - though maybe if they had solved all the outstanding crimes and banged-up all the criminals there might be an excuse for it.
Next question: think of one simple way to screw up someone's life; Correct, impersonate them on twitter and make stoopid threats.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The police weren't trawling Twitter: according to the article in The Independent, a "friend" grassed him up.
idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting a lot of people defending this guy - but threatening to blow up an airport is just stupid
don't even bother with proxy, just don't make bomb threats, it's not smart or funny
The proxy is a particularly stupid idea - and all too typically geek. If your defenses are breached, you will be approached as a real threat. No more fun and games.
Staten Island Teen Arrested in Apple Store Bomb Threat [nbcnewyork.com] [Jam 13]
His Employers Are Taking This Seriously (Score:5, Informative)
Dumb vs. Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
While the police action did not speak for much common sense and understanding of modern communication, neither does the Twitter posting speak of intelligence of the poster. Saying "You got one week to get your shit together or i will blow you sky high" can be interpreted wrongly and IMHO you have to be quite dumb to make such jokes in public.
I think both parties involved have trouble with Twitter. The police had no method of putting that posting into a context. They interpreted it as a standalone message. The poster did not care, how that statement looks as a standalone message. For him his own Twitter context was applied automagically.
While i put quite some blame on the police, i do not think the poster is free of it. Been questioned for several hours seems to be fair for that. But being suspended from the job and banned for life from that airport is very excessive IMHO.
CU, Martin
Orwellian thought crime? (Score:4, Informative)
The civil libertarian Tessa Mayes, an expert on privacy law and free speech issues, said: "Making jokes about terrorism is considered a thought crime, mistakenly seen as a real act of harm or intention to commit harm. "The police's actions seem laughable and suggest desperation in their efforts to combat terrorism, yet they have serious repercussions for all of us. In a democracy, our right to say what we please to each other should be non-negotiable, even on Twitter."
Hooray! (Score:4, Funny)
Our taooless society now has a new set of taboos (Score:3, Interesting)
"Don't ride your bicycle without a helmet"
"Don't smoke"
"Don't mention bombs in airports"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The police acted on information that someone had made an internet threat to blow up an airport. Chinese Whispers anyone?
They couldn't risk not arresting the guy. And it took a week for them to get to him (maybe a week to report the threat, the article isn't clear).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So, you're saying the Chinese are behind all this?
His ordeal doesn't end here; may still be charged (Score:3, Insightful)
They couldn't risk not arresting the guy.
Indeed - I'm not too concerned over the arrest because it can be hard telling real threats from jokes when something is said in public.
But what concerns me far more is that, even though it's clear it's a joke now, he still faces problems:
* He's on bail.
* He may be charged with "conspiring to create a bomb hoax".
* He's been suspended from work - apparently we're guilty until proven innocent now.
* They've confiscated "his iPhone, laptop and home computer".
That last one
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're missing the point. If he knew this would happen, he probably wouldn't've done it at all. It was just him venting in a moment of frustration. How the police responded so quickly is beyond me, though...
Firstly, it implies that the fuzz over in the UK are listening pretty much non stop to Twitter to be able to react so quickly.
Or somebody who read the tweet reported it. In fact, from the Telegraph areticle (linked from the RA), police acted on "a tip-off from a member of the public".
Secondly, it implies that they are showing utterly no concept of applying common sense to what they do when they take what is clearly that sort of vent "oh fuck it, I am so sick of this weather!". Seriously guys, use your heads, can anyone really be that pissed at the WEATHER that they blow something up? I doubt it. I really fucking doubt it.
Can any normal person? I agree. Are there psychos out there who just might? Sadly, yes. And "You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!" does sound rather like a psycho. Britain has been the subject of extended terror campaigns, and I suspect that the British police are more familiar with what a genuine terror threat sounds like than the average /. reader. Unfortunately any measurement system is going to suffer type 1 errors (I hope innocence is still the null hypothesis). What matters is how they're dealt with if they're subsequently identified. That's not yet the case here: "He has been bailed pending further investigations." The police are not yet convinced if it was a joke, or if it was whether it was a harmless one (too many people think that hoaxing the emergency services is a "joke"; I expect that some think that real bomb hoaxes are), and it has not yet been tested by a court (as it should be if reasonable doubt remains). The real test will come if it does all turn out to be a misunderstanding. Wil he just be taken on one side and told not to be such an asshole (er, sorry, "will it be explained to him that the police need to investigate such matters, because after all, how would it have been if the threat had been real and he had carried it out? It would be helpful if he kept that in mind in future"), or will things like the airport ban remain in place?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Britain has been the subject of extended terror campaigns, and I suspect that the British police are more familiar with what a genuine terror threat sounds like than the average /. reader.
IRA terror threats were made by phone directly to the police or army. The point is to be able to blame the authorities for being too slow to evacuate people if your bomb kills someone. Throwing out a message on Twitter doesn't fit the profile of previous bombers in the UK.
Wil he just be taken on one side and told not to be such an asshole (er, sorry, "will it be explained to him that the police need to investigate such matters, because after all, how would it have been if the threat had been real and he had carried it out? It would be helpful if he kept that in mind in future"), or will things like the airport ban remain in place?
I would guess that they will try to get him to accept a caution. That saves the hassle of a trial, but still looks positive on the statistics.
No, he wasn't simply released (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy was simply arrested, questioned, and released.
From the original article http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html [independent.co.uk] :
* He's on bail.
* He may be charged with "conspiring to create a bomb hoax".
* He's been suspended from work - apparently we're guilty until proven innocent now.
* They've confiscated "his iPhone, laptop and home computer".
Yep, you left a few things out of your "simply".
Not to mention that these days in the UK, an arrest means your DNA and fingerprints are kept on file, even if you're found innocent or never charged.
I don't see the humor in saying [snip] That's the equivalent of saying [snip]
I didn't quite catch that, could you repeat it please? Something about you making a threat?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If he sent the message to the airport or the cops or the news media, then it's a hoax. Sending a message to your friends is different. Completely different. Maybe in these times it warrants somebody following up to make sure there aren't any dots to connect - but after the facts are gathered and the police decide to press charges as if this guy was a terrorist? Had intended to shut down an airport? Irresponsible at best. How much time & effort, how many tax dollars are funding this miscarriage tha
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually true Rugby Football fans refer to Rugby as Football at times, and refer to Football as Association Football.
It can get complicated :)
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't intend to make a bombthreat, hell, he didn't even make one. The fact that all hell breaks loose over something silly as this shows that the terrorists have won. Western society lives in fear, whether you like it or not.
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot needs a "Troll +1" mod, so people can learn to recognize such wonderful red herring mastery.
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Plenty of cops must be twats (twits are the messages; twats are the users) so they must know what Twitter is like; small, irrelevant messages from people too uninteresting to post long comments.
So, unlike someone calling up a talk radio station in what way?
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I mean, I'm sure you once shouted something akin to "I'm gonna kill you" to some drunk idiot on a Saturday night. Not a nice thing to say, granted but that doesn't make you immediately want to kill that person. Frustration has a tendency to make you say things you don't mean and/or would never do, that's why in most western countries it's very rare for so
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Informative)
Offense taken!
We're not the USofA so we don't have a D.A. or felonies, and he was arrested and questioned - he has not yet been trialled and indeed has not yet even been charged with anything.
He *may* be charged with "conspiring to create a bomb hoax" - that he did not intend to actually bomb the place is irrelevant.
Of course it is all a bit of an overreaction, but we might at least get the facts/terms right or it cheapens us all. It might also prevent him being a douche in future :-)
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
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In the UK we don't use "trialled" as a verb like that - it should be "he has not yet been put on trial".
A new product might be trialled, not a person in court.
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the problem is a lot of people don't really consider what could bring unwanted consequences.
The UK isn't the US - we don't have a great deal in the way of rights to freedom of speech enshrined in our laws. Hence, saying something like this can very easily have serious consequences and you can't start waving around a constitution as a defence.
Does it make me afraid to say some things online? Yes it does. There's lots of things I've typed up on /. only to think about it for a minute then hit "Cance
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Do I feel strongly enough about it to emigrate? The law as it stands in terms of freedom of speech has been much the same for centuries.
Please don't emigrate just yet—you may be in luck. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of speech for all EU citizens. It was enshrined into UK law by the Human Rights Act in 1998; this was the biggest fundamental change in the law regarding freedom of speech for centuries.
The problem is, the way it is enshrined into UK law also introduces a significant number of restrictions, mostly around the areas of security, crime, and morals. But the government has to actually pass specific
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Informative)
The IRA gave coded telephone warnings a few minutes in advance.
This was NOT to allow civilians time to escape, or reduce the number of civilian casualties.
It was to verify that the IRA were the ones responsible for the attack, because after an attack there was usually a RUSH of extremist groups stepping forward to claim responsibility. The IRA wanted to make sure they got appropriate "credit" for the attack.
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:4, Informative)
The IRA gave coded telephone warnings a few minutes in advance.
This was NOT to allow civilians time to escape, or reduce the number of civilian casualties.
No, since the IRA did bomb and kill civilians and were pretty unrepentant about it. Coded warnings can amplify the effect of an attack - or even make an actual attack unnecessary. Why bother with a real bomb when a simple telephone message can shut down 40 train stations and cause an estimated £34 million damage [independent.co.uk]? For every real bomb you can call in many times that number of coded threats, causing huge economic losses.
Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand? (Score:5, Insightful)
But then coded phone call AFTER the attack would have been enough. But I guess doing that BEFORE the bombs exploded had two beneficial (for the terrorists!) effects:
1) Increase Panic, spread fear. (And bring more "military" targets closer to the bomb)
2) Actually save "civilians" or at least give the terroists themselves the illusion of trying to save civilians.
From what I remember from interviews and documentaries I saw about that, they had the self-image of an army in a war against another gouvernment and its military, and to a lesser extent against the people of that country.
And don't forget the image. Thats even important to terrorists. It's much easier to convince an unsuspecting young guy when you can say "He, we're the good guys! We're at war, but we try to avoid civilian casualties". And it may help yourself to justify your feelings of guilt.
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Perhaps it would help if the other side made a distinction between military targets and civilian ones. As it is, any attack by any bunch of extremists is considered by the established order as "terrorist". An idiot walks into a mall with a suicide-vest and blows himself/herself up. The verdict of politicians, the media and the general populace: he/she is a terrorist. A few dudes get on a rickety, inflatable rubber boat loaded with explosives, waddle up in plain view to a sophisticated, armed-to-the-teeth, m
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Dude, read the story. It wasn't at an airport; it was on Twitter.
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My car tyres are flat and I have go to the garage to blow them up. what should i do ?
Could be worse, for me it's just the left hand rear tire, aka LHR. Could you imagine how lazy pigs fishing for leads (on twitter, FFS[1]) would react to "I need to blow up the LHR"?
[1] "Yeah sarge, just found out about 'da bomb'. It's going down at chelle97's mum's flat this weekend. It was on that Al-Taliban site, myspace".
Re:Living in fear (Score:4, Funny)
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"We will use illegal detention and questioning to harass you." sure sounds like a threat to me. If a law officer had made it, he'd be an ex-officer, because I WOULD KILL HIM.
Now someone do me.
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The GCHQ/NSA can digitally "tag them all" via sloppy ip use
Your life can then get difficult if you want paper work for a job outside the UK ect.
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Nowhere in TFA does it state that the Twitter feed in question was private, so how exactly would you know that? Either you have access to information not in TFA, or you DON'T actually know that it was private. If in fact it was private, then why didn't you support your argument with proof of that? If it wasn't private, then your entire expletive-ridden diatribe is baseless.