Tasmanian Cops Decline To "Censor Internet" 116
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.'"
Dodgy headline on TFS (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:Dodgy headline on TFS (Score:5, Funny)
I suspect the Tasmanian police cannot censor the internet, and even if they were given a court order only limited censorship could be attempted
I agree! The Tasmanian police definitely need to be given wider powers to deal with incivility on the internets. Remember when you criminalise Facebook, only criminals will use Facebook. Which would be a pretty convenient way to round up criminals if you think about it.
Re:Dodgy headline on TFS (Score:4, Informative)
It is their own fault for implying they can do something.
According to this site [tas.gov.au] they host or work with other sites to inform kids that what they are complaining about could be a crime. It's right there under the header "Department of Education (DoE) Tasmania"
My guess is that some people were sleeping in class when instructed on this, or some people got mad at comments posted and looked to find what could be done to discover that "It might be a criminal offense" connected to "cyber bullying" and considered the comments that offended them as bullying and a criminal offense.
This is probably why it's the Tasmania police taking this unusual step too.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
As the parent of a young child in Australia, I am facing a similar challenge when my son plays soccer for his school.
A few of the Catholic schools play very rough (swinging shoulder/elbow to the head, headlocks, punching and kicking other players - sometimes when they don't even have the ball, etc). I've taken a different course of action to "informing the police".
I notified the respective school principal in writing of "duty of care" and "contributory negligence" - which basically means "if anything happe
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Just as well he doesn't play Rugby!
Also, it's his "arse" that you will be suing.
Re:Dodgy headline on TFS (Score:5, Informative)
An incident off the ball can and should be consider assault with battery and should, in my opinion, be reported to the police.
"Consent is implied to those things which are inherent in the sport. Participants are generally deemed to not consent to behaviour outside the laws of the game. Claims of foul play being a "normal" part of the game are in most cases rejected - i.e. illegal tackles
McNamara v Duncan, 1971"
And yes, it was an Australian case (AFL as it happens).
And if you think the school has primary responsibility for educating your child I think you might have parenting a little be wrong.
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Wow. Would it not be better to just have a chat with the parents of the kids? If the parents are also a-holes then feel free to sue them for negligence, but the school is not the children's guardian. Then those parents can turn around and sue the school if they can.
For sports you should only be suing if the referee is not stopping the game or the administrators of the league are not setting safe guidelines. If everyone is doing their job and kids are still out of control (even with penalties and game losing
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Do you not have referees in Australia?
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Yes - but at school or junior/middle club level many of them are, shall we say, in need of further training, assessment and oversight. My son plays in the under-15 team for our local club, and there's one team in the region who are well known as a bunch of thugs - it's frustrating for our players who are taught to use their skills to play the game, as opposed to their elbows. We were approached by another team's manager one day and asked if we'd like to be part of a joint submission to complain about this t
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To be fair, a lot of the refs at the junior level are just kids themselves. Expecting them to impose discipline on a team when the coach and the parents don't respect that won't happen. You definitely have to complain about the team and it's behaviour to the appropriate association.
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Generally that's true, but I've seen the reverse, also. A young ref (I'd say he was under 20) at one of our home games actually red-carded the opposition's coach after warning him to stop abusive language. "Remove your ID badge and leave the field" - I was impressed.
Actually, I was hoping the guy would be stubborn and refuse to leave - the ref might have awarded the game to us, and the other team would have got a very nasty letter from the federation.
Anyway, I get cranky with incompetent ref
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I take a lot of photos at my son's games, and I've occasionally caught stills of that sort of stuff. I've even contemplated asking our team for accreditation to film the games - for training purposes, of course. I suspect certain coaches, players and referees would behave a lot better if they knew they were being filmed.
Re:Dodgy headline on TFS (Score:4, Insightful)
That's one way of looking at it. I was looking more at the ridiculous expectations that people seem to have about law enforcement and "law" and "enforcement" and all that.
People need to give up on the "this offends me and so it is illegal" crap.
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All of them? Not really. Some of them exist because the people who made the laws believe that the speech causes damage (employers firing you, screaming fire in a theater, etc). They're not all "it offends me, so it's illegal."
Re:Dodgy headline on TFS (Score:4, Funny)
True... sometimes it's "it *might* be offensive" without even checking with others for opinions.
In the end, people need to get over their crap. Excuse me while I draw some more Muhammad cartoons.
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People need to give up on the "this offends me and so it is illegal" crap.
So we need to take up the Talliban's Solution of "You Offend Me so Die" and just shoot them? That'll work well.
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It's power-grabbin' time!
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Saying that "Tasmanian police decline" to do something implies that they are actually empowered to do so as a matter of course.
Actually, there is precedent for using the phrase "decline to do" to describe a polite refusal to engage in conduct which one views as unreasonable or inappropriate. That is the sense meant here. The police have politely refused to get involved.
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The real issue... (Score:1)
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You really don't get the internet do you? not only does it breed this type of behaviour but news and blog sites love to publish sensational drivel about it.
BTW, /., user's were complaining about how crap you've become lately when you posted about the iOS AppStore hack, I sided with you on posting it thinking they were wrong.... this article however just made me eat my own words. Thanks!
Re:The real issue... (Score:5, Funny)
THATS IT IM CALLING THE COPS!
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Yours was a parody post, you just forget the <funny/> tag.
Right? Right?
Re:The real issue... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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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.
nope, the worst is the tragically high number of braindead morons that use facebook at all
Re:The real issue... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Wasn't there a story just yesterday or so about how Facebook could automatically detect crimespeech (or, you know, crimetext) and notify the police? I feel safer already...
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I pay me taxes guv'ner, I don't see why I shou'dnt use them up every chance I get. Like me mum always said "you can't take it wit you".
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I dunno. If a guy can be prosecuted for a wisecrack about bombing an airport on Twitter I guess it isn't a stretch of the imagination. Let's not forget that cyber bulling can and does lead to suicide.
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Honestly, it's a shame that those individuals didn't find help in time. What a waste of potential.
However, if they were prepared to kill themselves over something like that, it tells me that they were indeed in desperate need of professional help. I doubt they would survive very long in the real world without it if they would so readily kill themselves over "cyber bullying." What's needed is not censorship but for them to find help.
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Well lets put it in perspective... cops are dumb ... people who talk to cops are even dumber.
End of discussion, we can all go home now.
Unusual? (Score:1)
Yeah, it's unusual that somebody finally gets it right!
What a cool name! (Score:1)
I mean, seriously... Luke Manhood? "Throbbing" to his mates, perhaps? Rampaging? E. Normous Manhood, to his missus? And to be working in the eCrimes unit as well . . . if random strangers on the Internet can come up with this, just think what his Police colleagues can do. Anyone who can go through life with a surname like that, doing the job he does, gets my utmost respect!
I'm Telling Dad! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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The stance taken by these particular police strikes me as fairly mature.
Re:I'm Telling Dad! (Score:5, Insightful)
It IS immature. I believe that the general public (especially Facebook users) does not develop mentally past the 14 year old stage. Sure, people get "older" (if you cut them in half and count the rings) but that doesn't mean they automatically get "wiser". I think the biggest downside here is that those people like to use their birthdate for a measure of respect they should be receiving.
Now get off my lawn!
Re:I'm Telling Dad! (Score:4, Funny)
I think the biggest downside here is that those people like to use their birthdate for a measure of respect they should be receiving.
Now get off my lawn!
Agreed - slashdot uid is a much better measure
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Ditto, but YOU get off my lawn! :P
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I... couldn't put it better myself.
Physical maturity sadly is not even remotely equal to mental maturity.
God only knows how many people I know who have a mentality less than my cousin who is now in a pipe band, is taking over his dads business and doing several high levels in his 2 last senior years of school.
Meanwhile another cousin of mines stole money from my sister, mother, grandparents, her own brothers, her friends AND a fucking LAWYERs firm. (literally stole settlement papers)
Talk about complete thi
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In the high school where I went to, there was no bragging about "high levels" because every freaking body took them. You came to school on the first day of the semester, and your class schedule (same as mostly everyone else's in your group) was posted on the wall next to the principal's office. If you didn't like it there, you could always go to a lesser school. Same pretty much with the undergraduate curriculum at the university, except that the schedules were on the wall next to the dean's office, there b
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Re:I'm Telling Dad! (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that the general public (especially Facebook users) does not develop mentally past the 14 year old stage.
And they think you are a computer nerd who is completely out of touch with real life and incapable of understanding human relationships to the point of understanding things like Facebook or social interaction.
This feeling is universal. Everyone else is an idiot, except the ones who agree with you. The world is full of morons, if only you were in charge or could make them see...
Newspapers discovered this was the secret to increased sales decades ago.
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Capitalism breeds this sort of immaturity
bong smoking retard hippies breed this sort of immaturity... "hey man that's a cool trinket... think i might just take that... whaddayamean it was your granmas... fuck off and leave my trinket alone... police orificer!!! that asshole tried to take my trinket... will you fuckin arrest her or somethin... puffff.... ooooooh yeah that's some good shit"
capitalism isn't immature; it's just its own worst enemy
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hey man that's a cool trinket... think i might just take that... whaddayamean it was your granmas... fuck off and leave my trinket alone
That's a handsome straw man you've got there.
It'd be a shame if anything were to... happen to it.
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I'm game as long as you are sharing more then I have to.
Greed is inherent in behavior without capitalism which is why we have to tell children to share when they are young then tell them again not to share when they get older and start using the intertubes.
Wait, its the internet that makes people greedy.. hmm.
Re:I'm Telling Dad! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm game as long as you are sharing more then I have to.
Greed is inherent in behavior without capitalism which is why we have to tell children to share when they are young then tell them again not to share when they get older and start using the intertubes.
The problem isn't sharing or lack thereof. That's usually a symptom. The problem is taking - sharing is what hopefully happens after someone has already taken more than what's fair. But it's just a remedy, not a cure, and it's not even true sharing. It's unclean hands.
If a child takes the entire cake and then gives back half so his brother can get some, he shouldn't be rewarded for sharing. It wasn't his to share.
If he, on the other hand, is given a chocolate, accepts it in the faith that everyone got some, and upon finding out this isn't true shares it, it should be rewarded.
Wait, its the internet that makes people greedy.. hmm.
In some ways, unfortunately, this seems to be the case. I see more cases of people feeling entitled to anything they can get than, say, 20 years ago.
When a BBS closed or became subscription only, people would sigh and move on. If a web site closes or becomes subscription only, people will send hate mail because they're deprived of something they felt entitled to.
Yes, I would call this greed.
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Well, we are still right there with it not being an inherent trait. A child has to be instructed on not taking things too. It is not something he instinctively understands and often might take repeated attempts to cure him of it. The same goes
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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?
You must be new to the internet, there is a lot of people like that online.
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Or telling the teacher if someone is picking on you in school.
I think it's even worse than that. These are people who you can likely easily avoid and don't have to deal with on a daily basis. People you've likely never even met. People who don't really know a thing about you (unless you publicize everything).
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(unless you publicize everything)
hahahaha!!! you don't know much about facecrap do you
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It's a little more complicated then that. The government of the area actually planted this seed in their minds.
on this site, [tas.gov.au] under the heading Department of Education (DoE) Tasmania They place two sentences in the same paragraph that says
I have yet to find the actual site they are refer
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Or telling the teacher if someone is picking on you in school.
If someone is picking on you in school, you should tell the administration, and the administration should be legally required to investigate and reprimand the bullying student. The first offense should be suspension, and the second offense should be expulsion.
Our schools have turned into war zones rather than places of basic education (and no, having to deal with bullies is not a valid form of education), partly because we don't get rid of bullies.
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Why would you think they would get rid of the bullies after being told on?
The school gets paid for you to be there, they get paid by headcount. Learning and being happy are not priorities.
They need the bullies to show up to get paid.
Either Tasmanians are real assholes ... (Score:2)
or it's just one or two really busy ones.
Correct me if I'm wrong ... (Score:1)
But isn't the purpose of the police to respond in cases of immediate danger or to investigate criminal offences? Harassment, of this sort, seems like it should be a civil offence. Lawyers may get involved, but police rarely should be.
Actual Tasmanian here, giving you some context... (Score:5, Informative)
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...
word (Score:2, Informative)
They are words on a screen. If you can't deal with words on a screen, if they crush your life, then the real world is going to eat you alive, and the evolutionary process will shit you right out the other end and use you as intellectual fertilizer.
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Hate to say it, but the online world is part of "the real world" these days. Especially for anyone currently in their teens (or earlier). Remember people who were born in the mid-90s are now in their late teens -- these people have never known a time when "the internet" didn't exist.
So, given that internet communication is just as engrained in their lives as any other form of communication, it shouldn't be hard to understand that being belittled on Facebook is just as damaging as being belittled in the re
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We have to pass laws because people can't deal with being belittled? Whatever happened to learning how to deal with the real world and the
Publishing Is a Police Matter (Score:1)
Of course "the use of technology to undertake some conduct does not in itself create an offense." But publishing always requires technology. That's why there's a difference between slander and libel: the harm is different when technology (the "press") is used to lie in public.
Of course, the main harm is not the technology, but the publishing, by whatever means. Some publishing does more and different harm than others. But when people do harm by doing it in public, that's a police matter. Police are required
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Police are required to protect the public, especially in public.
I'm afraid you are mistaken on that one. The police are not required to protect anyone, and you had better not rely on them in a dangerous situation. At least, in the US the Supreme Court [nytimes.com] says that the police don't have to protect anything! Maybe it is different in other countries.
really? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Wait, Tasmania's a real place?
Public still working out where the line is... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Nothing to see here ... move along ... (Score:1)
What can you do? I had people impersonating me and causing all sorts of grief for me on facebook (not to mention a group of people who took it upon themselves to attack and harass me at one point in my life - reason given, to reduce my popularity with people). I had one of my neighbours from up the road asking about my type of phone and if I had spy cameras up. Some of my neighbours started refusing to talk to me and started giving me dirty looks etc. A short time later a friend alerted me to someone who
Re:Its Tasmania FFS (Score:5, Funny)
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"What a devilish insult, ..."
Hopefully a Tasmanian devilish one.
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Whoosh!
With the use of "bugs", "daffy" and "FUDD" (as in Elmer, not "FUD") in the same sentence, how could it be otherwise?
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Surely the social media subject could've at least justified a Tweety pun in there somewhere...
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It's a piss ant little island with more fibre than most densely populated nations and for what? the whole six inbred people that live down there?
Actually its population [google.co.uk] is about the same as that of Whyoming [google.co.uk].
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissant [wikipedia.org]
Go Tasmania, go! Proudly keeping people on their toes since Dracula :D
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FYI, Wyoming is the definition of piss ant.
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Ah The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, yes yes a fine film by all accounts (have not seen it myself but I hear good things).
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