UK man arrested under Terrorism Act for airport Twitter joke
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
The next attack that will succeed will do so in part because apparently the people that are in charge of sifting the stream of intelligence for actionable clues are completely without ability to analyze this kind of information in a way that would lead to a safer society.
All that happens is they waste tons of money and man-hours chasing nonsense.
A remark was made on a social networking site, boohoo. Disaster. Meanwhile the bad guys are having a field day and are going to slip through the cracks left by the thoughtcrime police being occupied elsewhere.
The questions about his life to me indicate that was their main worry. You know; of he just lost his job or something and life was spiralling out of control etc etc.
In a way I can see why they investigated. Arresting him was too much clearly but you can't just ignore an explicit threat entirely - ESP if it is reported.
And nothing was done with that information.
That was specific, actionable and nothing was done with it, this is just a guy with a sense of humour that finds that everyday manners of speech are no longer tolerated.
There is this movie called 12 angry men, which deals with exactly that subject. What people say when they're pissed off should be taken with a grain of salt. If someone tells you they'd like to blow up the house of commons we expect you to be sharp enough to see the difference between something said tongue-in-cheek or whether you're serious.
If you haven't seen it then I suggest you do. It's quite an old movie (1957).
and additionally we are getting hung up on non-existent terrorist parallels; probably cos of the laws used to arrest him. Forget them; the tweet sounded like a threat as much as a joke. There was even a timeframe :-) i think it's fair to say you don't ignore the possibility of a crazy carrying it through :-)
I think that should answer your question.
Personally, I think the man's a fool, but can understand why the authorities investigated him. Otherwise, what's the alternative? Make a joke about bombing a place and so avoid being searched when you turn up there?
Now would someone please come and arrest me?
The Master & Malgorzata revisited.