A law exists in the UK about using public communications networks to send grossly offensive or indecent communications.
Somebody complained to the police that this chap had maybe broken that law, and from the embedded video, it sounds like he wasn't willing to come voluntarily to the interview room.
So what do the police do? Tell the complainant, sorry, you feel like you're a victim of crime but the alleged offender wasn't willing to be arrested?
Nobody is picking ideologies to enforce. I don't see how the content of the supposed offensive tweet, is relevant to the decision to interview this chap under caution.
Why? Why is this any of the government's business?
As to why the behaviour needs legislating: because the British social contract required it, because in British society they're willing to trade the right to say grossly offensive things to people, for protection against hearing grossly offensive things. Lots of reasons, it's fine for them, you don't often hear clamour to repeal the law, they don't have the same issue with it that you do. So who are you to tell Brits that they shouldn't have a law?
Why make all of this up? Just so you can call someone a meddling busybody for having an opinion in a thread that you're also posting an opinion in?
Ultimately it's a question of consent and the social contract. My answer, which you're critical of here, is that ultimately the government have consent of the people to enforce this law and therefore it's the government's business. It's consented by the Brits, there is not democratic clamour to rewrite that law, and it's not for other countries to impose their values here. I hope you don't think I'm being pedantic, I'm just trying to answer the question that was put to me; why, in the UK, is this a regulated behaviour
I doubt it represents British society's desire. It's more likely a case of "when you're a hammer everything looks like a nail". MPs feel that their job is to always legislate. Let's not forget that since the 90s raves have been illegal in the UK.
Would you rather pay them to do nothing at all, or maybe adopt the US model where they spend a year of their term campaigning on the public's dime?
Probably most people in Iran agree with the laws that gay people should be executed.
Based on your "social contract" theory, that's just fine? I mean, who are you to tell the Iranians that they shouldn't have a law? Right?
UK is democratic and the elected reps' body is sovereign over law.
An Iranian cannot stand for election in her region on the platform of: I am going to repeal "Islamic" law.
A person can stand for election in the UK saying: vote for me and we'll repeat the 2003 Communications Act.
I don't think that you didn't know this, so I don't understand why you asked it really
Sorry, no.
Shouting abuse at someone in public can see the law involved, and that is the same if the public space is online.
Ok, so why is it the government's business if you are grossly offensive or indecent in person? Why can't the normal tools people always use in social interaction handle this?
> Shouting abuse at someone in public
Is not what the person who was arrested in this case was doing. His tweet was not directed at any particular person.
The law does recognize assault as a crime, and shouting abuse at someone in public can rise to the level of assault if the person being shouted at could reasonably believe that the shouter was threatening actual harm. But the crime in this case is not speech; the shouting isn't a crime because it is expressing an offensive opinion. It's a crime because it's a threat of actual harm.
What other institution would do this instead of the government? Because having no form of regulation is in my opinion not viable.
Just think of it for a second. No regulation is a double edge knife. Yes, maybe it would make for a less repressive society, but you would be opening ways for any sort of expression, not only those that don't bother you directly but also those that do. So lacking a better option, the government fills this gap.
If that is not acceptable to you, you should come up with alternatives other than unlimited freedom.
Yep, I get all kinds of really mean things said to me. Sometimes I even get upset by them.
I don't feel a need to arrest and jail the people saying those mean things.
What, precisely, do you mean here?
So we don't like repression, so we use repression? That doesn't make sense.
The way to counter speech that promotes ideologies you think are bad is with more speech that explains why those ideologies are bad ones. Or even just reminds people that those ideologies are bad ones. It isn't to adopt the same techniques that those bad ideologies use.
> What other institution would do this instead of the government?
The obvious other way of regulating speech that some people find offensive or indecent is people's freedom of choice in social interaction. Don't interact with people who say things you find offensive or indecent. If the offensive or indecent things are in tweets, don't follow them on Twitter.
> having no form of regulation is in my opinion not viable.
There is no such thing as "no form of regulation". People already regulate their social interactions with other people. Adding government micromanagement on top of that does not really add any value. It just adds more ways for the government to mess with people.
The idea underlying government regulation of speech seems to be that people should be protected from things that they might find offensive or indecent, because people are delicate snowflakes that can be damaged by such things and they aren't capable of just dealing with them using the normal tools of social interaction. For mature adults that idea is laughable. Part of being a mature adult is understanding that there are lots of things in the world that are not the way you would like them to be and dealing with it, and not invoking Higher Authority every time you don't like something.
Why doesn't it? I can see the irony of course but that doesn't automatically explain it. If the boundaries of a tolerant society are clearly defined, any form of repression towards emergent intolerant ideologies outside the scope of such society are valid and won't jeopardize it because of such scope.
> The way to counter speech that promotes ideologies you think are bad is with more speech that explains why those ideologies are bad ones.
That process is viable long term but not enough to protect people that might be in iminent danger, today, from groups like neo-nazis, racists or anti-lgbtq+. Society must account for that and protect those in iminent danger.
> Don't interact with people who say things you find offensive or indecent.
What about persecution? People that you try to get away from but will go out of their way to hurt you? That is again not enough, and if government resorts only to that it will expose vulnerable groups to hazard.
> There is no such thing as "no form of regulation". People already regulate their social interactions with other people. Adding government micromanagement on top of that does not really add any value. It just adds more ways for the government to mess with people.
That works on a micro-social scale, but not on a global scale, which is the kind of isonomy that is required for a functioning society. Government individuals can and have abused power, but I think those are two different issues, one being the scope of government action and the second power misuse and mismanagement. The later can happen even without a wider form of the former through corrupt operations. That is, even if we limit the scope of operation, if we don't elect good officials, they can still abuse power beyond this limited scope of action.
> damaged by such things and they aren't capable of just dealing with them using the normal tools of social interaction. For mature adults that idea is laughable.
That is a superiority fallacy that only distracts from the issue. Is *everyone* complaining about this a snowflake? Isn't there a slight possibility they might have some form os substance to their claims? If there is a small chance somebody is in distress we have to make sure we take this seriously. Sure you understand as a mature adult like yourself we are not talking about isolated incidents but actions that can be taken by society as a whole.
Our system of common law already does that. As I noted in response to another poster downthread, assault is already a crime, and shouting abuse at a particular person is assault if that person can reasonably believe that they are in danger of actual harm from the shouter. But that is not what the person who was arrested in the subject article was doing. He was not threatening, or even talking to, any particular person.
> people that might be in iminent danger, today, from groups like neo-nazis, racists or anti-lgbtq+
Whatever "imminent danger" exists is not from tweets. And conflating a tweet with the kind of "imminent danger" that actually harms people is exactly the kind of muddying of the "boundaries of a tolerant society" that makes the problem worse, not better.
> What about persecution?
The man who got arrested in the subject article was not persecuting anybody.
> Government individuals can and have abused power, but I think those are two different issues, one being the scope of government action and the second power misuse and mismanagement.
Expanding the scope of government power also expands the scope of possible misuse and mismanagement. So the two are connected.
> Isn't there a slight possibility they might have some form os substance to their claims?
Saying that you are offended by someone's tweet is one thing; of course you can and should say that. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm advocating for--combating offensive speech with more speech.
But calling the police because you are offended by someone's tweet is very different. Now you're not fighting speech with more speech; you're fighting speech with persecution. Which is exactly the sort of thing you claim to be against.
> we are not talking about isolated incidents but actions that can be taken by society as a whole.
Um, what? The tweet that got this man arrested was an isolated incident. He's not "society as a whole". He's just one person who tweeted something.
In fact, what "society as a whole" does, on your preferred model, is far more like persecution and "imminent danger" than what this man did. The guy tweets something you find offensive, so you bring down the massive power of the government on him? For a tweet? Where is your sense of proportion? Why can't you just say "that was offensive" and leave it at that, and save the massive power of the government for the cases where there is actual harm? Wasting all that power on a guy that just tweets something makes it harder to focus that power on the cases where people actually are harmed, which is where you say it needs to be used.
The specific arrest case blinds any sensible attempt to have a mature conversation over this subject.
In my honest opinion, the bloke who is obviously not a snowflake, that posted a frigging swastika made from lbgtq+ flags should just suck it as a real man and just go to jail without complaining like a wimp, otherwise he would be himself a snowflake and wouldn't be posting that. (Or have I got that wrong? I am not quite sure anymore).
In any case, adults should be behaving more like adults and realise their actions have consequences other than not having Christmas presents.
Have you got complaints? Good, we live in a democratic society. Just vote better next time. Just enjoy it while it lasts because that is the very thing that is just gone the moment that so called minor tweet repost swastika gets in effect.
And sorry for any inconvenience. Hope I didn't upset you.
In other words, you're perfectly ok with persecuting some people, so it's not persecution you have a problem with, just persecution of people you feel shouldn't be persecuted. Got it.
> adults should be behaving more like adults and realise their actions have consequences other than not having Christmas presents.
Certainly. I have already said, multiple times now in this thread (though not all in response to you), that this bloke should certainly expect consequences such as other people saying how much of an asshole he is. But that doesn't mean he should go to jail.
> Just enjoy it while it lasts because that is the very thing that is just gone the moment that so called minor tweet repost swastika gets in effect.
So you honestly think that if this guy isn't arrested and jailed for his tweet, it's the start of a slippery slope to a new Nazi society? You appear to be ignorant of how the actual Nazis came to power. Hint: it wasn't by saying things that were offensive and having people just shrug and go about their business and not arresting them.
The UK's elected parliament is free to repeal or amend the law at any time - it has chosen not to.
If this is a matter that concerns the electorate, they can ask their MP to raise the point in parliament.
If the way you determine what fits this description is by knowing it when you see it, you're enforcing ideology. There is no way that you need to interview a person to figure out whether a communication is illegal. You're interviewing the person to see if the person is illegal.
edit: https://www.college.police.uk/article/protecting-freedom-exp...
Just because something is codified in law doesn't make it right.
Can you honestly not think of any "offensive" tweets that you think would constitute harrassment and benefit from someone telling you to get your shit together? (edit: by which I mean police attention).
e.g. "I hope your {{family member}} gets {{offensive act}}'d"
Replace with favourite family member, and most offensive act you can think of.
Such a law used to exist in the U.S. as well. It was ruled unconstitutional, because the U.S. actually has meaningful protections for free speech (or 'freeze peach', as it's also sometimes known). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act : "...[I]t attempted to regulate both indecency (when available to children) and obscenity in cyberspace".
I believe that the original tweet by Laurence Fox did not receive a police response, and neither did the likely thousands of retweets.
The police grossly overreacted. Even their PCC criticised them and everyone seems to agree that no crime was committed (well, apart from a fringe who were the actual target of the original tweet).
The receiver is also important here. The same text can be innocuous in adult to adult communication but worrying if sent to a minor, specially if spammed repeatedly to somebody living at the same street.
I can see several cases in what the interview would be a reasonable first approach.
In any case it feels like the societies are slowly waking-up to the dangers of ciberwar; and that the age of puppet masters being allowed to roam free, brainwash and destroy the lives of people online is dying for good.
Police overreacted. No need to try yo find justifications.
... in your opinion. In many (most?) places Police has the right to ask informally anybody when investigating a situation of concern. People have a different way to interact with Police in Europe than in US when the excuse to "lie to the police" can't be used as mass destruction weapon against you. (If he was really arrested) he had to behave like a moron to escalate the situation to the point of being arrested.
And what he was expecting? Police are really motivated to investigate anything related with hate crime online now, after seeing in the last years how efficient became the pupetry. We only need to remind how the Qanon movement started (and ended), or how very young and very naive adolescents in the western countries had been radicalized to join the Islamic State.
Considering that the arrest caused an outrage, that no charges were brought, and that even the force's Commissioner criticised the action, I think that it is established.
Obviously the latter, therefore the content itself is held to some standard. Show me that standard, and I'll show you an ideology.
Not obvious at all. If you can explain to the cops why you found it offensive, it's conceivable to me that I'd be interviewed about it
The idea that the police can have the authority to detain someone because they have a reasonable belief that they hurt someone else's feelings is... well, if y'all don't see the obvious problem with that, I'm not sure how else to explain it.
Would this opinion change if you learned that in the UK people are generally trusted to make correct and true police crime reports?
Say you lived in a place where actually 100% of reports to the police, were truly people who felt like a crime had taken place. In that case, wouldn't we be fine with cops following up all reports?
So if people in the UK generally trust each other to be making true reports when they feel like a crime has taken place....why wouldn't brits empower the police to follow up on serious reports?
No, not at all, because "generally trusted" is not "100% of the time people will do things in good faith". And I don't agree with your assessment in any case; the article in question is a clear counter-example. And another comment somewhere here claims that the UK deals with quite a large amount of these sorts of reports where the police investigate and decide there's nothing to pursue.
> Say you lived in a place where actually 100% of reports to the police, were truly people who felt like a crime had taken place. In that case, wouldn't we be fine with cops following up all reports?
That depends on what you mean by "following-up". If tweeting something that made someone "anxious" means that you can expect the police to show up at your door and demand to interview you (or else you will be arrested), I think that's incredibly heavy-handed. In this case, the police should have been able to look at the tweet in question, think "hmm, well, that's a shitty thing to post, but I don't see anything criminal here", and leave it at that.
> So if people in the UK generally trust each other to be making true reports when they feel like a crime has taken place....why wouldn't brits empower the police to follow up on serious reports?
I've already pointed out that I don't believe this is true in general, but there's more to it than that. People change. Governments change. The law often does not. If you give one government the power to do something, because you believe that government is good and will not abuse it, you must consider that the next government may not be one that you trust as much, but will also get to have that power.
Is it conceivable that the UK government would actually interview you to protect me against itself?
Selective enforcement of unenforceable rules is a century-old trick. Here's a relevant quote from Atlas Shrugged:
You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt.
Yes I absolutely do. Do you have some examples of the opposite to share?
edit: Assuming the parent means that they think 'left' offensive tweets would equally dealt with by the Police.
I'm from the UK (Scotland) and I cant remember a 'pro left' offensive tweeter getting arrested, but then again the number of arrests for social media posts is pretty damn small in the first place, so not exactly something I think ANYONE can reliably draw inferences from.
I think the most recent was Toby Child (Correction, Toby Shone), but there was a Walker something arrested for owning "the Anarchist cookbook" in the last 10 years, and more recently multiple members of extinction Rebellion were arrested juuust before an authorized protest, on no ground, for no particular reason, which -what a surprise- prevented them to assist the protest (This is actually a French tactic, good job implementing it UK police).
It really picked in the 90s against "ecoterrorists", but arresting lefties is like 50% of your counterterrorist police job, because they smoke pot and like to trespass a lot, which give ground to search their home and arrest them for cannabis possession (or fuck with them, just because) and way less dangerous than going against real terrorists with guns and explosives.
What i find really weird is people complaining "It's always against my camp", forgetting that most of the time, it's actually not.
I get that UK law is different from US law, and that they actually have hate speech laws (while, in the US, hate speech is protected by the first amendment). But it's really bad that governments have this sort of power, where they can persecute people based on speech they don't like.
To clarify, I don't agree with the law - I think offensive speech should be legal - but this Ayn Rand stuff just sounds petulant in this context. If you want to insult gays on social media as a hobby, the main thing stopping you is not government oppression, it's the fact that a majority of voters want you to not do that.
Do you really think that a majority of voters would want somebody to be arrested for a post like this? If we're going to automatically assume that all government actions are simply what the "majority of voters" wanted, then nothing the government does can ever be wrong.
And the reason I think that is, making fun of gays used to be both widely accepted and totally legal, and those two things changed at roughly the same time. If that's not the law changing to reflect the evolving will of the electorate, it's a hell of a coincidence.
Actually, we don't have to imagine this.
First they came for the bloke that posted bad taste jokes about a murder victim, and he got 12 weeks in jail [1]
Then they came for the man who insulted a policeman by sharing a Snapchat picture of his face with a penis superimposed on it, and he was fined £400 and required to do a community service punishment [2]
Then they came for the people who direspected military dead by burning poppies and they got nights in cells and fines and hastily organised commemorative apologies [3]
Then they came for the bloke that tweeted something about tEh LGBT AgEnDA, he got off relatively lightly and the police got their wrists slapped, and people started quoting Ayn Rand and talking about how uniquely oppressive "woke" people are
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-19869710 [2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2552269/Builder-ord... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/12/kent-man-arrested...
The first level is that many western societies have vocal groups of people whose joy in life comes from bullying others (getting other people fired, targeting them with rather disproportionate punishments, campaigning outside their houses, etc). The woke/progressive movement has attracted a lot of these people, but I agree that blaming all progressives for doing that is like blaming all conservatives for being racist.
The second level is that the governments realized that by giving platform to bullies they can keep the public busy with an endless third-world-style feud, while escaping accountability for many real problems (former middle class plunging into poverty).
The third level is that most people refuse to scrutinize the actions of those who claim to be fighting for a good cause, refuse to check for conflicts of interest, refuse to distinguish between anti-discrimination and attention seeking and refuse to focus on actions rather than identities. And this makes the 2 previous levels possible.
That would be the less foreign thing to me
Did a judge sign off on a warrant for his arrest? If I find your post grossly offensive should you be removed from your home and sent to a police interrogation room just in case you hurt my feelings? And how would the police be able to determine that outside a court? My feelings would have to be litigated which would require my filing suit. Any suit originating from a civilian is civil in its nature and is outside the scope of police action.
Edit: Let me caveat because I fired fast and loose with this reply. This is from an American perspective. I am not a UK lawyer so this could very well be perfectly legal. Though I do view it as "bad" and would oppose the introduction of these norms in America.
This section covers it:
I'm not sure of the specifics as to what "public decency" means in the UK but I believe your implication. I think subsection 6 supports my 'theory' (read: wild accusation)? Seeing as it was posted on the internet and could reasonably be avoided.
Even if that's not so, this seems like a tort and should not be handled by the police. Just my opinion.
The tweet was neither of those though?
Tell the complainant, sorry, you feel like you're a victim of crime
Do people in the UK really wake up every day knowing that hurting someone's feelings is a crime and they're just ok with that? Of course society could not function if that were the case in practice. In practice, whose feelings matter is entirely political.
Focus on solving crimes like theft, not investigating meme retweets.
Why would they even need to interview him to determine if it was a crime or not?
It is a crime in the UK to send a malicious message contrary to that Act of parliament...
> Why would they even need to interview him to determine if it was a crime or not?
Lots of reasons to interview him, and you've given one here. Generally in UK, if someone complains that you've broken the law, you're given an interview to present your side of the matter.
> it sounds like he wasn't willing to come voluntarily to the interview room.
Is this against the law in the UK?
The police also have wide discretionary powers to arrest without warrant. One of those grounds is to allow "prompt and effective" investigation of a suspected offence. And PACE Code of Practice G expressly suggests "won't come to be interviewed unless arrested" is one case when this might apply.
So, in practice, if you refuse the 'voluntary' interview then you may well face a compulsory one, plus a bonus arrest record.
In principle they shouldn't be arresting you unless they have sufficient grounds for suspecting an offence, though there are the usual accountability problems in enforcing that. The recent case of ST is a good illustration of that[0]: a 14-year old was arrested at dawn on a flimsy case of participating in the robbery of a mobile phone at school. The arrest was mostly to search his room, as well as to ensure attendance at interview, which is legal under PACE, but he was willing to attend voluntarily, as well as to agree to the search, and the timing of arrest and decision to hold in custody rather than immediately bail were also probably unlawful. He sued for false imprisonment. He lost the case because the first instance judge decided that 'whilst the arrest and detention were "reprehensible", the way the police powers had been exercised "lamentable" and it was doubtful that the actions would be "justified in the court of public opinion", there had nevertheless been reasonable grounds to suspect the Appellant of an offence of robbery and there had been reasonable grounds to believe that the arrest and detention were necessary.'
(This was overturned on appeal to the High Court, but it does show what a high bar there is for holding to account the use of powers of arrest).
Being the victim of a crime is a different thing than having the feeling of being the victim of a crime.
Good to know some people are more concerned about the reporting on overstepping than the overstepping itself.
See the other replies to this comment for examples of this.