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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

This boggles my mind, as a citizen of the USA who is used to having freedom of speech.

1) It's a tweet (of all things)..

2) Which incites nothing, and is an expression of opinion

And the guy gets hauled off to jail for 2 months because of it? This is the kind of behavior I'd expect from China, not an ostensibly first world nation!

*edit

I meant that literally, too. My mind simply ceases processing the circumstances under which a completely harmless tweet, in a place like Great Britain, can be grounds for legal action. I thought (mistakenly) that freedom of speech was recognized a bit more with the US's allies.

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The right to free speech is a negative right under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Why incitement to racial hatred might be an issue in the UK?

The usual figure given is 1 in 10 people living in the UK is an immigrant. This does NOT count descendants of immigrants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brixton_riots

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationalist_Party

  >Why incitement to racial hatred might be an issue in the UK?

I don't particularly understand the utility of such hate crime laws. For instance (and this is a bit out of scope of this article), how is:

"Let's go roam around and beat up some old people, clockwork orange style!"

any different from

"Let's go roam around and beat up some old black people, clockwork orange style!"

Both are conspiracy to commit a crime, both are likely to involve someone being injured to the point of near death, yet one is somehow worse and will lead to harsher sentencing because it's motivated by a different kind of hatred?

I am legitimately ignorant on this matter, could someone enlighten me?

I once thought much as you do:

Because the latter terrorizes the subgroup and gives social proof making it "more acceptable" to target that group for both crimes and less than crimes.

I live in an area that still has streets named after what they did to black people here (And I didn't realize it while I lived on that street what it was named for): Lynch

gives social proof making it "more acceptable" to target that group for both crimes and less than crimes.

I think you need data to support this assertion. Following the Skokie march was there more violence against Jews in Chicagoland?

As far as terrorizing the subgroup, I guess that depends. As a Jew I don't feel terrorized by Neo-nazi mailing lists, despite many of them being public. Moreover, even if I felt uncomfortable, I don't believe that my feeling overrides their right to express themselves in methods which don't constitute harassment.

Ever hear of the "Overton Window" concept? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Demonizing an outgroup to turn them into acceptable targets is exactly what this law is to prevent (and there is something to prevent: see the British National Party).

You're talking about different things: He's talking about sentence enhancements on already violent crimes. You're talking about something about talking.

I find the British reaction to this tweet appaling, that they jailed the racist twit.

I however fully support the lengthening of sentences when a subgroup bias is determined to be likely.

While nothing easy popped up via a google search, here is another reason: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/hate_crimes_study...

Apparently, victims of bias based crimes have more trouble getting over the crimes as well (as they can't very well stop being that thing).

>And I didn't realize it while I lived on that street what it was named for

While I'm sure such cases do exist it also happens that Lynch is a very common Irish surname.

Even in the US, you can be sued civilly for hateful comments and jailed for comments that could be construed as inviting or inciting violence.

I don't know the full story, the tweets are gone and the BBC didn't reproduce them.

Do you have a source for your comments on civil law? As far as I know you can be sued for defamation and harassment, but neither of those are simply "hateful comments."

Also, "fighting words" is not simply inviting or inciting violence, it's "those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

All of those are a subset of hate speech. Inciting violence is not necessarily under fighting words, it's a category of its own.

Here's the Wikipedia article on US hate speech, they call out specific forms of hate speech which are illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States

First, you did not use the term hate speech, you used the term "hateful comments," which do not legally have any connection.

Second, it seems that your own link reinforces exactly what I said. Inciting violence is not a crime in the United States. Incitement to riot may be, but this is not what you said. US law requires an immediate threat of violence in order to censure speech outside of defamation and obscenity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#Incitement_vs._f...

Incitement is a related doctrine, allowing the government to prohibit advocacy of unlawful actions if the advocacy is both intended to and likely to cause immediate breach of the peace.

You seem like you're reaching for something to argue about. "Yes, but you didn't use the proper legal term!" You also seem to be confusing the statement I made about civil suits vs what can be considered a crime. But, since two people have been willing to argue semantics in what is obviously not legal advice, I will say you must be right. I concede. Hateful comments could not get you sued civilly and inciting violence is not the same as advocating a breech of the peace. I guess.

Weren't a couple of British tourists hauled in and deported because they tweeted something inappropriate (according to TSA standards) a few weeks back?

Happens everywhere.

There is a huge difference between being criminally prosecuted and being deported from the US as a foreign national. First, you don't have to commit a crime to be deported from the US -- you are a guest of the US government and may be deported at any time for a number of things, including anything which the government believes endangers public safety or national security. Not only that, the judicial proceedings are far more minimal. There is no crime and thus there is no criminal court.

This is a British citizen who was jailed for things that he posted on Twitter that did not incite violence. This does not happen in the United States. This is unconstitutional in the United States.

True enough.

I wasn't comparing the severity of the reactions though. I was just pointing out that tweeting can land you in trouble. It is _not_ like sharing something naughty with a buddy over a pint. People just need to be more cautious of what they tweet or put on their face book wall.

Irrespective of severity, the level of overreaction in both incidents is comparable (IMO). Deporting tourists because they tweeted something harmless in hipster-speak is a bit naff.

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