Thoughtcrime in Britain
azizonomics.com
azizonomics.com
In July, a 17-year-old was arrested during the Olympics for tweeting abusive messages at diver Tom Daley.
In August, a 22-year-old man was arrested for posting racist tweets aimed at footballer Carlton Cole.
Also in August, a 44-year-old man was arrested for posting a message on Facebook praising Anders Breivik.
In September, a 22-year-old man was arrested for setting up a fan page on Facebook for Dale Cregan, shortly after Cregan was arrested by police, suspected of murdering two female police officers.
In October a 19-year-old man was sentenced to three months in prison for posting jokes about the missing five-year-old April Jones.
Also in October, a 20-year-old was given a community order for making an online post stating "all soldiers should die and go to hell"
Some of the example you give fall on different sides of the line for me.
Racist messages may be a different matter. It is pretty clear that the UK does not have free speech in that area (including face to face - inciting racial hatred is a criminal offence) and I'm not sure that is a bad thing although I would like to imagine it is better to hear everything and beat racism with arguments that sounds like a naive view.
So from your list:
Tom Daley - probably an overreaction. Angry tweet mob response probably sufficient. Prolonged harassment of less popular people in more need of police intervention.
Carlton Cole - Potentially criminal on or offline. I wouldn't argue against police involvement.
Praising Brevik - shouldn't lead to arrest (unless racist itself) although might get you watched.
Dale Cregan fan - shouldn't be criminal just nasty and dumb.
April Jones - Ridiculous. Unless posted to the family or on a memorial site.
Soldiers - I don't think this should be a matter for the police or law enforcement at all.
[EDIT - The Poppy Case is I think completely ridiculous and he should have just been ignored and not given the attention especially as it sounded (on the radio news) like he had just posted to his friends on FB. If he sent it to fan page for the British Legion or a support page for those who had lost family in conflict it may be worth the police having a chat with him although as a one off I don't think it should be prosecuted even in that scenario.]
If people rally around a case the police and courts are forced to react with harsh sentencing. Morally these people are in the wrong but a moral justification is different to a legal one.
Paul Chambers was found guilty for sending menacing electronic communication. He tweeted that he would blow up Robin Hood Airport when it closed after heavy snow. I've seen worse sarcastic tweets than this in my stream before, after the listed cases these tweets could result in legal action.
That in itself is quite alarming, that the justice system seems to be bowing to the whim of the mob.
More worrying is that, in each of these cases, there were people who initially brought the communications to the attention of the police. In each case there was some busybody, with nothing better to do, who thought some hijinks on the Internet was worthy of a police investigation.
I have no doubt that the number of these cases being reported in the national news (at a rate of one every 1-2 weeks over the last six months) is re-enforcing the view that reporting offensive content to the police is an appropriate and proportionate action.
> Paul Chambers was found guilty for sending menacing electronic communication.
Chambers' conviction was quashed in July, in a rare display of common sense.
I despair of this country, I really do. The whole system around speech laws is a mockery of justice. People with no connection to the country sue each other here because the material may have been available in the UK. People are arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned for little more than being insensitive buttholes.
We desperately need a first amendment in our own law. Freedom of expression is supposedly guaranteed under EU law but these cases never seem to make it that far.
1) Britain has never had free speech.
2) This was not a thought crime. It was a deliberate insult: an act of insensitivity and rudeness intended to give offence.
You cannot walk onto a cinema and shout fire and you cannot legally call someone a cunt to their face in public (with the deliberate intention of causing offence) without attracting the attention of the law.
While I'm sure there are many more pressing things that the UK's police force could (and should) be dealing with, calling this a thought crime is both naïve and stupid.
The fact here is that it was a deliberate insult and even with free speech it wouldn't have prevented the government from harassing him.
Without free speech? Well that's easy, charge him with felony treason. The law is still enforced, and was originally written in 1848. It doesn't even take a manipulation of the wording of the act to make his life hell.
> If any person whatsoever shall, within the United Kingdom or without ... devise, or intend to deprive or depose our Most Gracious Lady the Queen, from the style, honour, or royal name of the imperial crown of the United Kingdom, or of any other of her Majesty’s dominions and countries, or to levy war against her Majesty, within any part of the United Kingdom, in order by force or constraint to compel her to change her measures or counsels ... or to move or stir any foreigner or stranger with force to invade the United Kingdom or any other of her Majesty's dominions or countries under the obeisance of her Majesty, and such ... imaginations, ... or intentions, or any of them, shall express, utter, or declare, by publishing any printing or writing ... or by any overt act or deed, every person so offending shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable ... to be transported beyond the seas for the term of his or her natural life.
If they charged him for felony treason. He wouldn't be eligible for bail. He could be held in solitary confinement. It's an indictable offence, which means even dropped it could mar his record for life without it being pardoned. He could be sentenced to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for the term. He also might only be allowed a judicial hearing and no jury, meaning luck of the draw.
Sorry, but this is a bit of over zealousness to harass a jerk. If anyone actually wanted to destroy him a Felony Treason charge would have done the trick even with a freedom of speech law. So I really don't see how "freedom of speech" factors in here. It's hate speech and already violates a law just for that, free speech is already trumped by that.
The "theater/fire" metaphor was first used by US Supreme Court Justice Holmes, to justify the imprisonment of anti-war protestors in World War I for distributing leaflets. It's exactly because such a broad justficiation can be so appealing and so easily misused that the US rejected that decision in favour of a far more narrow description of prohibited speech.
I realise that the UK can make a different stance on free speech, but it seems ironic to pluck as your standard the very language that was used in the United States to quash opposition to the war and mass deaths that the poppy is intended to commemorate.
US Supreme Court Justice Holmes was wrong. His analogy was bad one that was thankfully rejected.
I may be wrong in this case about whether the freedom to insult people for no reason should be protected, I am still mulling it over, however I was not wrong and a free society is not wrong to sanction shouting "fire" in a crowded cinema.
2) This was a picture posted on facebook, by a moron, not a threat. There is no provocation here, no immediate danger, no incitement to violence. It's ludicrous that it could be considered a crime.
2) I never said it was a threat. I said it wasn't a thought crime.
Civilised society must protect thoughtful speech but cannot protect all speech.
We are not (and should not be free) to:
* Make up (and spread) lies with intent to mislead or harm
* Defame people
* Insult people for no other reason than to cause them pain
* Wilfully cause panic
* Incite others to harmful action for no good reason
However you can think anything as long as you keep it to yourself.
Free speech is the freedom to express ideas; not the freedom to insult other people for no reason. Linking it to the latter belittles the former.
Setting fire to a poppy and calling squaddies cunts was a deliberate insulting act. The very fact that we have seen it and are debating it shows that it indeed caused offence. What was the great intellectual idea that we should be protecting? The freedom to call soldiers cunts for no reason? There was no humour here either. This was not a misunderstood joke. It was exactly the sort of behaviour that would cause a fight in a bar and as such would be illegal there too.
Freedom to be nasty is not the same as freedom of expression. Your ideas need to be backed by facts and have a purpose other than deliberately causing anguish or inciting violence. Civilisation is built on civilised discourse and should seek wherever possible to move away from violent exchange.
I, too, believe in protecting free speech and I am also very alarmed and embarrassed by many of the UK Facebook & Twitter court cases of late. The Robin Hood Airport case was a travesty and some of the plights of jokers during the riots of 2011 were certainly Orwelian, e.g.: 4 years for making a bad joke.
We must protect free speech but protecting any nasty idiot like this does nothing for freedom nor freedom of ideas. It merely allows the nasty to spread their nastiness.
(It is also my opinion that ideas freely expressed should not be free to seek to remove these rights of free expression from others.)
Why not? Your other points have some merit. This does not.
"The very fact that we have seen it and are debating it shows that it indeed caused offence."
So what? Really, so what? Some moron in a bedroom in Kent posted an offensive picture. And? Are you not adult enough to ignore it? Who cares? It's not like he punched someone.
"It was exactly the sort of behaviour that would cause a fight in a bar and as such would be illegal there too."
Except it wasn't said in a bar, it was published online. There are a lot of things people say to each other online that they wouldn't say in a bar in case it caused a fight. That is not the standard for free speech.
"Freedom to be nasty is not the same as freedom of expression."
Yes, yes it is, because where you draw the line of nasty is entirely subjective. Just look at all the people that think any expression of atheism, or talk of historical record as it applies to religion is insulting. You would have these off limits as well.
"I, too, believe in protecting free speech"
You really don't, otherwise you wouldn't support this arrest, however abhorrent or useless you thought the opinions expressed in it were.
Also, and probably importantly, there's a large public (and legal - see the various judicial outcomes) reaction against the stupidity of laws like this.
The man's nominal offense was a parole violation. Whether the government's pursuit of the violation, or the sentence given, were typical for such violations is beyond my expertise.
However the government went out of its way to see to it that his arrest (pardon, "brought in for questioning") was known to and photographed by the press. This was an obvious effort to communicate to elements abroad the distate of the government for the video. Maybe he had to prosecuted on the parole violation -- if so, that could and should have been done much more quietly.
No one seems to regard this particularly important, which I find very strange. One, anyone in the US who might want to say something "offensive" now has cause to wonder what opportunities they present to discretionary prosecution.
Two, and more important, the US government has just validated censorious behaviors of a great many governments. How exactly are we going to complain to the Chinese or Egyptian government for jailing dissenters when we have made a point of doing just that? Worse, we've just told all those dissenters that they cannot be sure that we will be supporting them if they get into trouble.
I don't really much care that his offense was nominally related to an international incident, or that he said means things about someone else's religion. The whole point of ignoring such problems is to deny the government _any_ excuse for censorship. Because once a government gets in the habit, it becomes quite easy to find excuses for the censorships it finds in its interests.
This was a shameful episode for Americans. Joined to a cultural squishiness on speech "offensive" to one religion in particular, it is disturbing. Join it with a few more episodes of government action and the lot will begin to become dangerous.
The author appears to be British. So what does this have to do with anything?
That is so obvious I have to wonder why you are looking for arguments against even mentioning the matter.
Whilst generally speech is fairly free, and we have a pretty diverse media, there have been numerous laws impeaching upon Free Speech, particularly recently, generally in terms of avoiding obscenity and protecting children. It's a worrying trend, and one I wish we could revert.
I've been wondering a lot recently what the best way is that I can help campaign against this - it's my biggest bugbear with UK politics currently, far more than the economy or other social issues. Any suggestions?
If you really want to do something about this problem, break the law, get arrested, and defeat the law in court. Or make friends with somebody who did that and assist that in their legal fight, assuming they decide to fight.
Of course, your probability of success is slim, but that's a quick way of getting rid of something profoundly stupid by a sole individual.
The overwhelming majority of the British public see these kinds of things as grossly offensive and in cases have created petitions wanting stuff like this to be illegal.
This first blew up when the group "Islam4UK" demonstrated in Luton against the royal anglian regiment's homecoming parade. This spawned the EDL group to counter-protest.
They later threatened to demonstrate in Wootton Basset (where dead soldiers are repatriated) and the uproar against this was huge with major newspapers all calling for the march to be banned.
It is now illegal to be a member of the Islam4UK group, so they have had to change their name a bunch of times.
This could come down to your view on the role of government, but I personally don't see that the majority opinion should be how a society is defined. There are dangers both ways, though I feel the government should always be pushing a more progressive social agenda. Gay marriage is a great current example. Obama is doing it right by pushing for it. Gillard in Australia is doing it wrong by saying "the people don't want it" and axing any proposals. Obama is fighting upstream for what is right and Gillard is basically saying "look, my hands are tied b/c the people don't want it". It's a cop-out for making an unpopular but right decision.
In the case of free speech, there is little wiggle room, IMO. People need to be free to say what they want. It may not be popular, but that isn't the point.
Long winded way of saying, the mass opinion shouldn't be the way we define civil societies. We need to do what is right. "Right" might be gray at times, but it is usually pretty clear when you get the smart people together and have them hash it out.
This is (of course) because in their minds they are part of the in-crowd and people caught by these unjust laws are part of the out-crowd and are therefore 'other'. Many humans do not care about what happens to anyone that can be defined as 'other'. It never seems to occur to them that it could be used against themselves or their relatives. They also seem to trust government implicitly.
Perhaps it's a generational thing. I hope this changes.
"In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, as with libel, slander, obscenity, sedition (including, for example inciting ethnic hatred), copyright violation, revelation of information that is classified or otherwise."
Source Wikipedia.
Britons have a right to be angry, and a right to express their anger at these arrests. They are an assault on the human rights of all citizens of the UK and the willingness of some on this topic to accept these assaults is both unsettling and unexpected.