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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

For some cultural context: two people recently murdered a soldier, and waited until police came to arrest them. While waiting they spoke to people, some of whom filmed their statements.

Here's some BBC links (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22644057)

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22664835)

Some of the arrests were before two competing groups held demonstrations in the same town. The English Defence League (hateful moronic racist thugs) and Anti-Facist something or other (a rag-tag bag of anarchists, tin pot trots, students, and anti-facists) were both holding demonstrations.

Police are perhaps a bit antsy because both groups have had problems with violence, and this is exacerbated when they demonstrate at the same time.

US citizens may not like our laws, but we -on the whole- do. It is a weird cultural difference between the UK and US.

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Agreed, I was quite surprised (as someone from the UK) at the point of view expressed in this article. It does highlight how different our cultures are in some respects.

Most people in the UK would support this action - the police are arresting people who have made hateful, racist or threatening comments. Why is that bad?

I think the author of the article is probably someone an average person might consider an "activist" or the like, but I (an American) also feel like the report is alarming. It sounds like the kind of thing you'd expect from Saudi Arabia, rather than a democratic society.

I suppose in the US we are more in the all-or-nothing camp when it comes to free speech (at least idealistically).

Edit: Most people in the UK would support this action - the police are arresting people who have made hateful, racist or threatening comments. Why is that bad?

The concern is that what is perfectly fine one day (and really truly legitimate) can be "bad" the next. Better not to have a category of "bad" speech at all. Otherwise you may be at whim of political fashion.

Does it make a difference if the tweets are direct threats to individuals? (Bob threats Jasmir via tweet.)

Or if they are calls to violent action? (Bob tweets asking people to riot, with an added hashtag of a known violent organisation)

I kind of understand why Americans dislike arrests for general hate speech. I understand why some Americans think it's weird that I'm so relaxed about it too.

Free speech in the UK (and the rest of the EU) is governed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which you can read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_Con...

Basically, part 1 says "you have free expression", while part 2 says "unless that expression could seriously damage people's lives". Works for us.

I think part 2 of the Article is what people worry could easily be abused, especially when you include wording like "for the protection of health or morals". "Morals" in particular being something that is subject to very wide interpretation.

Viewing from the lens of an another American political issue: separation of church and state, an aspect of freedom of religion. There are people in the US who strongly believe that we should have state sanctioned prayer in schools and feel this doesn't conflict with religious freedom. What they fail to take into account is that at some point their children could be in the school holding prayers for Not_Their_Religion. The point being that separation of church and state is the only policy that protects everyone's religious freedom. Analogously, you can argue that allowing all speech is the only way to protect everyone's freedom of speech.

I really am not an expert on this. This is more of a dorm-room, after-hours student discussion level of understanding on my part and likely more a cultural reflection than a strong reflection of legal foundations, etc.

Threatening comments would not be OK in the US. Threatening someone is illegal here.

The US historically has tended away from laws that apply to people's thoughts or opinions, unless those thoughts or opinions are connected with a tangible crime.

Some whackjob spouting off racist comments isn't considered to be committing a crime as just being an idiot who should be ignored. That being said, if such speech resulted in a riot or a hate crime, or was harassing, the racist would not be free from the consequences of his or her speech, whether the case might ultimately be tried in civil or criminal court (or both).

The Bill of Rights, arguably the most important US legal document, states that "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech[.]" That does not mean however, that one is free from the consequences resulting from one's speech.

IANAL, but that's my layman's understanding.

Re your last statement, I completely agree, I believe most people here in the UK are fairly comfortable to see people being arrested for these tweets and Facebook posts. People need to be made aware that posting stuff on twitter is publishing and is covered by the same laws as all other published media. The two commonly broken and inciting racial hatred and libel.

Probably because the U.S. never had any of its cities destroyed during The War. Plus we have quite a different origin as a country than most of Europe and the U.K.

While I still don't like it that these laws use supposition to infer guilt, I understand why they exist. I just hope laws like these never catch on here.

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