Arrested for a Comment on Twitter
No, I’m not joking. Someone actually made a flippant comment on twitter and got arrested for it:
When heavy snowfall threatened to scupper Paul Chambers’s travel plans, he decided to vent his frustrations on Twitter by tapping out a comment to amuse his friends. “Robin Hood airport is closed,” he wrote. “You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
Unfortunately for Mr Chambers, the police didn’t see the funny side. A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat. After he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation, and has, he says, been banned from the Doncaster airport for life.
Sorry but WTF? When did we lose the group ability to distinguish between a credible threat and someone mouthing off – ill-advisedly sure – but obviously just mouthing off? Why waste police time investigating what I could have told them was rubbish (and I don’t even know him)? Hannah Dunleavy suggests:
While I agree it was a savage over-reaction and has undertones of something quite troubling, I wonder if they’d all be so outraged if Chambers had been a Muslim teenager from Bradford, rather than a white man. I’m sure they wouldn’t. Freedom of speech has to apply to everyone: jokes about blowing up planes cannot be the preserve of Caucasians and Christians.
I agree there’s a point there about freedom of speech needing to apply to all, but to be perfectly honest if a Muslim teenager from Bradford had said the same thing in the same context I would be equally as outraged. If a Muslim teenager from Bradford starts mouthing off Jihadist nonsense on a website known for its extremist content then by all means devote police resources to investigate what’s going on there, but to react in the same way to a stupid comment in a flustered mood by anyone mouthing off to their mates and admirers on twitter? Perspective really is needed.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
[...] As I said after his arrest, it’s an absolute insanity that an ill-judged comment, intended only for his Twitter followers, should then be put on trial for sending a ‘malicious message’. Absolutely insane. Hopefully Allen Green is right and there’ll be a not guilty verdict or better momentarily. [...]
[...] upon a time Paul Chambers made a flippant joke on Twitter. Then he was convicted of ‘menace’ for it: Paul Chambers, the Twitter “bomb [...]