This nonsense has to stop. On Monday a 26 year-old man from Doncaster was found guilty of breaching the Communications Act 2003, having been arrested under the Terrorism Act in January, for tweeting
“Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” — @pauljchambers
Not only does this prosecution (taken by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), so supposedly ‘in the public interest’) represent a hideous misinterpretation of a joke, but also threatens our right to free speech.
There is no way that this tweet could be taken seriously. The tweet was posted in January, when Robin Hood airport was closed due to snow, and @pauljchambers was due to be flying out on holiday the next week. His tweet was meant in jest – he would have to take serious action if his flight was cancelled. (There’s a bit of a logical fallacy if blowing up an airport is your response to your flight being cancelled…)
The action taken by the CPS is most certainly not in the public interest. The cost to the police and CPS of arresting, gathering evidence and then taking out court proceedings is really not spending that can be justified on someone who made a joke on a micro-blogging service. More importantly the trial sets a precedent that is worrying – both for future possible CPS investigations, and private court cases against individuals who might have tweeted something offensive.
I’m not suggesting that people should tweet rude, potentially offensive or terrorist material as a matter of course, and before hitting ‘Tweet’ or sending a text to the service users should think about the content their sending. Most times I tweet or post to the Internet I go through a small and tortuous debate: What will people think? Will this make people unfollow me? Will new tweeps follow me if they read this? How might this affect my brand image? But there are times when you feel anger, a carelessness or just the need to say something; blogging – be it Twitter or any other social media service – services make the Internet the perfect space for this. Unfortunately hard-core terrorists do put content on the Internet too, and authorities will need to learn to establish between careless comment and serious threats better.
When people do tweet material that offends some, could be interpreted as offensive, or is terrorist or protests against a government or organisation, how do we deal with it? Personally – in my humble opinion – it is a violation of our human rights to be prevented from speaking our minds. People committing terrorist acts, whether it is our human right to carry them out or not, should be arrested and charged. And yes, this tweet constituted a potential terrorist act by our government’s laws. But this certainly was not terrorist in nature, for two reasons: 1) how many people planning to blow up airports post publicly about it? and 2) the context and humorous nature of the tweet make it clear that it was not threatening.
Having heard Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of civil liberties organisation Liberty, speak this week in Reading, it was made very clear to me that we really do need to protect our rights. Yes, people who are clearly terrorists need to be banged up, but when the authorities are banging people up or making their lives really difficult for simply saying things, well, our society is going somewhere wrong.
I think it’s time that we take a stand here; complain to the CPS, join a campaign against the trial, support the appeal for the @TwJokeTrialFund and support the protection of our civil liberties. If we don’t? Well, I don’t want a fine of £1000 and a Criminal Record for a tweet I write, and I’m sure you’d like the freedom to speak your mind – within reason, at least.
