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Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

economist.com

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Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#101

Post by arp242 »

option wrote: post #68
chairmansteve wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are definitely problems, but at least you can criticise the speech laws. And fight to change them. In fact if you feel strongly about it you can do something about it. The article mentions the Free Speech Union in the UK. There is also the EFF in the USA. Democracy requires that we fight for it. Otherwise it will disappear. In dicatorships there is no opportunity to speak out.

you can criticize speech laws for now . And tbh, not sure to which extent it is true. There is no switch front democracy to dictatorship, there is a transition.

> you can criticize speech laws for now. And tbh, not sure to which extent it is true.

You are commenting on an article which critiques these laws. It's not the first either. So what you're saying is demonstrably nonsense.

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#102

Post by alephnerd »

pcrh wrote: post #91
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person in question did not say the latter. You have, presumably deliberately, decontextualized it. She said roughly what you said followed by "for all I care", and she also deleted the post a few minutes after. (What some people may not understand: UK police are running a dragnet online now, it is unclear when this started but was in full force after Covid, you can post and immediately delete, you can post with f…

My question was more specific. I copied the quote from the Economist, a reliable publication. So, assuming the posting was as written, would it fall under the "clear and imminent" criteria apparently used in the US?

It would not if there wasn't proof that there was actual planning. That said, you would most likely be monitored by local and state law enforcement.

A similar case happened in Central Illinois a couple years ago, where threats were posted but arrests were not made until the threats moved to actual action.

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#103

Post by rawling »

OgsyedIE wrote: post #14

It's strange that all four examples in the article are people with commonly objectionable right-wing views when the UK has sent arresting officers to people on the basis of online comments across the political spectrum in the last couple years. It isn't merely a partisan issue where a group that are easily written off as racists receive heavy-handed justice, the police have intermittently targeted every view away fro…

> even Quakers

Arrests made _at a Quaker meeting house_, not _of Quakers_ (or at least not for _being_ Quakers).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj3x5j6g30ro

> The Metropolitan Police said six people had been arrested on Thursday evening at the Westminster Meeting House on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.

> The force said the arrests had come amid concerns about plans to "shut down" London next month using tactics such as road blocks.

I would imagine your example of "anti-hunting activists" would likely also be people planning to do something to break the law - not purely for online comments.

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#104

Post by crtasm »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #79
pcrh wrote: post #36

The comparison is made with America's First Amendment, which is a valuable piece of legislation. How does the law in the US treat incitement to violence, as shown by some of the cases described, e.g. Among them were people who said things like “blow the mosque up” and “set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards”. That probably would have been legal in America, says Gavin Phillipson of Bristol University,…

The person in question did not say the latter. You have, presumably deliberately, decontextualized it. She said roughly what you said followed by "for all I care", and she also deleted the post a few minutes after. (What some people may not understand: UK police are running a dragnet online now, it is unclear when this started but was in full force after Covid, you can post and immediately delete, you can post with f…

>she also deleted the post a few minutes after.

This is incorrect.

"At the time she had about 9,000 followers on X. Her message was reposted 940 times and viewed 310,000 times, before she deleted it three and a half hours later. " - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3nn60wyr6o

>you can post and immediately delete, you can post with five followers...they will find it, and will attempt to prosecute

Examples of this happening please?

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#105

Post by landl0rd »

pcrh wrote: post #89
landl0rd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2014, Police Scotland posted on its Twitter, "Please be aware that we will continue to monitor comments on social media & any offensive comments will be investigated." Met Police have taken similar actions in pursuit of chilling effects on social media. The Communications Act prohibits what are at best vaguely-defined "offensive communications" and created Ofcom. Because of this ridiculous violation of inalienable…

> inalienable rights The UK doesn't follow the American declaration of independence... In UK law such "inalienable rights" are found within the Human Rights Act, 1998 [0], itself based largely on the European Convention on Human Rights [1]. Both are famously disparaged by the political right. [0] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/contents [1] https://coe.int/en/web/human-rights-convention/home

That's basically irrelevant from where I stand. I don't subscribe to the idea that everything is relative. That we should "respect different choices". The point of an inalienable right is that it's intrinsic according to our basic values. The british failing to respect that doesn't change it.

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#106

Post by account-5 »

JadeNB wrote: post #69
account-5 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Muddled laws are a government issue. And the second goes for the people affected by the muddled laws too, who have way more discretion than the police.

> And the second goes for the people affected by the muddled laws too, who have way more discretion than the police. Are you arguing that the fault for being on the wrong side of the powerful lies with the people who could have just decided not to be on the wrong side of the powerful? We're discussing here laws where someone, whether the police or some other authority figure, is going to be deciding whether you're su…

> Are you arguing that the fault for being on the wrong side of the powerful lies with the people who could have just decided not to be on the wrong side of the powerful?

No.

I saying that people are responsible for their actions.

In western society (democratic) laws are implemented by people put in a position of authority by the very people those laws apply to.

I'm not really sure I understand the rest of what you're talking about, so I do t want to assume anything, but it sounds like you're after perfects laws no one can misinterprete? I don't think that's possible. Bug free software will likely come first.

Either way the conversation about power and who has it and who doesn't doesn't strike me as helpful.

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#107

Post by onetimeusename »

chairmansteve wrote: post #18

Britain has a problem. But so does America. Quite a few people (non citizens so far), have been arrested for criticising the actions of the current Israeli government.

The difference between the two free speech problems can be exemplified with the statements "Palestine is for the Palestinians" and "Britain is for the British". I suspect the political solution behind the two free speech problems is very different though.

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#108

Post by cobbzilla »

mig39 wrote: post #76
cobbzilla wrote: post #74

The thing that boggles my mind most is the UK libel laws where stating a true, verifiable fact can be illegal if it makes the subject look bad. Someone tell me I’ve got that wrong.

No, this is incorrect, and a quick google search would verify that. Where did you get that idea? Truth is a _defence_ against libel.

I did have it technically wrong but practically correct.

Do go have a quick conversation with your favorite AI about this. Ask if anyone in the UK has ever been punished for saying a true thing, and whether the cost on the defendant to prove innocence is not so exorbitant as to allow libel to be weaponized by the wealthy against their critics.

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#109

Post by pcrh »

alephnerd wrote: post #102
pcrh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question was more specific. I copied the quote from the Economist, a reliable publication. So, assuming the posting was as written, would it fall under the "clear and imminent" criteria apparently used in the US?

It would not if there wasn't proof that there was actual planning. That said, you would most likely be monitored by local and state law enforcement. A similar case happened in Central Illinois a couple years ago, where threats were posted but arrests were not made until the threats moved to actual action.

In this case, the threats did move to action....

Re: Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways

#110

Post by onetimeusename »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #65
croes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, democracy doesn’t mean free society. People can vote for less freedom

No-one voted for this. The police in the UK are using a combination of existing powers (for example, intimidating people by using their powers to question people), non-statutory instruments that politicians have told them repeatedly to stop using, and laws that are being applied to the online world in an expansive way (the current PM is the former head of government prosecutions so is basically the worst person possi…

I think the entire West is experiencing this problem. Things like immigration laws are determined not by elected officials but by bureaucrats and judges/lawyers who it turns out are often on the same side. It's a very sticky problem. The Nomenklatura of the USSR is probably the most similar description.
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