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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

#141

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

zugi wrote: post #24

> The public might well question why so much time is spent on this, while burglaries routinely go unsolved. I'd offer yet another explanation: laziness. For burglaries, you have to get out of your chair, go out into the community, interview witnesses, search for evidence, and maybe wander into dangerous areas to find and arrest potentially violent suspects. For internet thought crimes, you can sit in the comfort of y…

The other side of that coin is that burglaries are limited in that the criminals have to physically be present to commit the crime and that puts a hard limit on the number of victims. Posting incitements to commit violence on the internet is not inherently limited and can easily provoke riots based on complete falsehoods. There's also the much more dangerous issue of destroying democracy by misleading a large number of voters.

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

#142

Post by account-5 »

JadeNB wrote: post #124
account-5 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'r…

> 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. Right (although I think that the latter sentence is, first, not limited to western societies, and, second, not ubiquitous in them), but the issue here is not whether people should escape consequences for actions that have been…

So are you suggesting that the enforcement of the laws in question, per the article, are actually a cover to suppress something else? If you are you'll need to spell it out for me since what the article covers as criminal seems to fit what the laws state as criminal.

Power balances or plays in any society are inevitable. I just don't see it as relevant in this scenario. Certainly it's fashionable today to demonstrate how hard done by you are but in this context the people affected in the article are certainly inconvenienced by police at their door but hardly any of them that I can see were powerless and suffered because if it. Everyone can have their day in court. It's the courts that decide whether you're guilty, whether the police were over reaching; case law is full of such things.

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

#143

Post by account-5 »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #136
account-5 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police didn't arrest J.K. Rowling for her tweets about transwomen after the new Scottish law came into force, even when she asked them to. No muddling of the new law just police... Underreach? Or not doing their job? Depends who you ask. Either way tit for tat examples help nothing. Fact is, police are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Plus it's good to just blame them for things they aren't in control of.

JK Rowling can afford a good lawyer.

Yes I'm sure she can. But that is surely besides the point?

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

#144

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

anonymousiam wrote: post #118
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.

In the UK, you don't even need to speak to be arrested. https://reason.com/2024/10/17/british-man-convicted-of-crimi...

That was in a specifically protected area covered by a PSPO that explicitly banned prayer. He then refused to move on, so this was a deliberate protest against abortion.

> On the day, he was asked to leave the area by a community officer who spoke to him for an hour and 40 minutes - but he refused.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo

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

#145

Post by ayrtondesozzla »

chairmansteve wrote: post #33
hathym wrote: post #16

I used to think I lived in a democracy, but the last couple of years pulled back the curtain revealing the true nature of western democracy

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 criticise things, but if you are effective, or if you criticise the wrong thing, you risk jail, harassment, ostracisation, threats, campaigns of vilification and slander, etc. Your doctor visits and lawyer visits will be surveilled, your basic diplomatic rights violated. You can be tortured in public view.

Wikileaks' Julian Assange is perhaps the archetypal recent example, but there are others.

Westminster has undergone a violent authoritarian shift in recent decades. Stating that clearly is a prerequisite to beginning a fight for "democracy", as you put it.

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

#146

Post by croes »

jibe wrote: post #28
croes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When you vote away foundational freedoms, you are no longer a democracy, at least not a liberal democracy.

As long as you can vote and the vote is recognized you are a democracy, there is a reason why liberal democracy and democracy aren’t just synonyms.

Foundational freedoms sounds like a fixed definition of freedoms but history showed it’s highly subjective and selective by culture and country.

Not all cultures value individual freedoms like western culture does, and few cultures grant all their freedoms to people outside their culture or country.

Societies always have to balance between what’s good for all, most, some and one.

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

#147

Post by pcrh »

crtasm wrote: post #127
pcrh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, she was found guilty of "sending a communication threatening death or serious harm". >Sweeney wrote: "It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosque. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6x105wgz5o

Also noted in the article: it was posted in the days after the riot and in response to seeing people cleaing up and repairing the damage.

Connolley's message was posted at 8.30pm on the 29th July. One day before crowds attacked Mosques in Southport. Related disturbances continued until August 5th.

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

#148

Post by pcrh »

alephnerd wrote: post #130
pcrh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, she was found guilty of "sending a communication threatening death or serious harm". >Sweeney wrote: "It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosque. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6x105wgz5o

Not in the US's case. A direct link would be needed. American jurisprudence on speech leans towards Free Speech Absolutism [0] due to jurisprudence from the 1970s-2000s, and the test for "clear and imminent danger" is extremely high. Even though the US and the rest of the Anglophone speak English, America jurisprudence is extremely distinct from the rest of the Anglophone (and vice versa), and IMO it doesn't make sen…

How direct is direct enough? Connolley posted messages inciting racial violence, racial violence ensued.

Was Connolley a major instigator of these riots? No.

The judge's sentencing remarks are below, the key part being:

>6. When you published those words you were well aware of how volatile the situation was. As everyone is aware, that volatility led to serious disorder in a number of areas of the country where mindless violence was used to cause injury and damage to wholly innocent members of the public and to their properties.

https://crimeline.co.uk/lucy-connolly-sentencing-remarks-17-...

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

#149

Post by soco »

cassianoleal wrote: post #125
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.

> In dicatorships there is no opportunity to speak out. There is always opportunity to speak out. In dictatorships, it usually costs more energy, money and sometimes lives. It tends to culminate in revolutions, and then the system changes. In censored quasi-democracies like what we see in "the west", it tends to culminate in being ignored and the status quo being maintained or gradually worsened. Alternatively, you m…

I'm not sure I follow the logic. I mean all the arguments are valid when taken separately, but the construct fails me. You mean, the dictatorship is then better because you might die but the survivors can have a revolution? Why couldn't then a democracy have a revolution as well, by exactly the same argumentation? And how's all this black and white thinking, like because democracy is not perfect, dictatorship becomes suddenly acceptable???

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

#150

Post by soco »

beej71 wrote: post #131
arp242 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So how do you think dictatorships come to be?

I'm sick of all this doomsaying coming from the bench. If somebody thinks the dictatorship is around the corner, then please get on your ass and do something about it! Organize, vote, find your own way. Because the world has zero uses for more oracles, but a lot of use for _involved_ people.
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