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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

#71

Post by KaiserPro »

landl0rd wrote: post #30
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.

Strictly speaking most have been arrested on immigration-related charges but been targeted for prosecution due to criticizing israel. This is bad and a large step in the wrong direction but it's markedly less bad than the "hate speech" laws of Britain and many european countries.

> but it's markedly less bad than the "hate speech" laws

those laws require due process. the american immigration "charges" are not tested by courts. They are executive actions, that might be challenged if you are rich enough.

The UK does not have "hate speech" laws. It never had, anyone who tells you otherwise is pulling your leg. What can happen is you can ask for a more harsh sentence if there is "hate" involved. Yes, you will have heard of cases where someone was simple "just a bit racist" but thats moreoften than not an aggravating factor.

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

#72

Post by alephnerd »

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'm not sure it can be attributed to political parties in the UK.

By most standards, the British political tradition has remained paternalistic in it's mindset, and a lot of the shifts in civil liberties happened fairly late (1980s-90s) and without the requisite judicial scaffolding being built in place.

Furthermore, a lot of the same powers and institutions used for internal security during the Troubles were redeployed during the GWOT and never pushed back against legally speaking.

For example, London was the first major city to deploy centralized CCTV surveillance en masse.

And this isn't a UK only thing - across Europe, mass surveillance laws and government perogative are much stronger than their equivalents in the US, and given tensions on the eastern border of EU+ due to a belligerent neighbor like Russia and Azerbaijan using grey zone tactics, I think we might see a further regression on this front, because NatSec will always trump liberties.

By most standards, we're in an interregnum period similar to the 1930s, the "Dreadnought Wars" (1906-1914), or the 1950s that can spill over.

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

#73

Post by noir_lord »

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…

> elected officials have limited powers to direct civil servants and cannot remove all but a handful of civil servants.

On the other hand politicians frequently blame the civil servants as well.

In reality, parliament is sovereign, if they really wanted to reform the civil service they could do it via changing the laws.

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

#75

Post by KaiserPro »

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…

The tories activly campaigned on the platform of regulating internet speech.

> Windrush was one, there were many others

mate, windrush was down to May and her spads. They knew the problems, but decided that the press was worth it.

> the current level of immigration is supported by ~3% of the population

Immigration has halved this year.

The problem is that has tradeoffs, like social care isn't going work anymore.

I understand your frustrations. I hate that no matter who I vote for I seem to get reform-lite dipshits.

Thats not the fault of the civil service (although there is an entire subject in it's self) thats the fault of the press and political class being too close.

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

#76

Post by mig39 »

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.

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

#77

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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,…

Context helps.

The tweets appeared during an attempt to set off race riots in the UK, which was partly being organised on Twitter.

And some people had indeed tried to set fire to hotels.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/12/rotherham-ri...

So this wasn't random online muttering. It was a clear statement of encouragement and intent.

Compare with the much larger number of people who have been jailed for discussing peaceful protests against fossil fuels.

And the number of people - zero - who have been jailed for high profile disruptive protests against... changes to inheritance tax.

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

#78

Post by sofixa »

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

> but the last couple of years pulled back the curtain revealing the true nature of western democracy

There isn't a singular "western" democracy. Different countries have varying levels of (dis)functional democracies and freedoms, and choose different tradeoffs. E.g there are more hate speech restrictions in countries like Germany and France that literally saw what happens when evil is left unchallenged and many innocent paid with their lives; Germany has a federal state against too much power centralisation, France does the opposite due to absurd failures of governance in the past.

None of the various failures or wins of democracy in "the West" are inducement of "western democracy".

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

#79

Post by skippyboxedhero »

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 five followers...they will find it, and will attempt to prosecute. People on here go mad when police in the US pick up drug addicts, the UK has a China-style operation aimed at the public, they are making 200-300 arrests a week, it is complete insanity).

Now compare this to what else people are seeing. Some people in the UK (I cannot say which ones) are subject to rules: benefit fraud, tax evasion, public disturbances everywhere..."community policing" so these laws are not enforced. A well-known paedophile politician was recently convicted for attempted rape and sexual assault, they got a sentence shorter than the person you are referring to above...a convicted paedophile. Some parts of the UK have given prosecutors guidelines not to give a custodial sentence to paedophiles. During the riots, whilst people were being arrested for tweeting, there was a video online of a policeman asking attendees of a local mosque to put their weapons back in the mosque...no arrests made. For people in the UK, the problem is not the danger of things being said online, the danger is things going on in the physical world around them. I don't think a reasonable person can fail to connect these two things, there is a reason why the police go after the innocent online rather than criminals.

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

#80

Post by landl0rd »

KaiserPro wrote: post #71
landl0rd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking most have been arrested on immigration-related charges but been targeted for prosecution due to criticizing israel. This is bad and a large step in the wrong direction but it's markedly less bad than the "hate speech" laws of Britain and many european countries.

> but it's markedly less bad than the "hate speech" laws those laws require due process. the american immigration "charges" are not tested by courts. They are executive actions, that might be challenged if you are rich enough. The UK does not have "hate speech" laws. It never had, anyone who tells you otherwise is pulling your leg. What can happen is you can ask for a more harsh sentence if there is "hate" involved.…

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 rights, in 2016, almost 9 people every day were detained and questioned for online speech and almost half of those were prosecuted.

Britons have been jailed for posting emojis of an ethnic minority with an emoji of a gun. Or for saying illegals should be mass-deported. They have also been jailed for things that probably are closer to hate speech but that is just as bad.

Let's not pretend "due process" is worth a damn when such a basically unjust law is allowed to stand.

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