For some cultural context: two people recently murdered a soldier, and waited until police came to arrest them. While waiting they spoke to people, some of whom filmed their statements.
Some of the arrests were before two competing groups held demonstrations in the same town. The English Defence League (hateful moronic racist thugs) and Anti-Facist something or other (a rag-tag bag of anarchists, tin pot trots, students, and anti-facists) were both holding demonstrations.
Police are perhaps a bit antsy because both groups have had problems with violence, and this is exacerbated when they demonstrate at the same time.
US citizens may not like our laws, but we -on the whole- do. It is a weird cultural difference between the UK and US.
Agreed, I was quite surprised (as someone from the UK) at the point of view expressed in this article. It does highlight how different our cultures are in some respects.
Most people in the UK would support this action - the police are arresting people who have made hateful, racist or threatening comments. Why is that bad?
Threatening comments would not be OK in the US. Threatening someone is illegal here.
The US historically has tended away from laws that apply to people's thoughts or opinions, unless those thoughts or opinions are connected with a tangible crime.
Some whackjob spouting off racist comments isn't considered to be committing a crime as just being an idiot who should be ignored. That being said, if such speech resulted in a riot or a hate crime, or was harassing, the racist would not be free from the consequences of his or her speech, whether the case might ultimately be tried in civil or criminal court (or both).
The Bill of Rights, arguably the most important US legal document, states that "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech[.]" That does not mean however, that one is free from the consequences resulting from one's speech.
I think the author of the article is probably someone an average person might consider an "activist" or the like, but I (an American) also feel like the report is alarming. It sounds like the kind of thing you'd expect from Saudi Arabia, rather than a democratic society.
I suppose in the US we are more in the all-or-nothing camp when it comes to free speech (at least idealistically).
Edit: Most people in the UK would support this action - the police are arresting people who have made hateful, racist or threatening comments. Why is that bad?
The concern is that what is perfectly fine one day (and really truly legitimate) can be "bad" the next. Better not to have a category of "bad" speech at all. Otherwise you may be at whim of political fashion.
I think part 2 of the Article is what people worry could easily be abused, especially when you include wording like "for the protection of health or morals". "Morals" in particular being something that is subject to very wide interpretation.
Viewing from the lens of an another American political issue: separation of church and state, an aspect of freedom of religion. There are people in the US who strongly believe that we should have state sanctioned prayer in schools and feel this doesn't conflict with religious freedom. What they fail to take into account is that at some point their children could be in the school holding prayers for Not_Their_Religion. The point being that separation of church and state is the only policy that protects everyone's religious freedom. Analogously, you can argue that allowing all speech is the only way to protect everyone's freedom of speech.
I really am not an expert on this. This is more of a dorm-room, after-hours student discussion level of understanding on my part and likely more a cultural reflection than a strong reflection of legal foundations, etc.
Does it make a difference if the tweets are direct threats to individuals? (Bob threats Jasmir via tweet.)
Or if they are calls to violent action? (Bob tweets asking people to riot, with an added hashtag of a known violent organisation)
I kind of understand why Americans dislike arrests for general hate speech. I understand why some Americans think it's weird that I'm so relaxed about it too.
Re your last statement, I completely agree, I believe most people here in the UK are fairly comfortable to see people being arrested for these tweets and Facebook posts. People need to be made aware that posting stuff on twitter is publishing and is covered by the same laws as all other published media. The two commonly broken and inciting racial hatred and libel.
Probably because the U.S. never had any of its cities destroyed during The War. Plus we have quite a different origin as a country than most of Europe and the U.K.
While I still don't like it that these laws use supposition to infer guilt, I understand why they exist. I just hope laws like these never catch on here.
It's happened quite a lot in the last few years, e.g. following the collapse of a black football player, Fabrice Muamba.[1]
You have to consider the different context at play here; the UK has never had a history of "fundamentalist" (for want of a better word) free speech like there is in the US. There are plenty of laws on the books, from sending malicious communications to inciting racial hatred, that prevent speech that would be entirely legal in the US.
I think that's something that's reflected (either a cause or an effect, I'm not sure which) in public opinion, too; there's certainly no widespread outcry here at these types of arrest. The only recent case I can think of where the ruling was against free speech and where public opinion was significantly against the ruling was the Robin Hood Airport tweet, where someone tweeted an obviously incredible threat to blow up an airport.[2]
I apologize for posting blogspam but I refuse to post the DailyMail on HN.
Either way the mods took this article off the frontpage.
As a side note, the border security do not operate under the same laws as the US courts/police. It's a grey area where they can arbitrarily deny you for looking at them the wrong way. Free speech doesn't apply at border crossings. In addition noone was arrested domestically. Not the best analogy.
There is absolutely no context given in the article. In particular, we don't know what these tweets actually said. In general, free speech is quite well protected here (UK), but it is an offence to incite violence. The tweets and Facebook posts could conceivably have been threats of violence against individuals (groups, etc.), in which case it's no different to making that kind of threat in public in any other forum, i.e., illegal.
It said in the article what they are getting charged with:
> The Malicious Communications Act 1988 is a British Act of Parliament that makes it illegal in England and Wales to "send or deliver letters or other articles for the purpose of causing distress or anxiety". It also applies to electronic communications.
I stopped reading at the opening sentence: "Because it just wouldn't do to upset the sensibilities of those who might wish to cut your head off."
This is implying guilt (or intention) on the part of the recipients of these racist messages, and seems to imply that it's OK to 'upset' (re: profile and aggravate) people if you think they're likely to cut your head off based only on their race or religion. Which is pretty low.
I don't know if this received much coverage in the US but these arrests are for comments made in the aftermath of a murder of a British army cadet in broad daylight [1] the other day that has been called a terrorist attack. There has been a significant rise in racial aggression since the incident and that needs to be brought under control [2].
I'm not sure how known this is, but in 2011 UK had a couple of days long riots in a number of cities. It was not justified in any way in my opinion - just a lot of people who took their general problems to the street and started destroying shops, cars, houses, attacking police. (that's the tldr, check wiki link for the details) With that kind of response to the social network comments, I think police is trying to prevent another such event aimed at a specific group.
Absolutely, we've banned several Islamic fundamentalist organsations including, Al-Muhajiroun and Islam4UK. Both were proscribed under the UK's Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005.
My "hate" comments are directly related to those "hate" actions, like killing and maiming. Lest alone, shrouding words as "hate" words are poisoning, because it tries to defang legitimate criticism to "Oh lol, he's just a racist".
And I do wish for a peaceful earth, full of multitudes of genetically different peoples, following different faiths and paths. And I'd like to be able to go up and ask them about that. However, we're not there, and tribal groups take hold instead. The best I can do is to highlight when a certain tribe acts up, whether that be the Catholic church, England, USA, UN, Islamic countries.. It matters not who does evil, but that it is called out (and stopped if possible).
This is mild by British standards. Harsh was sending a drunk student to jail for 56 days for some incredibly tasteless but obviously-trolling racist comments in a highly-publicised Twitter exchange, or the politician's wife who just lost a libel trial for writing "why is Lord McAlpine trending" when Lord McAlpine was trending because of speculation wrongly linking him to an accusation of child abuse.
That said, the linked article, which repeatedly Godwins the discussion before it starts and (wrongly) speculates that Muslims don't get arrested for similar offences, is garbage.
And here I am, in agreement with cricizing (read religious hateful comments) against Islam.
After having looked at governments that are Islamic states, and the way they treat fellow people (religious and nonreligious), they deserve to be critically looked at. In Saudi Arabia, women who are raped are then killed for "being a whore". Little girls are trapped in a burning building because they didnt have their headscarves.
And then there's the whole Sharia Law. Many Imams want Sharia installed in every western state possible. They do similar tricks as the Domionionists do here (right wing Christian extremists).
If they could conduct the affairs of their own people and those innocents around them better (try humanely), then I'd not be writing this. Since they won't, I shall be vocal.
Here's some BBC links (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22644057)
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22664835)
Some of the arrests were before two competing groups held demonstrations in the same town. The English Defence League (hateful moronic racist thugs) and Anti-Facist something or other (a rag-tag bag of anarchists, tin pot trots, students, and anti-facists) were both holding demonstrations.
Police are perhaps a bit antsy because both groups have had problems with violence, and this is exacerbated when they demonstrate at the same time.
US citizens may not like our laws, but we -on the whole- do. It is a weird cultural difference between the UK and US.