What about researchers attempting to understand the mechanisms of extremism? Can you get a permit to commit thought crime?
This looks meant to be applied selectively in a very fascist way of only against those they want to get rid of and discredit or as a "we are making you safe!!!" propaganda point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Unit...
It could also be designed to limit flow of propaganda by putting a fear into young people who might be tempted to share with peers.
It’s wrong, I’m just not convinced it’ll be used as you predict.
My cousin had a university professor who taught an elective about modern terrorism or something like that. He allegedly told the class on day 1 that they would all wind up getting "randomly" selected for pat downs as a result of the research they would have to do.
I suspect in the UK that you would be flagged similarly and they'd stop looking into it if it looked like legitimate research or keep looking into it and possibly make an arrest if you seem to be the kind of person they don't like. Regardless, this law sets up a hell of a lot of (completely innocent) people to be harassed by the state.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/3/section/3/enacte...
Only a pity we'll soon no longer have the ECHR in the chain of appeals.
Leaving the EU does clear an obstacle to leaving the Council of Europe, but it would likewise clear an obstacle to leaving any number of other international organisations, membership of which is mandatory or implicit for EU nations.
Theresa May would indeed like to leave the European Council because she doesn't support Human Rights. Right now she isn't even able to get her own party to stop voting against her, so I suspect that it's premature to say "we'll soon no longer have the ECHR".
Trivium: the EU stole the CofE's forty-year-old flag when they needed an emblem.
I find it particularly absurd for the Tories to do this as it was Churchill who was a big advocate for its creation, and the 51 Tory govt that signed us up to it. Atlee's Labour, surprisingly, was against it at the time.
Isn't CofE flag just Saint George's Cross? I know next to nothing of matters religious.
In this case "CofE" is Council of Europe, not Church of England.
He crowd funded a fortune yet barely offered any defence, beyond "it was a joke meant to annoy his girlfriend", even after the judge explicitly encouraged him to during the trial.
EDIT: The actual ruling appears to be far more reasonable and straightforward than I thought from the reporting at the time:
http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/8/1962/PF-v-Mark-Meecha...
You had no need to make a video if all you wanted to do was to train the dog to react to offensive commands. You had no need to post the video on your unrestricted, publicly accessible, video channel if all you wanted to do was annoy your girlfriend. Your girlfriend was not even a subscriber to your channel.
Finally, before turning to sentence, I should note that although I invited both legal representatives to make legal submissions during the trial about the law on freedom of expression, that was done only to a very limited extent. In the absence of focused submissions on that topic by either the Crown or the defence, all I can say is that, while that right is very important, in all modern democratic countries the law necessarily places some limits on that right.
Academic research and journalism are specifically exempt, see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/3/section/3/enacted
As someone on your side of the pound, though a bit closer to the equator, count me as one who wouldn't trust that kind of selective enforcement from the UK justice system.
For a tweet immediately considered not credible as a threat by the people to whom it was directed. Read a week after it was sent.
Not sure what amount of nuance can be had after something like this.
Once a law is published, anybody can use it for any action it allows.
The goal of background checks was to protect the most vulnerable, not create a license to work required for a quarter of all jobs, etc, etc.
It's also completely at the juries discretion to override any order given by a judge, and they apply common sense to the whole situation. If you can't convince 10 out of 12 people that this person should be arrested for clicking a link, then no, they won't be. No matter what the judge says.
Most famous example is probably the Official Secrets Act prosecution of Clive Ponting after the Falklands war. No defence was valid, jury acquitted anyway, govt of the day was not happy.
They'll have already been arrested, detained for months, and likely spent thousands on legal costs by the time it's before a jury.
And good luck working after being acquitted, with the Internet history that no doubt will have accumulated.
A jury of your peers is the last line of defense for justice, but in no measure whatsoever does it serve to balance the cruelty of an unjust law.
Some German states just strengthened their laws, ostensibly to fight terror. First application: protesters trying to protect a forest.
When you must rely on the law being applied benevolently, it is no longer "rule of law".
It's very much debatable whether the application of these laws is proportionate, but it's not against people peacefully assembling with banners and chanting slogans.
Don't look at the goal, look at how it can be used.
> The cases in which a person has a reasonable excuse for the purposes of subsection (3) include (but are not limited to) those in which—
> (a)at the time of the person’s action or possession the person did not know, and had no reason to believe, that the document or record in question contained, or was likely to contain, information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or
tl;dr this is precisely why the register is fucking shit. THey use stupid clickbait titles and they choose to mangle the truth
In the UK you follow the spirit of the law, not the exact wording. That means no, clicking a link that redirects you to some shady site does not mean the SWAT team are going to knock down your door and arrest you.
Also the burden of proof generally always lies with the prosecution. It being "abused" is called "making a case" and bears no relation to this law at all. If the case is shoddy, the defense will absolutely destroy it.
And yeah these things are a side effect of common law which which is pretty subjective around things of bad taste. And, as your story shows, the courts worked it out.
He wasn't just fined, this apparently caused him to not be able to receive work and gain a criminal record. Even the rest of the CPS didn't want to continue along with the case but the director of public prosecution pushed it (https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/29/paul-chambers-tw...).
The courts didn't work it out, he did, after receiving an outpouring of support (social and monetary) from British comedians.
I don't understand your sentiment in the slightest.
The guy deserved to be inconvenienced for stupidity, if nothing else.
It absolutely and very clearly is, especially when that stupidity ends up costing the taxpayer money. Not wearing a seatbelt is stupidity, and people not wearing it should be inconvenienced.
The money was spent because they chose to prosecute it, not the other way around.
Meanwhile the tweet "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!!" is (at least to me) obviously a joke. But oh well, seems like a lot of the world (you included) have self-imposed Asperger's and operate with brains only capable of only working in binary.
The saying "If only more people in the world were like you" needs to have an inverse...
Hence why we dislike this law.
The problem is that the government is taking this as a licence to make laws overly broad. Their policy seems to be to make everything illegal and hope that the courts sort it out.
EDIT: Also, it allows selective enforcement. I bet "the spirit of the law" turns out to mean that I can view ISIS propaganda but Muslims can't.
Have you read the law?
I know how HN feels about the Daily Mail, so I tried to find this story on the BBC. Couldn't. If someone's google-fu is better than mine, I'd be much obliged for a link. If nobody else finds it either, well, I leave the implications up to the reader.
I have no confidence in the police's discretion right now.
Breaking that first rule, I do note the Daily Mail article is good enough to mention the phrase "campaign of targeted harassment", which (if you ask me) rather makes it sound like there was a bit more involved than simply somebody calling her a he, something that judging by her Twitter feed she must be pretty used to by now.
In fact, on her Twitter feed (I found this by googling her name. I've always been pretty good with Google): https://twitter.com/flyinglawyer73/status/109531093363797606... - summary is apparently that she complained to police because of somebody releasing private information, and not because she was referred to as he (though I'm sure that was mentioned as evidence of malicious intent); the arrest was entirely at police's discretion; there's some kind of ongoing investigation.
This may well give you no further confidence in the police, but the ongoing investigation (and injunction - though we're given no details about what it covers) may explain why the BBC haven't printed anything.
(There's more in her recent tweets, including as many of the predictable responses, from exactly the people you'd expect, that you can be bothered to trawl through.)
I don't like trawling through this muck, nor especially do I like dragging it in here like this - but I even more dislike seeing the Daily Mail's shite promulgated.
Do you really believe this is limited to the DM? I see outrage-farming everywhere. They are all desperate for clicks.
The true story will eventually come out at which point we will find that the accused spent months harassing the victim on the internet and the seemingly innocuous statement was the last straw.
Why not? Imagine this scenario: the police strongly suspect that person X has some kind of terrorist involvement. They have no solid evidence. However, they are able to show that person X once viewed extremist propaganda. So they prosecute X for what they can prove -- viewing propaganda -- telling themselves, based on their wider investigation and inadmissible evidence, that they’re prosecuting a terrorist.
But what if they’re wrong? Even though they’re trying to follow the spirit of the law, they could still end up prosecuting an otherwise innocent person. What defence does X have?