The problem is that this act is also the way to prosecute death threats.
In the UK its generally frowned on to send threats of violence. Given that we also have a much lower homicide rate, I'd say thats a fair exchange. even if the act causes aberrations.
The article would be more convincing if it talked about the pub order act 2023, which allows the police to do this: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj3x5j6g30ro
But as thats protest law, it appears that it doesn't count as free speech.
Now the bits that are concerning are that the courts system is so underfunded that there is no legal support for defendants. Proper representation would help eliminate a large number of the stupid and frivolous cases. This is why legal aid needs to be for everyone. ITs not down to funding to determine guilt, its the courts.
The point about magistrates being untrained is bollocks. They are "lay" for a reason. Thats the bedrock of common law.
In dicatorships there is no opportunity to speak out.
I get why democracy has to be indirect when it comes to many complicated, interconnected issues but things like free speech laws, abortion laws, public decency laws, smoking bans etc. should all be decided in a direct vote (repeated every N years). As it is we often have a situation where significant majority have a different view but a small strong group is able to influence the law. It's not a democracy but a farce in my 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.
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 may become a pariah and either have to self-exile [0] or suffer years of isolation and torture [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Asylum_applicat...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Imprisonment_in...
There is no switch front democracy to dictatorship, there is a transition.
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".
People can vote for less freedom
Just generally, this model doesn't apply to the UK. There is an extremely long history of people voting one way and the government doing something else. This is because the country is led by people whose views are shared by no-one, and the tremendous power of the Civil Service (elected officials have limited powers to direct civil servants and cannot remove all but a handful of civil servants...there was an example recently of a senior civil servant giving incorrect information to a minister, the minister was forced to resign, that senior civil servant stayed in for several years, another minister attempted to remove them, the civil servant sued and won a substantial settlement then chose to retire early on a full pension...he was responsible for several massive issues in his department too, Windrush was one, there were many others).
A more nefarious factor is that turnout has collapsed because voters, correctly, understand that their vote doesn't actually matter. The government is unable to do things so why bother voting. Turnout is significantly higher in Russia presidential elections.
To give you an example, the current level of immigration is supported by ~3% of the population. No-one supports this. The government knows no-one supports this. Immigration has stayed high for multiple years, we have had elections, it doesn't matter. If we elected someone to fix it, they would be unable to fix it. Labour have tried to fix it...they spent years in opposition saying the Tories couldn't fix it with their policies...they get into government, within a year they are now trying the exact same policies...because Parliament has no real control, whether in theory or in reality, to change anything, the government gets in, the civil service present the same choices that won't work...you have to be actually mad to think voting makes a difference. The idea that you can fix things by voting is the reason why things are stagnating.
- the worst democracy is better than the best dictatorship (we are not the worst, others could be worse)
- the system is good and perfect, it's just a few bad actors ruining it (we can fix it as long as we fix these certain bad actors)
But so does America. Quite a few people (non citizens so far), have been arrested for criticising the actions of the current Israeli government.
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.
That is a very good point. The evidence is right there literally in black and white.
And they can easily get there conviction rates up, which probably matters.
How far do they go? Will they subpeona twitter if you have pseudonym and track down your ip address? How about tor and vpn, will they actually go thru four letter agencies to track you down?
Second: You are responsible for your actions, even if you're just following orders.
One San Francisco flavor of this to get charged for bribing officials to do their jobs.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/three-construction-plan...
Over here we've seen this with various jurisdictions decriminalizing marijuana and other drugs by simply not policing it.
Well, what is the content of those e-mails?
Dear The Economist, your story is not worth the paper it isn't printed on without the goddamned specifics.
The content of those communications could well be reasonably actionable by police. Of course, those who were paid a visit by police will claim that they made nothing but some disparaging remarks.
It is an extraordinary claim that a school called the police over mere disparaging remarks, and that the police subsequently arrested someone on specific charges. Extraordinary claims require backing evidence.
A BBC story says that: "Maxie Allen and his partner Rosalind Levine, from Borehamwood, told The Times they were held for 11 hours on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications, and causing a nuisance on school property." It's possible that the school simply distorted the facts to bring about an arrest, dragging the police into it.
That same county's own PCC (Police and Crime Commissioner) made these decent statements:
"There has clearly been a fundamental breakdown in relationships between a school and parents that shouldn't have become a police matter."
and
"While people should be courteous and go through the proper channels when raising concerns about a public service, the public should be able to express their views without worrying they'll get a knock at the door from the police."
So The Economist simply made up this stuff about someone arrested over "disparaging remarks". There were allegations of harrassment and causing a nuisance. Maybe the police went a bit overboard, but they can't just ignore such allegations either. That's why the prank known as swatting works.
> Another man criticised pro-Palestine protesters, tweeting: “One step away from storming Heathrow looking for Jewish arrivals.
That sounds like a legitimate target for investigation by police; it can be reasonably interpreted as a threat to carry out some action. If that individual did storm Heathrow and cause a violent incident, and it came to light that the police had known about his plan from an online posting, they would face heat.
Nothing here but rage clickbait.
I mean, maybe it's worth a look anyway, but not directly for the reason you stated.
The rest of your post I agree with.
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 your own chair, getting paid to surf the internet, and declare enough posts "offensive" to look productive. When you do show up to arrest someone, they're highly unlikely to be violent. It's a lot easier and safer than investigating burglaries.
But more seriously, society has dealt with misinformation and disinformation for millenia and collectively decided that freedom of speech and the press were key factors in keeping democracy, and were a more vital concern than the threat of misinformation. To me, government deciding what is or isn't misinformation is a step away from democracy and towards tyranny. But I do understand that reasonable people can disagree about where to draw the fine lines of freedom of speech.
It's pretty crucial to find out how these ended up with the police.
Did these people send Whatsapp messages to someone who didn't like the messages and this person then went to the police? In that case, it's back to the article and lack of definition within these laws.
If, however, the police got the whatsapp messages via some kind of mass-surveillance programme, then we have a big problem...
It is also worth understanding that in the UK, the security services use specific events to push politicians (with the help of the media) into passing these laws. The Online Safety Act is a recent example, the media campaign was orchestrated by the media/police/security services, and there was a similar campaign behind the 2003 Act...every time. To imply that the laws are there to do anything other than reduce freedom is the wrong starting point.
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, since it falls short of presenting a clear and imminent danger.
What would constitute "clear and imminent danger" in a online posting?
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.
(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.
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?
So, assuming the posting was as written, would it fall under the "clear and imminent" criteria apparently used in the US?
i honestly don’t know - making people think twice about what they post is a social good and maybe we should keep the law simple and let the courts drive through this new harsh application
The government will always be more interested in suppression of media and speech because that allows them to protect themselves.
I think the uk needs much more freedom of speech, both at a legal level and culturally (I am a Brit)
But the articles arguments are weak:
Someone calling for violent disorder during a riot probably should face prosecution. The fact the US constitution might protect such speech is irrelevant.
Similarly you can make a good argument that incitement of racial (religious etc) hatred should not be protected either. If you want to critique Islam or Israel go for it. But calling all Muslims or Jews or all women or gays or whatever other group names is likely to cause arguments and disturb the peace.
The article also focuses way too much on the USAs approach. This seems to me to have failed: on one hand the us is knee deep in conspiracy theories and far right rhetoric, and on the other people self censor endlessly (or face the consequences on an arbitrary and capricious basis).
If you’re going to argue for free speech, do it based on the inherent dangers of letting any one group decide what is banned, do it on the necessity of having clear quick communication of social changes and do it on the basis of the fastest correction of error. Not “because someone wrote down congress shall pass no law” and then a long list of judge’s arbitrarily decided what that did or didn’t protect over the next 200 years.
https://reason.com/2024/10/17/british-man-convicted-of-crimi...
> 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.
Truth is a _defence_ against libel.
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.
Does the editorial team of the Economist want to imply that only right-leaning members of the British public are experiencing this?
They also used it against people opposing draconian covid policies or protesting for Assange and neither of those are partisan views, no matter how much some might want to pretend they are.
These claim that their views would be more widely accepted if it were not for restrictions on freedom of speech.
> That has allowed the police to take a draconian approach to pro-Gaza protests
Generally pro-Gaza is more associated with left wing.
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.
