The Independent reports: Twitter joke led to Terror Act arrest and airport life ban
When heavy snowfall threatened to scupper Paul Chambers’s travel plans, he decided to vent his frustrations on Twitter by tapping out a comment to amuse his friends. “Robin Hood airport is closed,” he wrote. “You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
Unfortunately for Mr Chambers, the police didn’t see the funny side. A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat. After he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation, and has, he says, been banned from the Doncaster airport for life. “I would never have thought, in a thousand years, that any of this would have happened because of a Twitter post,” said Mr Chambers, 26. “I’m the most mild-mannered guy you could imagine.”
The police appear to have gone into overkill mode on this one. As Matthew Taylor observed on twitter – it would be interesting to be a fly on the wall when the CPS consider this case for prosecution. Which law has been broken? Are they going to be able to bring a case within any known law? Will a jury think that the country is losing the plot if a case is brought? Will the trial judge throw a pencil into the air and say that the police and CPS need to get a grip? I was going to write about this in some detail. Fortunately, Matthew Taylor, on his MTPT blog, analyses the law and I need not do so. See: Somebody set us up the bomb, or Making a #TwitterArrest
It is, of course, easy to comment after the event – but even allowing for a heightened state of alert following the failed Christmas airline bombing, surely we need a bit more objectivity and measured judgement being applied? I for one, will certainly not be asking friends for help on Twitter blowing up balloons for a party in case some over anxious member of the public tips off the police that some atrocity is about to be committed and the police decide to interpret ‘balloons’ as meaning a high profile building and ‘party’ as a terrorist group. Good grief… put this way… almost any tweet could be interpreted by the police to be pregnant with ‘terror and security issue’ meanings… we could be doomed.
I’m not going to discuss this… but I just could not resist this headline from the Times..
Abuse of pre-pack deals ‘could turn Britain into an insolvency brothel’
The knives are coming out and they are sharp. Tony Blair engaged in what came to be known as ‘sofa’ government. It appears his successor, Gordon Brown, prefers the darkened bunker, with civil servants excluded, and the brutish tool of political edict.The Times reports
Whitehall rebels over ‘brutish’ Gordon Brown
The credibility of the control order regime has been further questioned by a decision of Mr Justice Silber.
The Times reports: “The two suspects, known as AF and AE, had argued that the orders against them were unlawful and that they were entitled to damages for breaches of their human rights. Mr Justice Silber, sitting at the High Court in London, agreed and quashed the orders yesterday. He said that the men could claim damages from the Government for restrictions placed on their movements during the past three and a half years. However, he added that the ruling did not automatically mean the men would succeed with their claims and emphasised that the level of compensation would be low.”
Alan Johnson responded immediately and the government will appeal the decision. The Times noted that AF and AE won a landmark ruling in the House of Lords last year over the Government’s use of secret evidence to persuade the courts to impose and maintain control orders.
Pressure continues to be exerted for reform of our libel laws generally and The Times reported yesterday that Nick Clegg pledges to curb libel law’s ‘chilling effect’ on scientific inquiry. Fellow law blogger Jack of Kent has long focused his attention on libel reform and his latest post (and others on this theme) is worth a look
Assisted suicide or attempted murder?
Just three months after the Crown Prosecution Service clarified the law on assisted suicide, a”devoted” mother helped her suffering daughter die by handing her a lethal dose of morphine and then administering a lethal cocktail of drugs. The Independent.
I examined this issue in some depth with former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, in two podcasts late last year (Links to the podcasts above).
MPs warn of criminal justice ‘crisis’
The Law Society Gazette reports: “A committee of MPs has warned that the criminal justice system is ‘facing a crisis of sustainability’ as government spending on prisons takes resources away from other aspects of criminal justice. The Justice Committee said the government should make ‘radical moves’ to shift resources away from incarceration towards rehabilitation and projects that tackle the underlying causes of offending like social exclusion, poor education and drug addiction. The call was backed by Law Society legal aid manager Richard Miller, who said that a reduction in spending on prisons would leave more cash for the legal aid budget.”
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Binary law asks... Are blawgs an effective marketing tool?
White Rabbit, an experienced member of the Bar and author, in a post entitled Thought Crimes considers the case of the tweet which led to Paul Chambers being arrested by police. Accepting that Paul Chambers may not be the brightest knife in the box for tweeting about blowing an airport sky high… White Rabbit concludes..”Clunking, boneheaded authoritarianism by numbers!…. and muses…”A quick blast of Maggie’s Farm seems appropriate.”
The Legal Action Group (LAG) notes… A bill of rights election “Last week saw the opening shots of what is likely to be a four-month general election campaign, assuming Gordon Brown goes for the predicted 6 May polling day. The Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 will feature in this campaign as Conservative leader David Cameron has pledged to repeal it and replace it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’. It is unclear, though, what he means by this.”
IPKat has this wonderful story in their Monday Miscellany…“Via a Tweet from Duncan (IP ThinkTank) Bucknell comes news from TorrentFreak that the official logo for Hadopi — the new French mechanism for dealing with file-sharing copyright infringers — was itself a copyright infringement since it employed an unlicensed font. Hadopi has apologised through “gritted teeth” (dents grincées) and is busy seeking an alternative, non-infringing font.
And finally…. I was on twitter last night exchanging a bit of curmudgeon with @jangles (we were discussing the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft) and he suggested I listen to Razzle Dazzle from Chicago. Good advice and if you need cheering up after Blue Monday yesterday… the most depressing day of the year… then this is definitely worth a listen…
IF the rather silly Mr Chambers is charged with an offence serious enough to get before a jury then perhaps we might have an example of a jury throwing it out of court because they see the prosecution as oppressive. We are seeing a lot of heavy-handed officialdom these days (e.g. Terrorism Act section 44) and arresting somone, subjecting them to lengthy questioning and then making them wait weeks for a “charging decision” is oppression in itself. Maybe in these times we might be as well hanging on to the jury. It can be, even if only occasionally, a useful long stop on oppressive conduct by the authorities.
Legal Action Group have published “A Manifesto for Justice”
http://www.lag.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=93223
It is an interesting read. They favour jury trial for serious offences. However, their plea to stop the annual criminal justice bill is likely to fall on the deaf ears of politicians. In the period 2004-9 we have seen about 16 Acts which might be described as “criminal justice” and that is after the blockbuster Criminal Justice Act 2003. I doubt this will change because politicians fight eachother to be seen as tough on crime or terror. Having said this, there are some Law Commission reports which deserve to be implemented. A particular example is their proposal to reform the law of murder. In 2009, the government chose to reform the special defences (e.g. provocation) to murder: Coroners and Justice Act 2009. This is a partial and problematic example of law reform and ignores to a large extent the recommendations of the law commission which, along with the courts, saw the need for more complete reform.
Obiter J – Surely, the CPS won’t bring a prosecution for this? I have no doubt, if they did, that the case would attract significant publicity in the media and the blogs.
Thanks for the link to Manifesto for Justice.
Regarding the Hadopi pirated font debacle, the FontShop article by Yves Peters is the best I’ve read, he’s done a great job collating and fact-checking the information:
http://fontfeed.com/archives/french-anti-piracy-organisation-uses-pirated-font-in-ownlogo/
They’d claimed it was simply an early draft design variation that was ‘accidentally presented’, but then some enterprising fellow searched the French National Institute for Intellectual Property website and found the final logo’s filing… from November ’09. Whoops, so much for that excuse! It’ll certainly be interesting to see how this one continues to develop.
I don’t think they will actually bring a prosecution. MTPT has covered that on his blog. I would certainly hope that they do not. I merely say that, if they did, there could be a possibility of a bit of “jury equity.” People are getting rather fed up of over-the-top heavy-handed officialdom.
My response was to Twitter to the anti-terrorist police that I intended to blow up inflatable dolls. So far, they have not kicked my door in yet…
Unfortunately, you have missed this is your review…
See you in Court Mr and Mrs McCann
could anybody help me by explaining precisely what the:
‘libel law’s ‘chilling effect’ on scientific inquiry’ actually IS?
and why does nick clegg feel we need saving therefrom when the economy has gone to buggery and the criminal justice system is down the shitter? might it not be of more value to the nation to organise a collection to post dave cameron to the lion house of auckland zoo in a bag full of sausages?