UK man arrested under Terrorism Act for airport Twitter joke

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/7016266/Man-arrested-under-Terrorism-Act-for-Doncaster-airport-Twitter-joke.html

by sailormoon • 17 years ago

16 21 17 years ago

telegraph.co.uk

jacquesm5• 17 years ago

What I really seriously wonder about is if these authorities have nothing better to do than to follow up on ridiculous leads like these. Apparently you are no longer allowed to write works of fiction either.

The next attack that will succeed will do so in part because apparently the people that are in charge of sifting the stream of intelligence for actionable clues are completely without ability to analyze this kind of information in a way that would lead to a safer society.

All that happens is they waste tons of money and man-hours chasing nonsense.

A remark was made on a social networking site, boohoo. Disaster. Meanwhile the bad guys are having a field day and are going to slip through the cracks left by the thoughtcrime police being occupied elsewhere.

dagw2• 17 years ago

I have no doubt that the intelligence people involved are fully aware that the comment was a joke. I imagine the theory is that by harassing all the people who purposely add noise to their intelligence stream they will get a higher signal stream in the long run. This is essentially the same reasoning they use to crack down hard on anyone who jokes around at various physical security checks at places like airports.

jacquesm5• 17 years ago

Well, I think it works in the exact opposite way because I'm sorely tempted to go and make a bunch of blog posts about all kinds of terrorist acts that I've just dreamed up to show how ridiculous this particular tactic is.

arethuza2• 17 years ago

Maybe someone needs to create an equivalent of the emacs "Spook Mode" for twitter

jrockway3• 17 years ago

Wait. Are you saying that real terrorists don't share their plans on Twitter!?

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

Wait. Are you saying that real terrorists do share their plans on Twitter!?

jrockway3• 17 years ago

What is Twitter's obligation to the UK to disclose the IP addresses of posters, anyway? It sounds like this is a very flimsy case; they have to prove the guy posted the tweet, and to do that, they need to get a company with no staff in the UK to turn over IP address information. I am surprised they even managed to get an arrest warrant.

sailormoon• 17 years ago

The impression I got was that the offending post was reported by someone who knew him; presumably that person also provided his name and other details to the authorities.

jrockway3• 17 years ago

Is "some guy said so" enough to seize three computers and make an arrest? (Apparently it is. Deeply depressing.)

jacquesm5• 17 years ago

Good old East German tactics then.

The Master & Malgorzata revisited.

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

If you enable it your tweets now can be geotagged. Which is public info. That's one of many ways to have tracked him.

arethuza2• 17 years ago

twitcrime doubleplus ungood

pavelludiq• 17 years ago

I from Eastern Europe(Bulgaria), 20 years ago people used to go to jail for jokes, people used to get reported in by friends and family too, i see history repeating itself. Feel free to repeat our mistakes.

mootothemax• 17 years ago

The problem here is that whilst it's long been accepted that you can't joke about having a bomb in your bags when checking in, we have novel real-time services such as Twitter, and the authorities and general population at large have to work out what the middle ground is.

Personally, I think the man's a fool, but can understand why the authorities investigated him. Otherwise, what's the alternative? Make a joke about bombing a place and so avoid being searched when you turn up there?

mixmax• 17 years ago

Copenhagen airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!

Now would someone please come and arrest me?

andyjenn• 17 years ago

I'm sorry but the, "A Robin Hood airport spokesman said..." just sums it up for me.

UK man arrested under Terrorism Act for airport Twitter joke

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