There have been a lot of interesting stories floating about lately; the banning of the Hunky Dory ads because I stared at all the crisps, the people voting for a hung parliament, Ash Cloud being the new Swine Flu, to name a few, though one of the biggest stories for the technically minded, and free speech aware must be that of Paul Chambers who was given a hefty fine and a criminal record for a silly tweet, in the name of public interest.

Paul who was traveling from Doncaster, to Northern Ireland during the snowy-spell of Jan ’10 found the town’s “Robin Hood Airport” closed a week before he was due to fly. In jest, and out of frustration he issued a flippant remark to his then 600 Twitter followers. A few days later it was picked up by an off-duty member of staff who felt the need to bring it up with management, who felt the need to inform the police, who then arrested Chambers, before asking him to explain Twitter.

“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!”

It is only with large sums of ignorance that anyone would see this remark as a threat to national security under any act let alone the Terrorism Act and subsequently Paul was ordered to pay £600 costs, a £385 fine and a £15 victim surcharge (who’s the victim??).

Many kind people have offered to donate money to Paul for the charges such as the fine and possible further legal charges incurred, including the legendary Stephen Fry:

As stated by his girlfriend, Paul was half way through qualifying as an accountant, “This conviction means he can’t qualify now. His career is ruined!”

A blog and twitter account have been set up to accept donations to cover the already incurred legal charges, fine and possible appeal.

Personally, I feel it was a silly thing to say, however, if one cannot be facetious when angry what can one do? It does bring up the issue of privacy, and education, that these mediums are public (unless otherwise stated/actions taken to make private) and can be seen by anyone, occasionally staff at the place you are giving off about. But a terrorist Paul is not. It was merely an off-the-cuff remark, a joke — a bad joke — if that cannot be seen there is something very wrong with the legal system.

Blogger Jack of Kent has full details of the case:

The CPS realised that they did not have sufficient evidence for the bomb hoax offence under the 1977 Act, that is the actual legislation dealing with supposed bomb hoaxes.
But the CPS were going to prosecute him anyway, as it was in the public interest to do so.

The problem would be that there would need to be an offence.
Thankfully, the CPS cannot (or at least should not) just prosecute someone in the “public interest” without an offence.

So some bright spark came up with section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.
This makes it an offence for a person to send a “menacing” message over a public telecommunications network.

Issues of Freedom of Speech, intent and utter bullshit laws and indeed worse lawyers come to mind. Is humour dead? Is “big brother” watching everything? How does this affect our civil liberties?

I’m with Ultra Culture, a new Twitter game:

As Glinner says, “We’re not living in Prague 1965.”

Paul has expressed his own thoughts on the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog.

Crazy Colours has more details on the fund. So far £1,850 has been raised.

Tagged: Free Speech, legal, privacy, Twitter | 4 comments »