Is free speech dead in Scotland? And what about privacy here?
This is potentially disturbing:
Following a report of a series of alleged offensive online posts relating to Syrian refugees living in Rothesay on Bute, Police Scotland confirmed on Tuesday that a 40-year-old man, understood to be from the Inverclyde area, had been arrested under the Communications Act…
Following the arrest, Insp Ewan Wilson from Dunoon police office said: “I hope that the arrest of this individual sends a clear message that Police Scotland will not tolerate any form of activity which could incite hatred and provoke offensive comments on social media.”
The only—and I mean the only—way this sort of arrest might be justified is if the social media postings were used to specifically plan an imminent act of violence against refugees. That would be tantamount to enforcing our own very limited “incitement to riot” exceptions to our free speech laws.
But until I learn that’s what was involved here, I’m going to assume that the man was committing acts that were much less actionable than that. After all, the police officer is quoted as saying that authorities [emphasis mine] “will not tolerate any form of activity which could incite hatred and provoke offensive comments on social media.” Sounds like he’s talking about language that might invoke a feeling (hatred) and incite more speech.
I first learned about a decade ago that Europe’s protections for freedom of speech are far less strong than our own. Back then, I was studying libel laws in France and Britain. This recent incident is not about libel, it’s about something called the “Communications Act,” which has the following provisions:
Section 127 of the act makes it an offence to send a message that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character over a public electronic communications network. The section replaced section 43 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 and is drafted as widely as its predecessor.
That’s awfully broad. But later there were interim guidelines which tempered it (however, they’re only “interim” and “guidelines”; the statute itself appears to have remained broad):
On 19 December 2012, to strike a balance between freedom of speech and criminality, the Director of Public Prosecutions issued interim guidelines, clarifying when social messaging is eligible for criminal prosecution under UK law. Only communications that are credible threats of violence, harassment, or stalking (such as aggressive Internet trolling) which specifically targets an individual or individuals, or breaches a court order designed to protect someone (such as those protecting the identity of a victim of a sexual offence) will be prosecuted. Communications that express an “unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, or banter or humor, even if distasteful to some and painful to those subjected to it” will not.
Better. But wait:
Communications that are merely “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false” will be prosecuted only when it can be shown to be necessary and proportionate.
Leaves an opening for prosecuting almost anyone, doesn’t it? What’s more:
Revisions to the interim guidelines were issued on 20 June 2013 following a public consultation. The revisions specified that prosecutors should consider:
—whether messages were aggravated by references to race, religion or other minorities…
So there you have it. A bunch of unclear guidelines that can be used to prosecute real incitements or to prosecute whatever you think is “hate speech,” if that prosecution is “necessary and proportionate.”
Again, it’s possible that this particular arrest was a proper one for something very egregious that amounts to incitement to riot. But I doubt it.
Meanwhile, in the US, Apple is resisting the FBI’s request that it help in the de-encryption of San Bernadino mass murderer terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. But the situation is even more complicated than that makes it sound:
At issue is a court order issued Tuesday by Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym of the Federal District Court for the District of Central California ordering Apple to, in the words of The Associated Press, “supply highly specialized software the FBI can load onto the phone to cripple a security encryption feature that erases data after too many unsuccessful unlocking attempts.” Wired adds that Apple’s compliance would allow the FBI to attempt to unlock the phone using multiple password attempts””a method known as bruteforcing. But Apple declined, calling for a public discussion, so its customers and citizens “understand what is at stake.”…
“Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software ”” which does not exist today ”” would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.
“The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.”
Is the issue that no such technology exists at the moment? Because really, unless that’s the basis of the argument, couldn’t the same argument be made against any cooperation with authorities that compromised privacy, because anything could be demanded and misused by a tyrannical government? If the government has become that tyrannical, iPhone de-encryption may be the least of our worries (perhaps that’s already true). Likewise, if iPhone has created a technology that’s impervious even to police investigation in a case as clear-cut as this, isn’t that very dangerous as well, and should they be allowed to protect it when it was in the possession of a confirmed terrorist jihadi (now deceased) who had murdered fourteen people in cold blood?
It is still another case of needing to strike the proper balance between individual liberty and societal protection, between government as helper and as enemy.
As far as I am aware, and as of a couple years ago, there is no free speech right in Great Britain that transcends the legal ability of Parliament in its ordinary course of events to abrogate it.
Even if the UK did enshrine a bill of rights, as I understand there had been talk of doing, it would not so far as I can see stand in a transcendent relation to Parliament, as Dicey observed the US Constitution stood in its constraining relation to the acts of Congress.
It’s a tough one.
If you implicitly trust the government to practically never abuse its power and you believe that offering them unmitigated access like this could prevent another 911, it’s pretty easy.
Converesly, if you believe that the government is highly corrupt and not to be trusted with such power, it’s also easy.
But if you believe that the reality is far more complex, that even though some corruption can and does happen in our massive bureaucracy, by and large the government (esp. law enforcement and the military) is trying its best to keep us safe, it becomes a question of where to draw the line.
Look at the IRS scandal, it demonstrated that the IRS is a clearly politically corruptible entity. Or the Fast & Furious scandal. Or the Benghazi scandal. That people abuse government power to achieve a political ends is hardly new, but it’s still scary. Is it scarier than thousands dying due to a terrorist dirty bomb explosion that perhaps could have been prevented with some critical information was lost on some iPhone?
The FBI missed it.
Such a backdoor would mean that EVERYONE on the planet resisting oppression would be easy prey for their police states.
Red China
Russia
Iran
Saudi Arabia
et. al.
The needs of the planet out weigh the needs of the FBI…
Especially since their argument is really centered on ECONOMICS.
The NSA surely has methods to crack this one particular iPhone.
No-one doubts that.
1) The original bit-stream can be downloaded off of the iPhone — and replicated over and over… and over and over.
2) These perfect copies can be brute force attacked to spill the beans.
Even if this or that virtual iPhone locks up… you still have the ‘original magic bean’ growing in your digital garden.
The FBI’s headache is that such efforts are a PITA.
That’s ALL.
Further, the missing moments are — at this point — merely tidying up of the case.
The social network that these two fanatics crawled on has surely been doped out by now.
It’s not as if they had contacts that were ONLY phoned during the magic missing minutes.
Indeed, I’d bet serious money that they didn’t call ANYBODY during the magic minutes.
Instead, they were rolling around scoping for easy targets — at the exact same time that they were finding cop cars coming from every point of the compass… Blues Brothers style.
They’d already made their valediction.
I saw that story too and was also disturbed at the potential implications. I searched high and low and what the man said is apparently not available. If his comments were truly egregious, publishing them would act as justification.
Which makes probable that they were not an incitement to violence and were instead a protest against the UK government program to ship in 1000 migrants to an island with a total prior population of 6,298… Residents who are in the main elderly, while the majority of migrants are young men.
There are a number of stories across Europe of dissident opinion being repressed through a variety of methods.
The migrants in Europe are also being purposely agitated by far left ‘open borders’ groups. In Calais, France an open borders group has declared Calais’ migrant community a “journalist free zone”…
In the UK, Muslim activists have started to publicly call for a ‘Palestinian style intifada’… to bring down European governments.
It occurred to me this morning that Western Europe is engaged upon a path whose coming dhimmitude will force the resistant to migration Eastern Europe nations into the arms of Russia. An embrace from which they are not likely to escape a second time.
I might add that the NSA is not supposed to help the FBI domestically.
So the FBI really ought to phone GCHQ in London… or Ottawa.
Geoffrey: have you seen this? Testimony of one Simone, of Calais, re the migrants’ brutalizing of the folks in the town.
Frightening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKAQX74yRyc
Beverly,
Yes, its appalling and news of it is purposely being repressed. It’s not just Calais either, it’s happening across Western Europe. Nor can it be stopped, since Europe’s majority will ignore it, excuse it and attack those who speak out against it, until its far too late.
It is literally civilizational suicide.
Europe is following the path of the pacifistic “Moriori”, almost completely wiped out by New Zealand’s Maori. But unlike the Moriori, of whom the British rescued the very last, (in conquering the Maori)… Western Europe will only escape their Muslim conquerors, if at some later point, Russia decides to absorb Western Europe.
Oh the tragic irony, America saved Europe from the Nazis and the Soviets but could not save Europe from themselves.
Re freedom of speech in Britain: in his memoirs, Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote admiringly about Britain’s restrictions on speech and the press, and said he wished he’d had the same during his reign in Germany!
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/48436.html
Europe is quite keen on putting the clamps on free speech.
Mama Merkel was at an event with Zuckerberg & she demanded to know how he was going to rein in anti invader
hate speech on Facebook. I visit the site Spiegel, Lefty drivel
of course but at least there was comments section that let opposing views be posted…..ppfft….that was done away with
about the same time Merkel accosted MZ. Yet a conservative gov in Poland which wants to restrain. Lefty media there is getting a huge push back & scolding from the EU accusing them of Commie censorship behaviors!
Nonapod addresses the dilemma; its all a matter of do you trust government to do the right thing. Team obama burned that bridge.
Any speech that harshes anyone’s mellow other than straight white males is Right OUT.
I remember well the trial of popular novelist Michel Houellebecq for alleged “hate speech” over something a character in one of his books said. My (then)wife was French, a big fan of Houellebecq, and we followed the whole business very closely.
I think I can almost quote by memory what the character said. “All religions are stupid, but Islam is the stupidest.”
It might be mentioned that Houellebecq (pronounced “Well-uh-beck”) no longer lives in France. A review o his latest novel, SUBMISSION, was on the cover of the Charlie Hendo magazine when the editorial staff was almost entirely assassinated. SUBMISSION portrays a near-future France where a Muslim has just been elected president. It develops that in order to continue to teach at a university, you must now be a Muslim. Our hero submits.
This submission is compared to the submission of O in STORY OF O. Anyone who as read this notorious book about utter and complete sexual bondage will understand what this means.
But how many members of the American intelligentsia here, pretty much all atheists and secular humanists, would not convert?
Unfortunately, truth is not a defense against libel claims in Great Britain. Up until a few years ago, people would take advantage of this fact by filing libel claims in British courts against American authors whose books were sold in the Isles. Congress put a stop to this, though.
The sad fact of the matter, and as absurd as it sounds, is that truth might currently only be a defense against libel and slander claims in the US right now.
The Daily Beast (link @ drudge) is reporting that “Apple Unlocked IPhones for the Feds 70 Times Before”…
The FBI doesn’t want Apple to unlock the phone this time. What they want is a software program that will turn off the “fail to input the pin correctly ten times in a row, and your data is wiped” security feature. With that, they can brute force hack any iPhone they want.
Don’t worry, the UK laws will never be used against Muslims and that’s the main thing, right?
Iowahawk pointed out that Apple is like a bank that refuses to open a safety deposit box for the police, and the FBI are like police who want a master key that will unlock any safety deposit box. Irreducible conflict here. How about the feds give the phone to Apple, Apple works its magic on THAT ONE PHONE, the feds get the info and everybody is happy?