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| Men sought over car park killing Three men are sought by police after a man was shot dead in a suspected gangland attack in Glasgow. news.bbc.co.uk |
Twitter terror arrest: cause for concern | Ally Fogg The arrest of a man for making a joke about terrorism on Twitter is the inevitable consequence of a paranoid, risk-averse societyIt seems one can no longer make jokes about terrorist bombs without risking arrest. At a juncture in history where terrorists have taken to sporting exploding underpants, this is unfortunate to say the least.It's hard to muster much sympathy for the unnamed German airline passenger who was arrested recently for making a joke to security about the bomb in his underwear. He deserves his fine for wasting the time of security personnel, plus another for aggravated stupidity and perhaps a third for bringing the German sense of humour into disrepute.The case of Paul Chambers, however, should cause us all rather more concern. He was due to fly from Doncaster's Robin Hood airport to Ireland in the New Year, but heavy snow intervened. In frustration, he sent off a tweet to 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!!"Not the funniest comment ever to grace Twitter for sure, but utterly banal – the kind of throwaway remark that any one of us might say out loud to our friends, or thoughtlessly bash into the box on a social networking site or a newspaper comment forum. South Yorkshire police didn't see it that way. Last week Chambers was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and questioned for seven hours before being released on police bail. He has been suspended from work and his computer, iPhone and laptop have been confiscated and he has been banned from Robin Hood Airport for life, which may be the only saving grace.Police say they were alerted to the comment on his closed Twitter feed by a tip-off, although it's a reasonable assumption that the phrase "blowing the airport sky high" might have tripped a few alarms on electronic signals intelligence systems at GCHQ. I know how these things work. I've never missed an episode of Spooks. Nonetheless, one would hope that somewhere down the line a real human being might intervene, decode the hidden messages contained within those 140 characters and detect the presence of an arcane cipher known as a "joke". If that proves beyond the capabilities of our intelligence services, then in this age of body scanners and electronic imaging, perhaps a gadget could be invented that could detect the presence of humour in a sentence from 25 feet away. They could test it on ITV sitcoms to eliminate the risk of false positives.On the one hand, it is easy to dismiss this as an isolated case of police over-reaction. File it alongside the Muslim schoolboy questioned after uploading a photo to Facebook of himself posing with a gun (he was playing paintball at the time); or the unfortunate man recently cleared of an extreme pornography charge after prosecutors accepted that the animal involved in the bestial scene was actually a cartoon tiger, not a real one. Or the arrest of photographers taking pictures in public; or any of the hundreds more seemingly isolated recent instances of people being detained or arrested for activities that barely tickle the toes of criminality.Perhaps the most telling and frightening detail of the Chambers case is the explanation given by the arresting officer: "It is the world we live in." The world we live in is a surreal, incomprehensible collage of inflated authority and over-bearing bureaucracy which cannot differentiate between schoolboy humour and a death threat. Arrests like this one are an inevitable consequence of a society where paranoid risk aversion has run spectacularly out of control. In our desperate urge to prevent atrocities such as terrorist attacks, child abuse or violent crime, we find ourselves chasing shadows, just in case danger lurks beneath.One price we pay for safe passage at the airport is that we need to avoid making tasteless jokes in questionable humour. Like most sensible people, I accept this and abide by it. But I refuse to accept that one price worth paying to protect our way of life should be that we refrain from making tasteless jokes on the internet from the comfort of our own homes and offices. For some of us, making tasteless jokes on the internet pretty much is our way of life.UK security and terrorismTwitterPoliceFreedom of SpeechAlly Foggguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Photographers' terror law protest Professional and amateur photographers gather in London's Trafalgar Square to protest against terror stop and searches. news.bbc.co.uk |
Virus closes eight hospital wards An outbreak of a bug which causes vomiting leads to eight hospital wards being closed or partially closed in Swansea. news.bbc.co.uk |
Nick Robinson Does slow growth weaken argument for spending cuts? bbc.co.uk |