MJW

.. or you could be a victim of some retarded policeman's interpretation of section 44 of the Terrorist Act ! OMG !

Man arrested after Twitter joke about bombing airport under Terrorism Act | Mail Online

LG John

Oh well, he's f*cked then! They will find 'kiddy ****' as they always do and he'll get charged and convicted of that.

I hate this country. I hate the law. I hate the police. I mean reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally! I suppose if I type, "I'm so hungry, I'd kill for a pizza right now" into Facebook, I can expect plod round at any moment!

Markus

He should be thankful he's not in the US, as he'd be wearing a nice orange jumpsuit and be in Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

It is somewhat extreme to say the least. The problem is that if he had been serious and no action was taken then the police would have been slated for doing nothing. I think the over-reaction was due to the whole terrorist thing.

Saying you would kill for a pizza probably wouldn't elicit such a response as that wouldn't be seen as a terrorist action.

Hanley

I'm sure Felix will come along and tell us all the guy deserved it for thinking it and should be locked up for life

RA Dunk

Was a bloody stupid thing to type on a public site given todays climate regarding terrorists/bombers anyway, he's not a kiddie and should have had more bloody sense TBH

MJW

In all fairness though, anti-terror police should really learn to use their brains in these situations. How many terrorists have carried out attacks after they've advertised the fact on widely-monitored social networking websites ? And why hasn't Osama Bin Laden accepted my friend request on Facebook, the miserable git ? Surely there's 3G coverage for his iPhone on the Pakistan border ?

stedee

iTrader: (4)

stupid thing to say tbh

boomer

Exactly

Why else would they confiscate his laptop, iPhone and home computer despite the fact that it was all a (very stupid) joke???

mb

boomer

Funny you should say that!



mb

MJW

Whoa, 7 years for thought crime ! The US has to do everything bigger & better don't they ?

r32

I'm not surprised they knocked on his door, what a **** to write that on a public site. Throw the key away........

Spoon

Possibly a nice bloke but just not very bright given the world we now live in. You can shout and scream all you like but unfortunately you really do need to think about what you write first if it is free for all to see. Hence I never use social networking sites.

Its a struggle enough on here to stay within the boundaries that favour the new found low limits of expression.

Jamie

Boomer that reminds me of that lad from here in Manchester got done for blowing himself up and the police found kiddie **** on his computer forgot his name Keios ??

rifleman

bollocks im in trouble then....mine full of pics of my blowing **** up and afghan.

mrtheedge2u2

You mean "Chaos"

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

I really should get round to enabling TPM and fitting a servo/solonoid triggered shotgun shell on my hard disks.

Jamie

Yes him.

madscoob

iTrader: (3)

what a prize bellend what did he expect lmao almost as bad as a mate of mine on a night out on the lash who said to a copper if i call you a **** you can arrest me cant you , copper replied yes , mate says how about if i think it then , copper says you cant get arrested for thinking sir . ok says mate i think ure a **** . promptly got arrested . was bloody funny at the time though

GC8

Simon used to be spot-on. He does seem to have become a little radicalised recently...

astraboy

Reminds me of the time my trains werent working properly.
I sent a stroppy letter to SouthWestTrains they replied informing me it had been forwarded to the btp!
astraboy.

subaruturbo_18

Quite funny really, but in the context he'd written it in its clear its a joke. Fair play for the police investigating it how they did though. I think confiscating his gear was a bit much though. He's only gonna go out and buy the same stuff again, and then open another twitter account

LG John

You are taking the **** right?

I mean, picture the scene:

1. You are at your computer and a little wound up about cancelled flights due to weather.
2. You decide you'll wax lyrical to your mates on your social site.
3. You make a silly, throw away, and pointless post.
4. You sit back to contemplate your expectations.

You conclude that realistically any of the following could reasonably happen.

a) nothing
b) a mate makes a counter comment
c) you get arrested

I'd like you to assign realistic probabilities to each of these - again, putting yourself in the moment when you contemplate making this twitter post.

You may not be good with percentages/probabilities. I'm a professional poker player with some experience of numbers, so I can perhaps help a little:

Probability of:

a)30%
b)69.999%
c)0.001%

FWIW, that is a probability of 99,999 to 1....and I feel I'm being generous.

In conclusion, I cannot comment on your opinion that he is a bellend; that is subjective. However, to suggest that the expectation is to be arrested and charged for this is quite laughable.

The whole thing is a joke! This is everything that is wrong with this country/world and it's only going to get worse.

GC8

The 'serves him right' / 'throw the key away' remarks are stupid beyond belief. Lets hope that if youre unfortunate enough to find yourself in this ridiculous situation: that you have someone with more wit than youve demonstrated to fall back on.

LG John

GC8 agree - these keyboard warriors have simply no clue how destructive these situations can be to a person/family. Have any of you considered the implications if this person gets a criminal record for a terrorism based crime. Home Insurance.....dream on (or mega costly). Good job? Questionable! Family Holiday to America....haha ha ha....not a prayer!

scoobymad555

iTrader: (1)

well I gotta be honest .... I've said plenty worse things than that on fb before

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.... and way way WAY worse things than that in emails when I've had the ar$e ache .... might explain why my emails seemed a little slow lately come to think of it

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Its funny how people take comments like that seriously......

Internet traffic is scanned for certain key words and he said some of them, it is inadvisable in the extreme to say stuff like that even in jest, its not like it is even funny, ok its a bit ott to arrest him but if some says that on Twitter and then carries it out and the comments were ignored then I expect that the authorities would be villified for not acting on it.

It has been proven, time and again that joking about such matters can land you in hot water, especially at check in but people still do it, and still find it hillarious until they get a night in the cells and miss their trip.

And the guy goes on Twitter, case closed.

LG John

Joking at check-in I understand. That's a pretty obvious place to have comments taken seriously? But a social networking site....really???

I mean, where do we draw the line?

You or drunk on a nightout with your mates and say, "hey, hey guys! Wouldn't it be cool to blow up a plane Ozzy-B stylee?" Copper overhears and assumes you are a terrorist? WTF?

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

The point being it's not funny and the authorities dont know that its some drunken comments or the insane rantings of a radical nutjob, ok, its obvious what it looks like but once they have seen on it they have to act on it and I find it very easy avoiding aviation/explosive/airport humour and I would personally expect some kind of problem if I posted something like that on Facebook, we have had people trying to do this recently, there are those out there who are hell bent on doing stuff like that and saying stuff like that and sparking scrutiny may just distract the Police or other agency from someone who isn't joking.

I get the Message, the Police are saying, dont joke about it unless you want a visit, anything else is still fair game, its not the thin end of the wedge or totallitarian control, we have very free speech its just given the current climate it is not a clever thing to do.

ScoobyWon't

Funnily enough we had a message in our briefing today which stated that we could not use the Terrorist Act to look through people's bags, phones, computers, vehicles etc even if we expect them to be carrying a bomb.

The European High Court have decided it's against terrorists human rights to be searched for bombs or bomb making equipment

Ah well, we'll just have to let everyone get blown up as it's against the bombers human rights to stop him.

Incidentally, surely being blown up by a terrorist is against our human rights...

Lisawrx

iTrader: (1)

I agree it was a really stupid thing to say considering todays climate as you say, and he should have known better, but alot of people make comments that are stupid (on here for example) that they just don't think about beforehand.

While as the police were alerted to this, they probably couldn't just turn a blind eye (joke or not), I would hope a bit investigation would show he was guilty of being stupid, not being a potential terrorist. Then hopefully that will be the end of it, no record etc. I can't help thinking this could've been done a little more quietly before going down the terrorism route, unless there is more to this story, and how do the papers know about it?

This was clearly stupid, I'm sure he knows this now, but how would we view this story...? Person went onto FB/Twitter and looked at some pictures a friend had posted up, pictures of say their son/daughter in whatever context and commented about how cute or pretty they looked. Could even be a video of them say in a swimming pool (little clothing obviously) and they make some sort of comment. If for some reason that was reported would we say 'serves him/her right' for looking and commenting on pictures of children, or would we say it's ridiculous as clearly it was innocent. Considering todays climate regarding child **** etc.

I know the situations are very different, but both include comments that can be taken the wrong way today.

I hope this sort of makes sense.