Crime and punishment and Twitter
The airport experience. Even the most mild-mannered of us can devolve into rage-blinded Neanderthals when confronted with the lines, the delays, the cancellations. How many times have you vented and ranted to friends and family after an especially frustrating encounter? So you can surely sympathize with Paul Chambers of South Yorkshire, England, when his flight to Dublin this past January was cancelled due to threat of snow at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster. Chambers reacted as you might have—he joked with his friends that the airport needed to get its act together, or he’d blow the place sky high. Okay, maybe you wouldn’t have referred to explosive violence (still, how many of us have said we want to “murder the boss” after a horrible day at work?). And maybe you would have thought twice before making your comment on Twitter. But Mr. Chambers did not. He chose to tweet his frustration. In a manner obviously meant to amuse his friends. Or so he thought.
Turns out the joke wasn’t so obvious to the police. They showed up at Mr. Chambers’ workplace about a week after the airport tweet. To arrest him, under the Terrorism Act. Explaining himself was tough, especially since the police had never heard of Twitter (they had received an anonymous tip, and showed up with a print-out of Chambers’ Twitter page, but were unfamiliar with the service).
Eventually, Chambers was released on bail. But the police confiscated his iPhone, laptop, and home computer. He was banned from the aiport for life. And he was suspended from his job. Ultimately, he was charged and found guilty under the Communications Act for the offense of sending a menacing message. He has been ordered to pay a thousand pounds in fines and legal costs. Mr. Chambers may appeal.
Now, given the tenor of this blog’s past posts about Twitter, you might expect me to close with a scathing indictment of the service’s abundant evils. But really, given all the social, legal, privacy, and safety ramifications, I’ll refrain from drawing any sweeping conclusions. Other than to say this story would have been a lot more fun if the culprit had been Ashton Kutcher.
Photo available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license; author: Dylan Oliphant, originally posted on Flickr.