OK, so reflecting on the world at the moment. Do you want the police to suspend investigating all complaints involving social media, or to continue to investigate them?
If you choose the first one, then you're preventing the investigation of mass riots, conspiracy to murder, mass disruption of public infrastructure -- and so on. All which have happened in the last 9mo, and gone through the courts. BUT you do have the advantage that police wont, once in a blue moon, turn up to someone's house and investigae them for a bit of nonesense that disappears within a day or at most a month when a real judge has looked at the case.
If you choose two, then you can still offer guidance to local police forces to be more careful in assessing complaints -- guidance which has almost certainly been given, since the gov arent happy theyre being distracted with this BS.
Now ask yourself: who at the moment really wants option number 1?
> OK, so reflecting on the world at the moment. Do you want the police to suspend investigating all complaints involving social media, or to continue to investigate them?
Yes. I do. I want them to put resources into catch the criminals in my area that have been stealing motor vehicles instead as that actually affect me and my community. Not policing social media.
They could you know arrest the person and search the phone under suspicion, or get a court order. They don't need mass surveillance. Maybe they should do their job and actually investigate it, which they don't do.
You can always justify more infringements on personal liberties under the guise of stopping crime, protecting the children, stopping the terrorists. That doesn't mean we should.
What we shouldn't be doing is using resources to find people saying naughty words on facebook (which is literally what they do).
This was literally posted here like last week, I suggest you read it:
>if you're sincere about catching criminals you would want even more intrusion into online spaces
Why?
For 40 years, Police in the US have been given basically carte-blanche to do whatever dragnet surveillance they want, as long as it "technically" is done by a third party they just buy services from. Police have had constant and perfect visibility into the digital world, with almost no moderating force, and yet they're so bad at finding culprits that violent crime clearance rates are still a coinflip.
Oh actually that's just in my State. ME claims the national violent crime clearance rate is ~20%. Jesus.
It seems obvious to me that police departments are either utterly incapable of, or utterly unwilling of, doing their damn job. We have given them near infinite power and zero responsibility and they've spent those immense resources being trained that everyone is trying to kill them, being taught how to shoot people first and ask questions later, and harassing people, often including journalists literally exposing their mob activity.
Please don't give them more power until they demonstrate an ability to productively use the power we have already given them.
No one's talking about pre-crime. I'm talking about crime.
It's a crime to conspire to murder; to commit fraud; to arrange an act of terrorism; and so on. And in all relevant cases, social media was used in court after-the-fact just as evidence.
So we're talking about activity on social media which are crimes themselves, just being used as evidence after other crimes have been committed.
This is the problem with the propaganda being put out there at the moment, none of it is true -- and all of it is in the service of disgusing the content of actual court cases.
People on the far-right like to use the phrase "posting to social media" when they mean "using online communication platforms to arrange a violent riot with the intent to murder people". And they like to pretend this evidence collection is happening before those actions -- when its after, and presented in court.
> Are you really going to defend the conviction of a teenage girl quoting Snoop Dogg lyrics on facebook?
Can you link me to the evidence you have for this person having been convicted? Because she wasnt, the case was immediately over turned on appeal and the lower court volunteer judge basically reprimanded.
Do you have any evidence for any of these things you believe? Have you looked into any of them? Who told you about them? How do you know about a teenager in liverpool that upset a police officer? Why is that something you know about? Do you not find that odd? Isn't it strange that you "know" she was "convicted" but have no actual idea what happened?
Just reflect a moment on what the major actions of the UK gov. involving social media have been over the last year, and which of those have resulted in actual convinctions. HINT: ones involving plots to murder people by the far right.
Hmm... who exactly has been talking about all these "free speech" cases? Coincidence?
> Can you link me to the evidence you have for this person having been convicted? Because she wasnt, the case was immediately over turned on appeal and the lower court volunteer judge basically reprimanded.
I am aware of this and I deliberately used this as bait, quite predictably you defended what took place.
You must have missed the bit where the police literally go looking for offensive words on social media. They literally have software that flags up speech.
It matters not that later on it was "corrected". The reason it was "corrected" I suspect was because of the amount of pressure put on politicians after it was featured in the media.
* There should not be entire police departments dedicated to prosecuting things said on social media.
* There should not be software that flags up the fact that you said naughty words.
* This should not have never even got to court in the first place.
> Just reflect a moment on what the major actions of the UK gov. involving social media have been over the last year, and which of those have resulted in actual convinctions. HINT: ones involving plots to murder people by the far right.
Argh yes the terrifying "far right".
The fact is that the government point at scary people like the Islamic Extremists (I am old enough to remember that), the neo-nazis, homo-phobes and other generally nasty people to sell these awful laws and then they are (mis)used against normal people.
> Hmm... who exactly has been talking about all these "free speech" cases? Coincidence?
Why does it matter? If Adolf Hitler/Francisco Franco/Mussolini/Stalin/<insert despot> rose from the dead tomorrow and was making valid criticisms of the various laws in the UK that stifle speech that doesn't mean that they are incorrect about those facts. It would make them hypocrites, but not incorrect.
If you've never been involved in court proceedings it will come as a surprise.