Yes, bad laws that are open to interpretation, perhaps as designed. But the police have a lot of discretion and it's much easier to go after someone for an obnoxious tweet or supposed offense than it is to go after real crimes. We always hear "lessons will be learned" after the fact, again and again, but they don't seem to be.
The two laws that the article mentions are pretty well explained in it, fairly clear cut in was can be a criminal act under them. Now whether they are fit for purpose in modern contexts or whether they are too broad is another matter, and not one the police can do anything about. Their job is to enforce what's on the book.
> much easier to go after someone for an obnoxious tweet
How far do they go? Will they subpeona twitter if you have pseudonym and track down your ip address? How about tor and vpn, will they actually go thru four letter agencies to track you down?
Muddled laws are a government issue. And the second goes for the people affected by the muddled laws too, who have way more discretion than the police.
> And the second goes for the people affected by the muddled laws too, who have way more discretion than the police.
Are you arguing that the fault for being on the wrong side of the powerful lies with the people who could have just decided not to be on the wrong side of the powerful?
We're discussing here laws where someone, whether the police or some other authority figure, is going to be deciding whether you're subject to them based not on plain and objective facts, but on subjective criteria - which inevitably, and unaccountably, will include your other activities. They're designed to offer a fig leaf so that you can be prosecuted for something whose punishment is comparatively palatable, without having to acknowledge the actual cause for offense.
Of course one can argue whether any particular law falls in this category, but I think it's difficult to argue that the designed consequences of such laws are the fault of the person subject to them.
> Are you arguing that the fault for being on the wrong side of the powerful lies with the people who could have just decided not to be on the wrong side of the powerful?
No.
I saying that people are responsible for their actions.
In western society (democratic) laws are implemented by people put in a position of authority by the very people those laws apply to.
I'm not really sure I understand the rest of what you're talking about, so I do t want to assume anything, but it sounds like you're after perfects laws no one can misinterprete? I don't think that's possible. Bug free software will likely come first.
Either way the conversation about power and who has it and who doesn't doesn't strike me as helpful.
> I saying that people are responsible for their actions.
> In western society (democratic) laws are implemented by people put in a position of authority by the very people those laws apply to.
Right (although I think that the latter sentence is, first, not limited to western societies, and, second, not ubiquitous in them), but the issue here is not whether people should escape consequences for actions that have been democratically deemed unacceptable (through direct democracy, or through people electing representatives who make the relevant laws). Rather it is, I think, the danger of using the cover of one action, that people have democratically agreed is unacceptable but that the makers or enforcers of law are not actually seeking to curtail, to regulate another action, that has not been democratically agreed to be unacceptable, and might actually be professed to be allowed or desirable while being indirectly and sometimes covertly suppressed.
> Either way the conversation about power and who has it and who doesn't doesn't strike me as helpful.
No matter what your philosophy of society and the role of law, it strikes me as hard to have such a philosophy that is of any use in actually helping to govern a society without paying attention to power, who has it, and who doesn't.
So are you suggesting that the enforcement of the laws in question, per the article, are actually a cover to suppress something else? If you are you'll need to spell it out for me since what the article covers as criminal seems to fit what the laws state as criminal.
Power balances or plays in any society are inevitable. I just don't see it as relevant in this scenario. Certainly it's fashionable today to demonstrate how hard done by you are but in this context the people affected in the article are certainly inconvenienced by police at their door but hardly any of them that I can see were powerless and suffered because if it. Everyone can have their day in court. It's the courts that decide whether you're guilty, whether the police were over reaching; case law is full of such things.
Enforcing laws consistently would be great but of course one great tactic of tyrannical governments is to have a lot of laws, but only enforce them against disfavored groups.
One San Francisco flavor of this to get charged for bribing officials to do their jobs.
Police have broad discretion over what they enforce and when. In America Castle Rock v. Gonzales affirmed this strongly (although it also had other questionable implications). I believe things are similar in Britain.
Over here we've seen this with various jurisdictions decriminalizing marijuana and other drugs by simply not policing it.
Then the title is misleading and clickbaity then. "Government is restricting speech in worrying ways" is the actual story. Or old laws not fit for purpose in modern contexts. But during the police in the title means more clicks because everyone hates the police.
Police didn't arrest J.K. Rowling for her tweets about transwomen after the new Scottish law came into force, even when she asked them to. No muddling of the new law just police... Underreach? Or not doing their job? Depends who you ask.
Either way tit for tat examples help nothing.
Fact is, police are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Plus it's good to just blame them for things they aren't in control of.
Perhaps because the police aren't arresting people over mere Tweets, or their speech alone. Perhaps, just perhaps, conduct or actions or monetary support are also involved, but the headlines can only trumpet the reason for arrest, or the stated charges.
JK Rowling, CH OBE FRSL is an author whose corpus of speech is mainly her novel-writing. Now how did nine letters come to be placed after her name, even as she shortened her first two initials? Because her writing (speech) has been in exemplary service and support of the Crown and the British Empire.
So why would police arrest JK Rowling for pushing back against one wedge-issue in the culture war?
The 70-year-old Guy being arrested outside the abortion clinic for holding a rosary and praying, is that the singular offence he committed? Possession of a phoenix feather? Did he rescue Tom Marvolo Riddle's mother? I don't know. Neither do you.