This document summarizes the case of Paul Chambers, who tweeted a joke about blowing up an airport but was prosecuted for sending a menacing message. It discusses how the case escalated due to a cycle of cover-your-ass behavior by various institutions. It argues this shows a normalization of deviance in public institutions and risks future injustices if systemic issues around risk aversion, secrecy, and culpability are not addressed.
Geostrategic significance of South Asian countries.ppt
Reading between the lines of the Twitter joke trial
1. Reading between & beyond the lines of the Twitter joke trial
Ray Corrigan
Open University
7-18 September 2012 Gikii 2012
2. 6 January 2010
@pauljchambers
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3. “@ Crazycolours: I was thinking that if it does then I had decided to
resort to terrorism”
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4. “@ Crazycolours: That’s the plan! I am sure the pilots will be
expecting me to demand a more exotic location than NI”
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5. “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to
get your shit together otherwise I am blowing the airport sky high!!”
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11. Airport police
S Yorks police
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12. 7 days post tweet
Anti-terror squad – workplace
Bomb hoax arrest
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13. “some” people might be concerned?
"Yah. Hmm mmm"
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14. 10 February 2010
“no evidence at this stage to suggest that there is anything other than a
foolish comment posted on “Twitter” as a joke for only his close
friends to see.”
7-18 September 2012 Gikii 2012
15. CPS
127 (1)(a) Communications Act 2003
A person is guilty of an offence if he—
sends by means of a public electronic communications network a
message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent,
obscene or menacing character;
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16. Nobody acts as though there's a 'threat'
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17. No urgency
CYA
Tick the box
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18. Magistrate convicts
Crown Court upholds:
"satisfied" that the tweet was "menacing per se" and that "an ordinary
person" seeing it "would see it that way and be alarmed. The airport
staff did see it and were sufficiently concerned to report it."
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19. "Yah hmm mmm"
“satisfied that the appellant was, at the very least, aware that his
message was of a menacing character."
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20. Crown Court posed Qs on interpretation of s127(1)(a)
s127 & CYA problem
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21. High Court
tweeting is sending messages by means of a "public electronic
communications network"
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22. paragraph 24 where emphasis is given to "potential recipients of the
message" being "the public as a whole"
Google?
Facebook?
WWW
Privacy?
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23. High Court
s127 ok – update of misuse of phone for menace
No “newly minted interference with.. freedom of speech"
Interpreting s127 “disappointingly little coherence in English law’s
approach to threat offences”
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24. message which does not create fear or apprehension... lacks menace
No threat, no menace, no actus reus, no criminal conduct
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25. No attention to simple fact that the tweet lacked any conceivable
menace
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26. message which does not create fear or apprehension... lacks menace
No threat, no menace, no actus reus, no criminal conduct
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27. High Court para 31 - 34
“In any event, the more one reflects on it, the clearer it becomes that
this message did not represent a terrorist threat, or indeed any other
form of threat..
...It was treated and addressed as if it was not a credible threat... no
action... no minimal.. protective measures... no urgent response...
Police action was not exactly hurried”
“proper respect must be paid” to the Crown Court but...
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28. “Cr*p! How this ever get this far? A bunch of CYA clowns couldn't
get their sh*t together and we are blowing this case sky high!!”
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29. 56 days jail Liam Stacey – Fabrice Muamba
Racially Aggravated s4A Public order Act 1986
@rileyy_69 (aka Reece of Weymouth) – Tom Daley
s1 1988 Malicious Communications Act
“an indecent, grossly offensive, threatening, or false message with the
intent of causing stress or anxiety”
s5 Public Order Act 1986
Harassment, alarm or distress... threatening, abusive or insulting
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30. How did it get that far...
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31. Even the CPS wanted to drop it but...
“the key finding of fact in the case was a finding of the Crown Court,
which only the High Court could overturn.”
http://blog.cps.gov.uk/2012/07/clarification-on-decision-making-in-paul-chambers-case.html
7-18 September 2012 Gikii 2012
38. Bloody Sunday
Stephen Lawrence
Jean Charles de Menezes
Deepcut barracks
Multiple asylum seeker cases 300 to Sri Lanka this week
David Kelly
Birmingham Six
Rendition
Sally Clark ...
7-18 September 2012 Gikii 2012
43. Chambers: twitter + threat = dangerous + guilty
Football 70s, 80s
Football fans = animals to be herded
Miners strike S. Yorks – violent criminal anarchists to be fought
Orgreave 95 – acquitted – fabricated police evidence
Lord Denning – Birmingham Six 1980
“Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial ... If the six men
failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by
many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of
perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary
and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous. ... That was
such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, "It cannot be right that these
actions should go any further.”
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44. State hostile to claims of injustice
Treat people involved with dismissal (contempt)
Pull down the shutters
Apologise much later for actions of predecessors
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45. Fear of consequences
Reputation – loss of public confidence
Personal
Organisational
Economic
Media & political
Legal
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46. Leads to amoral
Battening down the hatches
Secrecy
Rigid attempts at application of protective procedures
Active obstruction & cover up
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47. Public services normalisation of deviance
Culprit-counting targets – someone must pay
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48. CDB
DEA
Data retention
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49. Police, politicians & media
Demand for culprit/s
OA to rich data mines of everyone's lives
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What is it about Twitter that makes authorities lose all sense of perspective? What is it about Twitter that makes authorities lose all sense of perspective?
The DPP was not the reviewing lawyer in the case of Paul Chambers, but in June he did instruct the team managing it to consider conceding the appeal. This was considered and progressed, however, at a later stage the DPP was advised that, as a matter of law, conceding the appeal would not be possible. This is because it was not possible because the key finding of fact in the case was a finding of the Crown Court, which only the High Court could overturn. The DPP accepted that advice and reluctantly agreed that the appeal had to proceed.
Institutional risk aversion (economic externalities aside) Proceduralisation of same Organisational reflex for self preservation at all costs... There is a widespread doctrine amongst zombie bureaucrats that given enough data all conceivable situations can be predicted and all possible organisational responses codified in procedures and micromanaged. Then as long as procedures are followed all will be well.
System failed and people in positions of trust with capacity to put it right failed to do so, actively obstructed such efforts and were complicit in or directors of the cover up of those failures
Systems built on the premise that, at every stage, the right option is the perceived risky option – for the individual and their employer – will regularly lead to the kind of systemic insanity that led to the persecution, prosecution and unjust conviction of Paul Chambers. The insanity becomes an emergent and defining feature of the system. When it is the criminal justice system, weighed down already by decades of fear induced, hyperactive, unintelligible law making of the political digerati, then we all have reasons to be concerned.