The Glasgow Police tweeted an unusual warning on Friday: “Think before you post or you may receive a visit from us this weekend. Use the Internet safely. #thinkbeforeyoupost.” The accompanying image heavily implied that Scottish police would be monitoring text messages, Facebook, and Twitter.
According to Pew Research, millennials use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at higher rates than any other age group. We are the first generation to grow up with text messaging. The benefits of these tools are obvious: convenient and efficient communication to individuals and groups at the touch of a button. With this comes the fact that all such communication — whether we delete it or not — essentially lives forever in a digital paper trail. Millennials have the longest paper trails of all.
On the surface, the creeptastic tweet is a great reminder of how lucky we Americans are to live in a place where freedom of speech is part of the deal (no matter how much SJWs try to stifle it). But situated in the context of United Kingdom politics, the tweet is much more: It’s a reminder to Scottish people that they are bound by the UK’s Communications Act of 2003. Section 127 of that law states:
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he —
(a) 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; or
(b) causes any such message or matter to be so sent.
(2) A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he —
(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false,
(b) causes such a message to be sent; or
(c) persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.
That sure makes it sound like it’s illegal to bother someone on social media. Social media might be the most potent bothering tool the world has ever seen (except for the keyboard clicking sound on the iPhone, but I digress).
Lawmakers soon realized that this law was broad and ambiguous — and to use one of the Left’s favorite words, “problematic.” Legal Insurrection reported that in 2012, “The Director of Public Prosecutions issued interim guidelines…Communications that are merely ‘grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false’ will be prosecuted only when it can be shown to be necessary and proportionate.”
The criteria of “necessary and proportionate” are highly subjective. This hasn’t stopped police across the pond from enforcing the social media statutes of the law. In fact, just weeks ago, Scottish police arrested a 40-year-old man after he made several anti-immigrant and Islamophobic social media posts.
Equally interesting is who hasn’t been arrested: namely, Imam Habib ur Rehman of Glasgow Central Mosque. Rehman sent a series of WhatsApp messages in praise of Mumtaz Qadri, who brutally assassinated a Pakistani governor. The governor attracted Qadri’s ire because he opposed harsh anti-blasphemy laws and punishments, and opposed capital punishment for a woman accused of insulting Mohammed. It is a cruel irony that the governor, who was trying to keep someone else from being killed for supposed blasphemy, was murdered by Qadri for being — in Qadri’s eyes, and in the eyes of many other radical Muslims — a blasphemer, himself.
This is where Imam Rehman comes in. Upon Pakistan’s execution of Qadri, Rahman praised Qadri’s killing of the governor. This is more than just annoying or offensive commentary — it’s praising violence against a public figure due to differences in religious opinion. If that’s not hate speech, I’m not quite sure what is.
The WhatsApp messages were reported to the Scottish police. On April 1, the very same day as the #thinkbeforeyoupost tweet, a police statement was issued on Rehman’s outright praise of a radical Islamic murderer saying, “no criminality has been established.”
Are you kidding me, Scotland? So, not only is the law sometimes used to restrict free speech, it’s sometimes not used when it could be applied to stop the incitement of violence. The protection of free speech, plus equality under the law, are painfully necessary and sorely lacking.
