It takes a lot to shut me up. I tend to be first past the post with an opinion, right or wrong, and not much brings me up short in that area.
I must confess, however to falling speechless and slack-jawed for a moment at the sheer gall of a CBS News Internet poll accompanying the story of two men sentenced Tuesday in the United Kingdom (“Brits get 4 years prison for Facebook riot posts,” August 17): “Is four years prison too harsh for a Facebook post?”
I don’t really even have to reach the issue of reader response (although, as I write, 50% of respondents sickeningly declare for “No, fair punishment”). The only thing possibly more appalling than the question itself asked with a straight face is the absence among multiple choice answers of “are you out of your freaking mind? Prison? For a Facebook post?”
Folks, this is not an edge case — “fire in a crowded theater” or “fighting words” spoken while brandishing molotov cocktails. It’s a clear matter of people sitting in front of computers, typing things intended to be read by other people sitting in front of other computers.
Nor, seemingly, did the Crown Prosecution Service pull a fast one with “conspiracy” charges or other trickery to make it look like this was about anything other than speech. The cases were plainly charged, the alleged crime being “inciting disorder.”
As I’ve written elsewhere, the war for humanity’s future — a war that has raged for centuries, a war in which the sides are the state versus everyone else, winner take all, and the stakes amount to nothing less than a future dominated by totalitarianism versus the slimmest shot at creating a free society — has over the last year or so been stripped to its essence as an information war. The state’s guns are very real and its victims still bleed red, but the battle will be won or lost at the level of information and communications control.
While I firmly believe that only one outcome — the end of the Westphalian nation-state — is possible, I’m surprised with the speed at which states are confirming my estimate of the situation by descending to the tactic of desperation: The frontal assault.
Over the course of only a year or so, the Wikileaks disclosures and Bradley Manning affair have pushed the US government away from the typical “damage control” approach to disclosure of embarrassing state secrets and into a policy of sparing the state public scrutiny at all costs.
Over the course of mere months, we’ve gone from “western democracies” chiding Egypt’s Mubarak regime for shutting down Internet access to stall a revolution, to San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit bureaucracy shutting down cell phone access lest its authority be “challenged.”
In a matter of a few weeks the status of “social media” has been doubly transformed — first from “a free marketplace of ideas” into a potentially dangerous venue that prisoners might abuse, and now from that into a place where communicating might make one a prisoner.
All of the foregoing, of course, assisted by lapdog media with a sudden handwringing interest in “flash mobs” and the temerity to ask questions like “is four years prison too harsh for a Facebook post?” as if the correct answer could conceivably be anything other than “are you out of your freaking mind?”
Things will certainly get worse before they get better, but the stink of fear surrounds the state and its defenders. And for good reason. They’re living on borrowed time.
Translations for this article:
- Portuguese, Meia Légua, Meia Légua, Meia Légua Avante.
Citations to this article:
- Thomas L. Knapp, Half a League, Half a League, Half a League Onward, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age, 08/23/11
- Thomas L. Knapp, Half a League, Half a League, Half a League Onward, Carroll County, Maryland Standard, 08/19/11
- Thomas L. Knapp, Half a League, Half a League, Half a League Onward, London, Ontario Free Press, 08/18/11
- Thomas L. Knapp, The War on Free Speech, Counterpunch, 08/18/11
- Thomas L. Knapp, Half a League, Half a League, Half a League Onward, Baltic Review, 08/18/11
They were planning crimes, Tom: "massive Northwich lootin." They deserve jail time. I don't know if four years is too much, but really, this kind of post dos a good job of convincing everyone that the sides are nutty anarchists versus everyone else."
"They’re living on borrowed time."
I know. Anarchists have now convinced up to .1% of the population. Give it another 1000 years, and you'll have won!
Gene,
Maybe they were planning crimes. If they were planning crimes and were charged with planning crimes, I wouldn't have had the basis for this post.
But they weren't charged with planning crimes, they were charged with "incitement," i.e. speech, and nothing else.
Either neither of these yahoos committed an overt act to actually advance the alleged plans — even buying a ski mask or a jug of kerosene would be enough to nick them on conspiracy charges — or the prosecutors decided not to charge them for having done so.
And all of this occurred at a time when the cops could have been busy arresting people who were, you know, actually breaking windows, burning cars, etc., instead of just yakking about the idea on Facebook.
QED, the state's clear intent with this prosecution was to send a message and create a chilling effect: "Watch what you say. If we don't like it, you'll end up in prison."
Since they weren't charged with any crime (meaning specificall that the three elements of a crime: an act, a victim and intent), I do not hesitate to suspect that the motivation for the prosecution is to demonstrate the power of the state to make anything that offends it a 'crime' and to punish anyone who disobeys its mandates – or even its intentions.
Every day I see more evidence of this. How ironic to be driving in a pack of cars travelling down Route 3 in Massachusetts at 80 MPH and seeing several huge overhead lighted billboards exhorting drivers to 'obey speed limit'. I hope the cameras have sufficient resolution to to identify all the drivers wagging their middle fingers at them. OBEY! (ever see the movie 'They Live'?)
But to obey is impossible. I don't know whether the convicted in England were criminals or not, but this kind of brutality and oppression won't convince any but the already sheep-like to OBEY. To the contrary, it should inspire some to pick up the law books and find their way to court – where they can explain the law to the weasel-like civil servant judges who allow this shit to happen. Jail is too good for them.
What's the matter with the cops? All kidding aside – if they are better than doughnut-gobbling bums, they ought to refuse to make illegal arrests and go after criminals. Do they have no shame either?
We should all be offended by this travesty, on the other hand, the few of us who are attentive and have the ability to remedy this (by this I mean those who can read and have spine enough to stand up) are marginalized and ignored – to the detriment of society. What a sham! What a shame!
I guess the real home for sociopaths is (as it seems always to have been) civil service jobs.
They were planning crimes…
To make "planning" a crime is to prosecute thought-crimes. I have all kinds of fantasies about the proper punishments for government thugs; if I let one of those be viewed by someone else, am I also guilty of "planning a crime"?
I think that the word "crime" should apply to actual destructive acts. Words and thoughts should not be criminalized.
Tom, I tend to think "incitement" can well be a type of aggression, in some cases, as I and Pat Tinsley outline in Causation and Aggression. Some speech can indeed play a role in causing aggression, e.g. the President saying "drop the bomb on Nagasaki," a firing squad captain saying "ready, aim fire!", a wife begging her lover to assassinate her husband, a guy lying on a witness stand to get an innocent person convicted, and so on. I'm not pronouncing on the particular case at hand (I'm leery of armchair reasoning that is devoid of sufficient context).
Stephan,
I'm not arguing that incitement can't be a type of aggression.
I'm arguing that these guys were charged with incitement, and were charged with nothing else, and were handed rather harsh sentences, for the specific purpose of "sending a message," "creating a chilling effect," etc.
If not I'm not mistaken, Kinsella-Tinsley (2004) would agree that incitement alone is insufficient, and that a causal link would need to be shown between the inciters and the subsequent aggression that occurred.
Thomas L. Knapp wrote:-
I don’t think that follows at all. Remember the saying that you should never believe in a conspiracy when a cock-up will do. I find it far more plausible that they didn’t care at all about such longer term things and simply used that method because it was more convenient for their present needs, to stop the current round of problems they face, since they got a far lower burden of proof etc. from doing it that way.
Actually I think there is good cause to consider the act of the prosecutor(s), police, courts and all involved in this prosecution a conspiracy.
One of the essential elements of the conspiracy is intent and that is where, I think, your position relies on the assumption that the participants (I name a few above, but follow on please) either don't know, understand or even care about the fact that they violate the rights of the accused by such a prosecution (without a crime).
The actual conspiracy (this has been found to be the case in prosecutions of police misconduct for beatings etc. – which in this instance we could elevate to prosecutors, judges and others) is in the fact that these officers were not properly trained – su that they know that this is a violation of law. Whether negligence or intentional for any individual, somewhere along chain, these organizations and their employees were chartered to protect the rights and property of teh people. If they can fail (in my opinion, so obviously), then the investigation and the liablity go up to whoever made the decision to either hire unqualified people, or to fail to provide them training and verification.
As with most corruption and conspiracy, by the time you notice it, the acts of multiple people, not caring or being aware of their own criminality can lead one to believe that it is not a conspiracy – just a bunch of ignorant lazy-minded people acting in their own self-interest.
But then, they are willing to overlook their responsibility for money, career dvancement and nice vacation homes, while teh filthy thugs do their dirty work.
I would call them all criminals – I just have.
(sorry for attempting to describe a broad conspiracy in a few seconds).
Er… isn’t negligence and so on just precisely what move things from the category of conspiracy to the category of cock-up? And I very carefully didn’t make any of those assumptions you suppose, confining myself to stating I found it more plausible, a working hypothesis based on parsimony (like Occam’s Razor); without any certain knowledge on the points one way or the other, that is sufficient to undercut any definitive “Q.E.D.” the other way.
I don't know the legal meaning of cock-up but I know that negligence entails liability in both the criminal and civil courts.
There is no uncertainty in the law about this. What is actually uncertain is whether or not the specific charges made actually allege a crime or, as I presume (please forgive me – I would not go into court with a presumption, but I think it is permissable here) that these are merely (as stated) a fictitious 'crime' of speaking out against the establishment.
According to your cock-up theory, anybody can allow crimes to go on and even actively participate in them – as long as he doesn't know what he is doing.
There is nothing like a razor's edge in the circumstances of this case. The whole point of specifying a conspiracy (to commit a crime) in the law is to attach liablity to every party who aids or implements the plan.
If your argument is that so many people are involved – for such a long time that it is hard to prove, so be it. It is hard to prove. That's why we have courts, isn't it?
It isn't hard to understand this. It is just unpleasant to think that we have allowed it to reach this point.