Banned at airport over Twitter tweet
p2pnet news view P2P:- Paul Chambers may have the dubious distinction of being the first person to be arrested in Britain for a Twitter tweet.
“Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
Chambers (right) “posted the message after snowfall threatened to delay his plans to travel from Doncaster’s Robin Hood airport to Ireland on January 15,” says the Mail Online.
When police arrived at his office, “My first thought upon hearing it was the police was that perhaps a member of my family had been in an accident,” he says in the Independent.
“Then they said I was being arrested under the Terrorism Act and produced a piece of paper. It was a print-out of my Twitter page. That was when it dawned on me.
“I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they’d never heard of it.
“Then they asked all about my home life, and how work was going, and other personal things. The lead investigator kept asking, ‘Do you understand why this is happening?’ and saying, ‘It is the world we live in’.”
Apparently, a security conscious Twitterer tweeted him in, says the story.
The Mail quotes civil liberties campaigner Tessa Mayes as saying, “Making jokes about terrorism is considered a thought crime, mistakenly seen as a real act of harm or intention to commit harm.
“The police’s actions seem laughable and suggest desperation in their efforts to combat terrorism, yet they have serious repercussions for all of us. In a democracy, our right to say what we please to each other should be non-negotiable, even on Twitter.”
Chambers has now been banned from Robin Hood airport for life.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Mail Online – Frustrated air passenger arrested under Terrorism Act after Twitter joke about bombing airport, January 18, 2010
Independent – Twitter joke led to Terror Act arrest and airport life ban, January 18, 2010
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