Why does Britain want to put the public in prison for fact-checking claims in ...

[Rick]

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd has announced a fifteen-year prison sentence for watching terrorist propaganda, whatever that means this week. There is an exception for academics and journalists with “legitimate reason” to watch the material firsthand. But this also means the general public is going to be banned, under threat of a long prison sentence, from fact-checking such stories in the mainstream media.

In the last post about Britain’s announced law putting people in prison for “repeatedly watching terrorist content”, which amounts to putting people in prison for reading banned literature, there is a catch that deserves particular attention.

There is an exception to the announced law, where you may have a “legitimate reason” to watch such “terrorist content”, and therefore should not have to be in prison for fifteen years for doing so. The announced legislation still doesn’t sound sensible in the slightest, but at least you can detect that somebody with a bit of sense had a small amount of say to mitigate the worst effects of this digital book burning law.

But there’s a catch.

The exception where you may be allowed to watch such material firsthand only applies if you’re an academic or journalist. Only then is it even considered whether you have a “legitimate reason” to view such material, whatever reason the government considers legitimate on a particular day. It is also noteworthy that the definition of “academic” and “journalist” is highly debatable; for example, most governments consider only full-time professional reporters to be journalists, even though serious bloggers — who do not have a boss breathing down on them with pressure to get a story out quickly — can and have produced higher quality stories than your average paid reporter.

However, for the general public, there is never a right to view the material firsthand. This also means there is never a right for the public to verify claims made by academics or journalists by checking against their firsthand sources, even though these sources are as available to the public today as they are to journalists.

Let’s take that again, because this is the consequence of these laws: the general public will be put in prison for fifteen years for verifying claims made by the mainstream media, by checking the claims against the primary sources.

This leads us to the inescapable question:

Why does Britain want to put the public in prison for verifying claims made in the mainstream media?

(This is a post from Falkvinge on Liberty, obtained via RSS at this feed.)


Originally Published: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 18:00:59 +0000
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[contrail]

They must be hiding a dark secret, on the plus side time to wait and bait a wikileaks.

[Kingfish]

Could be something to do with the psychos going around murdering people in the name of Allah, but that's just a guess.

[Sid]

True dat. There is nothing like a good book burning to stop psychos from murdering people.

And we are all better off simply listening to the Government anyway, rather than wasting our time trying to think for ourselves. Everyone knows that politicians always tell the truth.

[contrail]

This sounds like telling people to not read a banned book, only now more people will start to read it, in this case watch it.

[Kingfish]

True dat. There is nothing like a good book burning to stop psychos from murdering people.

And we are all better off simply listening to the Government anyway, rather than wasting our time trying to think for ourselves. Everyone knows that politicians always tell the truth.

Yes but when the next psycho beheads someone the MP's can tell everyone that they banned you tube videos so its not their fault, plausible deniability for the left whit snowflakes to lap up while they invite even more refugees in to the place.

[Hiroven]

True dat. There is nothing like a good book burning to stop psychos from murdering people.

And we are all better off simply listening to the Government anyway, rather than wasting our time trying to think for ourselves. Everyone knows that politicians always tell the truth.

Yes but when the next psycho beheads someone the MP's can tell everyone that they banned you tube videos so its not their fault, plausible deniability for the left whit snowflakes to lap up while they invite even more refugees in to the place.

Umm, this seems a bit overthought.

[Sid]

It's not overthought, it's classic government: being seen to be doing something NOW (i.e. before the next general election) is THE number one priority. It doesn't matter if it's the wrong thing or even a bad thing as long as it won't do much damage before the next election.

The collateral damage from security theatre such as this is overlooked at best, swept under the carpet at worst.

It certainly won't stop psychos from murdering people. It won't even stop them from watching terrorist propaganda. The only people harmed by it are honest citizens who have little-if-any interest in watching terrorist propaganda (but who have a very important interest in not having the government dictate what they are/are not allowed to read/watch). Thin end of the wedge.

[joew771]

Thin end of the wedge.

This isn't the thin end of the wedge. It's a large chunk of bullshit. Some people watch terrorist propaganda to check the veracity of the news, some watch it to see how stupid the terrorists sound, some watch it to see people dying, some people watch it for whatever other reason. Watching something shouldn't be illegal, especially when it's free and available to everyone to watch if they want to.

Acting on things is what matters. If the government wants to keep an eye on people that watch things like this, I don't agree with it, but I understand it somewhat. Get those people that actually kill people. But just watching something and being punished for it is far over the line.

I'd be in prison for about a million years if they used this on me, and I'm about the furthest thing from a terrorist as you can get.