Britain issues new
guidelines on prosecuting offensive online comments
By Henry Chu
December 19, 2012, 11:42
a.m.
LONDON – People who post
offensive messages on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter should face
criminal charges only if their comments are harassing or threatening and not
simply in bad taste, according to new legal guidelines in Britain that follow a
spate of controversial prosecutions.
Free-speech advocates here
have been alarmed in recent months by a number of incidents in which users of
social media have been arrested and jailed for posting messages that others
deemed repugnant. A 2003 law authorizes such harsh punishment for “indecent,
obscene or menacing” communications sent through a public electronic network.
But the law predates the
explosion of such new media as Twitter and Facebook, and some police officials
say that having to investigate the increasing number of complaints about
offensive online messages is distracting them from more serious work.
Keir Starmer, the chief
prosecutor for England and Wales, said Wednesday that new guidelines from his
office would raise the bar for criminal charges under the 2003 law by limiting
most prosecutions to cases involving threatening and intimidating remarks targeted
at specific individuals. That would help protect freedom of expression while
still allowing authorities to crack down where warranted, he said.
“There are millions of
messages sent by social media every day, and if only a small percentage of
those millions are deemed to be offensive, then there’s the potential for very
many cases coming before our courts,” Starmer told BBC radio. “So we need a
sensible way of dividing the messages into those which are more likely to be
prosecuted – the threats and the harassment and the breach of court orders –
and those that aren’t – the deeply unpopular, the shocking, the grossly
offensive.”
Under the new guidelines,
most if not all of a recent rash of high-profile cases would probably not have
been prosecuted, including a youth who was sent to jail for 12 weeks for
posting crude jokes about two kidnapped girls and another young man who was
sentenced to 240 hours of community service for declaring on Facebook that
British soldiers “should die and go to hell.”
Critics of the
prosecutions noted that such comments might raise eyebrows and draw
disapproving looks if spoken aloud in a pub, but online they suddenly become
criminal offenses. Civil-liberties activists warned of a chilling effect on
free speech.
Starmer agreed, and
consulted lawyers, police and other experts on setting a higher threshold for
prosecution. The new guidelines go into effect immediately but will be reviewed
again in March after the British public has had a chance to offer its input.
“It would be stifling free
speech if people thought that every time they communicated something which
might be deeply offensive or deeply unpopular … then the police were likely to
get involved,” Starmer said. “We need to protect the individual against threats
and harassment … but free speech has its place.”
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