The police have no jurisdiction over our thoughts, but that hasn’t stopped them trying recently. Just over a year ago, a plainclothes officer from Humberside Police turned up at my workplace to ‘check my thinking’ for getting involved in the transgender debate online. An individual had taken offence at something I’d retweeted and reported it as a hate crime.
The crime in question? Well, it was retweeting a silly song lyric that brought the complaint, but the subsequent police investigation found another 30 ‘transphobic’ tweets I’d made. As a former police officer myself, I considered the force’s intrusion to be deeply Orwellian.
Read article: My fight against the police over ‘transphobic’ tweets
By way of illustration he mentions the recent case of Harry Miller, the ex-policeman who was investigated by Humberside police for retweeting a poem deemed to be transphobic. Miller is currently challenging the police investigation in court. ‘The judge reminded the court that freedom of speech outweighs the right never to hear something you don’t like.’
Read article: Comedy in the era of Twitter outrage: An interview with Ricky Gervais
Subscribe to Fair Cop News to receive the latest campaign updates, blogs and Fair Cop news coverage.
Email address:
You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the footer of any of the emails.
The Fair Cop News mailing list is provided by MailChimp. When you sign up, we only ask for your email address so we can send you occasional news emails. Your email address is passed to MailChimp so these news emails can be sent out. See MailChimp’s Privacy Policy for details on how they process your information. We do not sell or share your email address with third parties.
