The real* terrorists must be pissing themselves
General public: 0
Terrorists: 1
* actual baddies.
Mexican prosecutors are pursuing terrorism and sabotage charges against two Twitter users who falsely reported an armed attack by drug gangs was in progress at a local elementary school. The tweets falsely claimed gunmen had stormed several schools in the Mexican state of Veracruz and either injured or kidnapped children. A …
Trolling is terrorism?
Somehow, we need to teach TheGreatUnwashed[tm] that ASCII isn't exactly reality.
But that would put the kibosh on !GooMyFaceYouMSTwit ... and unfortunately, multi-billion-$currency, multi-national marketing companies seem to be driving the minds of idiots, world wide.
If it causes terror. In this case, it allegedly led to panic and several traffic accidents.
Terrorism isn't just blowing things up, it is any activity which is intended to cause terror amongst the general public. Arguably, this definition should be extended to those activities of governments that seem designed to keep people scared and obedient (such as 'terror threat levels' and other similar nonsense).
Conversely, terrorism *isn't* any activity which *doesn't* cause terror, such as photographing police officers, or protesting outside parliament.
I don't agree with the UK verdict against Paul Chambers, but I do think these two, Gilberto Martinez Vera and Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola, should be prosecuted. No-one fled Nottingham airport in a panic, or avoided the airport as a result. People wouldn't even have noticed if someone hadn't complained. In contrast, the reported events in Mexico are believable and people actually responded immediately.
So playing a stupid prank is now terrorism.
Wasting police time, yes. Terrorism no.
Throw the book at 'em on the sentencing. Make it clear that there are real terrorists about and even a tweet can cause major panic. But a tweet is a tweet. It is not killing people or planting bombs.
I don't know about you but last time I had a family member in a hospital (for something unlikely to be life threatening by the way) I was speeding across town at night 130 km/h (with the obvious 50 km/h limit of course). Until you are in that panic situation you can't even image how it feels to be afraid for a loved one. If I though my family was being held hostage somewhere I probably wouldn't have even looked at the red lights anymore and just hit the paddle. No wonder there were 26 accidents because of this when everybody started to drive like in need4speed.
PS: I have a great prank idea. Lets tell everybody at a clinic they have HIV and lets see if any of them kill themselves over the news. Afterwords we can say: sorry, it was just a prank.
So basically, your family member was in hospital. Getting all the care that modern medicine can provide. For something not life-threatening.
Yet you, yourself, figured that it was OK to potentially hurt J. Random Stranger (and maybe kill yourself), rushing to the side of said family member ... To do WHAT, exactly?
What a fucking moron. The mind boggles ...
Let's just get clear that what is happening in Mexico isn't terrorism, it's criminal activity, there's no political agenda (well actually with the level of corruption that may be arguable).
I have friends who live in Mexico and in the time since I visited them in Monterey last year things have got so much worse they wouldn't advise a return visit now. the panic that the tweets generated is perfectly justified because that sort of thing DOES happen.
It's some terrorists, they say they're at our house and have our kids at gunpoint. They'll shoot them unless we give them £1M."
" Let's check the BBC, see if there are any hostage situations. None reported? Right, tell them that they're clearly trolling and we don't believe them."
*bang*
*thud*
The knowlege that free speech exists means that if someone does shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, you look up and see if there are flames before stampeding to the door.
Actually, even if there isn't free speech, you still look up.!
...who made sure that before the broadcast in questions, there was a notice given that the following was a work of fiction, yet still got into trouble because some idiots thought a radio play was real?
If you do a little digging, there wasn't actually a 'mass panic' as a result of the broadcasting of War of the Worlds, but widespread reporting of there having been a panic by the press. Fancy that, newspapers printing half truths...
I think there might be a slight difference there but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Why did the authorities not simply phone the schools in question and ask if there were any issues?
Secondly, Mass Panic Occurs After War of Worlds Broadcast - Not exactly true, you know. In fact, there is almost no evidence that any mass panic occured at all. The Coopers Field Police Department record that they had a couple of calls that night that were listed as 'pranks'. As a precaution, they attended the alleged 'landing site' and arrested a number of drunken teenagers.
This idea of "Thousands pouring into the streets in panic" is a media-driven myth, as newspapers wanted to discredit radio as much as possible. Kind of like how our modern media like to blame the interwebs for rioting and so forth.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/24685
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/did-the-1938-radio-broadcast-of-the-war-of-the-worlds-lead-to-mass-hysteria