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Snow joke as man is held over airport bomb tweet 
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PC Pro wrote:
Snow joke as man is held over airport bomb tweet

A man who jokingly tweeted that he would blow up a snow-clogged airport has been arrested by anti-terror police in the UK.

Paul Chambers decided to vent his frustration on the social-networking site after his plane was cancelled by the recent snowfall. "Robin Hood airport is closed," he tweeted. "You've got a week and a bit to get your s**t together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

The joke backfired a week later when anti-terror police arrived on his doorstep and arrested him. "My first thought upon hearing it was the police was that perhaps a member of my family had been in an accident," Chambers told 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."

Mr Chambers was reportedly questioned for seven hours, before being bailed until 11 February, when he'll learn whether he'll be charged with conspiring to create a bomb hoax.

In the meantime, police deleted the bomb message from his Twitter account and have confiscated his iPhone, laptop and desktop computer. He's also banned from the Doncaster airport for life.


Courtesy of PC Pro.

This is so [LIFTED] ridiculous it beggars belief!

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:16 pm
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You know, I wonder if every UK-based Twitterer and Facebooker started extensively making these kind of joke threats whether the entire security services would be so overloaded they'd implode.

To my mind it seems the only way we can begin to make a mockery of The Powers That Be. Then again, they're beginning to become a joke anyway, only they're too up their own backsides to notice.

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:23 pm
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I'm wondering if anyone reported him or if the powers that be are monitoring it. Although I couldn't imagine any jihadists announcing a forthcoming attack on Twitter or Facebook.

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:44 pm
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Somebody grassed him up. Apparently the plod didn't even know what Twitter was - which I find difficult to believe, to be honest, even for the present state of the police in this country.

It's worth reading the Independent article. Where's me links... Clickety

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:47 pm
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There seems to be conflicting information about what Act he was arrested under. The Grauniad say it was the Criminal Law Act 1977.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ja ... ter-arrest

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:50 pm
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Linux_User wrote:
PC Pro wrote:
In the meantime, police deleted the bomb message from his Twitter account and have confiscated his iPhone, laptop and desktop computer. He's also banned from the Doncaster airport for life.


Lucky bugger

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 2:00 pm
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HeatherKay wrote:
You know, I wonder if every UK-based Twitterer and Facebooker started extensively making these kind of joke threats whether the entire security services would be so overloaded they'd implode.


Uh oh... If we don't hear from you for a few days I guess this post is the reason ^_^


Mon Jan 18, 2010 3:26 pm
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PC Pro wrote:
and have confiscated his iPhone,
Well at least something went right for him.

This whole thing is ridiculous, I mean how come it took the black bastards a week to feel his collar, how can he be charged with conspiracy if no one else is involved, did twitter give up his personal information (if so was there a court order) not to mention the massive favour he'd be doing by actually blowing the airport up.

Disgusting, arresting this guy is simply a misguided PR stunt by the filth.

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 4:02 pm
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LaptopAcidXperience wrote:
This whole thing is ridiculous, I mean how come it took the black bastards a week to feel his collar, how can he be charged with conspiracy if no one else is involved,

Technically, everyone who read his tweet is 'involved'.


LaptopAcidXperience wrote:
Disgusting, arresting this guy is simply a misguided PR stunt by the filth.

I doubt even Plod would be mental enough to consider this a good idea as a publicity stunt. It is my experience (which is actually more than average) that plod's knowledge of tech is bordering on zero and that therefore he tends to over-react whenever it's involved. Add together the two things he fears most - technology and terrorism - and over-reaction is pretty much inevitable.

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 4:22 pm
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jonbwfc wrote:
LaptopAcidXperience wrote:
This whole thing is ridiculous, I mean how come it took the black bastards a week to feel his collar, how can he be charged with conspiracy if no one else is involved,

Technically, everyone who read his tweet is 'involved'.


That did cross my mind but surely it doesn't constitute conspiracy, if so, isn't everyone who read the post arrestable as well.


jonbwfc wrote:
LaptopAcidXperience wrote:
Disgusting, arresting this guy is simply a misguided PR stunt by the filth.

I doubt even Plod would be mental enough to consider this a good idea as a publicity stunt. It is my experience (which is actually more than average) that plod's knowledge of tech is bordering on zero and that therefore he tends to over-react whenever it's involved. Add together the two things he fears most - technology and terrorism - and over-reaction is pretty much inevitable.

Jon


Publicity stunt was the wrong use of phrase, I meant that they're sending a message that they can and will arrest people for pranks relating to terrorism, it makes them look like they're doing something because they can't catch the real terrorists.

My other half (honestly I've got a girlfriend) has considerable professional experience of the police and she certainly bears out the statement that police know f**k all about technology, unless it's attached to their German machine guns.

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Last edited by LaptopAcidXperience on Tue Jan 19, 2010 8:09 am, edited 1 time in total.



Mon Jan 18, 2010 4:38 pm
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Whether or not the police were right to track this guy down is largely irrelevant.
Anyone who thinks the police, airport security or the security services have even the smallest sense of humour where airports and bomb threats are concerned obviously hasn't been paying attention for the last 30 odd years. The guy is a moron for putting this on twitter.

The sad thing is of course that proper terrorists are somewhat unlikely to put something so blatant on the internet anywhere. Unfortunately the security services have to honour the threat because if they didn't and there was some sort of attack that had been notified there would ten kinds of hell to pay as a result. Carpet bombing twitter, facebook and the like with bomb threats just to see the reaction might be quite amusing for a short while but it would cause such an increase in the background noise MI5 and the like have to sift through that the probability of an actual attack would have to go up.

In summary, this is only a massive over-reaction by plod because the guy isn't a terrorist (yet anyway).

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 7:36 pm
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davrosG5 wrote:
Whether or not the police were right to track this guy down is largely irrelevant.
Anyone who thinks the police, airport security or the security services have even the smallest sense of humour where airports and bomb threats are concerned obviously hasn't been paying attention for the last 30 odd years. The guy is a moron for putting this on twitter.

There hasn't been successful bomb attack on an airport in the last 30 years. There have been a tremendous number of false alarms and wacko plots that had no chance of success. There is definitely a point where paranoia overtakes practicality in security terms.

davrosG5 wrote:
The sad thing is of course that proper terrorists are somewhat unlikely to put something so blatant on the internet anywhere. Unfortunately the security services have to honour the threat because if they didn't and there was some sort of attack that had been notified there would ten kinds of hell to pay as a result.

And it would have taken all of 10 minutes to figure out the bloke was an idiot but certainly not a terrorist. yet they kept him in the cells/under interrogation for a considerable period of time and confiscated his property. If the public end up being more scared and resentful of the police than the terrorists, who has won?

davrosG5 wrote:
Carpet bombing twitter, facebook and the like with bomb threats just to see the reaction might be quite amusing for a short while but it would cause such an increase in the background noise MI5 and the like have to sift through that the probability of an actual attack would have to go up.

Given the evidence suggests they have absolutely no ability to appropriately filter information anyway, I can't see it will make much difference frankly.

davrosG5 wrote:
In summary, this is only a massive over-reaction by plod because the guy isn't a terrorist (yet anyway).

And slamming him in the clink and taking his stuff for such spurious reasons, is that going to make him more or less likely to become one?

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:13 pm
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jonbwfc wrote:
There hasn't been successful bomb attack on an airport in the last 30 years. There have been a tremendous number of false alarms and wacko plots that had no chance of success. There is definitely a point where paranoia overtakes practicality in security terms.

...

And slamming him in the clink and taking his stuff for such spurious reasons, is that going to make him more or less likely to become one?

Jon


I didn't say there had been a totally successful attack on an airport. I said that anyone who hasn't noticed the police et al's total lack of a sense of humour where airports are concerned has been living under a rock for the last 30 odd years, is an idiot or possibly both.

As for the success or otherwise of attempted attacks. Glasgow airport springs to mind. They didn't achieve their actual objective but they did do some damage to the building. Poor execution rather than an outright failure.

You did read the bit in brackets at the end of my post right?

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:30 pm
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davrosG5 wrote:
Whether or not the police were right to track this guy down is largely irrelevant.
Anyone who thinks the police, airport security or the security services have even the smallest sense of humour where airports and bomb threats are concerned obviously hasn't been paying attention for the last 30 odd years. The guy is a moron for putting this on twitter.

I concur. It's a bit like responding to "anything to declare?" with "Nothing except this bomb". You'd fully expect someone saying that to be detained and probed and charged with some kind of crime for being so stupid, not to mention insensitive.

Fake bomb threats are and always have been a very serious crime, often causing as much chaos as a real attack. Blowing people up is not a laughing matter.

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Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:44 pm
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I'm sorry but the absolute worst that should have come out of this was "words of advice", a humorous Twitter post should not warrant this kind of attention.

There is also a clear difference between posting something on Twitter from the comfort of your own home and sparking a bomb threat via something said in person at an airport.

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