Guatemalan Twitter User Arrested For "Inciting Panic" 76
talishte points out (with a snippet from BoingBoing) that "Amid protests in the streets and on social networks calling for
Guatemala's president to step down after the assassination of a
whistleblower attorney, Guatemalan police have arrested a Twitter user
for 'inciting
panic' through tweets. In the capital city today, police
raided his home and confiscated his computer."
While you are at it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
While you are at it (Score:0, Redundant)
Ah, Slashdot. Where even the First Post can be declared "Redundant".
Now, if you can get a "+5, Redundant", you can win teh internets.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, Slashdot. Where even the First Post can be declared "Redundant".
It's not hard. Just First Post this:
Amid protests in the streets and on social networks calling for Guatemala's president to step down after the assassination of a whistleblower attorney, Guatemalan police have arrested a Twitter user for 'inciting panic' through tweets. In the capital city today, police raided his home and confiscated his computer.
Freedom of speech... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Secretly I hope more bad stuff happens to twitter. Im tired of moving social sites because everyone else is. Facebook is fine. We dont need MORE.
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
What about:
Myspace
Friendster
Classmates
Usenet
Etc...
What's that? these don't do the things you want them to do, like Facebook does? Huh.
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Shhhhh!
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Yeah, because twitter makes a noise when you send out a tweet. Good one.
Re: (Score:2)
Contrary to what you might think, freedom of speech is not black and white/all or nothing.
You can't shout fire in a theater if there is no fire, does that mean that there is no freedom of speech in the US? In no country in the world are you allowed to say anything you want and not receive any punishment, does that mean that freedom of speech is non-existent? If that is the case, what are you wining about?
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Contrary to what you might think, freedom of speech is not black and white/all or nothing.
You can't shout fire in a theater if there is no fire, does that mean that there is no freedom of speech in the US? In no country in the world are you allowed to say anything you want and not receive any punishment, does that mean that freedom of speech is non-existent? If that is the case, what are you wining about?
Excellent points. How is this relevant?
Re: (Score:2)
The guy was arrested for inciting a panic. That's the effect of shouting fire in a crowded theater and why you can't do it.
Re: (Score:2)
The guy was arrested for recommending a boycott. That isn't even close to the same thing.
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The charge was creating a panic though. That is a legitimate charge if the actions in question back it up or support it. This is what the op was getting at and is relevant because of the law being used to go after him. Not all speech is or should be protected.
Re: (Score:2)
Where's the evidence of that panic?
Again, holding the opinion that we should boycott a business is not along the same lines of lying about a building being on fire.
Whether or not all speech should be protected isn't really relevant when we can all agree that this position is a valid one for a reasonable person to take.
"Bank is evil, therefore giving more money to bank is reprehensible." = Valid opinion to hold.
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I don't need evidence of panic. I'm just comparing the charges. Whether he is innocent or guilty is another matter entirely.
As to the mans opinion, I agree, it's a valid position to hold. however, I wasn't speaking to that, just the charge and how not all speech is protected.
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The only reason you can't yell fire in a movie theater is that a reasonable person would expect that to cause a panic leading to injuries.
In the U.S. for example, nobody will be arrested for suggesting that people shouldn't do business with AIG for example.
You can even tweet "Yo ho ho, Bank of America is going belly up!" if you so desire.
From the sound of things, the REAL reason for the arrest is that he said politically inconvenient things. That is the very essence of lack of free speech.
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but you're right about the politics being the real cause of the arrest, not the reason for it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I could be sued, but not criminally charged. Of course, anybody can sue anyone for anything. AIG couldn't win because I'm merely expressing my own personal opinion. BofA because it's obviously a humorous message. In fact, Berke Breathed published a very similar statement in millions of newspapers and books in the '80s. Even if I sent out a more serious message, I would still be merely expressing an opinion and belief.
That doesn't mean that with their well funded army of lawyers compared to my lucky if I don
re:freedom of speech... (Score:2)
if i had mod points i'd mod up the grandparent for the bloom county reference. ah, oliver wendell jones, how i've missed you...
Re: (Score:1)
Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
Twidiots always assume they invented everything.
What's the difference? None.
I suppose Tweeters can be proud their chosen technology joins the illustrious ranks of the telephone, the fax machine, and the mimeocopied bill pasted on a telephone pole as agents of protest.
Re: (Score:1)
Well it IS more confortable, wouldnt you say?
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Well it IS more confortable, wouldnt you say?
How is Twittering from home like a literary chronicle containing the names of all the teachers and writers from the close of the Talmud to present day [reference.com]?
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Twittering is more like a tiny blog post than a text message. You can potentially have lots of listeners. Or are you talking about texting to some mailing list?
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Meh. Obvious difference is obvious. It's also functionally irrelevant.
See also flash mob [wikipedia.org]. The fact that this is based on Twitter is really only important to Twitter aficionados.
Anything to lend an air of significance, I guess. Yes, Twitter, you matter. Really. We respect you now.
suggesting a boycott is not cuasing a bank panic (Score:3, Interesting)
Calling a suggested boycott of a bank inciting a panic is so stupid it'd be funny if the poor guy wasn't actually arrested for it. A bank panic is when people run to withdraw funds because someone told them their money was unsafe in that bank. Suggesting a boycott on ethical grounds does not even remotely relate to causing a panic.
He suggested breaking the bank. He did not say the bank was going broke. Anyone who called this a bank panic must have assumed that everyone who reads a sentence or two on Twitter will immediately do whatever they are told.
In that case, hopefully those people who think it's necessary to do whatever suggestions they read (like the officials who brought this trumped-up charge) are also reading Slashdot. I suggest that anyone calling this causing a bank panic go swimming in a piranha-infested river while tied to an anvil.
Re: (Score:2)
By all accounts, this bank, along with the president and some of his buddies, is Very Bad News. Corruption, money laundering, assasination, real banana republic and/or major western democracy stuff. A noted lawyer was assasinated a couple of days ago [boingboing.net] and left a youtube message just before that happened(in link) discussing the matter.
This isn't because some dumb jobsworth actually thinks t
Good advice (Score:4, Interesting)
is not inciting a panic, even if everyone panics. You can get charged for shouting "fire" if there is no fire. If there really is a fire, you should not be charged even if there is a stampede and someone gets crushed.
On the other hand, if the government has already killed 2 people, one quite obviously because of what he was saying, I wouldn't be doing anything that might land me in jail.
That's a good way to "accidentally" shoot yourself in the back, jump off your cell's balcony, shoot yourself again with a different gun, and then trip into a wood chipper.
Re: (Score:1)
So you're telling us that cowardice is the categorical imperative?
Re:Good advice (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you think personal martyrdom to be more effective in achieving your goals, avoiding government assisted suicide is hardly cowardice.
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That guy has balls and achieved something with his death. Nobody is going to notice if a few people stop tweeting, the SS can just post:
Life sucks, might shoot myself in the back, jump off my balcony, shoot myself again w/ different gun, and then trip into a wood chipper, FML
So getting caught tweeting shit about the president isn't going to achieve much. It's not about backing down, just no point getting caught tweeting
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Bull.
How are they to know if it was a party or an individual? There are at least two parties that would benefit from it: which one is to blame?
My point is that the net is not what lawmakers had in mind where they limited messages "against the dignity" of a party or running politician.
It makes sense with radio and tv because they are state concesions, but the net is not one of those: it is free, open and global.
This fuckers need to get their hands of my net.
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Who CARES?
Its not about the law and its not about which party fucking sucks (and believe me: I grind an axe with the engraved face of Benito Juarez that will take a Panist head soon enough).
Its about the net NOT being subject to ANY KIND OF REGULATION. Its about making it clear to any gray burocrat, regardless of party, that his/her PAWS have no place anywhere NEAR the net.
If your stance made any kind of sense whatsoever, the IFE stance would not have included a letter to youtube executives. It wouldve been
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And how will you be able to differentiate anmongst party-produced content and individual produced content?
Elimanting the posibility for anonymity, hey?
Fucking fascist pigs!
Anonymity (Score:5, Insightful)
Any more proof required that Anonymity is required for a working free society? Not because without it, a society ceases to be free, but because an oppressive government requires a complete lack of it.
Quite frankly, every time I hear someone say "but I'm not hiding anything", I have to add "yet". People might not hide anything now, but that's largely because they're part of the majority that makes laws. They don't understand how quickly their position can evaporate and how quickly they can find themselves on the wrong end of the long arm of justice.
Re:Anonymity (Score:5, Insightful)
Any more proof required that Anonymity is required for a working free society? Not because without it, a society ceases to be free, but because an oppressive government requires a complete lack of it.
Quite frankly, every time I hear someone say "but I'm not hiding anything", I have to add "yet". People might not hide anything now, but that's largely because they're part of the majority that makes laws. They don't understand how quickly their position can evaporate and how quickly they can find themselves on the wrong end of the long arm of justice.
And if they don't understand that by now, with the numerous examples history has provided, then unfortunately it's probably because they don't want to. Just read any decent history book and what you see is that most of recorded history is the story of the most violent, egomaniacal, psychopathic and murderous segment of the population trying to assert control over everyone else with varying degrees of success. It's as though we think that all of history stopped applying to us in the last 50 years or so, like state power is your friend and has given up its dream of absolute control merely because it has learned that it will encounter less resistence if it puts on a smiling face and tells you it's all for your own good. The smallest foresight can prevent the Orwellian police state that's coming and is becoming more prominent, but not when people think that burying their heads in the sand is any sort of prevention.
What you said above reminds me of that saying: "it's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
You're implying two things:
1) People believe that state is coming.
2) People actually care about that state while they're still allowed to make money and consume.
Seriously, to most people (especially those in newly rich countries like China, but even here in the US) the only "freedom" they care about is making mon
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Says the anonymous coward... The ironing is delicious.
history stopped applying(!!) (Score:2)
The neo-con view explicitly describes itself - bizarrely - as "post History", and evidently its proponents and executives (Bush, Cheney, etc) believed this, or claimed to. It was one of the hallmarks of their generally insane and bloodthirsty credo.
But this also ties into the general "exceptionalism" that Americans still cling to about their own place in History - "can't happen here," even though it already is. [youtube.com]
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The neo-con view explicitly describes itself - bizarrely - as "post History", and evidently its proponents and executives (Bush, Cheney, etc) believed this, or claimed to. It was one of the hallmarks of the...
... the Communist Parties of the USSR and China as well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're too right. Governments know it's easier to take away anonymous speech first, and free speech that is not anonymous later. It'd be quite difficult to take away anonymous speech if free speech was taken first. They must lock people into identifying themselves so they can find you once they make what you're saying illegal to say.
It it one's duty to oneself and those one cares about to stand up not only to recognized tyrants, but those who would put the tools of the tyrant in place.
It's a scary time to live in the U.S. (Score:2)
But this and stories like this remind me that we've still got it pretty good by comparison. That doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to push for more reform and systemic changes that remove opportunities for corruption.
It seems stereotypical that central and south american governments are all overtly corrupt. The U.S. government would already be hopelessly corrupt if it weren't for the wide range of obstacles the founders of the U.S. intentionally placed in the way of such HUMAN tendencies. Those obstacle
Is anyone else astonished... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Compared to some braindead online personalities I know, he probably had his address listed somewhere in his online profile. If not on Twitter, then on his completely open and public Facebook account.
Some people just don't get it.
Heh Heh (Score:2)
Anybody else read that as 'inciting panic' through the tweets (streets)? I was wondering if it was submitted by a poster with a speech impediment.
They confiscated his computer (Score:1, Funny)
It would be cool if you could bypass the computer and "tweet" directly from a mobile device like a phone...
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What good is a phone if you cannot... speak?
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How do you "incite panic" virtually? (Score:2)
Twits should be no different than getting an email about how Microsoft is offering to pay you for forwarding an email. I fail to see how a virtual message could have incited a "panic" unless the ratio of gullible e-idiots per capita is around 1:1 in that country.
Trust, but verify.
in order to properly understand (Score:2, Informative)
That poor guy was arrested because of this:
-In Guatemala all banks are in control of a few very powerful families (republica bananera way
-that control is of course close tied to congress campaigns and policy making.
-since a couple bank panics in the last few years, they pushed a law that makes illegal say anything bad about a bank.
-the guy twitted.
I don't know how to feel about this... (Score:4, Funny)
Suppressing free speech: bad.
Ridding the world of Twitter, one twit at a time... hmm.
Guatemala (Score:3, Informative)
I find the list rather ridiculous. Cuba is rated 7. Why? I presume because it locked up a bunch of independent journalists, many of whom had contact with the US mission in Cuba. So why is Cuba 7, but Guatemala 3.5? This journalist was KILLED - in Cuba they arrest, but do not kill journalists. So why are they rated so much lower? Also, Saudi Arabia is rated 6.5, as is China. So Saudi Arabia is more free than Cuba? That is completely ridiculous.
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I find the list rather ridiculous. Cuba is rated 7. Why? I presume because......
This is the root of all your problems: you are presuming instead of actually trying to figure out. This information is available, Freedom House publishes their methodology, and gives detailed explanations of their ratings. For example, "Cuban officials strictly regulated and monitored internet use, with the threat of 5 years in prison for connecting to the internet illegally and 20 years for writing "counterrevolutionary" articles for foreign websites. Many websites were blocked during the year." That is
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Well, you see, most US Government reports (and presumably the reports of those funded by them) sum up their opinions of Cuba pretty much like this:
CUBA BAD
And that's about as far as they go with their critical examination.
free speech (Score:2)
Nobody has the right to peace and quiet. Getting people upset is a vital part of the political process. Obviously the current government of Guatemala needs to hit the bottom of the garbage can.
What the tweet was all about... (Score:1)
My think about it (Score:1)