London cops waste £2.1m on thought crime unit – and they want volunteer informers The Metropolitan Police is to spend £2.1m of public money funding a unit that will actively investigate “offensive” comments on Twitter and Facebook, according to reports. Backed by a team of “volunteers”, the Met's new unit will actively seek out anything “deemed inappropriate” on social media services, according to the …
I suspect (hope) this is the Met grabbing PR and extra Home Office funding for moving some people around.
They'd have had to be doing this anyway and much better to have a dedicated low-priority team than having response officers running around doing it when they should be doing something useful.
In general the Met is quite good at keeping the front line out of the streets. Whether that's a good thing because you get faster response times or bad because it leads to a stormtrooper attitude is up for debate.
You are a hypocritical, over paid, headline grabbing muppet.
"https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/14/met-police-chief-cuts-safety-public"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3391986/Met-Police-chief-orders-65-000-Range-Rover-despite-warning-budget-cuts-leave-country-risk-criminals-terrorists.html
Slightly off topic but I like the way Viz usually get away with the kind of outrageous claims that would land other publications in the dock - they just attribute everything to an unreliable, ficticious source:
"Our source was on his twelfth pint when he made the completely untrue claim that <insert celebrity name here> liked to have sex with goats on a regular basis. 'The <celebrity> also has sex with rabbits', he lied to our reporter."
“There’s a risk of online vigilantism, where people who are offended by the least thing will have a licence to report it to the police.”
Everyone has a license to do that already.
Vigilantes are those who decide what is a crime and deliver punishment. In this case it is more 'nark', 'grass', or 'informant' than 'vigilante'. Those recruited will simply be providing information and the police will decide if there is an offence and, with the CPS, whether that should be pursued. No one seems to be proposing that Mr Angry can hit the Dislike button and the target will go straight to jail.
I'm so glad that Brexit gave us our country back.
With this news and our departure from the European Court of Human Rights, our already 'secret courts', a determination to use our Security Services to spy on our texts, email, voice calls and social media messages and contacts, energy meter usage, vehicles we are driving, along with from/to where, I'm sure that the Brexiters will delight in the U.K. we 'got back'...
We aren't leaving the european court of human rights. It is an entirely separate organisation to the European Union. The two cooperate, but they are not the same thing.
May herself said she wouldn't be campaigning to leave it.
Of course, given that countries like Russia are full members of the Convention and theoretically under the judicial oversight of the Court, yet get away with literal murder on a regular basis, one wonders how effective it actually is.
"May herself said she wouldn't be campaigning to leave it."
- Was it not reported she said she'd like to stay in the EEC but leave the EHCR early in the Brexit campaign? She kept quiet through most of the rest of it.
Going by the push for Surveillance during her tenure at the Home Office, she's not one to let go of an idea.
"Going by the push for Surveillance during her tenure at the Home Office, she's not one to let go of an idea."
Yup, because of her enthusiasm for the mass surveillance of the people she is supposed to be serving (Democracy - we've heard of it), my first thought, upon her taking up her new post, was 'Prime Sinister'
"On the launch of her campaign for PM, she stated that there was no support for leaving the ECHR (either the court or the convention) and that she would not be pushing for it."
Yes, a typical politicians statement. She's on record as wanting out of the Human Rights Act and hence the ECHR, but she's not going to push for that because she knew she'd never have won the PM position with that as an election promise.
"I'm so glad that Brexit gave"
Dick.
This isn't anything to do with state control, it is just a predictable extension of the politically correct bullshit games politicians and officials play all day.
The "you can't say that" brigade being so desperate to display their correctness now think it acceptable to use the law and tax payers money to make sure people "can't say that".
An interesting article in The Spectator (paywall, probably - extract below) recently pointed out that "Hate Crime" is unique in requiring no evidence. So how come it costs £2.1m to investigate?
The police’s ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ now stresses that the victim’s perception is the deciding factor in whether something is measured as a hate crime. No evidence is required. ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident,’ the guidance says. ‘[The] perception of the victim, or any other person, is the defining factor… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception.’ So you don’t need actual evidence to prove hate crime, just a feeling. The police are discouraged from asking for evidence.
"So you don’t need actual evidence to prove hate crime, just a feeling."
The public consultation draft of the Sexual Offences Bill in 2003 included a virtual "victim" - the hypothetically most vulnerable person who could be imagined. They didn't have to be present - in fact no one needed to be present for the offence of exposure to have been committed. Nor did there need to be any intent to cause alarm or distress.
Objections caused that low threshold of evidence to be modified for the final wording of the Act.
So you are saying that no one else has to be present for the crime of "exposure" to take place?
So, presumably, you would have to give yourself up?
Mumble.....if a tree falls in the forest and nobody..........mumble.
I once had a piss against a tree trunk when out walking. Nobody else was there. Should I give myself up?
So right. The "victim" is self-evidential. Here in the US, sexual harassment charges are based purely on the perception of the victim: hence to make a comment (while still half asleep prior to that second cup of morning coffee) "Good morning, Miss Jones. You certainly look nice today!" is an indefensible punishable offense of sexual harassment if Miss Jones perceives it to be!
So get used to it. I'm sure that the first moment our Congress manages to reassemble itself following our quadrennial self-flagellant silly-season of trumpeting and braying, they'll add "deviant speech" to our list of self-incriminating offenses.
"Good morning, Miss Jones. You certainly look nice today!" is an indefensible punishable offense of sexual harassment if Miss Jones perceives it to be!
It's worse than that. The guidelines say "perception of the victim, or any other person". Even if Miss Jones likes the compliment, even if she blushes and says "Thank you kindly, Sir. Fancy a quickie in the stationery cupboard?", it's open season for anyone within earshot to get the Police round and have you cuffed before you've finished that second cup of coffee.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
