Over 5000 people have sent fake warning messages in solidarity of this guy - including the words "IamSpartacus" - a reference to Stanley Kubrick’s movie in the 60's where all the slaves stood up and said .. well.. I am Spartacus. (For those too young to see the movie - picture the scene from Dead Poets Society where all the kids stood on desks.. Or even more recently, Being John Malkovich if this guy was making money, and the plot was written by someone on hallucinogens.
So I think we can agree this guy is guilty of poor judgement - most reasonable people know you can't make jokes like this in a post 9/11 world. But should he be criminally charged? Is it reasonable to assume he was only joking? Perhaps - but then we have the subjectivity question. Should possible threats be ignored if a policemen decides it's only a joke?
To those who think that is unreasonable, consider this. In
Well it would suggest that he could argue that it was obvious that he was joking - who would tweet such a thing if they really intended to bomb the airport. The 'reasonableness' argument would say that most 'reasonable' people would not react to the message by raising alarms.
On the flip side, if an Agency admitted to ignoring such threats because they were categorized as jokes, they would surely leave themselves open to criticism, particularly in the event of a bombing. This seems to suggest that, reasonable or not, the authorities have a defensible case that they did not regard this as a joke in this instance.
Unfortunately, the protest of the internet in 'spamming' the twittersphere, whilst interesting from a cultural perspective, may mean that any real threats from now on will have a greater level of scepticism applied. Is that necessarily a good thing? I guess it’s a bit of a catch 22 situation much like the cartoon’s of Muhammad. Is it someone’s right to joke around about bombing airports on twitter? Perhaps. Should they? Of course not..
1 comment:
1 - A reasonable person would not make the threat in the first place.
2 - A reasonable person would understand the consequences of making such a threat in this post 9/11 world.
The fact that this person made the threat, to my mind means he is one or more of the following,
1 – An unreasonable person.
2 - Mentally unbalanced to some extent.
3 - Serious about the threat.
To my mind, the reaction of the threat should be to always raise the alarm, the action taken against the individual should depend on the state of the individual making the threat.
1 - Unreasonable person, fined, jailed and smacked about for being unreasonable.
2 - Mentally unbalanced to some extent, given help and put out of harm’s way.
3 - Serious about the threat, SHOT
I guess it's situation normal, assume the worst and hope for the best.
Post a Comment