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posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday May 13 2014, @02:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the Chilling-Effects dept.

As reported in The Guardian, and on the blogger's own site, British writer Michael Abberton tweeted a link to a fake and/or satirical advertisement for the right wing UKIP party.

Not too long after he was "visited by two Cambridgeshire police officers on Saturday. He was told he had not committed any crimes, but was asked to delete some of his tweets, particularly a retweet of a faked poster giving 10 reasons to vote for Ukip, such as scrapping paid maternity leave and raising income tax for the poorest 88% of Britons."

All of this is strange enough on it's own, but be sure to check the comment stream on his blog, where any number of Anons claim that he made up the entire story, despite the police having already confirmed it!

Related Stories

Historic Facebook "Fraping" Case Sees Irish Man Fined US$2,735 15 comments

From http://rt.com/news/169660-facebook-criminal-damage-page/:-

An Irish man has avoided serving jail time after pleading guilty to posting an offensive status update on his ex-girlfriend's Facebook page. The landmark case represents the first criminal prosecution for damages done to a social media account.

The 30-year-old man, hailing from the town of Donegal, was charged under the Criminal Damage Act 1991, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison and a €10,000 fine.

The Defendant, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was acquitted by a jury last month of raping and falsely imprisoning the same woman in her home on the same date her Facebook page was defaced.

He received a 2,000 Euro (US$2,735) fine. Potentially, a large number of people would be guilty of Fraping. Overall, the prosecution of criminal damage/computer misuse/fraudulent advertising/false utterances may be very expensive. In addition to this, there is the lawful and unlawful manipulation of social media accounts by police and courts:-

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday May 13 2014, @02:52PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 13 2014, @02:52PM (#42747)

    Now is this a .uk thing where "was asked" in its literal meaning, or does it mean "delete them or we'll torture you by forcing you to eat British cuisine" polite description of being forced?

    Locally you get this kind of interaction if "semi-lunatic" tries to make a police report about something thats not illegal, the lunatic is told suspects acts are not illegal, lunatic says she's going over to the suspect's house to confront him, cops realize a 5 minute good deed will eliminate an innocent possibly getting hurt and/or having to fill out the paperwork to haul the lunatic from the suspect's house if they just politely request for the lunatic.

    This usually happens with noise complaints, where at least in my youth they couldn't give out noise tickets until 10pm, but they could politely ask, at which point we'd politely comply. You can't (or, couldn't...) give out a generic "disturbing the peace" ticket for activities which are considered normal like running a circular woodwork saw in a residential neighborhood at 9:59pm but at 10pm you could get ticketed. Or if they're cowards or weirdos or intimidated or whatever they can ask the cops to ask you at 9:30pm to cut it out a bit early.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by lhsi on Tuesday May 13 2014, @02:58PM

    by lhsi (711) on Tuesday May 13 2014, @02:58PM (#42754) Journal

    The police have issues a response to this here (I'll quote it as it is a short statement): http://www.cambs-police.co.uk/news/newsitem.asp?Ne wsID=8191 [cambs-police.co.uk]

    12/05/2014 13:23:53

    Chief Constable Simon Parr said: "I believe in this instance police attendance was not required and I have asked for our approach to this sort of incident to be reviewed to ensure we do not get involved unless there is clear evidence that an offence may have been committed."

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 13 2014, @02:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 13 2014, @02:59PM (#42755)

    Not only did he make up the story, he made up the entire country. You may think there's an UK, but actually he just invented it, along with the right wing party and the policemen. In truth there's no such thing. Oh, and he even hacked Google Maps to show a big island between Ireland and continental Europe, where the UK is claimed to be. Don't believe that. There's only water there. Really!

    SCNR

    • (Score: 2) by nukkel on Tuesday May 13 2014, @07:41PM

      by nukkel (168) on Tuesday May 13 2014, @07:41PM (#42874)

      There's only water there, and it's called 'ale'.

    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 13 2014, @09:20PM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday May 13 2014, @09:20PM (#42923) Journal

      First Belgium does not exist, and now this! I think there may be some kind of Global Land Change going on. Or did I dream it?

  • (Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Tuesday May 13 2014, @07:55PM

    by bucc5062 (699) on Tuesday May 13 2014, @07:55PM (#42884)

    In looking at the ad I got a little confused with all the UK references for it seemed like a viable ad for the RNC...../kidding?

    My goodness, I thought politicians were suppose to have thicker skins then that or have more witty reparte' then "sic em you Bobby's, take em down good."

    --
    The more things change, the more they look the same