Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scotland: No Country for Free Speech

Behold, the most offensive tweet I’ve seen in months. You don’t have to be an off-grid anarcho-libertarian freedom-squirrel to see there’s something distinctly unpleasant – even something dystopian – about this. But such, alas, is the temper of our times.

Times in which the state’s officers – for such is McPlod – believe they are entitled to monitor your every conversation, your every outburst, your every opinion for evidence that someone, somewhere in Scotland might be offended by your views. Nor is it too extreme to observe that this satisfies, in its essentials, the definition of a surveillance state.

Such idiocies are not, of course, confined to Scotland. The UK government appears convinced the country may soon be menaced by a plague of terrorist toddlers hellbent on their own hideous brand of jihad. Nor was the infamous – and still shameful – Twitter Joke Trial a matter pursued by the Scottish police. Nevertheless, don’t let anyone think the Scotch polis are going to allow anyone else to outdo them in their quest to be the nastiest, most chilling, pernicious police force in Great Britain.

Apparently, however, your ‘right’ not to be offended now trumps my actual right to be offensive. Any offensive [sic] comments will be investigated (except for those we tweet ourselves). Police Scotland are, in this instance, no better than ambulance-chasing defence lawyers. Have you been offended? Please say you have! We can help you!

This was no rogue tweet either and, for that matter, no laughing matter. The Crown Office’s guidelines on ‘cases involving communications sent via social media’ makes this entirely clear. The monitoring of so-called offensive communications extends to “the resending or for example ‘liking’ or ‘retweeting’, of communications originally posted by others”. Doubtless the authorities would say they do not routinely invoke these powers.

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