British Police Crackdown on... Water Fights?

[Zaune]

Link

A man will appear before magistrates next month for allegedly trying to organise a mass water fight via his mobile phone.

The prime minister said last week that the government would investigate whether social networking platforms should be shut down if they helped to "plot" crime in the wake of the riots.

The 20-year-old from Colchester was arrested on Friday after Essex police discovered the alleged plans circulating on the BlackBerry Messenger service and Facebook.

The unnamed man has been charged with "encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence" under the 2007 Serious Crime Act, police said.

He was arrested with another 20-year-old man the day the water fight was allegedly due to take place, and has been bailed to appear before Colchester magistrates on 1 September. The second man was released without charge.

The BlackBerry Messenger service, a closed communications network, was the social network of choice for organising many raids on shops and businesses during last week's riots in England.

A police spokesman declined to disclose whether Essex police had been monitoring the service since the riots. "Essex police use appropriate measures for whatever the crime and wherever our investigations lead us," he said.

Speaking during last Thursday's parliamentary debate on the riots, David Cameron said he would investigate whether social-networking sites should be shut down if they helped to "plot" crime. The prime minister said he would "look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality".

He has received support from some Tory backbenchers, including Louise Mensch, who likened such a ban to closing a stretch of rail network after an accident.

In 2008 there was a spate of mass water fights in British towns and cities that were organised through social networks. Most remained peaceful.This month a water fight attended by thousands of young Iranians attracted the attention of Tehran's morality police and led to a series of arrests.

[Feil]

I'm dismayed about the idea of prosecuting someone for planning something that isn't, in itself, a crime - assembling a large group of people to play a game. The crime is assembling a large group of people in a public place without the appropriate permit - and there's no way anybody can prove that he wasn't going to try to acquire a permit, or wouldn't have done so, or sought to rent a private location for his function, or just canceled the event... if he had been notified by the police that he needed a permit, rather than been arrested.

That said, preventing large-scale gatherings on public property without due permission is the police's business; and it's not unreasonable to bring the law against organizers of such events. They just applied the force of the law wrong: Before a crime is committed, you use the threat of the law to coerce proper behavior, not as a weapon to punish improper behavior. And, like I said, assembling a large group of people isn't a crime, so unless there is actual positive evidence that they were planning to do it in an improper place and/or without proper permission, the police went about this all wrong.

[Skgoa]

I would have to dig it up, but a couple of days ago some kid in the UK was convicted for "shouting and swearing at the police". Its kinda typical by now to see law enforcment making asses of themselves with their heavy handed approach to everything they deem inproper.