You know that old adage about not saying “bomb” on an airplane? It turns out that it extends to Twitter as well. The Telegraph reports that a South Yorkshire man was arrested last week after joking on Twitter that he would blow an airport “sky high” if his flight was delayed.

When the Robin Hood airport closed due to snow on January 6, Paul Chambers tweeted:

“Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

While perhaps in poor taste, the comment was intended (and was interpreted by friends) as a joke. However, when police arrived at Chambers’s doorstep on January 13, the laughing stopped.

From the Telegraph:

“‘My first thought upon hearing it was the police was that perhaps a member of my family had been in an accident,’ 26-year-old Mr Chambers told The Independent.

“‘Then they said I was being arrested under the Terrorism Act and produced a piece of paper. It was a print-out of my Twitter page. That was when it dawned on me.’”

While being questioned on suspicion of conspiring to create a bomb hoax at the police station, Chambers had to explain to the police department what Twitter was and how it worked.

While Chambers has been released on bail pending further inquiries on February 11, his laptop, iPhone and home computer have been seized. The Twitter post was also deleted.

The question of when speech becomes akin to yelling “fire in a crowded theater” is becoming less clear in this new age of anti-terrorism law. Twitter and other social networks only make the situation that much more murkier, as both privacy and free speech issues become part of the equation.

While we think that the police overreacted in this case, this is a good reminder to be aware of what you tweet. What might seem innocuous in one context might be interpreted as threatening in another.

[img credit:SoulRider.222]

Tags: freedom of speech, law, twitter

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A Twitter argument allegedly resulted in murder last month, and New York police may subpoena Tweets as evidence in the case, according to a newspaper report.

Jameg Blake, 22, is accused of fatally shooting Kwame Dancy (pictured), also 22, in a shotgun blast to the neck – he pleaded not guilty this Wednesday.

The Harlem murder case, which allegedly took place in an apartment building on W. 132nd St. on December 1, may turn out to be the first in which Tweets are used as evidence in a murder trial.

The NY Daily News writes:

It started as a simple Twitter beef, 140-character spurts of anger by two young men who grew up together.

Hours before the shooting, Dancy may have taunted Blake with a tweet: “N—–s is lookin for u don’t think I won’t give up ya address for a price betta chill asap!” … Blake’s Twitter account is also full of online disses, though only one tweet mentions Dancy by name: “R.I.P. Kwame” on Dec.3.

A police source said the messages may be subpoenaed to bolster the theory that there was bad blood between the two old pals.

It’s not clear to what extent the Tweets are being implicated: certainly Twitter provides a juicy angle for newspapers at this point, and the relationship between the two appears to have been strained in the past. With the press quickly latching on to stories like the “Craigslist Killer”, it’s also worth reiterating that Twitter is simply a platform — how people use the service is not something under their control.

The Daily News quotes the victim’s mother, Madeline Smith, expressing her disbelief: “That’s not a reason to shoot somebody, that’s crazy. I don’t know what’s going on with that Twitter thing.”

Tags: harlem, murder, new york, twitter

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Naquan Thompson escaped from a Staten Island stationhouse on Wednesday after managing to slip off his handcuffs while being escorted out of the prison — and one cameraman got it all on tape.

The incident — which led to a wild chase and the eventual capture of the fugitive — was a huge embarrassment for the police department, and the cop responsible has been suspended.

According to the New York Post, officers didn’t realize their gaffe until a cameraman, who took footage of the chain gang escort and watched the event unfold, pointed out that the man in question had escaped. To make matters worse, video of the unfathomable incident was posted to the web, which means the world can watch the Staten Island Police Department’s big blunder.

You can watch it for yourself below:

Tags: prisoner escape, staten island prisoner, viral video

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It all started because a California police officer went over his monthly texting limit on his department-issued phone: a lawsuit that could have important ramifications on how we use cell phones and other mobile devices at work.

This spring, the Supreme Court plans to hear a case that sprung from a lawsuit SWAT team Sergeant Jeff Quon and three other officers filed against the police department in Ontario, California, after the police chief read their personal text messages. If you think the idea of your boss keeping tabs on your bad grammar and heavy use of emoticons is bad, Quon had also used his work pager to engage in some pretty serious sexting.

To be fair to his boss, Quon did sign a city policy that states that he’s only allowed limited personal use of department electronics and that he shouldn’t expect any measure of privacy — so maybe he should have thought before he started sending racy messages into the ether. Regardless, Quon and Co. won the battle at the local level, on the grounds that the chief reading the texts amounted to “unreasonable search,” which the U.S. Constitution doesn’t truck with.

Now the city has appealed to the Supreme Court, who will decide in June whether or not Quon was in the right, and, more importantly, whether you have the right to text with abandon, free from the peering eyes of your employers.

With mobile technology becoming more and more entrenched in our lives, this Supreme Court decision could be a doozy.

What do you think? Should your texts be as open for review as your performance? Or are some thing sacred?

[img credit: Nate Steiner]

Tags: california, iphone, lawsuit, sexting, Supreme Court, SWAT, texting

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A blog posting by Christopher Soghoian reveals that Sprint served up customer location data over 8 million times to local police forces during the course of one year. The shocking part is that this was done without any warrant from the courts. Soghoian learned this while he was a college student at Indiana University, and attended a surveillance industry conference in Washington DC.

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Over the past 3 plus years, we’ve seen Twitter embraced by a variety of different communities — think big brands, small businesses, PR and marketing types, media outlets, journalists, moms, and public service agencies. Most of us know, however, that for every positive Twitter use case there’s one that’s just as negative.

There have already been stories of burglars hip to Twitter who rob unwitting victims that have tweeted their whereabouts, and now the New York Daily News is reporting that street gangs in New York have found both a tailored purpose and practice for the micro medium.

The profile piece highlights how gang members, ambivalent to the fact that their tweets may be watched, are not only using Twitter to purposefully and openly stir the pot with rival gangs, but are also using it to coordinate fights. These Twitterers attempt to avoid detection by using street lingo, but their activities are constantly being monitored by police and investigators.

The story follows a recent incident where, according to the piece, “a boy shot in the leg … may have been targeted because of a battle the Original Young Gangsters crew started on Twitter.” As mentioned, Manhattan police are aware of the gang members’ activities and are keeping a vigilant eye on Twitter in the hopes of finding evidence or preventing brawls. There have even been Twitter success stories, but just as gang members have adapted to a new medium, we’d expect them to adapt to the surveillance measures as well.

If anything, this story serves as a reminder of how powerful real-time communication is and that it can be used by both heroes and villains.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, johnandersonphoto.

Tags: twitter

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Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

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In a bizarre case involving teen YouTube sensation Justin Bieber and a riotous crowd of his fans, a record exec from Island Def Jam Records was arrested Friday for, among other things, failing to Tweet when told to by authorities.

When the Beiber event at Roosevelt Field mall became unruly (video below), police appealed to the artist’s label to send a Tweet telling the crowd to leave. When that allegedly didn’t happen, police arrested James Roppo, a senior vice president of Island Def Jam Records, for “endangering the welfare of a minor and obstructing government administration”.

An Associated Press feed reads:

Police arrested a vice president from Bieber’s record label, Island Def Jam Records, saying he wasn’t cooperating with attempts to disperse the crowd. James Roppo, 44, of Hoboken, N.J., was charged with a series of misdemeanours, including endangering the welfare of children and obstructing governmental administration.

“We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message,” said Nassau County Police Det. Lt. Kevin Smith. “By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.”

The report doesn’t put the police in a good light, especially considering that Bieber’s feed does contain Tweets asking the crowd to leave.

But all may not be as it seems: contrary to the AP reports, the NY Daily News implies that the arrest was for sending out updates that Bieber was signing autographs even after the crowd had dispersed.

Roppo is pleading not guilty to the charges.

[via MediaMemo]

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Britain is fast becoming the reality show of the oligarchic society of the Oceanian province of Airstrip One, envisaged in George Orwell’s book 1984, and will finally bring into being the harbinger of Orwell’s vision of state spying.

Remember his world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, public mind control and the voiding of citizens’ rights? Well, it is about to become law in Britain, according to an article in the Telegraph newspaper.

In the book, Winston Smith, an intellectual and editor responsible for historical revisionism, lives out a meagre existence in a one-room apartment on a subsistence diet. In an alcove beside his “telescreen”, he believes his thoughts can remain private, but he is found out by the Thought Police, or Thinkpol, who spy on everyone, and is sent off for interrogation, electroshock and reintegration.

Perhaps exaggerated beyond its social significance, it is still true that there is widespread opposition to the almost exponential volumes of surveillance and invasion of privacy in Britain. And let’s not forget that this is a country that already has one and a half times as many surveillance cameras as China: in Britain today there are 4.2 million closed-circuit TV cameras; one camera for every 14 people.

Now, according to the Telegraph, it is recommended that, “653 public bodies will be given access to the information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors”.

Not only that, but these bodies need not seek the permission of a judge to obtain this personal information, but “simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority”. While the authorities will not have access to the content of personal emails or mobile phone calls, they “can see the internet addresses, dates, times and identify recipients of calls”.

Just like in Oceania, the new law will expose citizens’ personal data via the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which for years has been established as a euphemism for “fighting terrorism”. That term, presumably, excludes state terrorism.

The shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, said he feared the abuse of data intercept: “The big danger in all of this is ‘mission creep’. This government keeps on introducing new powers to tackle terrorism and organised crime, which end up being used for completely different purposes. We have to stop that from happening”. Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, criticised the cost of the scheme, and said it would in effect be “state spying”.

According to the Daily Mail newspaper: “The government also deploys millions of security personnel, which include uniformed, official security guards who work along side police, patrolling the streets and others who bug phones, scour the internet for sensitive material and block international TV news bulletins…Figures released showed that in Britain the number of Big Brother snooping missions by police, town halls and other public bodies has soared by 44 per cent in two years.”

Remember, in Britain and coming soon: every single day, every word you say, every game you play, every night you stay, they’ll be watching you.

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Every breath you take, Britain’s Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” will be watching you

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In an age where privacy is becoming increasingly hard to come by, the British government is further hastening its demise for citizens in the UK. According to The Telegraph, all internet service providers and telecommunication companies will be legally required to store records of all personal communications for one year.

Moreover, that data will be made available to a wide range of 653 public bodies including police, fire and ambulance services, the Financial Services Authority, prison governors and local councils. Obtaining access to the data won’t even require the permission of a judge; authorization from a senior police official or equivalent department head at a local authority will suffice.

The original plan, named rather ominously the “Intercept Modernisation Programme,” was to create a single government in-house database to compile and store all the data, but widespread opposition and privacy concerns held officials back from that brink. Nevertheless the new legislation, slated to come before Parliament after the next general election, will dramatically increase the amount and types of personal communications data that can be relatively easily obtained. And of course, UK taxpayers will be footing the bill for all that storage, to the tune of £2 billion over the next 10 years.

All of this is, of course, under the guise of fighting terrorism. Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling indicated one of the many problems with the sweeping legislation is the potential for “mission creep,” in which new powers introduced ostensibly for one purpose “end up being used for completely different purposes. We have to stop that from happening.”

What do you think about the new UK law? How much access is too much? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Nikada

Tags: COMMUNICATIONS, isps, law, legislation, privacy, uk

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You might not be familiar with the name Colton Harris Moore, but he’s quickly becoming somewhat of a local legend in Washington state, and finding fans on Facebook in the process.

Police are currently trying to find Moore, who is suspected in numerous burglaries in the area, and, much more intriguingly, stealing small airplanes and crash landing them.

On Facebook, the “Colton Harris Moore Fan Club” (and yes, there’s a t-shirt too) has attracted nearly 3,000 members. The group’s description:

“Colton Harris-Moore is Western Washington’s new Jesse James (without the murders). Without a doubt one of the greatest and most notable outlaws to come from an otherwise [expletive], boring area. Some of his greatest achievements include the Kamikaze theft and crash landing of 3 airplanes (with no flight training) as well as commandeering a couple boats. Let’s hope that he remains healthy, free and at large for a long time! Fly Colton, Fly!”

Although Moore’s crimes may be intriguing, he is dangerous. In his most recent suspected encounter with police, he shot at a sheriff’s deputy. Furthering the legend though, this segment that aired on the Today Show this morning:

Tags: colton harris moore, facebook

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“We are shocked and saddened by the loss of some of the world’s most loved brands. Our thoughts are with the families of those affected by this tragic chain of events and we are now investigating several leads.” stated Police Sgt. Pete Martin.

Today’s press conference comes just hours after the unconfirmed deaths of Apple, AT&T, and Pepsi and only days after Nike and the NBA were both found dead together in a bloody crime scene in the lower east side of downtown.

Several days ago we received news that Kraft Foods had been found dead after a neighbor reported a foul stench emanating from his home. Police later found Mr. Foods tied to a chair, apparently dead due to asphyxiation from imitation cheese powder. And before that Starbucks, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Best Buy were all found dead in a string of suspicious car accidents and drug overdoses.

Police believe that these events are connected and are urging members of the design community to remain calm and report any suspicious activity.

Sgt. Martin also announced a reward to anyone who offers information leading to the cause of all these tragic events. There are several ways to help:

1. Sign up to participate in the Brand Murder Design Contest
2. Redesign the murdered designs
3. Solicit votes for your designs

Martin said in a later statement that who ever gets the most votes will win several prizes including:

• Apple: 15 inch MacBook Pro
• Microsoft: XBox Elite
• Nintendo: Wii
• Best Buy: $100 gift card
• AT&T: $100 gift card
• Nike: $150 gift card
• NBA: $100 gift card
• Starbucks: $50 gift card
• Pepsi: 12 pack
• Kraft: 3 boxes of Macaroni & Cheese

After further pressure from the press, Martin reiterated that the winner of this contest will receive ALL of the above prizes. So don’t wait, head over to Brand Murder and help with the investigation.

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