https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/07/burning-down-our-liberties/
A Times investigation published at the weekend has surely knocked the censorship deniers’ legs out from under them. Not only do people continue to be arrested in Britain for things they say online, it’s also been rising in recent years. There are now 30 arrests a day for ‘grossly offensive’ speech under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. And that’s only two bits of legislation, and some police forces didn’t respond to The Times’ inquiries, meaning the true number of speech arrests is likely to be much higher.
To put that into perspective, purely going by those incomplete numbers, Britain is comfortably arresting more people over speech today than America did during the First Red Scare, when the First Amendment was essentially toothless and the American elites were gripped by anti-Communist hysteria. Greg Lukianoff, president of the US’s Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (or FIRE), crunched those numbers a few years ago, back when the number of ‘grossly offensive’ arrests we knew about was significantly lower.
HebrideanUltraTerfHecate /
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2025-04-08 13:43:34
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"content": "https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/07/burning-down-our-liberties/\n\nA Times investigation published at the weekend has surely knocked the censorship deniers’ legs out from under them. Not only do people continue to be arrested in Britain for things they say online, it’s also been rising in recent years. There are now 30 arrests a day for ‘grossly offensive’ speech under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. And that’s only two bits of legislation, and some police forces didn’t respond to The Times’ inquiries, meaning the true number of speech arrests is likely to be much higher.\n\nTo put that into perspective, purely going by those incomplete numbers, Britain is comfortably arresting more people over speech today than America did during the First Red Scare, when the First Amendment was essentially toothless and the American elites were gripped by anti-Communist hysteria. Greg Lukianoff, president of the US’s Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (or FIRE), crunched those numbers a few years ago, back when the number of ‘grossly offensive’ arrests we knew about was significantly lower.",
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