In case anyone hasn't come across this case, Mr Chambers made a comment on his Twitter feed expressing frustration at the closure of his local airport:
"Crap! 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!"
Pretty normal for Twitter, you'd think, and frankly rather mild for the Internet as a whole. Sadly, the Crown Prosecution Service didn't agree. When they got wind of this comment, they decided to prosecute him for sending a message on a public network that was "grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character".
Quite apart from the WTF that we have such a fuzzy law on our books, there is no evidence that Mr Chambers intended to menace anyone, or that anyone in fact felt menaced. This is apparently a case of the CPS deciding that Mr Chambers must be guilty of something, and then hunting up an obscure law to fit. (We actually have a law specifically dealing with bomb threats, but that would have required the CPS to make a more solid case so they (ab)used an obscenity law instead.)
Now, as an average netizen, I'd normally respond with a comment like:
"These vindictive fascist little jobsworths will be first against the wall when the revolution comes."
But given the CPS's apparent inability to recognise hyperbolic comments, I wouldn't dream of saying any such thing.
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