Recently, when heavy snowfall in Britain threatened to derail 26-year-old Paul Chambers's travel plans, he decided to vent his frustrations on Twitter by tapping out a comment to amuse his friends. "Robin Hood airport is closed," he wrote. "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"
Unfortunately for Chambers, the police didn't see the funny side. A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the U.K.'s Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat. While he was in custody, police hacked into his Twitter account and deleted the controversial post. Detectives have also confiscated his iPhone, laptop and home computer.
After he was released on bail, Chambers was suspended from work by his employer pending an internal investigation, and has been banned from the Doncaster's Robin Hood airport for life. "I would never have thought, in a thousand years, that any of this would have happened because of a Twitter post," said Chambers. "I'm the most mild-mannered guy you could imagine."
Civil libertarian Tessa Mayes, an expert on privacy law and free speech issues, said, "Making jokes about terrorism is considered a thought crime, mistakenly seen as a real act of harm or intention to commit harm. The police's actions seem laughable and suggest desperation in their efforts to combat terrorism, yet they have serious repercussions for all of us. In a democracy, our right to say what we please to each other should be non-negotiable, even on Twitter."
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