This tweet is a Section 127 offence

Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 is a notorious blot on the statute book, epitomised by the ultimately unsuccessful prosecution of Paul Chambers (the Twitter Joke Trial) under the first limb of the section.  That concerns messages of a grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing character sent by means of a public communications network.

The section is such a mess that the Director of Public Prosecutions had to devise a set of social media prosecution guidelines in attempt to avoid criminalising a substantial proportion of the population.

The less well known second limb of Section 127 is also extraordinarily broad.  It catches anyone who sends – again by means of a public communications network - a message that he knows to be false for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another.

The second limb was originally designed in the 1930s to catch a particularly unpleasant type of hoaxer who would send telegrams to people informing them that a relative was seriously ill (see Hansard).  Now, like the first limb, it can catch tweets.  (Tweets qualify because they are sent across public telecommunications networks.)

Putting aside the potential for the second limb to catch all sorts of harmless pranks, we can have some fun with it.

Consider the tweet that forms the title of this post: “This tweet is a Section 127 offence.” Could that tweet fall (however theoretically) within the second limb of Section 127?

The first requirement is that the message be false.  If the tweet is not an offence under Section 127, its message is false.  But if it is false, then Section 127 can bite.  But if that means the tweet is an offence, then the message is true and the tweet cannot be an offence. (For self-referential paradoxes, see here)  

Is the tweet sent for the purpose of annoying another?  Hardly (and indeed ‘another’ may suggest something targeted at a particular person). However a substantial section of the population detests logical puzzles and paradoxes and may conceivably be annoyed to discover that they have been lured into such a maddening game by following the link to this post in the tweet.

Finally, S.127 requires that the sender knows the message to be false. The tweet’s assertion that it is an offence under Section 127 is both preposterous and, by virtue of that falsity, potentially caught by S.127; and so (putting annoyance on one side) in turn possibly true.  I’ll leave to the philosophers whether I know to be false a message that I believe to be false, yet which endlessly loops through truth and falsity. 

Everyman and the data inspector

[Now dedicated to the memory of John Blundell, who died on 22 July 2014. Find out the connection here.]

Everyman is dreaming of a future.

Data Inspector: Good morning, citizen. We have reason to believe you have data in this house.

Everyman: Who told you that?

DI: Someone who knows.

Everyman: It would be a strange house that didn’t have data in it, wouldn’t it?

DI: All the same, we have to act on reports received.

Everyman: At dawn?

DI: You heard us. We require entry to inspect the data on these premises. We suspect it may be inaccurate, incomplete or irrelevant to the purposes for which it was collected or further processed.

Everyman: This is my private house. It’s my personal information.

DI: Your personal information? We’ve heard it names other people. That makes it their information.

Everyman: It’s still my private house.

DI: From which you run a little business on eBay.  No household exception for you.

Everyman: I don’t have to answer your questions.

DI: Ah, but you do.  How else can we perform our duty to the public?

Everyman: What about my privacy?

DI: Privacy begins at home. So that's where we start.

Everyman: By invading my privacy?

DI: We protect privacy, we don’t invade it.

Everyman: You seem to be about to invade my home.

DI: Sometimes you have to sacrifice privacy to preserve privacy.

Everyman: So what do you want to know?

DI: Who is the data controller in this house?

Everyman: How should I know that?

DI: You are required to know that. The data controller should have notified us.

Everyman: Well you’ve got me there, haven’t you?

DI: When did you last clean your data?

Everyman: Clean?

DI: Scrub it - remove excessive, irrelevant or out of date data. We like to see hygienic data practices, citizen.  Dirty data is a menace.

Everyman: Sounds like the last public health campaign.

DI: Exactly.  Unclean data spreads.  We could have a national data contamination crisis on our hands.  You know our motto: “Healthy data makes a healthy mind”.

Everyman: So you think I’ve got a secret store of mouldy old data hidden away here, do you? 

DI: I’m sure of it.  We have a duty to discharge and you’re starting to be obstructive.

Everyman: What else do you want?

DI: Do all your appliances conform to privacy design standards?

Everyman: And if they don’t?

DI: You’ll be put on our list.

Everyman: What list is that?

DI: The privacy offenders register. Everyone should know who can and can’t be trusted with their data.

Everyman: How long would I be on it?

DI: Permanently.

Everyman: No right to be forgotten, then?

DI: Not where privacy breaches are concerned, my friend. Far too serious.

Everyman: Well, thank you for your interest. Now please leave.

DI: Not that simple, citizen.  Sledgehammer, please.

Everyman: (wakes up).

Yoani Sánchez' digital newspaper, 14ymedio, is online

The daily Web newspaper 14ymedio looks like a fully traditional digital "newspaper" with news, sports, culture, opinion, fashion tips, weather, etc.

The 14ymedio "declaration of intentions" says the team is committed to promoting truth, freedom and human rights, without ideological or partisan ties -- they hope to provide a space for respectful debate and to contribute to the peaceful transition to democracy. A group of 28 writers and intellectuals, including Mario Vargas Llosa and Lech Walesa, signed a request that the Cuban government respect 14ymedio and allow it to exist with free expression.

Evidently some pro-government people were not happy with the launch of 14ymedio -- the Cuban domain name server was hacked, and Cubans looking for 14ymedio.com were automatically redirected to a pro-government Web site. Doug Madory of Renesys reported that the hack was local to Cuba and the site was visible in foreign nations. Madory speculated that the hack had been done by someone inside ETECSA.

Today, relatively few people on the island can afford to access 14ymedio online, but stripped down PDF and text versions are available. For the first issue, they were quite minimal -- hopefully they will improve -- becoming something like the daily New York Times Digest. It could also be included on flash drives that are regularly distributed on the island. Regardless, I hope the hack was a rogue action and the paper turns out to be the impartial forum envisioned by the founders.

Mobile email demand disrupts cellular service, but ETECSA is growing

Last week we reported on "growing pains" for mobile email as reported in Granma, but a new Washington Post (AP) story elaborates upon the problems. They report that the new mobile email service has performed poorly and also disrupted the regular voice call and text message service. (the story in Spanish here).

The report presents several anecdotes along with discussion of the high price of mobile service and ETECSA's business. Most interesting was a statement by Emilio Morales of the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group that 54 percent of mobile payments to ETECSA come from the Cuban diaspora, mostly in the US, and that a new class of roughly 400,000 independent businessmen and their employees make heavy use of cellphones for advertising with text-message as well as ordinary business calls. It seems that in spite of growing pains, ETECSA is a growing source of hard currency.

Yoani Sánchez' digital newspaper, 14ymedio

In a recent post on a different blog, I pointed out that the Internet "crowd" had quickly ruined the reputation of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling but that visibility on the Internet gave Yoani Sánchez cover to speak harshly and eloquently against Raúl Castro -- "a man alone in the crowd."

Sánchez, her husband and a staff will begin publication of their digital newspaper, 14ymedio, next week -- a further sign of her growing confidence in speaking out.

Growing pains for mobile email

Granma reports that demand for nauta.cu email from mobile phones (100.000 new users) has led to congestion on the cellular network of "over 500" base stations, so ETECSA is expanding the network. They will add 80 new base stations -- 15 are already online.

Congestion is not the only problem they are facing. It seems many of the phones ETECSA sells do not support GPRS and ETECSA support staff are not trained to cope with the variety of phones people have.

I don't doubt that they will correct these problems, but we are still talking about 3G service in limited geographic areas. As I've suggested earlier, upgrading to modern infrastructure would require significant investment and perhaps legalizing satellite access could bridge the gap.

(Thanks to Doug Madory for the tip).