Ignore the ignoramuses
April 1, 2016 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....ore-the-ignoramuses/
Social media has given newfound freedom. It is hailed as a new horizon in freedom of speech, since it gives everyone the opportunity to have their say.
Freedom of speech has, however, never been about everyone having their say. Freedom of expression has always been about safeguarding against censorship and silence.
Social media has allowed news to reach people in real time. You can follow the cricket as it happens, ball by ball, on social media. But it has also given people the licence to say what they want and how they want, without being held accountable.
Freedom of expression is mangled and abused on a daily basis on social media, but none more so than in blogs about Guyanese politics. The most vitriolic exchanges take place on blogs discussing Guyanese politics.
Very often the exchanges are about race and about allegations of who is racial and who is not, and which group does what and which does not. These exchanges add nothing to the debate on issues in Guyana. They are an abuse of freedom of speech.
The police are investigating certain comments made on social media about the President; it is alleged that some of the comments were threatening. Others, it is said, had racial overtones.
These types of statements have been appearing almost on a daily basis since social media like Facebook was established. People have been hurling racial and political epithets across the racial and political divide for a long time now.
The police may be opening a can of worms by trying to investigate these comments. Once they move against persons, you will find persons digging up material on other persons who would have made similar statements, and the police are going to find themselves with an endless list of comments to investigate.
The police have major hurdles to overcome in any investigation about racial comments. Firstly, saying that someone is racial or racist (and there is a difference between the two) is not the same as inciting racial hatred.
A lot of people have said many things about US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump. He has been accused of all kinds of things, but saying that someone is so and so, does not translate to inciting hatred. An offence of inciting race hate has to satisfy many elements, and this is the task of any police investigation.
Secondly, the police will have to find the individuals concerned. Many of the posts may be fake posts. The persons may not exist and even if they do, the police will find it impossible, outside of a confession, to prove that the person actually made the offending post.
Thirdly, there is the jurisdictional issue. For a criminal offence to be brought before the courts in Guyana, it has to be established that the offence took place in Guyana. Cyberspace crimes face a jurisdictional hurdle. Where did the crime take place, on land or in cyberspace? Even if the offence can be narrowed down to Guyana, there is still the issue of how the authorities are going to prove that the offending text originated from a Guyanese location.
Foreign technical help will have to be sought, and this is not going to be easy, because the agencies that can provide this information are not going to have the time to waste with an investigation about someone calling someone a racist or making common threats.
Fourthly, there is the unresolved issue as to whether Facebook is a public space. Some of the offences which are being investigated require that the statements be made in public media. Social networks such as Facebook are not public media.
The internet is a network of computers linked together. Facebook is an interface that links persons who agree to be linked together. Facebook is therefore a private network in which people can decide which of their friends and their friends’ can see what they post. Blogs may open a private network to comments from outside of the network, but the external comment can only be seen amongst those on the network.
The police, therefore, may be unnecessarily exhausting their time in trying to prosecute persons who made offending statements against the President of Guyana. As obnoxious as these statements may be, unless there is an imminent threat to the President or unless racial hatred has been incited, it may be better just to ignore ignorant and stupid blogs.
