You’ve heard that you shouldn’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater, right? We’ve found what may be the Twitter equivalent—threatening to blow up an airport via Twitter in an age of internet speed and terrorist threats.
The Internet Innovation Alliance pointed us to this story from the UK in which a frustrated traveler tweeted to 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!!”
A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat.
After he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation, and has, he says, been banned from the Doncaster airport for life.
While it has happened in the United States, Mr Chambers is thought to be the first person in the United Kingdom to be arrested for comments posted on Twitter.
On 13 January, after apparently receiving a tip-off from a member of the public, police arrived at Mr Chambers’ office. “I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they’d never heard of it,” he said. “Then they asked all about my home life, and how work was going, and other personal things. The lead investigator kept asking, ‘Do you understand why this is happening?’ and saying, ‘It is the world we live in’.”
He has been bailed until 11 February, when he will be told whether or not he will be charged with conspiring to create a bomb hoax. In the interim, detectives have confiscated his iPhone, laptop and home computer.
Tags: Internet Speed, Twitter