Watch Your Tweets! How Twitter can put you on the no-fly list.

It’s pretty common knowledge that you don’t want to joke about bombs or weapons at the airport security checkpoint. Or that it’s a bad idea to phone in a bomb threat, because you’re running late and you want to hold the plane. (It’s happened.) But now we can add another lesson to the list: Don’t make sarcastic jokes about blowing up airports on Twitter.

A fellow named Paul Chambers was frustrated with the heavy snows that closed Doncaster Sheffield Robin Hood Airport (great name). He was getting concerned that the delays would ground his own flight one week later. So he hit Twitter with the following comment:

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!

Dumb? Misguided? Foolish? Clueless? Self-indulgent? All of the above?

No matter what you call it, the British police found it less than charming, and paid Mr. Chambers a visit. He was arrested for making a bomb threat. They confiscated his laptop, phone, and desktop hard drive. And now, he’s been convicted for the lesser (but still serious) charge of section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, for sending an “indecent, obscene or menacing” message. He was not only convicted, harming his career as an accounting, but he had to pay a £385 fine, a £15 “victims’ surcharge,” and another £600 in legal fees. Ouch.

A judge argued that the comment was “of a menacing nature in the context of the times in which we live.” But now, Twitter is full of further menacing messages tagged #twitterjoketrial as a show of solidarity and protest.

I feel bad for the guy. Yes, he was being stupid, “in the context of the times in which we live,” but he wasn’t really threatening anyone. Now, having joked about blowing up an airport, he’s not only a convicted criminal, he’s probably on the no-fly list.

Source: ThisIs50