UK Laws Are Not 'Fit For Social Media Age'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: British laws restricting what the police can say about criminal cases are 'not fit for the social media age (source paywalled; alternative source),' a government committee said in a report released Monday in Britain that highlighted how unchecked misinformation stoked riots last summer. Violent disorder, fueled by the far right, affected several towns and cities for days after a teenager killed three girls on July 29 at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England. In the hours after the stabbings, false claims that the attacker was an undocumented Muslim immigrant spread rapidly online. In a report looking into the riots, a parliamentary committee said a lack of information from the authorities after the attack 'created a vacuum where misinformation was able to grow.' The report blamed decades-old British laws, aimed at preventing jury bias, that stopped the police from correcting false claims. By the time the police announced the suspect was British-born, those false claims had reached millions.

The Home Affairs Committee, which brings together lawmakers from across the political spectrum, published its report after questioning police chiefs, government officials and emergency workers over four months of hearings. Axel Rudakubana, who was sentenced to life in prison for the attack, was born and raised in Britain by a Christian family from Rwanda. A judge later found there was no evidence he was driven by a single political or religious ideology, but was obsessed with violence. The committee's report acknowledged that it was impossible to determine 'whether the disorder could have been prevented had more information been published.' But it concluded that the lack of information after the stabbing 'created a vacuum where misinformation was able to grow, further undermining public confidence,' and that the law on contempt was not 'fit for the social media age.'

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