This just totally sucks and fucks syphilitic arse:
More here: http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,914496,00.html
So someone does the security service’s fucking job for them, showing how extremely exposed UK plane travellers STILL are (despite 11/9, despite looming Iraq war, despite terror warnings all over globe) and they fucking ARREST him.
He had a fucking REPLICA!!! gun.
Shame UK police obviously have replica brains. From Martian morons.
He smuggled a replica gun on board an airplane knowing that he should by all rights be in serious trouble for it, openly admitted to it, and you expect him not to get into trouble for it? I’ve no doubt New Of The World are thrilled with the free publicity. I’d be more cross if he wasn’t arrested.
He still broke the law, though.
Having said that, I’d say it’ll be thrown out of court.
I’m happy for him to be arrested, if those in charge of leaving wide open such a huge glaring fucking security loophole are also arrested, charged with endangering human lives, and dismissed and barred from their current professions.
In a somewhat similar incident in my city, two TV journalists were arrested for hiring kids to buy alcohol with fake IDs (provided by the journalists) from off licenses.
When arrested, they protested that they were “doing the job of the police”, and therefore should receive praise, not condemnation. They also refused to cooperate with the police to say where they got the very well-made fake IDs, claiming some sort of imagined “reporter’s privelege” for actively participating in a criminal act.
:rolleyes:
I don’t know what class in journalism school teaches people that somehow journalists are above the law, or should not expect to be treated as the rest of society - or whether it’s some sort of superiority complex like “Look at me, I’m on TV every night. In this society, that means I’m more than a God. No way am I a loser!”
Journalists who break the law deserve equal treatment under the law.
And who’s to say who’s a journalist anyhow? There’s no professional licensing exam or bonding. Can I claim I’m a journalist too if I have a blog, so I can try smuggling box cutters onto planes, and walk away with a slap on the wrist because “I’ve done the job of the police”? Maybe I should try to rob banks, so I can write about bank security. I’ll bet I’d get a big reward too! :rolleyes:
I know I should wish that these people in the OP are treated equally under the law, but the vindictive side of me thinks that maybe they should be made an example of for fucking with airport security.
Isn’t that the same line of bull that hackers spout when they unleash a virus?
“I was just trying to show them how vulnerable their system was to attack”. By attacking it.
I ain’t buying it. He knew it was illegal, he should pay the price. And a little bit of the price the next scumbag who pulls this prank has to pay.
Um…
…is a crime in the UK? Going out to buy a toy gun with the express purpose of using it to hold up a bank is illegal? What’s it called, the Toys R Us Law?
What do they do if you go out to buy a toy gun as a birthday present for your nephew, and on the way home you decide to use it to hold up a bank?
Interesting notion that journalists are above the law, especially Rupert Murdoch’s employees.
It seems that what he actually did was take a couple of toy guns onto a charter flight before the plane was actually boarding with the help of a catering lorry driver - no mention of back-handers but if cash didn’t exchange hands, I’ll eat my keyboard. It would seem he couldn’t have boarded an emply plane without the help.
This is a “loophole” ? Maybe, I suppose.
Anyway, maybe, just maybe, the NoTW should have approached the police first before sensationalising and plastering the ‘story’ all over their paper.
He might get shot, is the answer. IIRC a guy with a toy gun/lighter got shot in London about 2 years ago (can’t find the cite). But there is a proliferation of replicas at the moment:
From jjimm’s first link:
“Fashion accessories?”
Who carries around a fake gun as a “fashion accessory?”
That’s exceptionally odd.
I wear one all the time. It’s a bugger to coordnate with my off-the-shoulder evening wear but these trials are sent to test us … You should see this wonderful burgundy shoulder holster I got *what * a snip ! Matches my new shoes perfectly …
Juvenile people who want to appear as though they’re gangsters. Or more particularly, “gangstas” - cf. Da Ali G Show.
Replica guns are considered a problem by the police in this country, for the fairly simple reason that they can do almost anything a real gun can (i.e. scare the s**t out of you and make you hand over your wallet). I suppose replicas are less of a worry in countries where the real thing is more readily available.
The police have been known to shoot people who carry replica guns, again for a fairly simple reason: they don’t know whether it’s a replica or the real thing until the person carrying it pulls the trigger, and they are not about to risk their own lives or those of innocent bystanders by letting that happen. Personally, if I’m ever confronted by armed police, my plan is to do exactly what they tell me to, and sort it all out at the police station later.
In this country, a criminal can be (and often is) charged based on the victim’s reasonable perception of what is happening. From the New York Penal Law:
That’s how a guy can be convicted of armed robbery when the “firearm” in question is actually a banana or finger, pointed under a coat.
So yes, this isn’t merely “Toys R Us.”
Yes - using a fake firearm (pretending it’s real) is illegal, if you do a hold up with it.
But in this case, the journalist didn’t point the gun at anyone’s head, didn’t try to actually hold up the plane with it, just photographed himself with it to show that it could be done.
Much like a white hat hacker who files a valid (if unsolicited) security audit on a site/server, but stops far short of defacing it.
The point it, this guy managed to get onto a plane with something that for all intents and purposes could have been a real weapon. He exposed a security flaw - such a flaw that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people many times before with hijackings on planes and elsewhere - and he is punished for it.
If our police aren’t doing their job, the public needs to know. It’s not like he was baiting or entrapping.
Sorry istara but add me to the list of people who think it’s good for the law to be carried out according to the rules, rather than dropping a case because someone’s intentions might be good.
Don’t worry about it - the case will be dropped, the author can play at “fearless journalist who’d face jail to get the facts”, the news of the world sells more papers, and hopefully the airport authories (who’d much rather this mess disappeared as quietly as possible than got lots more attention) will be so embarrassed
they’ll even take security safely for a month or so.
Your overall point is valid, I agree. But the implementation of it is impossible to do fairly and justly.
Anyone caught with a firearm/knife/prohibited item can claim they are doing it to “help the police”. How are they to know if that’s for real? And should they be forced to make that distinction?
Like I said - who exactly is a “journalist”, anyways? What would qualify one person to “help” the police, and not another? I’m a pretty good engineer, with two degrees and professional licensing. Am I qualified to try to come up with weapons and dangerous devices that can pass through metal detectors, and then test them out, to “help” the police as an unwanted security consultant?
(I’m using “Help” in quotes to mock you; rather, I’m saying that I do not agree that it would be helping them at all.)
Typically, the term “white hat” hacker to me means those creeps who feel that they have the right to trespass and access data where they are clearly not wanted, but who justify it on the bounds that they “do no harm”. Those people are unwanted, and depending on the situation and jurisdiciton, criminals - and should be treated as such. Or, are you referring to hackers hired specifically by a company to test security? Because that analogy won’t hold, since these journalists took it on themselves to “help” the police.
If the goal of these journalists was truly an altruistic “assisting” of the police, they could have informed the police via their solicitor/attorneys, blocked out the face and distinguishing marks of the person in the photo, and provided the information privately to the police, so they could improve security. But they chose not to do that - why? Because, IMO, this is nothing more than a dangerous and disingenuous stunt to sell papers. Nothing more, nothing less.
NO NO NO! I mis-typed! I mean I’m NOT mocking you…
Yup.
“Today, on the RatingsWhore News Network: to show how pathetic our government’s security precautions are, we exploded an anthrax bomb in a crowded nightclub. Tune in to see explicit and detailed instructions on how you can do the same! Next up: naked women explain why the terrorists will get you, no matter what you do.”
In terms of being a “valid” journalist - being in the full time employ of a national UK newspaper would pretty much do.
For freelancers there are other accreditations one can get.
Steve - 
but the point is that it was a fake gun. If a fake anthrax bomb was exploded (talcum powder) that would be the equivalent.
But doing it in a crowded public place - and causing panic - is a whole different ballgame. Now if this guy had pulled a fake weapond mid flight, sure he should be prosecuted, for breach of the peace etc, whatever UK law has. But he didn’t harm anyone (he couldn’t have harmed anyone as it was fake) nor alarm anyone, he just carried out an investigation into slackness that the security forces had failed themselves to audit.