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The following is a summary of a Breitbart article:
The office of the first Muslim mayor of London Sadiq Khan has set aside millions of pounds to fund police operated “online hate crime hubs” which will work with social media providers to criminalize “trolls” who “target… individuals and communities.”
The London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) will spend £1,730,726 of taxpayer funds to police online speech, as announced in a recent statement.
The program is described as “involving a dedicated police team [backed by] volunteers,” who will be collaborating with social media providers for filtering and identifying online infractions, identifying the locations of the perpetrators, and then allocating “the appropriate force.”
Earlier this year, the EU announced that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft have “committed” to working more closely with each countries’ national governments and law enforcement agencies to help them “criminalize” supposed “illegal hate speech online.”
Section 127 of the Communications Act of 2003 in the UK is used to prosecute “internet trolls” who “[use a] public electronic communications network in order to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety,” and it can result in a six month prison term or a fine up to £5,000. Convictions for such crimes have increased tenfold in the past decade, where 1,209 people were found guilty compared with 143 in 2004, according to the Ministry of Justice.
Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, explained “Pure rants, very childish [people online] are increasingly criminalized, and as a result of that the police is becoming more and more involved in controlling our morality. … [The police are] almost playing the role of a moral police. And instead of dealing with real crime in the offline world, [the police] find its very convenient to ‘send the message’ in the online world because it’s a relatively easy thing to do. … And what I’m really worried about, is that the whole freedom of speech becomes compromised whenever people have to think twice about what they say.”
Section 127 was the law used to prosecute the Northern Irish Pastor James McConnel who made “grossly offensive” remarks about Islam during a sermon which was broadcast online in 2014. He was subjected to an 18 month police investigation and criminal prosecution, and eventually he was found not guilty.
Also in 2011, a Scottish football fan was sentenced to eight months in prison under section 127 for insulting Celtic fans, Catholics and the Pope on a Facebook page. Also, during his sentencing, the sheriff told him that “the right-thinking people of Glasgow and Scotland” would not tolerate his views being expressed on the internet.