This morning’s annoyance was a story on BBC Newsbeat Friday morning. (Newsbeat the branding used by BBC Radio 1 for news) There’s an online version of the article, although that doesn’t mention the quote that wound me up – you’ll have to go to iPlayer to hear it. (Part of the 0830 news, go to 2:02:42 to hear the story) In a nutshell, it concerns warnings from the Attorney General that Twitter and other social network users risk prosecution if they “seriously offend” or “cause distress” via their posts.

The offending sentence: “Police have told Newsbeat more of their officers are now scanning web sites to spot illegal posts“.

The police force(s) concerned hasn’t been named, or an FoI request would already be on it’s way to them asking how much time they’re wasting with this. This is exactly the sort of problem that lead to the controversial and illiberal Twitter Joke Trial taking place. If the police scan for things, they may decide someone probably took offence or was distressed even if nobody was, just as in the Twitter Joke Trial case where nobody (Including the airport) took the tweet seriously.

The police have enough crime to investigate and prevent as it is. Do they really need to go looking for and creating new ones?