Twitterer arrested for airport bomb threat

Snow frustration boils over

Twitterer arrested for airport bomb threat

18 January 2010 16:29 GMT / By Duncan Geere

A Twitter user by the name of Paul Chambers has been arrested after making a bomb threat on Twitter. The 26-year-old from Doncaster had a knock on the door from local police just hours after he typed in: "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!!".

He was immediately arrested under the Criminal Law Act 1977 and detained for more than 6 hours of questioning, eventually being bailed. His computer and iPhone were confiscated, and the message was deleted from Twitter's site. The police issued a statement saying: "We advise members of the public to use such sites appropriately, as they are easily accessible to the public and any inappropriate use could cause unnecessary concern and lead to comments being reported to police".

Chambers' tweets are marked as private, so only people he accepts are able to see his messages. That scotches our hopes that the police have some sort of Twitter Search alert set up for "bomb". Instead, it's likely that one of his followers reported the message. Would you tell police about a message like that, if you saw it? Tell us in the comments.

Via: guardian.co.uk

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Software, Websites, Twitter, Airports, Police