The Minority Report is here 

The Minority Report has arrived into our lives, & by Minority Report, I do not mean a world where 

psychic people, also known as precogs in the movie Minority Report foretell the committing of a crime, thus allowing the authorities to arrest someone before a crime has been committed. However, like the movie, I am talking about people being arrested for thought crime, or more accurately; they are being arrested for speaking their mind. 

The Internet has become a place where people can share ideas, life events, photos, videos, play on-line games together, make friendships, & even fall in love. However, there is a dark side to the net, there are hate sites, predators,  sites that spread viruses & spam, etc. Unfortunately one big side of the net is unfortunately people will often brake social norms within digital social networking sites, within chat rooms, & even chatting or talking to one another in on-line games. On-line, people's annanimity empowers & emboldens them to verbally attack people, to say extremely hateful things that they would never say in public, or to even tear someone apart, threaten them, report someone to authorities as a terrorist, simply because they find their views offensive. 

It is acceptable to voice the opinion you disagree with other religious views, or to even say you don't agree with people's political views, or people being gay. However, threatening, harassing someone, etc, simply because their religious or political views differ from your own, or that they happen to be of a different gender, are older, or of a different sexual orientation. 

Social networks & gaming networks are finally cleaning up there site, as those who use hateful of threatening language are in fact violating their terms of use. Of course they are only doing this due to pressure from users. However, the authorities in their unending efforts to find a terrorist behind every corner, & those users who will yell terrorist at any off collar remark. 

For example, A Texas teen maked a violent joke during video game, and was jailed for months
It started in February when, Justin Carter was playing “League of Legends”, an online, multiplayer fantasy game, when another player wrote a comment calling him insane.“He replied ‘Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk,” Carter’s response, which  was intended as joke was seen by a user in Canada. The woman who saw the post looked up Carter’s Austin address, determined that it was near an elementary school, and called the police. Carter was arrested one month later, and has been in jail until a charitable person recently paid his bail. Authorities charged him with making a terrorist threat. If convicted, he will face eight years in prison.
“These people are serious. They really want my son to go away to jail for a sarcastic comment that he made,” said Carter's father.

Authorities said that recent school shootings like the one in Newtown, Connecticut have caused them to evaluate all potential threats seriously. They said Newtown was still fresh in their minds at the time of Carter’s arrest. An Austin police detective said in a statement “In light of recent situations, statements such as the one Justin made are taken seriously,”. 

Are we supposed to guard everything we say out of fear that, someone else might take it the wrong way, and report us to the authorities, that the authorities will lack the judgement to determine a youthful joke or laps of good judgement, from a real threat of violence or terrorism. I mean, the police could have asked the company that hosted the on-line game to allow them to read the post, if the women didn't give them the full transcript of the post, or they could have interviewed the young man & his family. Instead, the police decided to jump the gun, & this young man has spend several months in jail, where he doesn't belong. 

To me, this situation goes far beyond this young man & what he said, for I wonder if people with as fragile a sensibility or lack of judgement as the woman in Canada will report bloggers, those who create youtube videos, those who post in social media sites like twitter, instagram, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Will those in the GOP & far right use this as a tool to silence the opposition, & to silence the masses, or will those with saner minds keep the Internet a place as a place for the free exchange of ideas, opinions, & freedom of expression.