UK Parliament not fucking around, sends sergeant-at-arms to seize Facebook docs
22 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers
If witnesses don't cooperate with parliamentary enquiries, the UK Parliament has the legal power to send a sergeant-at-arms to fuck them up. But it's not been used in a very long time and people were starting to question if Parliament would ever actually use that power in the 21st century, or if it would work.
But they fuckin went and did it
Damian Collins, the chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to compel the founder of a US software company, Six4Three, to hand over the documents during a business trip to London. In another exceptional move, parliament sent a serjeant at arms to his hotel with a final warning and a two-hour deadline to comply with its order. When the software firm founder failed to do so, it’s understood he was escorted to parliament. He was told he risked fines and even imprisonment if he didn’t hand over the documents.
“We are in uncharted territory,” said Collins, who also chairs an inquiry into fake news. “This is an unprecedented move but it’s an unprecedented situation. We’ve failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest.”
get fucked zuck
Where did you get the Sergeant-at-arms from ?
hey fuck you
If you're on about spelling, sergeant-at-arms is considered a more updated spelling over serjeant-at-arms, but both are fine.
If you're on about where we actually got one from, parliment uses a powerful spell to summon someone with a big ass gold mace and a sword to fuck facebook up.
No, no, no. The Article the doesn't mention anyone related to the Serjent at Arms of the commons. I have no idea where he got that part from.
In another exceptional move, parliament sent a serjeant at arms to his
hotel with a final warning and a two-hour deadline to comply with its
order. When the software firm founder failed to do so, it’s understood
he was escorted to parliament. He was told he risked fines and even
imprisonment if he didn’t hand over the documents
Thank you.
now that's subpeona power
Why are they doing this, exactly?
British parliament discovers cache of documents uncovering a secret takeover by Lizard People, PM May insists they will get right on it after they Brexit.
I wish the US would do this shit too tbh
we have subpoena and search warrants which result in a team of law enforcement agents knocking at your door.
The US actually has a very similar rarely-used procedure for when someone is held in contempt of Congress. The sergeant-at-arms of the House or Senate can be dispatched to arrest them and bring them to Congress for questioning and punishment.
However, this process takes a shit load of time so they introduced another method in 1857 where Congress can refer the issue to a US Attorney to get a grand jury indictment. That's also pretty rare though AFAIK.
This is awesome. I actually have faith that of all the Western countries, the UK and possibly Canada are the only ones with the will and knowledge in their houses to stem the growth of Facebook as an extra-national superpower.
This is very clearly intended as a warning shot for Mark Zuckerberg himself too. They've been asking him to testify for months and have threatened to issue a legal summons for him.
This is their way of telling Zuckerberg that if he continues to ignore them he'll become unable to visit the UK without being arrested and brought in for questioning.
Maybe he should quit being Mark Fuckerberg for two seconds and start being Mark Zuckerber.
You act like they're not one and the same.
It really depends on which OS he boots into upon system restart
From the way things seem to be going for him, he might become Mark "The Prison Succ" Zuckerberg if he tries to visit the UK.
It continues: today the DCMS committee held an unprecedented international hearing with parliamentarians from 8 other countries, Zuckerberg was asked to attend but didn't show up, so they announced they will be releasing the seized documents publicly, and posted this to twitter:
https://twitter.com/CommonsCMS/status/1067380726142836736
As cheesy as that tweet is, it does have a valid point.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.