This was a blogspot.com (Google) blog, right? Not a lot the Malaysian police could do, I wouldn’t have thought. She’d have got a quicker response complaining to Google. Poor girl got a nasty surprise, but other than that, I don’t see what’s newsworthy about it.

I’d imagine if the authorities are aware of anything at all, it is that the Internet is a large and difficult-to-control phenomenon, and Religion-insulting websites are not at all uncommon. What do you want them to do – ban the Internet?

Even so, it’s not so surprising is it Jeffrey? If some terrible misfortune were to happen to you and someone scrawled “love from OrangRojak” in blood on the wall next to the crime scene, I imagine the police would be interested in my availability for questioning too, even though I have already publicly protested my innocence in a previous thread and claimed that the scenario was only an illustration. The police are not IT experts, even if their ‘customers’ sometimes are. How can they be experts in every way to commit a crime? Criminals are very inventive!

The woman was doing “her civic, concious and public duty” by default when she was acting in her own best interest, once she knew she was both the victim and apparent perpetrator of (what is locally) a public outrage. That she is the victim is not established beyond all doubt, is it? That she is the apparent perpetrator is the root of the problem. Perhaps a later report from the authorities will claim they picked her up to ‘protect her’ in the same way they did for Ms Kok.

The ‘clear her name on RTM’ sounds over-optimistic. I would have thought Google would willingly have given her (or her proxy) access to the (reset) blog to post an explanation. Misrepresentation on the Internet is common, but the rules for dealing with it are well-known and widely regarded as working well.

Didn’t RPK set a precedent for this? I don’t actually read a lot of press in Malaysia, but I thought I recalled someone defending him on the grounds that even though his name and picture appeared next to an offending Internet article, it could not be proved that he wrote it. Do I remember correctly?

You’re suggesting a rational person wouldn’t cause pointless public outrage without first concealing their identity – at least, I think you are. I had to add the qualification so I wouldn’t be tempted to get myself in hot water with the obvious examples from history. With the qualification, and since the copy of the blog content I saw this morning (quite coincidentally) appears to be utterly without value, you’re almost certainly correct. But then, a person does not need to be rational to come to the attention of the authorities! I imagine the Malaysian police don’t often pause to consider whether their suspects have acted rationally.

Sorry, maybe I was being over-sensitive – I knew the woman’s name from this morning coincidentally reading the blog of someone who happened to blog about the subject a few days ago. I just wondered why, when ‘the woman’ was probably sufficient to identify the subject of your comments, you were providing more detail. I was only worried that you were leading up to a full name, address and marital status.

I didn’t mean to compare the content of RPK’s and this woman’s blog, only that there was a precedent for someone coming to the authorities’ attention because of a blog that bore their name and picture, and then used the defence that anyone could have put those things there. Harme Mohamed’s witness comments:

http://westmalaysia.com/?p=3494

There are plausible explanations for a person doing exactly what would be the worst case story (for the woman involved) in this case, mostly involving temporary or permanent loss of reason, or ‘error of judgement’, if that isn’t the same thing. This case is not about a civic minded person reporting a crime, but about someone reporting that an outrageous work which purports to be by them, is not their doing. I think you may have stretched the point too far with “every innocent civic minded person who reports a crime on the basis that he witnessed it”.

What does ‘released on police bail’ mean in Malaysia? In the UK I would expect someone to be charged with an offence before they were released on bail. I’m sticking to my ‘police not experts’ line, and siding with the police on this one. The copy webpage I saw was just a set of silly names, like a child might create in a playground. While offensive, it was never intended to be anything but. If there is an ‘offence’ (whatever that means – what will the police charge be? Disturbing peace?), the police will want charge somebody. The page implicates the woman, regardless of her claimed innocence. If the police did not charge the apparent perpetrator, everybody who commited a crime would be videoing themselves in the act for YouTube and claiming that someone faked it.

I am not without compassion. There’s every chance that the poor woman is in the midst of a completely unexpected and possibly terribly traumatising experience. The police have to charge the apparent perpetrator for the public offence until they’ve got someone better. I don’t think the police have an attractive choice in this matter.

“It is very difficult ”
On a scale of ‘not at all’ to ‘extremely’? What exactly is “very difficult” in kilometres per hour? OK, I too may be guilty of stretching points. It isn’t the job of the police to make judgements where there’s no testable criterion. “Did she do it or not?” “Looks like it” is good enough for most police work. The chance that the incriminating evidence is fabricated is a matter for someone better equipped to judge.

When you exercise your judgement to second-guess the police, are you using the same mental faculties and education they are? In a matter like this, the police may as well throw dice to decide whether to suspect someone or not. I think we can grant them some leeway when they’re faced with acts outside their usual fare.

Just in case I’m confused and we’re talking about different subjects – you mean this one?
http://www.menj.org/islam/siapa-adibah-ahmad/

I’ve a feeling this issue may have started quite some time ago. That we’re reading about it on LKS blog now may be a sign that MPs are on notice to respond to any substantially controversial issues with a “thankyou for your letter, you’ll hear from us in February” letter, so that there’s nothing better for LKS to make political capital out of in the run-up to the KT election.

I started this reply hours ago (before bored children needed a proper father), so it’ll look odd now. Thanks for explaining bail undergrad2.

Jeffrey, if you can read ‘suspect’ where I say charge (my misunderstanding of the mechanics of police work), I stand by my previous statement. This is not ‘a person reporting a crime’, this is an uncommon instance where a person has reported something when it appears (to a casual observer) they are the perpetrator. There is no suggestion in my comments of ‘needing to charge someone at all costs’, those are your words.

Regardless (since we cannot expect the police to examine Google’s logs, and I doubt TM will keep sufficient logs for long enough, even if the true perpetrator was in Malaysia) of who the true perpetrator is, the blog is all the police had to go on. This is a rare and interesting case, where the police could have acted more generously and people would have been complaining that they weren’t taking the insult seriously or acted as they did and suffered LKS’ exclamation marks. An easy choice, for them, I suspect.

Ahahaha ‘right another comment’. An unconscious error, but not bad enough to need correcting