Aletho News

UK Police Arrested 62,199 People Over Online Speech In Five Years

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 8, 2026

Britain’s police arrested at least 62,199 people over five years under laws governing what people say online or over the phone.

That’s a busy period for the written word. And the number of those charged over the same period is 18,510, while 12,292 people were convicted.

The Big Brother Watch report, Britain’s Free Speech Problem: How Growing Restrictions Are Stifling Speech Online and Offline, covers the period between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2025.

The laws are Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, and Section 179 of the Online Safety Act 2023.

What do they concern? Indecent or grossly offensive messages, electronic communications that are grossly offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing, as well as the persistent use of a public network intended to cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety.

That’s as well as sending a message that the sender knows to be false, without reasonable excuse, and with the intention of causing non-trivial physical or psychological harm to a likely
audience.

These are the “crimes” that the 62,199 people are suspected of committing, but the rate at which people are arrested under these laws varies greatly across the country. By as much as 43 times.

Cumbria Constabulary is leading the way with 25.7 people arrested per 10,000 residents. And at the other end of the spectrum is Staffordshire Police with 0.58.
That’s a 43-fold difference.

The report also details the case of Child A, a “vulnerable” teenager from the West Midlands. She viewed a TikTok post about a teacher, but did not create, share, or comment on it.

However, her school inspected her phone, found no account connected to the post, and then gave her name to the police.

Two officers then visited the family home and demanded that Child A hand over her devices. The family was told that she could either attend a voluntary interview or face arrest.

The family chose the former and Child A gave a written statement, after which the investigation was closed with no further action.

And then there’s the case of Anneka Svenska, an animal rights campaigner. Two Sussex Police officers visited her over a social media video in which she said that MBR Acres, a company that breeds beagles for research, sent “hundreds of kilograms of animal remains” to incinerators.

This happened in July 2026, and is therefore outside the five-year period covered by the report. But Svenska was offered a community resolution that included taking an “online thinking skills” course and an online “impact exercise,” or face arrest.

After her lawyer sent evidence supporting her claims to Cambridgeshire Police, the matter was reportedly dropped, in about 15 minutes, although the evidence had been available in the original video.

Svenska did not accept the community resolution.

In the five years covered by the report, there were 43-fold fewer arrests in some postcodes compared to others. But Big Brother Watch said that the Online Safety Act has already had a devastating effect on free speech, with some 300 small community forums closing or changing ownership in order to avoid the new law’s requirements.

And while the group doesn’t want all laws regulating communications to be scrapped – because some messages can indeed constitute crimes – the three laws in question are formulated in a broad and unclear manner, leading to their uneven application across the country, and investigations that are “avoidable.”

These investigations can be “punitive” even when no conviction follows, as people are subjected to police visits, demands to hand over their devices, interviews, arrests, and charges.

The group is now asking Prime Minister Andy Burnham to review what it calls “anti-free speech laws.”

Svenska, at least, escaped the online thinking skills course. It took the police about 15 minutes to catch up.

September 8, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, UK