A certain balding (OK bald then), curmudgeonly Irishman has been saying for years, what the UK media is saying today. Your Tweets and social media posts of yore, could come back to haunt you one day soon.
Today’s harmless Tweet could be dug up by someone who misinterprets it, and it could conceivably cost you your career. The Daily Telegraph has learned that the police are recording and keeping thousands of non-crime hate incidents. The majority of these incidents take place online.
In fact, UK police forces have recorded more than 2,000 such incidents against under-16’s in the past seven years. A non-crime hate incident is where someone reports you for hostility against them or someone else, because of their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. 
The alleged hostility isn’t a crime, but police forces are making records of every such allegation and keeping them on file. The police can keep these records for six years. If someone does a DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service) check on you and you’ve previously been reported for hostility, it could very well show up.
It doesn’t matter that you were neither cautioned, charged, nor found guilty of anything. It could put your career in jeopardy. I mean nobody wants a hatemonger working for them right?
Tory MP Sir John Hayes told The Telegraph that he was disturbed to hear that this was going on. He said;
“I think it is a really unfortunate, dangerous road for the police to go down. Nobody should be condemned for every quip, joke or comment they have made through their young or adult lives.”
Self-censorship is the most insidious form of censorship there is and that’s what this boils down to. Future generations won’t dare to venture an opinion on anything, lest it land them in hot water.
