Not sure if OP or anyone else who thought along similar lines will see this follow up, but I was mulling the original comment over some more and I know why I reacted so strongly to it.

When I think of the word terrorism, and I'm sure many others think like me, I think of 9/11. Or the Las Vegas shooting. Or one of the many horrible bombings in various parts of Middle East, etc.

Those are acts that have no pre-warning, and are designed to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible, and to cause as much fear and, dare I say it, terror as possible.

What XR are intending on doing is abusing an obvious outcome of notifying civil aviation authorities that a dangerous object will be active in airspace where civilian commercial airflight is taking place. The outcome being flights are grounded and redirected, causing a lot of inconvenience to people and costing the economy potentially millions of dollars.

I think XR believes it's a 100% obvious thing that by notifying the appropriate authorities well ahead of time, all planes will be safely rerouted or grounded. If there was even the slightest chance that their actions could cause a plane crash, then I firmly believe XR would not even consider such an action.

So yes, I understand we have actual legislation that could very reasonably be used to charge the people responsible for the plan at Heathrow airport. The problem is I think that the legislation in question was designed to target something very different. If activists from XR are convicted of charges stemming from the "Terrorism Act", it becomes perfectly reasonable to label those activists as terrorists.

But then what we've actually done here is placed activists who never had the slightest intention of causing grievous harm to other people (loss of life, massive economic damage, etc) into the same category we reserve for extremists who have perpetrated genuine atrocities. That just seems completely wrong to me.

If we want to bring about legislation that criminalizes certain forms of activism that go "too far", then fine. I think even that could be a perilous path, but I can make my peace with it being necessary. I would just hope we stop and ensure everyone is on the same page that we're categorizing these people as something like "activists who went too far" in order to distinguish them from "extremists who carried out attacks that we as a society consider utterly unthinkable and terrifying".

>When I think of the word terrorism, and I'm sure many others think like me, I think of 9/11. Or the Las Vegas shooting.

Did the Las Vegas shooter have any ideological motivation? I thought he was just a nasty guy with a lot of guns.

Out of interest, are you a lawyer? I'm really struggling to see how you can interpret the language of the page you linked to include non-violent activism. Could you tell me specifically which sections of that legislation you think apply here?

1a -> 2d : creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public

1b : the use or threat is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation

1c: the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause

So XR is an ideological and/or political cause, intended to influence Governments, and this threat to fly drones over airports in and of itself risks the public. Assume a failure and/or crash of the drone, and all the bad "accidental" things which could arise.

One could certainly argue that the statute is "wrong", and that this sort of action should be treated as some other criminal offence. However I believe it is capable of being argued as terrorism under that definition.

Hence anyone so charged could be subject to pre-trial detention of up to 28 days, and then may have to convince a jury that they should engage in Nullification.

Part of the complaints about that Act when passed was specifically that it covered stuff which did not involve violence (2b - 2e). Note that the criteria in Section 1 (2) are logically OR'ed - only one of 2a through 2e has to be satisfied.

If you believe you may need advice from a Lawyer, I suggest you consult one.

When I asked if you were a lawyer, I was genuinely curious. I figured if you were linking legislation without actually pointing out specifics, then it might be because your point was so blatantly obvious that only a dummy would not see it as self evident ;)

I disagree with your assessment. I myself am certainly not a lawyer, but the way I interpret that language is for something to be considered an act of terrorism it has to meet a criteria from section [1] AND section [2]. I agree that the planned drone demonstration meets 1c, but I don't think it meets any of the criteria from section 2.

If you're suggesting that because they're disrupting transportation activity then they are somehow creating serious risk to the health and safety of the public, then I wonder what you think of any kind of large scale protest march that closes down the majority of main roads in a capital city? Is that terrorism too?

> I disagree with your assessment. I myself am certainly not a lawyer, but the way I interpret that language is for something to be considered an act of terrorism it has to meet a criteria from section [1] AND section [2]. I agree that the planned drone demonstration meets 1c, but I don't think it meets any of the criteria from section 2.

Also not a lawyer, but it seems pretty clear to me that flying drones around an airport can be considered to fall under 2(d): "creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public".

The fact that the airport can respond by closing down operations to mitigate the risk does not make it OK, any more than phoning in a warning before setting off a bomb makes that OK.

This is actually the best rebuttal I’ve seen so far, thank you.

I still think it’s unfair to compare a drone inside restricted airspace (and notified well ahead of time) to an explosive device in the terminal.

But I can certainly see how the two things can be put in the same category by many people.

Shutting down essential services is a risk to the public.

Imagine someone waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant or whatever. Now you have to get an uber to deliver it.

I think you have to consider how transportation activity is being disrupted. It’s being disrupted because the risk of a collision between a drone and airliner carrying many people is considered a grave safety threat to hundreds of lives. A low altitude crash of an airliner poses serious risk of a large number of deaths both of the passengers and people on the ground. A large, non violent, protest blocking the streets probably doesn’t create the same risk of large numbers of deaths.

Did they create a serious risk?

That would be a fact for the Jury to decide.

I'd rather expect it to conclude they did.

Forget about planes flying (or not).

How much does one of these drones weigh? How much damage or injury would one cause if it falls upon someone or some equipment within the airport grounds? Think of the various flammable liquids in various parts of the airport.

We have rules (and licensing conditions) about flying drones in general, simply because of the serious risk some of them can entail. They came in within the last few years.

Targeting critical infrastructure to get what you want is definition of terrorism.

I just want to say I hear you and think there could very well be some interesting nuances that we could discuss. But I have a policy of not engaging with throwaway accounts. If you want to send me an email and discuss this further, then great! My email is in my profile. Or if you want to repost this comment from a non-throwaway account, even better!

Yes, the greatest issue with that piece of legislation.