00:00The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Wyoming.
00:03Benjamin Franklin said over 270 years ago,
00:07freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government.
00:11When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved
00:15and tyranny is erected on its ruins.
00:19An evil magistrate entrusted with power to punish for words would be armed with a weapon,
00:25the most destructive and terrible. Under pretense of pruning off the exuberant branches,
00:30he would be apt to destroy the tree.
00:34Mr. Farage talked in his opening statement that noted that Europe's regulatory regime
00:42risks exporting restrictive standards that could violate Americans' constitutional rights.
00:48So I'd like to expose that and discuss that a little bit further.
00:51He noted that the oh-so-benignly titled Online Safety Act exemplified this regulatory model.
00:59The OSA is marketed as a measure to protect children online,
01:02but it is clearly being used as a means to actually impose government-backed censorship,
01:08especially speech, which is critical of government policy.
01:11As an egregious example, we have learned that the OSA has been used against Katie Lamb,
01:17MP for Weald of Kent, to block videos of her speeches made in Parliament critical of the fallout
01:23from the country's immigration policies.
01:27Mr. Price, are you familiar with the circumstance where actual speeches in Parliament or other public figures,
01:37their speeches are being censored by the government under this claim of protecting minors
01:44or protecting people from hearing this speech?
01:47I'm familiar with censorship of public protests.
01:50That's already happened in the United Kingdom.
01:53The Online Safety Act has placed blocks on those to protect children.
01:59That's the claim.
02:00But it has prevented adults from accessing it as well.
02:03So the Times has also reported that using the Communications Act of 2003
02:08and the Malicious Communications Act of 1988, there have been 37 police forces have made over 12,000 arrests
02:17in 2023 alone, which is the equivalent of 33 a day, all in relation to social media posts.
02:24Are you familiar with that information, Mr. Price?
02:27I am, yes.
02:28Okay.
02:29In July, the House of Commons Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee released a report
02:34indicating that the OSA was merely a first step is the way that they have described this.
02:40In other words, they are planning to do even more to address what they describe as online harm.
02:47Have you heard that as well?
02:48I have, yes.
02:49Well, and I think that there's something that just happened this week,
02:52and a few of the members have referenced it,
02:55but it involved the Irish comedian and writer Graham Linhan,
02:58who was arrested in Britain, apparently for social media posts about transgender issues.
03:04Did you hear of this circumstance?
03:06Yes, I did.
03:06I know Graham personally.
03:07Okay.
03:08And according to his Substack article, the trouble actually began when he was in America.
03:13He was at the airport in Arizona seeking to fly back to Europe,
03:17was told that he did not have a seat, was put on a later flight,
03:21and when he arrived at Heathrow, he was met by five armed police officers.
03:27Are police officers in England typically armed?
03:31They're not, no.
03:31So did you find it strange that he would be met by five armed police officers?
03:37At airports, counterterrorism police are usually armed,
03:40or there's a special wing of the Metropolitan Police that has armed support unit.
03:45So is he considered a terrorist?
03:46We're not clear what provision he was arrested under of the legislation,
03:52but there is a power in the Terrorism Act to arrest people at airports and seize their devices.
03:56Sure.
03:56Was he identified as a terrorist because of his online posts?
04:00It's not clear yet if he was arrested under that provision, but it has very wide-ranging powers,
04:04and it is used on occasion to detain people at ports.
04:07Okay.
04:08I understand that, and that probably is more of a frightening answer than I expected,
04:13which is that they've used the power that is typically reserved for terrorists or people
04:18who are of grave risk to the country to arrest Mr. Lindhyn at the airport because of his Twitter posts.
04:24Is that right?
04:25It's not clear if they use it yet, but that is a power that they frequently,
04:28that is used to seize people's devices at airports.
04:31Can you describe more of what happened with this incident involving Mr. Lindhyn?
04:37Do you have the familiarity with the facts?
04:40I've read his statement, yes.
04:42Okay.
04:42And could you please explain what happened?
04:44It appears that he was detained on arrival in Heathrow and then arrested, searched,
04:51subjected to a long series of questions,
04:55most of which revolved around his beliefs on gender ideology and transgender issues.
05:00Some of the questions from the police, according to Mr. Lindhyn, were extremely ideological in nature,
05:05and they talked about people who are assigned a gender at birth,
05:09which, as he pointed out himself, is activist language that the police should not be using.
05:13So he also claims that his bail conditions was,
05:16one of the conditions was that he could no longer use X.
05:19Is this a tactic you have seen or heard of being used before?
05:23Yes, we've seen extraordinary bail conditions, even placed on clients of our own.
05:28We had a client, Pastor Dia Moodley, who was given a bail condition,
05:31that he was not allowed to preach about the differences between Christianity and Islam
05:35on the basis that he would be bailed.
05:37So we have seen bizarre and wide-ranging bail conditions set on people before under speech offences.
05:43Time's expired.
05:44Okay, thank you.
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