Spain’s Orwellian “Citizens Security Law” Gag
If you think our First Amendment rights are being trampled here in America left and right, check out what’s going on in Spain.
This woman posted the following picture of a police car parked in a
handicapped spot on her Facebook page with the caption “Park where you
bloody well please and you won’t even be fined.”
Now, because of Spain’s Orwellian “Citizens Security Law” which went
into effect July 1st, they have fined her €800 or nearly $900 USD simply
for sharing the picture on social media. Police were reportedly able to
track her down within 48 hours.
That’s because the so-called “Citizens Security Law,” which the
people in Spain lovingly refer to as the “gagging law,” has a clause
that says, “the unauthorised use of images of police officers that might
jeopardise their or their family’s safety or that of protected
facilities or police operations”. The fines for this can go up to an
astounding €30,000 (nearly $33,700 USD).
Apparently sharing the fact that your local officer can take up a
parking spot designated for a handicapped person, an act you would be
heavily fined for, is not “legal” in Spain because it “endangers” that
cop’s “personal safety.”
When the police were asked how the photo had put them at risk under
the definition of the law, spokesman Fernando Portillo said, “the
officers felt the woman had impugned their honour by posting the
picture,” according to The Guardian.
Portillo said police can park wherever they want when they are in an
emergency, and the officer in the photo parked in the handicapped spot
because someone had vandalized a nearby park.
If you think about this logically, it obviously makes no sense. The
only way a picture like that would endanger that cop’s safety is if
someone saw the photo and got mad enough to commit violence against the
cop because he parked in a handicapped spot… in which case, it would
actually be the cop endangering his own safety and making himself look bad by parking in a handicapped spot to begin with.
Then again, there’s really no point in trying to argue with an
Orwellian police state. It’s not there to make sense. It’s there to
control everyone. Completely.
