Its been on the statue books since the Telecommunications Act 1984!
To be fair the feds are proportionate about it, otherwise this site would have been closed down ages ago. You won’t get busted for swearing on the phone when talking to your mates, but the law is used to catch people using telecoms networks to harrass one another, such as stalkers and abusive ex-partners.
bear in mind also that in the area that lad was from, the Police and Security Service had found a significant number of angry white men who were making viable IED’s for planned use against Muslims and other ethnic minorities as a reprisal against multiculturalism and the BNP “going soft” – also there is more of a culture of normal criminals using IEDs up North, so “jokes” about bombs are much more liable to be taken seriously, even if the lad wasn’t Muslim!
