Law & Emotion of Earthquakes
December 11th, 2006The media, amongst them the excellent english-speaking news portal swissinfo.org, report that my hometown Basel has been shaken by a minor earthquake (3.4 on the Richter Scale).
The tremor was caused by drilling work for a geothermal power plant, and so public prosecutors have started an investigation for damage to property (if there was any) and threats causing public alarm (Article 258 of the Swiss Penal Code).
The latter has the following wording (my translation):
“Whosoever causes public alarm by threatening or pretending a danger for life, physical condition or property, shall be liable to imprisonment of up to three years.”
I doubt that there will be a conviction based on Article 258 because apparently, there wasn’t any intention on the part of the persons involved to threaten the population. Nevertheless, I take my hat off to the creativity of Basel’s public prosecutors.
As a matter of principle, I’m not particularly happy with Article 258:
- First, there may be free speech issues — not in this case, but the classic example would be Orson Welles’ famous radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel “The War of the Worlds”, which did cause public alarm in 1938.
- Second, the population sometimes can react hysterically to certain threats or dangers, and it seems problematic that a potential over-reaction is attributed to the person who is responsible for the threat or danger, even if that person had the intention to scare some people.
Nevertheless, we possibly can hardly do without Article 258 Penal Code because of its preventive effect, in particular with respect to would-be imitators of amok runs, bombings, and all the other nasty things that have been happening way too often in Europe over the last couple of years.
P.S. A quick scan of the blog posts on the topic of the man-made earthquake has revealed that most bloggers rather seem to act as news brokers than as citizen journalists (or eye-witnesses, depending on your standpoint).