This week’s extensive London looting has pushed UK’s Home Secretary to converge with people in media and social media to block the access of these communication channels in case of an emergency, pretty much like what the police did after the London 7/7 bombing. Prime Minister David Cameron is empowering the police force to shut down services such as Twitter and BlackBerry messenger, the second of the two presumed to have helped looters direct the incursion.
“We are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality,” Cameron said during a session in the House Of Commons. “When people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them.”
While this may be gravely contravened by people who believe in communication and internet freedom, it also serves its purpose in preventing theft, assault and criminal damages in the wake of riots and several other emergencies. There have already been arrests made to people suspected of using social media to egg on illicit activities. Still, tech writers who believe Twitter should remain an open window to the world addressed the Prime Minister as ‘stupid’ for putting the UK in the same category some of those Middle East countries.
Despite the negation and massive disapproval, the government has already granted the police power to instruct mobile networks to kill the coverage in affected areas. Taking down Twitter has proved itself far more challenging, though, than taking down the mobile networks, as evidence in @RiotCleanup whose followers have skyrocketed to 82,000 overnight from 30,000. Cameron also believes that posting videos that demonstrates violence should be limited.
It is inevitable, however, that smartphones have become London’s new pen and paper to chronicle the foray. One media man by the name of Matt Stiles, a data journalist, even went as far as creating an interactive map with data from The Guardian and Google Fusion Tables.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry maker RIM swore cooperation with the police for the London riots, and got itself a good amount of hacker threats. The BlackBerry blog website was taken down and the hacker/s left the following message:
“We have access to your database which includes your employees information; e.g – Addresses, Names, Phone Numbers etc. – now if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters … do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps?”
Moreover, a certain group of civilians, in an effort to help authorities identify the people behind the incursion, are gathering photos taken during the disturbance and matching them social network images using a facial recognition API. While this may sound like great news for some, it’s also a demonstration of how some can maliciously take advantage of technology.
[...] be extremely reckless with their social media use when it comes to criminal activity and although London bureaucrats fear future riots and the role of social media in orchestrating them it has also been instrumental in understanding what happened from the street level. People caught [...]
[...] data bandwith, and they can multicast. This is one of the reasons why England’s government’s decision to talk about cutting off social media and messaging during riots is both dangerous and downright [...]
[...] these but there will always be someone who will use this to create havoc like those involved in the London riot where Twitter was used to both create chaos and aid the police. We should never forget that no [...]