You may have noticed over the past week a certain tension in the air. Also, a lot of smoke. The Feral Youth™ of Broken Britain© that Daily Mail columnists are always going on about took to the streets and wreaked havoc in their hoodies, you may have noticed. If not, you’re following the wrong people on Twitter. Also, it was Twitter’s fault…or BlackBerry’s fault…or Facebook’s fault. Probably not LinkedIn’s fault though. Also, it was rap music’s fault. Anyway, it was SOMEONE’s fault! After all, how else can we explain complex socio-economic factors? We can’t. It’s the computers fault.
Whichever scapegoat the media and politicians finally land on, one thing is for sure; the riots will have some interesting consequences for the relationship between the law and social media.
Social Media-led Arrests
For one thing, arrests have already been made for using Facebook and Twitter to incite the riots. Three people have been arrested in Southampton. In Scotland, three teenagers have been arrested for attempting to incite riots in Dundee city centre on Facebook. A spokesman from the Tayside Police stated that:
“The posting of such comments, whether or not the intention is to encourage disturbances, can cause alarm and distress to the communities in which we live and encourage others to behave in a violent or disorderly manner.”
That may sound familiar to you; we’ve basically resurrected the Twitter Joke Trial. The widely mocked and decried precedent set there was that a threatening message in a public forum, such as Twitter, is indeed a serious matter.
Here We Go Again
Earlier today The Prime Minister, David Cameron, came out with this gem in an address to parliament:
“Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So 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.”
He’s notably lacking in the details but if this particular decree is in any way similar to the Digital Economy Act of 2010 it will probably run straight into difficulties, both on human rights grounds and logistical ones.
Let’s talk about the practicality of banning people from using social media. A recent poll conducted by Opinium Research found that 38% of people support shutting down social media channels during civil unrest. The poll did not reveal what percentage of that 38% actually considered the logistics of doing such a thing. One, not very good, solution would be to enact a temporary blocking of social media domains, somewhat like the proxy that the Internet Watch Foundation already holds over the UK to reduce file-sharing of illicit material. Proxies can be breached pretty easily, as we saw in Egypt earlier this year. Maybe block those people who do incite unrest on social media from the internet? Tried that sort of thing already with the Digital Economy Act and that’s now stuck in what is sure to be a long judicial review. It wouldn’t work anyway, there are far too many ways to get around an individual ban. For instance, Starbucks. Another would be to shut off the Internet completely. And that wouldn’t go down very well at all, even with the 38% of people who wouldn’t mind losing Facebook for an evening.
Even if details of the rioters were supplied to social media site owners to be blacklisted, they could find new Wi-Fi connections and make up new details. Twitter, especially is extremely easy to falsify details on – you don’t even need to verify the email you use! BlackBerry Messenger? They’re called Pay as You Go phones. Even if you crack all of these problems, other forums and social media services you’ve never even considered will surely pop up. In some quarters these accounts and devices are called ‘throwaways,’ and social media profiles can quite easily become disposable and interchangeable; just look at the recent LulzSec and Anonymous sagas.
So… how exactly are you to ban people from social media, Mr Prime Minister?
by David Shawcross
Tweet, Blog, Riot!
You may have noticed over the past week a certain tension in the air. Also, a lot of smoke. The Feral Youth™ of Broken Britain© that Daily Mail columnists are always going on about took to the streets and wreaked havoc in their hoodies, you may have noticed. If not, you’re following the wrong people on Twitter. Also, it was Twitter’s fault…or BlackBerry’s fault…or Facebook’s fault. Probably not LinkedIn’s fault though. Also, it was rap music’s fault. Anyway, it was SOMEONE’s fault! After all, how else can we explain complex socio-economic factors? We can’t. It’s the computers fault.
Whichever scapegoat the media and politicians finally land on, one thing is for sure; the riots will have some interesting consequences for the relationship between the law and social media.
Social Media-led Arrests
For one thing, arrests have already been made for using Facebook and Twitter to incite the riots. Three people have been arrested in Southampton. In Scotland, three teenagers have been arrested for attempting to incite riots in Dundee city centre on Facebook. A spokesman from the Tayside Police stated that:
“The posting of such comments, whether or not the intention is to encourage disturbances, can cause alarm and distress to the communities in which we live and encourage others to behave in a violent or disorderly manner.”
That may sound familiar to you; we’ve basically resurrected the Twitter Joke Trial. The widely mocked and decried precedent set there was that a threatening message in a public forum, such as Twitter, is indeed a serious matter.
Here We Go Again
Earlier today The Prime Minister, David Cameron, came out with this gem in an address to parliament:
“Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So 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.”
He’s notably lacking in the details but if this particular decree is in any way similar to the Digital Economy Act of 2010 it will probably run straight into difficulties, both on human rights grounds and logistical ones.
Let’s talk about the practicality of banning people from using social media. A recent poll conducted by Opinium Research found that 38% of people support shutting down social media channels during civil unrest. The poll did not reveal what percentage of that 38% actually considered the logistics of doing such a thing. One, not very good, solution would be to enact a temporary blocking of social media domains, somewhat like the proxy that the Internet Watch Foundation already holds over the UK to reduce file-sharing of illicit material. Proxies can be breached pretty easily, as we saw in Egypt earlier this year. Maybe block those people who do incite unrest on social media from the internet? Tried that sort of thing already with the Digital Economy Act and that’s now stuck in what is sure to be a long judicial review. It wouldn’t work anyway, there are far too many ways to get around an individual ban. For instance, Starbucks. Another would be to shut off the Internet completely. And that wouldn’t go down very well at all, even with the 38% of people who wouldn’t mind losing Facebook for an evening.
Even if details of the rioters were supplied to social media site owners to be blacklisted, they could find new Wi-Fi connections and make up new details. Twitter, especially is extremely easy to falsify details on – you don’t even need to verify the email you use! BlackBerry Messenger? They’re called Pay as You Go phones. Even if you crack all of these problems, other forums and social media services you’ve never even considered will surely pop up. In some quarters these accounts and devices are called ‘throwaways,’ and social media profiles can quite easily become disposable and interchangeable; just look at the recent LulzSec and Anonymous sagas.
So… how exactly are you to ban people from social media, Mr Prime Minister?
by David Shawcross