Banning Social Media in the Context of Rioting

[thorgold]

This article details how the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, is proposing the banning or censorship of social media such as Facebook and Twitter after observations show that the London rioters have been using them for organization.

My first thought was one of exasperated shock - How could you even propose such a thing? Banning social media because it's used for communication amongst criminals would be like shutting down phone lines or the postal service. While some use it for nefarious purposes, it's nothing more than a means of communication, albeit a very efficient one.

However, with more thought, the problem boiled down to this question: Is the right to free speech forfeited when one is breaking the law?

Questions, comments, consternations?

[delfts]

It would likely cause even more rioting and lead to a more volatile situation. Removing rights from people when those people are asking for more rights/equality doesn't seem like it'll lead to the people being any happier.

I'm curious about how the riots will end. I need to read more about riots in history...

[Adam H]

However, with more thought, the problem boiled down to this question: Is the right to free speech forfeited when one is breaking the law?

I'm not sure how you boiled it down to that... Perhaps you mean "is the right to free speech forfeited when anyone is breaking the law?" in which case the answer is emphatically no, because someone is going to break the law no matter what...

[cphite]

It would likely cause even more rioting and lead to a more volatile situation. Removing rights from people when those people are asking for more rights/equality doesn't seem like it'll lead to the people being any happier.

I'm curious about how the riots will end. I need to read more about riots in history...

I would be against banning free speech and communications no matter what; to me, those are essential freedoms that should never be taken away from anybody, for any reason.

That being said, I honestly don't see these people who were rioting in the UK as being "asking for more rights/equality" - the vast majority of them were just drunken idiots looking for an excuse to act out. I fail to see how looting and burning local businesses equates to seeking more rights or equality; especially when a lot of the idiots doing it were spoiled brats who have as much or more than the people they were victimizing.

[jestingrabbit]

Bank robbers get away with cars, should we ban them? Murderers take showers to wash the blood of their victims off, should we shut down the water supply?

For every looter using social media to commit crimes, there were probably a hundred or more citizens using them to inform family members, strategise survival, etc. The nefarious purposes that people put public amenities to are vastly outweighed by the good purposes. Cameron is just incompetent and grasping at straws, blaming what he doesn't understand.

[Sheikh al-Majaneen]

Do not approve. Anyways, it seems unlikely, since the police are using social media to arrest the rioters.

[Glmclain]

I would seriously be surprised if anyone around here supported Totalitarianism to that degree. We seem to be a pretty liberal lot.

[Sheikh al-Majaneen]

I would seriously be surprised if anyone around here supported Totalitarianism to that degree. We seem to be a pretty liberal lot.

Technically, you would even find all the people in the hilariously reactionary constitution party to be too liberal to support that.

[Glmclain]

They would if it supported gay marriage and ay-rawbs use it.

[bgc]

Coincidentally enough, the San Francisco subway system (BART) just disabled all of their underground cellular antennas to stop people from coordinating a protest from inside the stations. 3 hours of service interruption later, no protests...

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/176717-report-sf-transit-agency-blocks-cell-phone-service

[Headshrinker]

I hear they plan to either target specific pages or disable FB and twitter just for palm devices

Spoiler:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023924/London-riots-2011-BlackBerry-Messenger-shut-unbelievable.html

The problem is not that people are out on the streets but they can communicate making them able to disperse and regroup in another area quickly.
I’m for this. It does not damage freedom of speech and the inconvenience of not being able to use these sites all the time would be vastly outweighed by disruption from a riot.

[Deep_Thought]

I've already made my thoughts on this topic clear in the N&A thread on the riots, and I've even written to my MP about it. In short, the idea is idiotic, and hugely hypocritical in light of the recent events in the Middle East. Any use of this against looters/rioters can just as easily be targeted against legitimate protests. The best thing would be to turn the communication medium against the rioters - use GCHQ's legendary interception machinery to monitor the networks and get the police to where the action is. You probably don't even need GCHQ - just a copper with an internet connection is enough to monitor Twitter.

The problem is not that people are out on the streets but they can communicate making them able to disperse and regroup in another area quickly.

No, the problem is that people are out on the streets and don't see any consequences to kicking in shop windows and running off with crap.

It does not damage freedom of speech and the inconvenience of not being able to use these sites all the time would be vastly outweighed by disruption from a riot.

Oh really? And what of all the inconvenience caused to people trying to warn each other of a riot approaching their area? Problems with the Twitter rumour-mill notwithstanding.

[mojacardave]

It would likely cause even more rioting and lead to a more volatile situation. Removing rights from people when those people are asking for more rights/equality doesn't seem like it'll lead to the people being any happier.

I'm curious about how the riots will end. I need to read more about riots in history...

I would be against banning free speech and communications no matter what; to me, those are essential freedoms that should never be taken away from anybody, for any reason.

That being said, I honestly don't see these people who were rioting in the UK as being "asking for more rights/equality" - the vast majority of them were just drunken idiots looking for an excuse to act out. I fail to see how looting and burning local businesses equates to seeking more rights or equality; especially when a lot of the idiots doing it were spoiled brats who have as much or more than the people they were victimizing.

I'm not against the removal of access to Twitter/Facebook/BBM if it's only for people who have been shown to have used them for the purposes of organising crime. True, they aren't the underlying reason that the people in question rioted, but access to Twitter isn't exactly a basic human right. When you commit a crime, you lose certain rights. If limiting some people's access will make it more difficult for them to arrange mass demonstrations, I have no real objection. I'd have no objection to removing the driving license of a convicted drunk driver either. It won't solve the person's reckless nature, but it might limit the damage.

I'm definitely against the blanket disabling of social media services though. As has been pointed out: that's similar in concept to disabling the phone network, or closing all roads.

[Pandorly]

There's always going to be another way of communicating, even if they do ban or censor Twitter and Facebook or whatever other mainstream social media teens use. Ever heard of mass texting, e-mailing lists, even IRC channels? Also, good old-fashioned word-of-mouth is certainly helped along by a commonly used medium called a "phonecall". The only way to prevent people from communicating is to take down the interwebs and phone networks, and even then there are ways of getting around those interventions.

I find this whole debate really ironic considering how recently the European court of Human Rights claimed having a satellite dish is a human right (apologies for the terrible news source) because it aids people in connecting with society at large. I mean, the European court ruled that preventing a couple from having a satellite violated their right to receive information. How the hell will Britain actually get around this massive "human rights violation"?!

Maybe a better way to quell uprising is to address the needs of the people doing the rioting. For example, invest some money in rectifying this, for a start. I found this bunch of figures, which I thought was quite an insightful eye-opener:

Highest estimated cost of riots: £100m.

Tax Avoidance by Vodafone: £6 Billion
Tax spent on Libyan intervention: £1 Billion
Tax avoidance in 2010 by richest people in UK: £7 Billion
Tax payers bill for banking crisis: £131 Billion
Tax money spent in Iraqi conflict: £4.5 billion
Tax money spent on Afghan conflict (up until 2007): £7 billion
Total MP expenses bill (2007): £87.6m

Perspective: Priceless!

[mosc]

I don't understand why the government would want to shut down people discussing their illegal activity online. I mean, there are few things dumber for a criminal to do. If the connection is so evident, the they aught to be able to explain it to a judge. The judge can the issue a wire tap and essentially the government can use twitter and facebook against these people directly. Free speech is great, but it's the governments right to listen in when they have probable cause.

[Headshrinker]

Any use of this against looters/rioters can just as easily be targeted against legitimate protests.

Why would a legitimate protest need to communicate quickly? They don’t need to disperse and regroup on short notice. And for that matter you could make the same argument about police, great for detaining violent drunks but the same officer could be just as easily targeted against legitimate protests. Only the paranoid fringe would think that the government will use any resource it can to silence a protest. If for no other reason than stopping a protest draws far more attention to it than just letting it happen.

No, the problem is that people are out on the streets and don't see any consequences to kicking in shop windows and running off with crap.

I think that is banned. I meant the logistics problem of moving police around that quickly. If you know where the rioters are that would make their jobs a lot easier.

Oh really? And what of all the inconvenience caused to people trying to warn each other of a riot approaching their area?

do you want to rely on twitter for that?

I don't understand why the government would want to shut down people discussing their illegal activity online.

But then they have already committed an offence, jailing them doesn’t put it right

[Deep_Thought]

Why would a legitimate protest need to communicate quickly?

I think you are misjudging the kinds of communication happening during the looting. What little has filtered through the press isn't "Coppers coming down Street X, meet up again in Street Y in 15 minutes", it's "We're going to loot shop Z, who's with us?". There's not much difference between that and "We're protesting issue A in place B, come make your voice heard".

And for that matter you could make the same argument about police, great for detaining violent drunks but the same officer could be just as easily targeted against legitimate protests.

This is true. But police officers have an awful lot of legitimate uses, unlike blanket bans on mass media.

If you know where the rioters are that would make their jobs a lot easier.

Precisely. So get the intelligence services to do their damned jobs, monitor the networks properly and pass the info onto the police.

do you want to rely on twitter for that?

Personally, no. Plenty of other people would. But as a much better example of what can be achieved via Twitter et al, read up about #riotcleanup. How could that have been organised if a media black-out had been in place?

[Adam H]

I think everything in Headshrinker's post is nonsense, but Deep_thought already covered everything except this:

I don't understand why the government would want to shut down people discussing their illegal activity online.

But then they have already committed an offence, jailing them doesn’t put it right

What is the alternative - jailing them before they have committed an offence? Or restricting innocent people's use of an extremely helpful and useful technology?

do you want to rely on twitter for that?

What do you rely on? That's not rhetorical, I'm curious. I currently do not rely on any riot-alerting-technology, but twitter seems as good as any.

[Headshrinker]

My understanding is that the looters will use twitter to find a target, when the police arrive they will run away and use twitter/fb to find another target. The police monitor twitter and fb but even if you know where to go, getting a good number of officers there quickly is a big challenge. Blocking certain paths of information will disrupt this process.
you could keep news, whether, official channels, and whatever else open. but rioters will have difficulty working as a group.
The other scenario is the evil establishment shuts down the communication for a legitimate protest. They get annoyed that they can no longer gossip at high speeds but their objective is to stand in a park waving poorly phrased banners and they continue to do that. They win.
Then the establishment shuts down all internet as a weapon in revenge. Their country suffers but life goes on. The government may/may not be able to use this to stay in control of now the least sophisticated country in the world, we lose but they don’t really win.
A legitimate protest occurs as planned, inside are some thugs who want to run riot. As with the student protest they all disperse and regroup by twitter / fb. This is shut down and groups that form are quickly kettled. Protesters who want to protest stand in the street as they wish, rioters do the same but against their will. Protest win and the police win.
The only problem is if the government begins to use this to censor information, this is a problem but remember the providers involved are not going to be under the direct control of Emperor Cameron, if he wants information removed he will have to go through the same process as he does at the moment (calling providers and asking things to be deleted). Besides this is the same as the government could use the army to enslave us argument. They won’t.

[JBJ]

My understanding is that the looters will use twitter to find a target, when the police arrive they will run away and use twitter/fb to find another target.

If that's the case, then the police could use the technology to set up some stings instead of blocking the services. Set up some accounts, tweet/facebook that such and such shop is a good target, have some officers already on site and when the looters show up... "Hello fellas. Put down the loot and put your hands behind your backs."

[Pandorly]

My understanding is that the looters will use twitter to find a target, when the police arrive they will run away and use twitter/fb to find another target.

If that's the case, then the police could use the technology to set up some stings instead of blocking the services. Set up some accounts, tweet/facebook that such and such shop is a good target, have some officers already on site and when the looters show up... "Hello fellas. Put down the loot and put your hands behind your backs."

Yeah but how would they decide which shop to encourage rioters to trash?!

[Sanjuricus]

Any society that surrenders liberties in pursuit of security will gain neither and lose both....to paraphrase Mr Franklins famous quote (at least its usually attributed to him!).

EDIT: My tuppence worth on the riots...they had fuck all to do with any social hardships after the first night of riots and became simply a distraction for common theft.

[Headshrinker]

Any society that surrenders liberties in pursuit of security will gain neither and lose both.

In some cases I would have to agree. But "any", that statement is just wrong. Is it both safe and free in Somalia? Anarchy has never been successful, it is about treading a balance.

[Griffin]

No, its neither safe nor free in Somalia, and they could improve security quite a bit without infringing on liberties (most of which they really don't have yet anyways). Not sure what your point is there.

Also, as a note at what sort of "threat" Britain would likely treat as worthy of a twitter ban...
And then they... wait, wrong link.
Here we go.

[Aaeriele]

Coincidentally enough, the San Francisco subway system (BART) just disabled all of their underground cellular antennas to stop people from coordinating a protest from inside the stations. 3 hours of service interruption later, no protests...

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valle ... ne-service

Nah, the protests just got delayed until yesterday, at which point they were so involved that 3 BART stations got shut down.

[fuzzycuzzy]

That being said, I honestly don't see these people who were rioting in the UK as being "asking for more rights/equality" - the vast majority of them were just drunken idiots looking for an excuse to act out. I fail to see how looting and burning local businesses equates to seeking more rights or equality; especially when a lot of the idiots doing it were spoiled brats who have as much or more than the people they were victimizing.

The problem with activism in a nutshell

[stevenf]

It is asserted that some of the recent civil disorder on UK streets was co-ordinated via social media. David Cameron (UK Prime Minister) is proposing a master kill switch for social media that the regime of the moment can hit when things get too vivid on the street for political comfort - I'm paraphrasing.

Can the knowledgeable please walk us through the technicalities of how this might be done and what, if anything, might be attempted to overcome such action. In my ignorance I had thought that the net was configured to survive massive attrition. I am aware that the net is accessible from many mobile devices and wifi in urban areas but presumably that and telephony are separate - it was all so much simpler when we wrote each other letters!

[LaserGuy]

Let's assume you could get Twitter or Facebook to agree to something like this in principle.

When you access your Twitter/Facebook account, the server receives your IP address. Your IP is fairly region specific, specific enough that the company could probably create a piece of code that blocks any messages received or sent from a particular geographic region. It wouldn't always work--a cellphone from a different region would still work fine, for example, but a net like this would probably catch >90% of the people concerned. It would, however, catch pretty much everybody else at the same time--being any more specific than that would be pretty hard. I think it would be honestly pretty easy to set it up though. It would be harder if you wanted to catch things like cellphone calls or text messages, because then you're dealing with many different providers, different services, different networks.

[edit]People could also get around this by just using a proxy server or something, but I'm guessing the average person probably wouldn't know to do that.

[CorruptUser]

Why does this sound like the start of some kind of British Dystopia movie?

[RoberII]

]People could also get around this by just using a proxy server or something, but I'm guessing the average person probably wouldn't know to do that.

On the other hand, such knowledge is easily shared, and anyone who wanted to know would know - TPB is blocked here in Denmark, but I don't know of anyone who can't get through it.

[Azrael]

Why does this sound like the start of...

... that other active SB thread on the topic?