David Cameron on social media

[james_davis_nicoll]

In February 2011:

"This movement belongs to the frustrated Tunisian fruit seller who can’t take his product to market. And to the students in Cairo who can’t get a fair start, and the millions of Egyptians who live on $2 a day. In short, it belongs to the people who want to make something of their lives, and to have a voice. It belongs to a new generation for whom technology – the internet and social media – is a powerful tool in the hands of citizens, not a means of repression. It belongs to the people who’ve had enough of corruption, of having to make do with what they’re given, of having to settle for second best."

August, 2011

The government is exploring whether to turn off social networks or stop people texting during times of social unrest.

Comments

[emceeaich]

Shorter David Cameron: "It's okay if Conservatives do it!"

[matgb]

Shorter Lib Dem activist: "We're not avin that".

*goes back to plotting emergency policy motion*

[graydon]

It's not like there would be any authoritarians if their brains would let them be empirical about silly questions such as "does this work?"

[ironjeff]

The government is exploring whether to turn off social networks or stop people texting during times of social unrest.

Since that worked out so well for the Egyptian government...

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Not to get all Biblical but that's a hell of a beam he's got there.

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

There was also muttering about violent video games being a factor in the looting. I'm surprised no MP mentioned video nasties, rave music, or rock'n'roll.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

This is the government that is cutting funding to flood prevention measures and other bits of meaningful infrastructure AND THEN turning around and bitching about how the rioters are especially disgusting because they were "destroying their own communities".

And it's not a beam in his eye, it's a wooden spanking paddle - I swear to god, I thought that the 20 years in the wilderness had shaken the pedophilic spanking fetishists out of the tory party, but apparently not.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

There appear to be two lines of disgust: "How awful, they're destroying their own communities, why don't they go somewhere else?" and "How awful, they're rioting somewhere else, why don't they do it in their own communities?"

This is in addition to the line from a few years ago, "How awful, this rioting is politically-inspired!" and the more recent "How awful, this rioting isn't politically-inspired enough!"

[julesjones]

I do not agree with turning off the texting, not least because of the number of people, including me, who were using their phones during the orderly evacuation of Manchester city centre to let people know they were safe, and to let people know where the trouble spots were so they could try to avoid them.

But the flip side of that is that what happened in Manchester was not a protest -- it was a pre-planned operation by the local gangster, who had worked out how to use SMS to organise a large scale smash and grab raid while half the local force were down in London. (Torygraph article, but nevertheless a good explanation, with the video showing him in action on the night).

I'm not sure if Cameron actually knew that when he was performing in parliament, but the beam isn't quite as large as you're suggesting.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

RIM's people were warning the UKGov of the double-edged consequences of such a shut-down during the riots, as I recall. Whether Cameron's willing to admit as much is another matter.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

With freedom of speech, of communication, one can see how ugly things are.

Without freedom of speech, of communication, the truth is more easily hidden.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

BERNARD: It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? `I protect the lives and property of my citizens; you keep the public safe from an unreasonable and trouble-generating minority; he maintains a totalitarian regime of thought control.'

[monarda-if.livejournal.com]

Here are the prime minister's actual words:

"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. I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers."

They do not match your summary.

In fact they look to me like a clever method of defusing criticism from the right by appearing to promise to do something (vague and undefined) while actually promising nothing at all.

[michaelgr.livejournal.com]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm certainly shocked and surprised to hear that a technology can be used for both good and ill.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Maybe they can DDoS 'em down.

I think it was John Keegan who argued just post-9/11 that ISPs that allow encrypted packets to pass through them should be destroyed with cruise missiles.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

From what the coverage over here stated, it wasn't 'their own communities.' This was flash-mobs converging on any community that felt ripe and undercovered by the police. Shoot even a 19 year old white girl from one of the four best of England's schools with a most wealthy father was caught with 5,000 pounds worth of goods stolen from some very posh shops in her sports car.

Love, C.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

+1

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

Flash crowds. Niven got the phenomenon right, but had the wrong enabling technology.

Cameron's actual words, quoted above, have echoes of many non-technical managers in my memory suggesting that they could do wonderful things with text-parsing software (a Director I knew about 15 years ago wanted to be able to generate digests of legal cases automatically). I'm sure that if he's envisaging anything, it's some nice filter that blocks bad messages and lets the good ones through. This will be possible when we have Mike Holmes running the filtering system; instead we would get a filtering system which would look as though it had been written by one of the less competent bureaucrats in an Eric Frank Russell story...

[monarda-if.livejournal.com]

It is irrelevant whether it's technically possible or not. Whether it would work well or not. Or whether it would be well run.

The government has no intention of doing this.

Really. No intention. Read his words.

Let me help, here's the immediate next part of the same speech:

"I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers. Specifically on facemasks, currently they can only remove these in a specific geographical location and for a limited time. So I can announce today that we are going to give the police the discretion to remove face coverings under any circumstances where there is reasonable suspicion that they are related to criminal activity."

Compare and contrast "look at whether it would be right" with "we are going to". Here's an example to help:

"I am going to do my chores."
"I will look at whether it would be right to do my chores."

This may seem like semantics but it reflects the political reality for Cameron. Sounding like he's doing something is free political capital, actually doing something will require a bruising battle with his coalition partners and an unpredictable quasi-libertarian wing of his own party.

Another example for Americans. Suppose Obama were to announce his plans to impose a 90% tax rate on the top 10% of earners. This is impossible for him to achieve but it wouldn't stop Fox News going bonkers, and it would energise elements of Obama's political base. The internet chicken-littles screaming that the sky is falling and the internet kill-switch is coming do strongly remind me of Fox News at this point.

Finally, and a separate point, look again at the new quote from Cameron's speech. Read it with the same stupid paranoia as the first part. Hasn't he just announced the police can remove burqas and other Islamic headdress whenever they feel there might be criminality (i.e. whenever they like)? [Meta: No, he hasn't.] Heard anything about that from the amateur civil libertarians burning up with news of Twitter being banned?