Should Governments Monitor Social Media to Prevent Civil Unrest?

by Billie Edington

By now, plenty has been written around the circumstances of the London riots. Like Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, social media has been credited, or in this case blamed, with aiding swift and active civil unrest. Criminal or political — or both — the “social media riots” of London have shown how almost any location is susceptible to the rapid assembly these networks afford a younger generation.

And it’s moving increasingly closer to home. As early as today, Philadelphia has had to impose a curfew on teenagers who used social media to organize criminal “flash mobs.” With an uncertain economic climate and a bleak job market, there’s reason to be concerned.

Rather than waiting to see how this might play out at home, the London riots in particular raise some larger questions about social media policy and government’s involvement. Police have attributed the rioters’ organizational speed primarily to BlackBerry’s messenger service (BBM) and Twitter.  These kinds of technologies used to be law enforcement’s leg up, and now they’re competing against its most adept users. The law does require these platforms to work with government agencies when criminal activity is suspected, but to what extent? BlackBerry has already felt the wrath of hackers for agreeing to help police in identifying potential rioters. But when it comes to public safety, who decides how far is too far? And can we, as users, trust our social platforms?

If our government and social networks start addressing these questions together preemptively, rights to freedom of speech, privacy, and assembly might not have to be so swiftly compromised in times of disruption. Consider the Pentagon’s recent request for research proposals that would help them better monitor conversation in the Middle East. This recognizes that social listening is an effective way to understand and track political rebellion.

But can our government listen more effectively in the social space at home to stop the “social media riots” from occurring here? The amount to which our government is already listening to our social networks at home is unclear, although you can be sure they are. But just as the London riots reveal, the masses are increasingly demanding transparency. In advertising, we continually tell our clients that social media best practices require transparency, authenticity and engagement. Those who don’t engage don’t control the conversation. And those who listen engage most effectively.

So do governments need to become better social listeners? If government services and officials opened up more channels of discussion online, would this help relieve some issues of transparency for the masses? Would we feel like we had more access to our political system? In a more perfect world, could we even find ways to curate effective and actionable political protests online so it never escalates to violence?

Democracy is, by definition, the governing voice of the masses, and social networks are the new soapboxes. If our government isn’t listening and engaging, is it doing its job?

BlackBerry Blog Hacked in Wake of London Riots

 by Christina Warren

Research In Motion found its official BlackBerry blog hacked Tuesday morning, following statements the company made regarding theLondon riots.

Rioters used RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger to communicate far more than using other social networks like Twitter or Facebook.

In response to the riots, RIM tweeted, “We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.”

As we noted yesterday, that seems to indicate that BBM isn’t as private as some rioters may have hoped.

In response, a group calling itself TeaMp0isoN hacked the publicly facing Inside BlackBerry blog. The site is now down.

Before the site went down, we were able to capture the following message from the hackers:

This hack is a response to this statement by RIM:

“We feel for those impacted by this weekend’s riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can. As in all markets around the world Where BlackBerry is available, we cooperate with local telecommunications operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials. Similar to other technology providers in the UK we comply with The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and co-operate fully with the Home Office and UK police forces.”

Dear Rim;
You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all, the Police are looking to arrest as many people as possible to save themselves from embarrassment…. if you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it, 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? Think about it…. and don’t think that the police will protect your employees, the police can’t protect themselves let alone protect others….. if you make the wrong choice your database will be made public, save yourself the embarrassment and make the right choice. don’t be a puppet..

p.s – we do not condone in innocent people being attacked in these riots nor do we condone in small businesses being looted, but we are all for the rioters that are engaging in attacks on the police and government…. and before anyone says “the blackberry employees are innocent” no they are not! They are the ones that would be assisting the police

- TriCk – TeaMp0isoN -
Greets To: iN^SaNe – Hex00010 – MLT – BlackHacker

- Knowledge is Power . . . . .

#FuckTheFeds

Twitter: @TeaMp0isoN_

London Riots: Twitter Traffic Surges in the UK [STATS]

 by Ben Parr

Traffic is surging to Twitter and major media websites in the UK as theLondon riots enter their fourth night.

Twitter has been the biggest beneficiary of the unrest, according to web analytics firm Experian Hitwise. The social information network accounted for 1 in every 170 UK Internet visits on August 8. Hitwise also reports that approximately 3.4 million people from the UK visited Twitter’s homepage yesterday, easily surpassing the traffic Twitter garnered during the super-injunction scandal.

The social media impact of the London Riots seems to be limited to Twitter, though. Facebook, the world’s largest social network, didn’t receive a similar traffic spike. Hitwise attributes this anomaly to the fact that Twitter’s most prolific users are located in London postal codes, while Facebook is more dominant in the northern UK.

News and media websites also gained traffic as a result of the London riots. Traffic to UK news and media sites increased by 14% between Monday and Tuesday. The BBC was the biggest benefactor, garnering a third of all Internet visits to UK news and media websites. Sky News was also a big winner, thanks to a surge in searches related to the riots.

Social media and mobile technology have been playing a major role in the riots. Rioters have been usingBlackBerry Messenger to organize their activities, while other citizens have utilized Twitter and Facebook to organize riot cleanups.

London Riots: Social Media Mobilizes Riot Cleanup

 by Erica Swallow

After days of riots in London, thousands of Londoners and worldwide supporters are taking to social networks to help reclaim the streets of London.

While rioters took to the underground paths of BlackBerry Messenger to organize, the highly spreadable mediums ofTwitter and Facebook have shown to be the perfect platforms for mobilizing cleanup organizers and followers in the early aftermath of the rioting.

For the most part, organization has been very smooth, with a few key hubs across social platforms taking root. The @RiotCleanup Twitter page has amassed more than 50,000 followers in fewer than 10 hours and is consistently broadcasting cleanup locations and times, along with other pertinent information regarding the initiative.

On Facebook, a similar page has emerged as the central location for information on the world’s largest social network.

And for a more static look at where the action is, riotcleanup.co.uk is being constantly updated with cleanup location information. In an email interview with Ian, the creator of the website and resident of rural Shropshire, England, he explained:

“I was sitting at home following the #londonriots hashtag — then I saw #riotcleanup start to appear. I am not in London, but wanted to do something. Near enough simultaneously, I registered riotcleanup.co.uk as someone else got the Twitter account @riotcleanup going. Then, I just knocked something together as fast as possible and uploaded it!”

Beyond the riot cleanup, another effort to catch and prosecute looters has taken root, with the Tumblr account “Catch A Looter” accepting and posting images of looters for identification.

For Londoners like Heather Taylor and Cheska Moon (pictured above), deciding to volunteer time to help rebuild their community happened in the matter of minutes.

Taylor told Mashable, “I saw the [#riotcleanup] hashtag spring up and thought, ‘We need to have a cleanup in Clapham.’ So, [I] set the time for 9:00 at Nandos, which got passed around.” About 400 volunteers showed up to the cleanup in Clapham, and the local Sainsbury’s pitched in by distributing food to volunteers, Taylor said.

Taylor is just one of thousands of volunteers spreading word of the cleanup initiatives that are taking place all over London.

Below is a look at some of the positive energy flowing across the social web as supporters take grasp of the situation and band together to restore order.

If you’re part of the grassroots organizing that we’re seeing take shape in London, please add to the story in the comments below.

BlackBerry Messenger Used More than Facebook or Twitter

by Chris Taylor

As the riots in London look set to continue for a third night — and to spread to other parts of the UK — details are starting to emerge on how the rioters have been organizing themselves. The medium of choice? BlackBerry Messenger.

The riots began as a protest at the police shooting of Mark Duggan, a resident of the Tottenham area of north London, last Thursday. AFacebook group quickly sprung up to commemorate Duggan; police and media attention was drawn to a particular post on the Facebook page which appeared to fan the flames, as well as the occasional tweet from rioters describing their deeds and where they were headed next. Some posted pictures of looting and burning police cars.

But it soon became clear that BBM was by far the most popular means for rioters to communicate. BlackBerry devices, cheaper and more widespread than iOS or Android smartphones, are owned by more than a third of British teens, according to a recent study. BBM — an instant message service for BlackBerry owners — is free, instantly available, one-to-many, and the authorities can’t immediately trace it. BBM users must exchange PIN numbers, which keeps their conversations private.

The Guardian got its hands on BBM messages directing rioters — blasts that are shocking in their specificity. “Everyone in edmonton enfield wood green everywhere in north link up at enfield town station at 4 o clock sharp!” reads one. Another directs looters to Oxford Circus in the heart of London: “SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!)”

Research in Motion, makers of BlackBerry, responded with this tweet: “We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.” That seemed to suggest that BBM would not be as private as some of the rioters might have hoped, but RIM refused to say exactly how much information it would be sharing with police.

The BBM connection didn’t stop one of London’s chief law enforcement officials from tarring all of social media with the same brush. “Really inflamatory” messages on Twitter were mainly to blame for the disorder, said Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police at a press conference Monday. “Social media and other methods have been used to organise these levels of greed and criminality,”