Fouad, apparently Blackberry has been cooperating with the British authorities after rioters were using the blackberry messenger. Makers of the Blackberry ( I think it is RIM or Research in Motion) can cooperate but they have insisted that those messages sent were going to be encrypted and cannot be unscrambled. What's really going on is that those messages inciting rioting were sent to twitter, probably re-posted and amplified in several networks. But I think Twitter has refused to close the accounts of rioters. It's like saying "<i>your right to throw a punch ends where my nose begins.</i>"
Twitter is a private company, as such, they cannot be required to
provide their service to anybody. It is their right to refuse their
service if they do so choose. If these people are using twitter to
organize and encourage criminal activity, then twitter can refuse their
service and at the same time they have the right <u>not </u>to refuse
service <u>irrespective of content</u>. All the government can do is track information and thwart any more looting. Also, RIM and Twitter may be legally ordered to hand over information if there are suspicions of unlawful activity. I'm not a lawyer but I doubt very much that Twitter will close the accounts of rioters. Closing those twitter accounts is not going to stop the rioting. The police have to stop them. The police might be outnumbered. If the police open fire, there's going to be all sort of human right accusations even if these law-breaking hooligans have been on the wrong in some sense. <br>
<br>If you remember the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles years back, it also incited the same rioting in LA. There were looting, too. The police couldn't stop them. It just wound down. When these hooligans in London don't have anything else to loot, the rioting will wind down. The loot money will eventually run out and I guess it's time to start looking for a real job. The real root of most of society's problems is allowing its people to be "addicted" to the entitlement system. When you make it so easy for most people, they abuse that. Why work when everything is handed down to you? The moral fiber in our "civilized" society is waning. I have students who believe that if they want to have new clothes, they have to steal them in the mall. They don't realize that in order to acquire these material things, you have to work and save up. The riots are nothing more than an opportunity to find an excuse to "go down hard and not get hungry." Sad but true.<br>
<br>Regards,<br>Charity<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 6:38 AM, Roland Perry <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:roland@internetpolicyagency.com">roland@internetpolicyagency.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">In message <CAHuaJtPiRPSmr-<u></u>V2ts8xFNBTG7gto6Kr-gSkE1n=<a href="mailto:NCtqmXU16A@mail.gmail.com" target="_blank">NCtq<u></u>mXU16A@mail.gmail.com</a>>, at 13:43:15 on Fri, 12 Aug 2011, Fouad Bajwa <<a href="mailto:fouadbajwa@gmail.com" target="_blank">fouadbajwa@gmail.com</a>> writes<div class="im">
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Shut this off, and you not only facilitate the danger,<br>
you endanger our fundamental right to freedom of speech. Violence<br>
should be punished where the law has been broken, but not at the<br>
expense of our fundamental rights."<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
I don't think there's a practical possibility of shutting off people's access to social networking sites (which is where the Internet Governance aspect is involved), but this episode has been the nearest to "shouting fire in a crowded theater" that I can think of for some time (which is relevant to the concept of free speech).<br>
<br>
The initial riots (which soon became completely non-political looting) may well have been triggered by false reports that the police had shot a suspect in the head[1]. In the UK, the police shooting anyone is quite a rare thing, there's an average of only two fatal incidents a year - which is perhaps why such a fuss is made. (And it's about 100x less than the USA, once you factor in the different population size)<br>
<br>
[1] A man was shot (and died), but not in the head.<br>
-- <br><font color="#888888">
Roland Perry</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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