The Danger of Social Media is also its Strength

In the wake of last week’s riots across the UK, David Cameron announced on Thursday that the government would look into banning people from using social media “when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”. I think this is a ridiculous, ignorant and impossible position to uphold.

What can already by done?

Social media services are provided by private companies, and by signing up to those services you agree to abide by their rules. You do not have the right to freedom of speech on their services. It is very often the case that “private” messages are rarely private – there is money to be made in mining your data and handing it over to advertisers. This kind of policy exists so that administrators can remove hate speech and graphic content.

Looking at the terms of use of Facebook, Twitter and RIM, it is pretty clear that all three services have clauses allowing them to hand information over to the authorities. Facebook asserts:

“We may disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests if we have a good faith that the response is required by law.”

Twitter similarly states that:

“We also reserve the right to access, read, preserve and disclose any information as we reasonably believe is necessary to:

(i) Satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request

(v) protect the rights, property or safety of Twitter, its users and the public”

Finally, RIM

“Reserves the right to review materials posted to or sent through a Communication Service and to remove any materials in its sole discretion.”

Furthermore,

“You hereby authorize RIM to co-operate with (i) law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violation”.

All of these services will aid law enforcement authorities with their enquiries – which is in their commercial interests as by doing so they will be seen as responsible organisations who do not want to promote criminal activity.

But, David Cameron was not just talking about having these companies hand over information; he was talking about going further and banning people from these sites altogether. So, let’s take a look at whether this could actually be implemented.

The Implementation

As this was just a general speech, not a lot of details were discussed on how such a policy would be implemented. There are a lot of questions to be answered; these are a few of the big ones that come to my mind:

• Will banning be a proactive or a reactive task?
  • If done proactively – how is this reconciled with the presumption of innocence?
• Will this be a blanket internet ban, or a ban on specific sites?
  • If a blanket ban is in place – how can you guarantee that person cannot access the Internet from another machine?
  • If a social media ban is in place:
    • What is the definition of a social media service?
    • Who will keep track of what social media services exist?
    • How often will this be updated?
  • Who will enforce this ban?
• When will users be allowed back on the Internet/services?
• What is the process of appeals?

This is quite a difficult area to be wrangling policy in, as actually enforcing such a ban would incur a massive and ongoing cost to the state, would require the full co-operation of all parties involved, and verges on the impossible. BBM, for example, is encrypted. To actively police this network would require the ability to decrypt a message and identify the origin, in addition to catching the criminal with enough other evidence to prosecute.

Chris Morris’ excellent film Four Lions shows the main characters communicating through a web service called “Puffin Party”. The reason I bring this to your attention is to state that not all social network activity is carried out via the larger services. Once you start heading into the obscure, you suddenly find yourself dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of places in which communications could be taking place. When Twitter and Facebook were blocked in the Middle East uprisings earlier this year, people turned to dating sites to communicate. People even get around the so-called ‘Great Firewall of China’. These systems are never perfect.

Neutral

During the riots there were various rumours going around on Twitter that riots had started in several cities when they hadn’t. Some police forces were very visual on Twitter to dispel these rumours. There is a risk in such a fast-moving story that these rumours might gain some traction and people would take to the streets, but this is not an exclusive feature of social networks. It is good ol’ scapegoating to say that social media was the cause of the riots. Sure, it might have been one of or the major means by which the message spread, but we must also consider the flipside.

Users of social media regularly use the service to do good – by linking to charities, or important stories, or in context of this article, organise a community cleanup operation (see the #riotcleanup hashtag feed). Tom Watson MP was correct in calling this technology “neutral” as the technology does not encourage this kind of behaviour. Social media is unique in that is has the ability to spread information on a scale never seen before – that is one the whole a good thing that we should not want restricted because of some bad apples.

To me, it seems as if this part of David Cameron’s speech is nothing more than populism, with the intention of gaining small-term favour from the public, and ensuring they remain in control of the media cycle by looking ‘tough’. There is clearly a fine line between the need for the Police to be able to effectively police our society, and acting in an oppressive manner. Whilst this does mean that the Police will have to adapt to new technology, we should always be wary of how much power we hand over. In times of crisis – keep a watchful eye on the government, and think critically about what they want to introduce into law.