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Nice Knowing You: British Authorities May Censor Social Media

twig's picture
Submitted by twig on Thu, 08/11/2011 - 1:44pm
Departments: 
Department of No! They Would Never to Do That!
Tags: 
internet
censorship
free speech
blackberry
Twitter
Facebook
social media
twig

In an attempt to prevent protestors from communicating with one another, British politicians are looking at censoring BlackBerry, Twitter and Facebook.

The question, according to Prime Minister David Cameron, is whether government has the right to "stop people using social media to 'plot' further disorder."

Meanwhile, the police aren't waiting for Parliament to sort it out:

Earlier today there was one of the first known instances of police arresting rioters for using social media to “incite violence.” ”Three people have been arrested on suspicion of using Twitter and Blackberry Messenger to incite violent disorder in Southampton,” police in Hampshire said.

Good thing we don't have to worry about our own politicians shutting down communication in this country, seeing as how free speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment and all. Right? Right?

Comments

Submitted by JuliaWilliams on

I seriously doubt they can interdict communications, as Anon helped stymie that attempt in Egypt (and elsewhere), but using them to jail and prosecute, well, (Bradley Manning) I'm sure they'll find a way to (Julian Assange) discourage the use of social media.

Submitted by jawbone on

social media and web traffic. Heh.

We may wonder why western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet.

They are not interested in learning what content those nations are monitoring, let alone their varied national conditions or their different development stages.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/in...

Earlier they called the US on managing the debt. Must be kinda fun to be a Chinese editorial writer for the gov't these days.

Turlock