should social media sites co-operate with police to suppress political dissent?

how often do you find a ready-made thread?

this morning's guardian on-line features the article that i bit below, based on comments by david cameron to the effect that social media sites have some kind of obligation to co-operate actively with police in situations that are deemed to be "riots" or "disturbances"...i put the words in quotes because they are political terms, the imposition of which is an aspect of framing a given action in the dominant media. would the question sit well were the same actions called "protests" or "revolutionary actions"?

the article is mostly a series of questions that i thought may be of interest to the collective, given that we are a social media site here and what obtains for the big geese could plausibly obtain for the littler ones.

the article is below. follow think link after for the hotlinked version, which gives background on cameron's remarks and other stuff.

link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/24/uk-riots-social-media

i see these as all ominous, problematic questions that follow from an ominously problematic political viewpoint triggered by what seems to me a classically conservative response to the "riots" (political actions? spontaneous responses to system problems?)--which is to strip political motivation away and reduce them to matters of "disorder"---so to criminalize them.

these questions are interesting, though.
perhaps we can have a discussion here, in our own parallel universe...
so what do you think?

 

I should imagine they already do help the police, and rightly so, when its kiddy porn or someones filmed someone being raped and the video stards doing the rounds. Criminal acts that endanger peoples lives.
As to political dissent - I suppose that could include things like me saying I think my local MP is a fuckwit. Many other people think the same - we talk about it in passing in the street - the fuckwits latest.... so I suppose you would need surveillence cameras and lip readers too.
Strange. Political dissent is okay in Libya. Students protesting fees are obviously evil potential rioters. Censore them, its less of an embarrassment to the govt. Invade their discussions and use them against them. A conversation is a plot.
If we are all to be having our knicker drawers searched, does that mean Cameron will start the ball rolling by allowing the findings of the Kelly enquiry to be opened up now, instead of waiting for 70yrs (untill anyone with an interest is dead).
No the police should not have unrestricted access - after all, they would be flogging more stuff to the press. Rather, if someone is going to be looking at it all, then it should be run like insurance fraud at the ministry of justice. They use their own insurance company investigators. If an investigation is found to be proven, I assume it goes to the police at that point prior to prosecution as fraud is a criminal matter. Do social networking sites not have like in house watchdogs?
If you shut all sites down in times of 'civil disorder', then what about the people who use it in a positive manner? What about those who want to let family and friends know they are safe - how about bringing in curfew for the masses too? I understand a small minority abuse glue - does that mean none of us should have access? Does it mean anyone buying glue, or attempting to, is to be seen as a glue abuser? An addict to be sectioned?

 

I don't think we should expect any less.

Facebook is the malling of the Internet, and like malls, Facebook is a private space, subject to the rules of those who own it. While I would prefer that my content not be shared, I fully expect it to be shared -- because that's just how it always plays out.

Mobile carriers can and will be subpoenaed for your text messages... why expect more from Facebook?

 

Relevant:

Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968 (Title III)

USA PATRIOT Act, Title II (Overview)

USA PATRIOT Act, Title II (Detailed)

IIRC, electronic media surveillance laws make it easier to read your emails / texts from last week than tap your phone on the grounds of "reasonable expectation of privacy." The surveillance law texts I've read were fascinating. The law enforcement response to dissenters is to criminalize them.

Facebook/Google/whatever all have user agreements that basically say that whatever you put on their system is theirs. Datamining, surveillance, etc.

We don't have a way for the people influence the government that works well but we have a ton of Orwellian weapons to "fight crime."

 

Mentioned this to a chap today - he said his provider is in Holland, and the Dutch providers would tell them to piss off. Dont know if thats true.

 

At the moment, I reckon:

1. The larger the entity which can say 'This is Mine', the more people who are affected should have a say in how it is managed, because there is less remaining space in which they may explore or access alternatives.Also, the larger the property, the more essential is access to feedback systems, in order to run it better. In my home, If I refuse my guest a cup of tea, access to the rest room and tell them they cannot use my phone to phone home, s/he can give me the finger and exit into a world in which those are accessible.

2. If I heard a group of people say 'Let's burn and look those people's property tonight', I'd want to tell people who could stop them, and feel relieved to know that other people and groups want to do the same.

3. 'Let's burn and loot' is a different message from 'I feel concerned by the inequality of distribution of wealth in the world and in my home town in particular'. As is 'Come to me, Oh Satan my Master!' is different from 'Let me rub this on your boil'. Given historical precedent Witch hunting, HCUA, Stalin, etc, the thresholds from personal expression of opinion, to intent to strategically subvert, to direct incitement to action need to be monitored. Writing a poem "I'm in love with Tolstoy's Natasha" is not communist propaganda or the first step toward revolution.

4. Rights to reply/debate need to be maintained. Those are, imo the 'public footpaths' with rights to greater robustness the bigger the property being traversed.


The OP points out TFP as a vessel in which to scry reflections. I'll have a look.

I look at TFP, and from a newcomer's perspective, see it includes Members becoming mods then members again, amicable transfer of administration, recent heads-together discussions on the TFP's Health and Survival [that's when I became an active member], Suggestions and testing of those suggestions, and a policy of respect for close on-topicness along with declaration and negotiation in case of variance. Acts of spam or disruption have been responded to with a combination of firmness, discussibility and transparency. Mods are continually acting as members in addition to performing their mod duty. It strongly urges subscription, whilst not closing doors to those who cannot, or who are, perhaps infrequent visitors or just checking the place out.

Facebook maintains a unilateral service 'Provider' status, in which admin input is purely managerial, and there is expectation, unlike this place, that your info can and will be distributed at will by the proprietors. Facebook like this place admits of mini-groups, but had no over-arching social mission, by which I mean this place specifies membership-relevancy condition as active evolution in specific areas, whereas Facebook seems to me to have a mission statement something like 'Project for the Evolution of More and More of Whatever'.

You'll already see that from what I have written above, I reckon that different constraints and obligations operate at different scales. Cameron tables the proposition ('is it right to') deny posting privileges on Facebook to people who organize meet-ups for the purpose of burning things down. Cyn denies posting privileges on Posting Games to those who post less than one-a-day in Discussion. Both intending to preserve the 'fabric of society', with different acts of authority at different levels. Though I'm guessing that the fabric of a predominantly tilted society would be of a different weave. I wonder how similar or different would a Tilted - owned Facebook be similar/different to the the present Facebook, and what, in this present political/social situation, would that planned meeting with the government be like.

 

I'm a babbling ninnyhammer but what I make of the OP's question is the following:

"Should social media sites cooperate with the [government] to suppress political dissent [in the event that the government isn't already hacking, cracking, bugging and tapping]?"

*something lofty about thoughtcrime / precrime*

I've been told by federal agents that the reason why they call it law enforcement is because most of the time we wait until it has been proven that someone has broken the law before we start cataloging the hell out of everything not covered by the tattered remnants of the 4th Amendment.

*something about how important reasonable expectation of privacy standards are today*

The items I linked above as well as numerous other legal martial arts katas are available to law enforcement. I see no need to go further than what we have now, especially considering how the new moves have been exploited (drug dealers being categorized as terrorists to wiggle around laws).

*insert Jazz's witty signature quotes from Pogo and Benjamin "All Balls" Franklin*

 

I wouldn't expect anything of social media sites other than doing whatever is best for their bottom line. Maybe here and there there will be a politically charged case in which they will act in defense of a member, but for the most part we can expect them to turn over anything and everything they have. Fighting for "rights" costs money.

 

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have a judicially sanctioned process for this kinda thing? Warrants? I guess my point is that they, the social media sites, don't have a choice in most cases where their data is being sifted by a law enforcement entity because they are compelled to give it up by law. If they wanna play Columbo on their own and report coulda-woulda-shoulda to the police, that's fine but the reality is that somebody is going to show up with a warrant and demand XYZ off their servers. The standard for probable cause vs. reasonable suspicious, reasonable expectation of privacy vs. open source changes daily, it seems. The "open email but not unopened email" logic that I still don't have a full legal understanding of.

It isn't even about the money (although that is the only reason social media sites exist), it's more about who is actually allowed to do it (play Johnny Law) and how seriously anybody would be taken if they did it on their own ("Stop! Citizens arrest!"). I don't see FaceySpace playing the nosy neighbor. D'just piss off their user base and law enforcement would probably be all "Who are you? GFY. We're underfunded and overworked, Hero."

Anything else seems a little too Minority Report for me, but whatever... I'm a big dummyhead and only talk in circles to hear my own voice.

Where is KirStang at? He's got schoolin'.

 

Drunk:

First Amendment, freedom to assemble, clear and present danger, freedom of speech. bla bla bla bla. In other words, suppressing such "assembly" in the United States would likely run afoul of the First Amendment. I think a very viable argument can be made against criminalizing facebook as a protected assembly right under the 1A. Only time such protection would cease is if lawless activity were to happen...in other words...Yes to marches and protests, NO to riots. Even if citizens have a viable complaint against big government, they do not have the right to burn cars and trash stores because they're pissed.

Reasonable Expectation of Privacy (Hereinafter, "REP"). Hey big boy. You pretty much have no REP when third party providers are involved--that includes bank account information, email, and most likely, facebook (how can you have REP when the website is dedicated exclusively to SOCIAL networking?) REP ceases when you share information with any third party--thus, ISPs, Banks and the like preclude a claim of REP, thus removing any such shared information from 4th Amendment protection.

Turning over information. I'm not so clear cut on the law. I don't think one needs a warrant. Only a subpoena to compel a third party provider to turn over information. (Because there's no REP involved--"The right of persons to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against UNREASONABLE searches and seizures").

/Drunk.

Everything written above could be wrong. YMMV.

 

Hi Plan 9 - your line on 'drug dealers treated as terrorists' reminded me of the seventies when the ploice had the right to stop and search those they thought were IRA - bombings and such you know. Anyway, the funniest thing happened when plod were on the beat - they turned over....... not a lot of people with ginger hair and paleish skin - nope - they stopped and searched lots of black people under their new powers, as they thought they were obviously supporting the IRA, and could possibly be doing a bit of bombing. Why did they confuse rastas, for example, with IRA terrorist types? Having given it much thought, I think its because it suited them to do so.

 

All sorts of interesting fluff available on the topic of "subpoenas" when combined with "social media":

Fluff Article 1

Fluff Article 2

Fluff Article 3

 

I have been reading these articles carefully. Thanks for providing them.
By the way, I hardly 'do' Facebook, and can't even get my mind round what Twitter 'Is', so I consider myself a 'student' rather than 'equally-informed partner' in this discussion. I'm following references and googling to work out the meaning of some of the terms used, but some of my future contributions might need to be 'What does this mean' or 'how does that work', rather than statements of opinion.


For now, I'll assume there are some similarities between American and English law ... subpoenas = warrants? 'n stuff.
In which case, it does look like present laws are covering most of the bases.

I keep keep wondering if Cameron is wanting to leverage an extension to 'neighbourhood watch'. In England, people who live in a street have the option to form a 'neighbourhood watch' whose agreement is to perform an organized 'keeping a watchful eye out and reporting anything suspicious'. There are no hard and fast rules about what 'suspicious' consists of. There are guidelines, but the overarching push is: if in doubt, take no chance ... call us. There are no rewards of penalties for reporting or not reporting. It is just a coordinated 'raise concern and get pro-active about safety and security and here's the number to phone if you see or hear anything'. An appeal to become Informers, based on 'morality' and 'community-self-interest' rather than legal pressure. Peer approval/acceptance strategy similar to the 'right' to put a green sticker on your product if it complies with 'Green' standards, most of which are not legally enforced.


The bit where Cameron wants to explore the notion of suspending people's accounts seems like a different possible level of intervention. On the one hand, the privately owned company has the 'right to refuse admission'. On the other hand, if chooses to cooperate, it takes on a massive watchdog job in a pool of ambiguity regarding what constituted dangerous activity which merits suspending an account. ['let's meet tomorrow to riot ... remember to bring the fuses' vs 'me an my friends was well wrecked on Jethro's 12th birthday ... here's the piccies'].

File hosting companies like Rapidshare have been fighting legal battles concerning responsibility for content of files they host, under pressure to actively police it. To date, they have been winning their case for privacy, agreeing only to remove files if specific complaint has been made.

 

Yeah, I must admit to looking at this issue strictly in the "AMERICAAA!" box because, well, I'm an American and have absolutely zero knowledge of the laws and criminal law procedures used in other countries. According to tests/professors, Europe is completely different in 4th Amend.-style areas.

 

they're interesting legal constraints that comrade 9 posted, yes?

i think people default into imagining that fb or twitter are some kind of electronic commons because that's how people use them. even when they're posting stuff that's all huffy about privacy and data-sales, they're still using these spaces as if there were a kind of public forum. and people have been told--over and over---in these sad neo-liberal dominated times, that somehow or another private control can be equated with greater freedom. which is standing reality on it's head...but in america you can do that because, in the end, nothing matters except that you have the capital to buy a repetition platform. you can say almost anything--so long is it is not from a left viewpoint, so long as it does not go after capitalism as a system, seemingly--and it's ok so long as you own the infotainment channel. such is the logic of markets. such is a consequence of treating information as a commodity. but i digress.

some quite important political actions have been triggered by actions mounted via social media networks--in egypt, the launch of the "we are all khaled said" page played a role in triggering the actions of january. the organization, however, did not happen via facebook or twitter. what happened on these platforms was a kind of echo chamber that disseminated the fact that x or y was happening, accompanied by variously dense tunnels of disinformation and/or rumor, that functioned as a kind of amplifier (and reflexive space, one of discussion and so forth).

the organizing itself seems to have combined cellphone technologies with other, more traditional forms (in the case of most of the actions associated with the "arab spring"--including those in europe (france, spain, italy, greece) the patterns familiar from the history of general strikes (creating public spaces, paper and street art, flyers, social networks in meat space) were all fundamental. similarly, so far as we know, during the actions that followed the last elections in iran--but there, cellphones were more basic still...and so it was not surprising that those corporate champions of open speech at nokia sold the iranian government surveillance technologies they developed to track people on nokia phones--but then again, cellphones are little surveillance devices. in case you lose one, of course. so it's all good. happy surveillance. you know.

there was a report the conclusions of which follow the above released in the uk about the riots a day after the article posted in the op appeared in the guardian that dismissed claims that either fb or twitter were significant mobilization tools. so the premise of the sequence of questions it posed retreated a bit from actuality.

at the same time, the legal requirements for reporting "the suspicious" imposed on all forms of communications media---supplemented with the massive electronic surveillance program instituted after 2001 as a particular object of cheney affection that was roundly criticized but never dismantled (check the electronic frontier foundation's webspace for a barrage of information)---all operating within a general climate of paranoia (manufactured to sell you the repression all this represents)---is quite sobering.

is political dissent a criminal action?
it seems as though it's been pretty thoroughly criminalized, particularly in the wake of the idiot "war on terror" given the vaporousness of the notion of "terrorism"...could be anything, right?