Technesstivity

After widespread Riots in the UK earlier this week, the UK Government, has proposed a Social Media Ban. On Thursday, the UK Prime Holidayer, sorry Minister, told Parliament that the goverrnment is examining the possibility to prevent suspected criminals from sending messages via social networking sites.

Twitter, Facebook and RIM have said they’ll be interested to discuss such possibilities with the government, obviously they’re looking at their own interests here. On Wednesday, the UK Government asked RIM to open up its service to them so they could figure out how looters had communicated via BBM and track their locations. After this announcement, a UK Hacker group posted a warning on RIM’s Blog. Claiming they were going to shut down RIM’s website and expose details of RIM staff if they collaborate with the UK Government. This is because BBM has very good encryption and the only way to get exact messages will be to reveal Intellectual Property or arrest people based on GPS Locations. As we know, there were many innocent people at these looting locations at the time. If you can’t read a person’s messages how do you use just their location to convict them. It doesn’t make any sense.

Dear Governments of the World, Stop blaming everything on the Internet

It’s the new blame game. Everything is blamed on the Internet since it’s not a person and can’t speak out for itself. Governments find it easy to switch blames on these virtual communities instead of tackling problems like gang violence, unaffordable school fees, violation of human rights or corruption within these governments.

These riots were bound to happen. There’s a huge disparity between the poor, middle class and rich in the UK. Everyone knows who the important people are and Monday’s riots showed this. On Monday, there were only 1700 Police men in London Town while there were 5000 Policemen for the Royal Wedding. Waddup David Cameron?

Clearly, lessons haven’t been learnt from the North African protests from early in the year and the Middle East protests that sprang from it. Violence escalated everytime the internet was shut off. Egypt turned off the internet, more youths went on the streets, Libya shuts off internet, more people go on the streets. Same thing happened in Syria. Why can’t governments see this? It’s not rocket science!

What happened to Free Speech?

Everyone has the right to freedom of association. So when the UK Governments start banning these social media sites, do they think people aren’t going to regroup another way? Or create newer sites? Before the internet there were many peaceful protests that had turned into riots. There were other just plain peaceful protests that were done without technology. We haven’t forgotten the US Bus Service Boycott by black people in the fight for equality.

Social Media did your job Cameron

I was very impressed when I woke on Monday and saw #riotcleanup trending. Whoever runs the Twitter account londonrioters.co.uk was set up so people could submit photos of looters and others could identify them anonymously. Details were then sent to the government.

The UK has bigger problems than Social Media

I was watching Sky News the other day and this dude blamed it on bad parenting because UK Parents are too busy working their asses off! He said, most parents don’t make enough money so they’re working 2 or 3 jobs so they can feed their family. With the amount of time they spend at work, there’s no guidance whatsoever, so the children are raised by Xbox and the television. Cameron might want to start with that.

What do I think the UK Government should do?

I think the UK Government can start by lowering school fees and taxes and fixing the messed up UK economy. Then you can set up a small social media listening centre, where you hire professionals who can search for keywords that insinuate riots and watch those social media accounts. Note: Watch, Not arrest people because they said they were going to protest. The UK also needs to begin counseling youths and prove to them [this part will be hard] that there are better ways to show anger and resentment to being treated unfairly than breaking into shops and stealing BlackBerrys. Finally, David Cameron should forget about a second term. Seriously

What do you think about the impending ban on social media? Leave us a comment.

No related posts.