Slashdot Mirror
UK Police Arrest 12 Over Facebook Use Inciting Riots
An anonymous reader writes "Scotland Yard vowed to track down and arrest protesters who posted 'really inflammatory, inaccurate' messages on Facebook, but it didn't stop at just two people. While two teenagers were arrested earlier this week in connection with messages posted on Facebook allegedly encouraging people to start rioting, 10 more have now joined them."
If you're going to bust everyone who posts THOSE on Facebook, you're going to need a helluva lot more cops.
But, then, I never realized that posting inaccurate information was a jailable offense in the UK. But then, I guess if you piss off the powerful people in any given country, just about anything is a jailable offense, isn't it?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yeah, how dare anyone try and punish people for rioting and incitement to riot? Clearly this is RACISM!
Idiot.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
They shot and killed an armed drug dealer. It may not have been justified, but he was not "innocent".
The riots weren't about protesting that even. They were just an excuse to destroy and steal.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
At the moment, it isn't the rich and powerful, it's middle class shopkeepers who have seen their livelihoods go up in flames as gangs of hooligans loot, pillage and destroy. If the police can gain of evidence of incitement from their Facebook pages, all the power to them. Freedom, online or off, does not mean you get to organize riots and I hope they throw the book at these vile anti-social bastards.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
Methinks you're romanticizing the "rebels" here. The riots aren't about ideology or protests. "Everyone else is getting free stuff and having a good time burning stuff! Want!" is not a movement inspired by martyrs, unless you do it in a really heavy handed way. If they broadcast a webcam of these people being beaten to death by police, maybe.
Taking down people for organizing some store-burning though, no. Many of the rioters seem to be cowards who were only smashing and stealing because they assumed they could get away with it, or they were going with the crowd. I suspect a few arrests will send most of the rioters to cover.
If they forcibly break up peaceful marches and demonstrations, then sure. There are of course real issues and legitimate anger there, and the government would be wise to avoid taking a hard line with protesters who know they are doing nothing wrong. Taking a hard line against people just looking to steal TVs though will be effective. If there are similar riots here in the US with similar people involved in it, part of me hopes the police bring out the rubber bullets.
V for Vendetta had a point - and that point wasn't mindless looting and rioting, which is what is going on at the moment.
There is nothing politically orientated about the UK riots, its literally just idiots doing whatever they think they can get away with. So yeah, take these ten, and the ten after that, and the next ten - until they get the message that this kind of behaviour in the UK is not acceptable. We are already a democracy, we already have a say in our governance - think rioting is going to improve anything...?
I don't know what they posted, but inciting a riot is a crime in the US too. Whether that's an infraction on Freedom of Speech or not is another debate. This is different because instead of doing it in person, they're doing it "over the Internet" and because there could be doubt over whether they actually intended to incite a riot or whether they actually had any influence over the riot starting (doubtful). Although if encouraging violence over the Internet is going to be punished, then a lot of people are in big trouble - And please go set fire to anyone who disagrees with that statement.
Of course... It's not hard to find people in the US that have been jailed for encouraging violence on-line, but it's typically very specific violence toward a very specific target, with confidence that it will be carried out.
Yes it seems like they're overstepping here, but complete freedom to say whatever you want isn't something we're in danger of losing - It's something that we've already given up.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
It is unclear at this moment whether the man was innocent or not, but even if he was, that doesn't really give anyone license to smash shop windows and steal LCD TVs or to use a car to mow down three young men trying to protect their property. This is pure lawlessness.
What they need to do is bring back the Riot Act, and have a police officer with a bull horn announcing:
"Our Sovereign Lady the Queen chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the Queen!"
Anyone still rioting an hour after that is read, well, they get what the deserve.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, but probably useless.
I mean, think about it. You have no outlook in life, you have no hope for progress, no hope to better your lot, and the "threat" you're facing is jail time? Compared to having what you else never will have?
You think that's a deterrent? Think again. Punishment as a deterrent works only if people care about it. For me, even waggling a finger or the threat of being possibly, maybe jailed is enough to keep me from rioting. Why? Because I need a flawless record for my job, and my job's paying quite well, so I simply work to get what they're looting for. Legally. It's also less hassle for me. For them, facing jail time is probably not really a big issue compared to the possible gain.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If there is one thing we have learned from history, the rich and powerful never give up any of what they have without a fight, usually involving a lot of bloodshed and regular folk being locked up.
Conversely, they wouldn't be rich and powerful if we would learn to live without them. Stop buying their products and learn to be less of a consumer. Consumerism was a mistake, it was their idea for you, not your idea for them. Stop asking them to solve your problems for you and learn to be more self-reliant, learn to embrace smaller more local solutions instead of these national and international one-size-fits-all programs. Stop being scared of every little "crisis" that was carefully engineered (yes this happens routinely, your reluctance to admit this is beneath you, get over it).
They matter so much because you participate in their system and play by their rules. You want to level the playing field? Go primitive and learn to live off the land for say, six months. Not you personally but everyone in a nation. Yeah you will suffer some discomfort. After the six months, the "rich and powerful" will be on their knees begging for you to participate once again in their system. Their money means nothing if no one will exchange goods and labor for it. Remind them that they wouldn't enjoy a position at the top of the pyramid without a ton of people holding up the lower layers.
You could get a similar result if the vast majority of adult people in a nation refused to show up to work for say, six weeks. They take taxes right out of your paycheck so this would mean no taxes get paid for over a month. No producers to pad the coffers of the giant corporations. What are they going to do, put 90% of the adult population in jail?
A tiny minority controls a large majority. This system depends on one thing: that those who step out of line only do it individually, that there are always enough others who stay in line who can be sent after them to punish their non-complaince. Tip those scales and viola, you have non-violently upset the balance of power. Non-violently is the key. Otherwise you are at least as savage as anything you claim to be against.
The power really does come from the "common" people. Only the people have forgotten this. Thus they get trampled and refuse to assert their power.
I'm kind of tired of hearing these riots being compared to Vendetta. The shit going on in England has about as much to do with Vendetta as the War on Iraq had to do with WMDs. In this case we have gangs targeting shops for personal gain, probably because they are being incited to do so by organized crime or worse, clandestine government officials from other countries. Bottom line, if you're a kid and you think it's smart to post your riot exploits on Facebook, or encourage others to riot -- you are stupid and therefore the rules of evolution do tend to take over the situation.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Not too long ago I remember some other governments going after protesters that organized on facebook. How is this any different?
This wasn't a protest. It was a riot. There was no purpose for any of it beyond breaking, burning and stealing.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
It's a crime under the concept that your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. Shouting fire in a crowded theater and inciting violent riots put other people at serious risk of injury or death, and thus it is a natural and rational point at which to state a limit on free speech.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's pretty much what I wanted to ask: What exactly did they post? What was the message they sent? How did that "incite" others, and to what?
Be careful what you wish for. Until we know for sure, the message could just have been the expression of discontent with the way the UK police handled the situation, something that should be protected as free speech and expression of opinion. Else we could easily soon face laws that make exactly that illegal, under the guise of "keeping civil peace".
In other words, were they trying to incite riots, or were they expressing their dissatisfaction? What was the message?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not rich and powerful, but if you try to take or destroy my stuff there will be blood.
They've basically had magistrates working graveyard shifts to process arrested rioters. The government is already doing a lot. The initial failure, at least in London, was the Met basically taking the kindly modern-day tactic of letting the rioters do whatever they want within a contained area. Of course, at some point the people who lived in the Tottenham district kind of lost patience with this containment tactic, as did Britons in general, and after the riots spread and similar police tactics were used elsewhere, basically the public wants the government to untie the hands of the police so they can do a proper job of saving property and lives.
The Facebook arrests appear to be over incitement, an illegal activity. If these stupid assholes were just bullshitting on the Internet, well, I suppose they might be able to convince a judge, but I suspect the courts, who will see it as their duty to make sure that any kind of incitement, even by big-mouthed fucktards, gets duly punished, will do thusly to them.
Here's a hint. When there are riots going on, buildings burned, people being killed, you have to a special kind of idiot to post messages of incitement on Facebook. I say throw the book at 'em.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's the "divide and conquer" strategy that the "rich and powerful" use.
Pit one economically disadvantaged group against another. It's being done here in the States and in many European countries. It's something that the political elite in Africa and parts of Asia have done for centuries. It's not new at all.
How do you think the Tea Party started? How many Tea Partiers do you think know what the TARP program or the debt ceiling really mean? All they know that they believe the blacks and mexicans are getting something that they're not getting. One of the most "conservative" states is Texas, that has a $27 billion budget deficit and takes more Federal taxpayer money than almost any other state, yet they're mad at "big government's wasteful ways". They're a welfare state that hates the Welfare State.
You better believe that the people who own private prison corporations are praying that we get London-style riots over here. Every time they see an arrest they're thinking "ka-ching!"
You are welcome on my lawn.
Youthful indescretion? What fucking planet are you on? They were trying to incite a riot for fucks sake. Everyone prosecuted for ANY involvement should have a permanent blot on their record. You break the law you live with the consequences.
I don't know about you, but I live in the planet where inciting a riot is a non-violent activity, as opposed to participating in a riot.
I can post, "EVERYONE GO RIOT NOW" all day long without hurting a soul. If you look at those words and you decide to be an idiot about it, that's YOU being an idiot about it.
That is who slashdot chooses to defend? Probably not if it was Taco's stuff they were stealing but okay if it was someone else's.
Armchair revolutionary? What you mean is... a ned who was trying to start the looting and torching in Glasgow too so that he got get himself some free stuff.
I can post, "EVERYONE GO RIOT NOW" all day long without hurting a soul.
Absolutely, and I can shout "get him Rover, kill kill!" without causing any damage at all or I can spend all day saying "I will give you $100,000 if you kill my wife" without any consequence but if I do either of those things as a way of actually getting someone killed as opposed to, for example, rehearsing my lines in a play then I should be locked up. Get it?
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
I think you best look up incitement. The context is important. If you go into a volatile situation like, say, an angry crowd, and shout "Let's kill those fuckers!", that's incitement and yes, in just about every jurisdiction on the planet you have just committed a crime.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Should be noted that often these types of (politically) pointless vandalisms occur as a by-product of genuine civic unrest (peaceful or otherwise)
Should also be noted that vandalisms give police an excuse to use force on the entire group (peaceful protesters plus vandals). Such was the case in the Toronto G20, for example. If I were an unethical power hungry cop who just wanted to bash some skulls in, I'd be considering inciting vandalism myself.
Oh well, that makes it okay then.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I mean, think about it. You have no outlook in life, you have no hope for progress, no hope to better your lot, and the "threat" you're facing is jail time?
From what I've seen, most of these 'revolutionaries' look to be just thieving chavs who've been given tons of free stuff on welfare all their lives and are basically unemployable due to their attitude and Britain's hopeless school system.
Absolutely, and I can shout "get him Rover, kill kill!" without causing any damage at all
And if dogs were capable of the same reasoning a human being is, instead of being tools just like a firearm that can be trained to perform the work you require of it, then I'd concede the point.
I can spend all day saying "I will give you $100,000 if you kill my wife" without any consequence
I am fully in favor of prosecuting only the hired killer, and not the guy who hired him. I know that's not how it works, but I believe it should be. If you couldn't find someone to do the crime, your wife wouldn't be harmed. Unless you did the deed yourself, in which case you're performing the harmful action.
One man's protest is another man's riot. I'm pretty sure, Gaddafi called his protesters rioters too.
Actually no, that's not true. I don't think anyone at all who knows anything about this believes it was a protest. Including the rioters. Let's be clear on this because it seems a lot of (non-British?) commenters seem to think that there was some political motivation behind the riots. There was none. None. There was a protest regarding the shooting of Mark Duggan by the police. Following on from that was a riot that lasted until morning by people not involved in the protest. The next night there was another riot. The next night there were riots in a few other cities on top of London. The first used the protest as an excuse to riot but had no connection to it, the subsequent riots had no pretence whatsoever.
TLDR:
Nobody was saying "Let's go out and show what we can do unless our voices are heard!". They were saying "Lots of people on the street, let's destroy some shit and loot what we can while the police are occupied".
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
On top of that, I'm concerned that delegating responsibility solely to the inciters lets the people who did the actual violent acts off the hook.
1600+ rioters arrested, 12 for Facebook postings.
How many eyewitnesses and "rioters themselves" have you interviewed?
"Interviewed": None. Spoken to: Loads. I have plenty of friends and family living in London.
Finally, simply taking stuff may be a form of protest. If you think the system works for you and you're happy in your environment then you don't destroy it. If you think the system is biased in favour of the already rich, a corrupt upper class who leech more from the country than a single looter with a new TV ever will, then going some tiny way to address the imbalance is one way of getting across your message. If you later make £50 selling the TV, well... that's the purpose in protesting: to improve your lot. For the long term, you may unintentionally spark social change. But at the time it may be that you simply were exhausted and wanted somewhere comfortable to sit on the bus.
What? These aren't people forgotten or abused by society, they're people directly subsidised by it. I don't know if you're British and just on your high horse about the poor starving masses or if you genuinely don't know about/understand that we have a social welfare system here but the idea that this is the only way these people have to improve their lot in life is utter bullshit.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Unless you own a bank and you loot a nation.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Check the footage on the news websites, the social media websites on youtube.. The looters are multi-racial.
No white people being hunted by the police at all, sure:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/8690951/London-riots-CCTV-pictures-of-suspects-are-released-by-the-Metropolitan-Police.html
Keep your racist bullshit off here please.
A fair number of the rioters appear to be working class youths. This idea that it's a class war is a bunch of bullshit.
FTFY. No such animal as the middle class right now. There's working class that don't, and those that do, and then the rich. Nothing in the middle.
The problem is, following De Menezes, following Tomlinson, following uncensured non-lethal police brutality attached to every protest of the past decade, people instinctively don't believe police reports.
The police do lie, do protect their own and don't apply the law equally to themselves. The IPCC's going to have to produce some pretty serious evidence that the police acted correctly in shooting Mark Duggan if they want to defuse those tensions.
Well, the police shot and killed a person the police say was an armed drug dealer. Whether true or not, public reaction will have a lot to do with the reputation of the police among the public.
If by demonstration of force you mean the way they ransacked a good chunk of London, set buildings on fire, stole from defenceless individuals, left people homeless, terrified neighbourhoods, caused millions' worth of property damage, disrupted the lives of millions of people, etc... then you got that right, those are the mechanics of opression.
If you're talking about the Police, who treated the rioters with kid gloves then you got it hopelessly wrong.
So you think that to burn down a city full of innocent people, steal from innocent people, terrify innocent people, killing innocent people is in some way shape or form justified because you "suspect" an innocent man was killed?
I hate to break it to you but there is no justification for arson, robbery and murder.
This is the UK police service's latest tactic: quietly observe as teenage thugs burn down peoples' homes and businesses, beat people to death, and loot main shopping streets, and then afterwards, spring into action and arrest people who submitted text to Facebook. Fantastic job they're doing, the streets seem safer already!
Actions and choices have *CONSEQUENCES*!?!?!?
It was fine when the protesters were in Egypt and other countries. Notice how the story has changed when free speech is exercised in a "free" country?
In Egypt people organized peaceful demonstrations and demanded basic human rights. In England people broke into electronic stores and stole Playstation 3s before burning the place down.
Your world has no consequences for anyone who can find others to do their dirty work, because you're not willing to hold BOTH parties responsible for their part in it.
They're punished for the action they committed not for what someone else did but for hiring an assassin. In your world if you're rich or powerful and immoral and can find someone who feels they have nothing to lose and is immoral then you can do pretty much anything - have your wife or your mistress or a complete stranger killed - and then openly say so because hey, all you did was promise the guy a million dollars to do it. Where's the harm in that?
In my world there's a difference between saying you'll pay a million dollars for a guy to kill someone and actually paying him. Money exchanges hands, that's fulfillment of a contract, not just speech. That's like my boss paying me to code. He pays me for a service, I give him something for his money. In this world people would soon catch on to the fact that they'll never be paid for the deed, unless the powerful rich guy is willing to risk getting caught. This is functionally no different then your world.
President Nixon, did you actually carry out the break-in yourself? No? Well, no problem then, abuse your power all you like, it's other people doing the work, right?
Nixon resigned because people were pissed off and didn't think his actions were moral. He was never convicted of any crime, and was pardoned before such a thing could happen. Once again, not functionally different.
Osama bin Laden, did you fly the plane yourself? No? Well, off you go then, go ahead and find some more lackeys.
Osama bin Laden was not a citizen who was being tried for breaking any laws. The same rules don't apply in military engagements. It's the reason why such things as collateral damage where innocent people get killed can be allowed to happen. Basically, if Congress decides to declare war (or apparently if the President decides to, which is a different discussion altogether), we can send our military to do damage, and it's as simple as that. In this case we're worried about the threat he poses, not about whether or not we're violating his rights. Whether this is fair is yet another discussion.
The way law generally works, more than one person can be fully responsible for a single crime. We can hold everyone culpable in a bank robbery guilty of murder for one elderly security guard who has a heart attack, including the guy who was 'just' driving the getaway car, for just one example. There are usually particular reasons and limitations on how the law works for such cases of multiple blame.* I'm not clear just where you are advocating redrawing those lines. For example, if several people fired firearms at the same person, would you prosecute an actual murder charge only against the one that actually hit their target, or perhaps the one who hit nearest a normally lethal zone? Do you see the others as still guilty of attempted murder since they did each do some actual act, or does the fact that the victim didn't get 'attempted murdered' but actually murdered mean the other acts don't matter?
* For your example, the law doesn't want to argue a lot of internal, subjective, state of mind issues, so whether the hit man would have been fully inclined to kill the victim just for a cash offer or had to be persuaded by various other arguments offered by the person soliciting the hit is something the law wants to avoid getting too deep into. Overlapping, shared responsibility means a judge or prosecutor can spend less time bring state of mind related issues before the jury. Prove that both people had, at some points, intent for a particular person to die, and the intent was accomplished by both of them taking actions (such as one telling the other one where a good spot to catch the victim alone was, not just the one action of, say, pulling a trigger), and you don't have to spend days debating just how cold blooded each person was, whether either of them might have changed their mind if things had been just a little bit different, and other intangible or speculative issues that might be presented if blame for a single act is a fixed value that has to be awarded to just one, or even if it's allowed to be divided between everyone involved.
Who is John Cabal?
You fail to appreciate that most of what keeps humans as well-behaved as most are is FEAR of punishment.
Act out in ape society and you can get bitten. Humans are no different. If you want to keep apes in line, have sharp teeth and the willingness to use them.
Those yobs are like jock-worshipping, prosperous "sports rioters" in the US who destroy and loot because their team of cattle won or lost a silly game. The way to deal with brutes is to break them, so break them and do not stop until the enemy either submits or dies.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
A police spokesperson stated that given the heightened level of fear and the continued threat of violence what was considered "reasonable" use of force (the amount of force you're legally allowed to use in self-defence) would also be increased. Which I took to mean: If you have a gang of 5-10 youths trying to kick your door in, or break in through your window and you ding a couple with your cricket bat, you're more likely to get off than you would under normal circumstances.
Exactly. Of course there are police on the streets. There are also dedicated police officers whose job is to coordinate police on the streets and to look at the overall intelligence picture to see where the next riot might spring up. Anyone who's saying that they're not doing their jobs by investigating Facebook/BlackBerry Messaging/Twitter leads has no fucking clue how these riots were organised and how the rioters were able to die back and re-emerge like the filthy cockroaches they are.
Facts. They are arresting people who were actually at the riots and committing crimes. Is it wrong to also follow other leads to apprehend others? The rioters used Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messaging to organise themselves. Fact. The police are investigating social networks to try and track down the looters and rioters.
And we have allowed the people in power, both corporate and government, to no longer have a FEAR of punishment.
Bankers loot a country. They make horrible business decisions and then demand that the government bail them out by cutting social programs. So welfare for those that are "too big to fail" but none for people.
You know where there are no riots? Iceland. They told those bankers, "sorry, but you got yourself into this all on your own, so fuck off". And you know what? The sun still rose the next day, or at least I think it did, depending on which season it is up in Iceland. But either way, people got up, ate breakfast, and life went on. Bankers holding their dicks instead of money from peoples' pockets.
You're goddamn right there's anger. Even unfocused anger. Uninformed anger. But sometimes you have to work with the anger you've got. I'm sure there was a lot of pearl-clutching and tsk-tsk-ing among the powerful and rich during the French Revolution, too. What is it that the tea party likes to say? That line about watering the tree of freedom with the blood of tyrants? Well, in 2011, the notion that people, from the middle class on down, just have it too damn good so they need a little misery. A little less health care. A little less education. A little more work. A little less retirement. We've bought this because there's a huge marketing campaign to sell these ridiculous notions. Governments print money to take care of the rich and powerful, to save "markets" but if a 65 year old thinks it's time to retire, well they've just got it too damn good. Fuck that.-
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm not going to waste my time explaining why, but you're a fucking idiot.
I'd support execution for economic crimes because of the immense damage they do. Any fraud or theft over a million bucks should carry a public death sentence, Chinese style. It's "economic treason", which unlike crimes of passion, capital punishment would deter.
Bernie Madoff wouldn't be so smug if he and his cohorts were marched into a stadium and shot. I'd volunteer for the firing squad lottery.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Looting shops and setting fire to them is unethical, regardless of morality.
Morals.. Relative.. Ethics.. Not so much.
Considering the coverage due to Riot/Civil Unrest is an optional (and expensive) extra, most don't have it. So it's all shouldered by the shop keepers.
This will definitely put many out of business, lowering jobs available in the area and making life harder for the poorest.
It hurts everyone.
The richest get irritated, the poorest get screwed.
Because:
1) Britain has some pretty terrible social problems caused by rampant mis-management by both of the major political parties. The causes for this are debated, but we have ended up with a large chunk of society who have never contributed anything, never intend to, have no respect for anyone else and have a deep sense of entitlement. These people are widely described by the media as having been "failed" by the system, but since the system gave them a free education (which they spat on, choosing to spend their time doing drugs, each other and bullying anyone in the school who dared to try to attain an education), gives them free housing, free money and so on it is really hard to be sympathetic.
2) It was clear that the police had absolutely no control over the situation on the first night, leading to the belief of the people in (1) that they could do whatever they want and get away with it. Since they have no respect for anyone else and a strong sense of entitlement, that was all the prompting they needed.
I mean, think about it. You have no outlook in life, you have no hope for progress, no hope to better your lot, and the "threat" you're facing is jail time? Compared to having what you else never will have?
Agreed.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to loose"
With the first link, the chain is forged.