Slashdot Mirror
Twitter To Meet With UK Government About Riots
"Twitter has confirmed that it will meet with the UK Home Secretary on Thursday, after being called in for discussions over the role it played in the recent UK riots. Twitter will send a representative to the meeting scheduled for August 25. Both Facebook and RIM will also send representatives to the meeting in regards to their effects on the riots."
Will there be representatives from the telephone company, and the postal services, to answer for the roles they played in the riots? What about mainstream print, radio, and television media who made others aware of the riots, and carried the idea of unrest to others, who then joined in?
The communication medium is but the messenger.
When it happens in Egypt and Libya, its an amazing tool for freedom of speech and the spread of democracy.
When it happens in your own back yard, its a problem.
but in the us all the gvmt institution has to do is to issue subpoena and pretty much all the information is up for grabs.. be it financial institutions, your m$ sexbox profile.. not to mention facebook which is basically founded on selling information of its users. I have to assume that UK wants somewhat quicker access to twitter, fb and RIM... less paperwork, more trees saved. because ya know.. they do care about the environment.
In essence, gvmt backdoor coming to all communication services. How long till that is broken and abused by evil hackers which will require even more draconian surveillance?
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When I first read the summary, I was surprised they even dignified the UK government with a response, much less an actual representative.
But then, I thought to myself, if they didn't, the government would have likely used that alone as an excuse. It really does seem the UK is fucked, either way.
Personally, though, I blame my government for the UK's attitude here. The United States government has pretty much shown the world that a powerful governmental body can get away with anything to a certain degree, unless the people do something about it. Hell, I doubt anything but a freaking revolution, either civil or congressional, could change government views of the effect of internet communication platforms on keeping the peace.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Twitter does't kill people, tweets kill people.
I wish there were some way that they could tell the world what happens at the meeting.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I think this is probably the most stupid thing the Tories have done so far.
Is this really how all countries end up? Take away the ability for people to defend their freedoms, play on their fears, take away their voice. Then rape them through taxation, banking and consumption.
How dumb can they get.
Twitter only was used by peeps like me in other countries to rebroadcast the pics and vids they tried to pretend weren't happening.
It was Blackberry messenger that was being used to coordinate things.
Total insanity.
Btw, I used to do counter-terrorism ops, and right now high-end automobiles are being burnt in record numbers in Germany.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle - either create jobs for youth and stop subsidizing the rich, or watch your country burn.
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They should all give a response in the words of Sir Alex Ferguson: "Fuck off."
[End Of Line]
Or is it: Immediate action needed. LDNers cannot have another evening like last night tonight. BBM clearly helping rioters outfox Police. Suspend it.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
not necessarily, in a proper functioning democracy, the electorate would kick the gov's ass if they tried blocking twitter cos' they allowed the riots, etc.
Thus why they are working on making it impossible for the citizenry to communicate quickly enough to outmaneuver the government who will most definitely still have their radios while the electorate is stuck with useless cell phones and internet connections with no idea which direction the troops are rolling in from.
I used to do counter-terrorism ops, and right now high-end automobiles are being burnt in record numbers in Germany.
That's a bizarre non-sequitur in the middle of a sentence!
either create jobs for youth and stop subsidizing the rich, or watch your country burn.
England has socialism up to its eyebrows. They've created a nearly-unemployable class of young people by removing any need to work (for the basics). The jobs are there, yet most low-skilled jobs are filled by immigrants (I was in London recently, and it seemed everyone in a service role had a French accent; it was very strange). Jobs programs have been tried, and people would simply not show up, or be so lacking in basic literacy, numeracy, or work ethic that there was no useful way to employ them.
I believe firmly that whoever can find a way to usefully employ all the chavs, neds, and yobs of the world will have invented the post-capitalist economy. MMOs and Farmville have shown that people will do menial, repetitive work for long hours and little compensation - and train themselves on the job to do it! There must be a way to build an economic system around that.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
not necessarily, in a proper functioning democracy, the electorate would kick the gov's ass if they tried blocking twitter cos' they allowed the riots, etc.
No, in a properly functioning democracy the electorate would decide whether they prefer bread and circuses to an uninterrupted Twitter feed and might well choose the former.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I play FrontierVille, not Farmville. Farmville is for neocons.
Besides, I'm working on the next gen Kthulhu Kitchen (tm), the eldritch cooking game, and that runs on an iPad in standalone with networked "gifting".
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"You, sir, are an idiot."
You, sir, presented nothing to counter his argument.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The UK government were friends with their citizens and followed them on twitter, they'd have a clue what all the commotion was about...
I'm imagining the meeting of Twitter and the UK Government will look a lot like the animated scenes from Mary Poppins.
Hey, how's it going?
I know it's terribly unpopular to be the voice of reason in a "GOVERNMENT IS BAD" discussion, but this meeting may not be a bad thing. Perhaps the government just wants insight into how they can get advance notice of violent trends. Perhaps Twitter can provide easy access to its data, to find people bragging about the loot they took. Perhaps whatever socioeconomic factors (if any) that led to the riots could be derived from other posts by the rioters, and the government could better understand the problems it faces.
But hey... never mind me. Let's all continue jumping to conclusions anyway. Up next, Linux Torvalds looks at Windows 8. Could this mean Microsoft secretly controls Linux development?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Lots of people in the UK know what you're talking about when you say a flick knife. It's a colloquial expression. Maybe its not used correctly (if you're in Ye Olde Guilde of Knifey Makers or something like that) but people here would understand it to be a sharp easily concealed knife that folds into the handle and springs and locks into place, or perhaps is flicked into the locked position by a flick of the wrists. ;-)
We've got quite a lot of pedants here already in the UK so probably we should be grateful you don't live here
Twitter in China = FREEDOM Twitter in the UK = NASTINESS Cameron you utter hypocrite.
Does anybody else perceive this as a kill-switch ploy between that of corporate and government?
More likely it is the government asking for a way to monitor tweets in real time surreptitiously based on various geo filters. e.g. all tweets from particular IPs / cells coming from a particular region. I wouldn't be surprised if they also wanted the ability for tweets to be modified, delayed, lost etc. and to send out tweets to people based on geographic location too.
Shoe, clothing, jewelry, gun, car, match, and lighter companies were all called in for their roles.
How dare they make products that can be used by destructive people!
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Will they answer all questions 140 characters at a time?
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.