After last year's riots in London, the British government established an independent panel to try to make some sense of what happened. Among the many things they examined were the claims by some that social media and text messaging were largely responsible, and that the government might need some kind of "kill switch" on these services to stop the same thing from happening again. The panel recently published an interim report, and their response to the social media question (as highlighted in the Guardian) is refreshing:

On the role of social networks, the panel concluded that rioters were aided by instant messaging services but warned against plans to shut down websites such as Twitter and Facebook. They pointed out that the UK has pledged support for the open use of social media during the Arab spring uprising across the Middle East.

"Mobile communications technology is continually evolving and new developments may benefit the police and authorities rather than rioters," the panel concluded. They added that some mobile networks have installed systems to detect crowds and the direction they are moving in so they can manage congestion.

"In the future, it may be possible to use cell congestion monitoring as a tool to tackle rioting," the report found. "What is clear from the riots is that there is no simple 'switch off' solution. Viral silence may have as many dangers as viral noise."

This touches on a couple of points we've made before—like the fact that smart cops can use social media to their advantage—but the highlight is the direct and unabashed comparison to the Arab spring riots. That's a controversial topic, with many people insisting that rioters in a democracy are fundamentally different than those in living under an oppressive regime. While I can see how people have less sympathy for the former, this argument has always bothered me, because it is used as justification for stronger methods (like shutting down Twitter) of stopping riots. That creates a strange paradox: the idea that oppressive measures are acceptable, but only for non-oppressive governments. While it's easy to look at some of the London rioters and see spoiled kids, it's important to remember that dictators see the rioters in their countries the same way.

So it's nice to see the panel underline the contradiction of supporting the open internet in the Middle East while wanting to control it at home. We've noted this exact hypocrisy at play in the U.S., where the State Department takes a vocal public stance in favor of an open internet around the world, while their diplomats quietly push copyright censorship systems in other countries—or where Joe Biden can opine against censorship while supporting SOPA and its censorship provisions. Of course, in that regard, the UK is not much better, and seems to have a similar blind spot when it comes to copyright law and the many ways it contradicts their stance on internet freedom.

As UK politicians and law enforcement still argue over things like blocking access to social media or shutting down Blackberry Messenger during times of riots and/or protests, it seems that some UK police know when to just jump right in. They've arrested and charged a guy for daring to organize a water gun fight using Blackberry messenger and Facebook. We're not making this up, though we wish we were:

The 20-year-old from Colchester was arrested on Friday after Essex police discovered the alleged plans circulating on the BlackBerry Messenger service and Facebook.

The unnamed man has been charged with "encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence" under the 2007 Serious Crime Act, police said.

He was arrested with another 20-year-old man the day the water fight was allegedly due to take place, and has been bailed to appear before Colchester magistrates on 1 September.

It's a "serious crime" to organize a water gun fight? Is there no right to bear supersoakers?

Pretty stunning to see L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of the WSJ (and now a columnist) make the argument that shutting down social media is fine and dandy, if governments say that it's to stop bad stuff (as defined by those governments). Specifically, he defends UK politicians calling for blocks on social media in response to the London riots. Crovitz's reasoning isn't just weak, it's full of bizarre logical fallacies.

But all uses of technology are not equally virtuous. Enthusiasm for technology should not lead to a moral and political relativism that confuses crime with free speech and the British police with authoritarian governments.

No one has claimed that the two are the same. The point, which seems to sail way, way, way over Crovitz' head, is that the ability to block communications in one case quite easily leads to it being used in the other. Bizarrely, Crovitz then defends the highly questionable BART cell service shutdown in response to the threat of protesters, by saying it's fine because "the world did not end."

And the world did not end when police did indeed temporarily shut down social media. This happened last week in San Francisco, Calif., one of America's most liberal cities.

Last I checked, the Constitution of the United States says, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." It does not say, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech... but it can if the world won't end from doing so." From there, Crovitz just gets weird:

Permitting peaceful protests while stopping violence seems like a reasonable compromise.

Let's be clear: when discussing the First Amendment, the phrase "reasonable compromise" generally means someone taking away your rights. The problem, which Crovitz can't seem to get his head around, is that you can't set up a system that properly determines what speech is allowed and what speech is violence-inducing. People who trample on the First Amendment assume, falsely, that it's easy to tell one form of speech from another. If someone is committing violence, arrest them for committing violence. Don't take away their free speech rights.

From there, Crovitz insists that China's free speech trampling is different. Why? Because it is! Don't you see? The problem is that it's very much in the eye of the beholder. China continues to insist that its trampling of free speech is a "reasonable compromise" because it keeps "bad stuff" away from the people. How do you determine where that line is? Crovitz pretends its easy. Our founding fathers knew that it was not, which is why they specifically wanted to make sure that "dangerous speech" was allowed.

Then Crovitz jumps into obnoxious false dichotomy territory:

Robert Andrews, a reporter for the paidcontent:UK website, asked Twitter users whether they would prefer to keep the service available so they could chat about the television music competition "The X Factor" or let the service be closed temporarily "so that fellow citizens like shopkeepers need not be assaulted, have their property and premises pilfered and trashed, and so that they need not live in fear."

Though it was an admittedly unscientific survey, Mr. Andrews nevertheless reports that every Twitter respondent opted for "The X Factor." He concludes: "So addicted are we to our electronic connections, we simply cannot bear to be parted, for even an hour or two, in the name of public safety while London burns."

Or perhaps the people responding to Andrews recognized the ridiculousness of the question, and knew damn well, that social media is used for a hell of a lot more than discussing some TV show... and that allowing communications platforms to be shut down, because the government and Crovitz think "bad stuff" might happen, is a path to censorship. It's not that people are "addicted to electronic communications." It's that people believe in their rights to free speech. Taking away social media wouldn't stop London from burning, but it might harm some pretty core principles of democracy and the ability to speak your mind.

Techno-utopians would like to believe that digital technology is always a force for good, but technology can also accelerate evil. As Thomas Hobbes would say, without the enforcement of rules for ordered liberty, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," both in the real world and online.

And since we're doing a grand tour of logical fallacies, Crovitz closes with a claim that is simply unsubstantiated because it's false. I've never heard the folks normally associated with "techno-utopianism" ever claim that digital technology is always a force for good. In fact, I've almost always heard them claim that technology itself is neutral and can be used for both good and bad. If anything, people tend to note that it can help amplify both good and bad uses. But the point that they make is that you can't somehow cherry pick the "good" stuff to allow and the "bad" stuff to ban, because that always fails in the long run. It always leads to greater than "reasonable" censorship and always leads to important critical speech being stifled. Crovitz may have no problem with trampling on the rights of others. I, on the other hand, have serious problems with it -- and with the WSJ advocating what appears to be flat out censorship.

After initially blaming the Blackberry and suggesting that Blackberry's messaging service be shut down to try to quell the UK riots, it seems that UK politicians are trying to up the level of "bad ideas in reaction to riots" with Prime Minister David Cameron suggesting that those who are suspected of rioting be banned from social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

David Cameron has told parliament that in the wake of this week's riots the government is looking at banning people from using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook if they are thought to be plotting criminal activity.

The prime minister said the government will review whether it is possible to stop suspected rioters spreading online messages, in his opening statement during a Commons debate on Thursday on the widespread civil disorder for which MPs were recalled from their summer recess.

I'm at a loss to see how anyone believes that cutting off communication for people who feel disenfranchised will suddenly make them less interested in rioting. There's this rush by people in charge to think that "if only we could stop them from spreading messages, that will calm them down." That seems likely to be a giant miscalculation. It's not hard to get around any such ban, and instituting such a ban is just likely to piss off the very people they're trying to calm down.

After some have been blaming the Blackberry for facilitating the London riots, it seems that some politicians are hanging their hopes on that to the point that they actually think that shutting down Blackberry's messaging feature will help. MP David Lammy apparently is asking RIM to shut off its Blackberry Messaging Service because nothing quells a bunch of angry, rioting young people like trying to cut off their ability to communicate.

The London riots sound a bit crazy, but perhaps even crazier is the fact that officials now seem to want to blame messaging via Blackberry devices for the riots:

Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said that "really inflamatory, inaccurate" messages on Twitter were mainly to blame for the disorder. "Social media and other methods have been used to organise these levels of greed and criminality," he said at a press conference on Monday afternoon.

Ah, right, just like vocal cords, pamphlets, telephones and other communication tools "were mainly to blame" for previous riots. Hint to the Metropolitan police: if you're going to always blame the tool, you're not going to do a very good job dealing with riots. If people want to speak out, they'll figure out a way to speak out. It's not the technology that is to blame. The technology is just a tool, and if you block off one path, you can be damn sure that they'll figure out another path instead.

Of course, the downside of officials misleadingly blaming the technology is that you get folks like this Dutch politician who took to Twitter about this to ask why police don't just turn off Blackberry Messenger in London -- perhaps not realizing that shutting that channel of communications down wouldn't stop anything -- but likely would anger people even more.

IshmaelDS was the first of a few of you to submit variations on this story of how some of those involved in the Vancouver riots are trying to stymie attempts by people to identify who they are through the abuse of copyright law. Some folks have set up sites with pictures and videos from the riots, trying to crowdsource the identity of people involved. However, some of those in the videos are making bogus copyright claims to get the content taken down:

"What criminals are now doing is they're claiming that they have copyright notice, or they're the copyright holder of the video because they appear in the video. So YouTube has been taking down videos in the last couple of days."

Of course, this is doubly stupid. Not only is it an abuse of copyright law, but it is basically people identifying themselves in the video, since they have to give their name to YouTube, and YouTube passes that info along:

Texeria uploaded the video on behalf of a friend. He says if criminals were hoping they might be able to hide by making copyright claims they're actually making themselves easier to find because YouTube notifies whoever uploaded the video.

"Basically what it says is, this person, and it lists his name, complained and so I actually have the personal information of the people complaining, and I will then be turning that info over to the police as well."