Britain is starting to explore limiting social media, after riots and prime ministerial broodings.
This is tricky to describe, in part because the UK is doing this largely in secret.
The officials and the executives met in private in government offices. The companies declined, beyond carefully written statements, to say what specific new measures they would be taking in cooperation with the British police and government.
So we have to go with the best guesses of journalists. For example, excerpts from the New York Times:
[T]he group had discussed how far the networks might be willing to bend privacy rules to assist the police in pursuing online criminal activity. Twitter, he said, giving an example, might consider compelling people to use their real names instead of anonymous handles. Research In Motion has already agreed to provide the British police information from the BlackBerry Messenger network — used by many rioters to organize and strategize — under certain circumstances, he said. They might consider allowing “protocols” for easier access in future.
Some entertaining allies and precedents:
RIM has previously negotiated with Saudi Arabia and India to allow some monitoring of users’ messages.
In China, The Global Times, a government-controlled newspaper, praised Mr. Cameron’s comments, writing that “the open discussion of containment of the Internet in Britain has given rise to a new opportunity for the whole world.”
Plus dataveillance:
the police were also considering using social media analysis software tools to parse enormous quantities of data available online for signs of future unrest.
Digital media anxieties can become digital media policies. Nightmares become law, and visions prosaic politics.
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