British MP Calls On RIM To Shut Down Messenger Services To Stop Riots; Because Pissing Off Rioters Calms Them Down?
from the umm... dept
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.
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Filed Under: blackberry, david lammy, london, riots
Companies: rim
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A hacker group, Team Poison, hacked RIM and told them they would release a database of RIM employees to the rioters if they did this.
The situation is well out of hand, but the Government seems to think they can just tell them the street lights are on, you have to go home now.
Being on the outside, with only second hand information, I'm trying to hear both sides and find the truth in the middle. What is becoming clear is there is a massive disconnect between the Authorities and the People.
They went into a situation that was already upsetting people and then shortened peoples fuses by mostly ignoring the family. Then there are reports after hours of waiting for someone to talk to them a 16 yr old girl got upset and threw (either paper, a rock, or both) at the police and then was beaten by 15 officers. There is video circulating of the beating as well as eye witness accounts of it.
Now in the void of information about this, rumors of him having been executed or handcuffed then shot, followed by a police response that looks disproportionally heavy handed in the beating of a 16 yr old... it makes it hard to dispel the rumors gaining ground in this case.
Add a media machine set to frappe trying to get the next shocking headline out, add a dash of people who feel the Government was out to get them to begin with... and boom.
There is a massive disconnect between the people in charge and the reality of the situation. If we turn off the Blackberries everything will just stop and we all all resume our civilized lives.
At the end of the day, if they shut down the network the rioting will only get worse. More people will join in feeling the Government is committed to crushing everyone underfoot.
If when they manage to get some order restored, the UK is going to, as a nation, need to have a serious look at itself and figure out why the gap is so large and how as a society they manage to close the gap.
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It's only tyranny when 'they' do it.
When we do it, it's to 'protect the children' or 'stop terrorists'.
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http://gizmodo.com/5829077/blackberrys-site-hacked-after-rim-vows-to-help-bring-bbm+using -rioters-to-justice
as well as
"Blackberrys allow for private, PIN protected Group chat-rooms, intended for the corporate sorts. But kids. You know kids. They're smart. A lot smarter than they're given credit for... "
picked up from the BoingBoing thread.
There are a large number of them, and to stop the other things you need to shut down the internet. Anonymous has taught us... If the Government shuts down your internet, Shut down your Government.
Besides it is easier to shift blame to Blackberries than to admit to the number of failings in the handling of this entire affair.
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I didn't hear about them stopping, I just assumed they wouldn't last the full night, and took the appearance of clean-up efforts as being evidence for that assumption, (subconsciously).
Wow.
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However, shutting down Blackberry Messenger will mean a lot of innocent people are going to at best severely inconvenienced and at worst cut off from their friends and families in the middle of a massive riot. From a political point of view, that's going to create a lot of problems in the long run.
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Given the level of organization, I wouldn't be surprised to see codes start to pop up. Y'know, if they haven't already.
One thing I'm disliking about this is the picture we automatically paint of any western riot: The rioters must be out to get rich or get sexual satisfaction out of burning things.
While I'm sure there are opportunists, I'd like to hear the reason why an entire crowd starting burning and trashing their own city for multiple days. Current stories are pointing towards a disproportionate response from 16 police ganging up on a girl who threw a rock at a protest, (First rock, thrown, apparently).
I assume that protesters in the middle east are probably also portrayed as being hooligans and looters in their countries. Are they? (Time for me to get googling, I think).
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Is it too early for the obvious joke there?
"At the end of the day, if they shut down the network the rioting will only get worse. More people will join in feeling the Government is committed to crushing everyone underfoot."
Not everyone, just those looting, smashing and burning the property of innocent people and businesses, not for some worthy cause or support of disadvantaged people, but because it's fun and they can get away with it. If they won't stop, those people should be crushed underfoot so to speak.
I have a great deal of distaste for brutality or unwarranted violence by the police, but I think this situation has definitely passed the point where it's warranted.
Cutting off Blackberry communications sounds like a stupid move, but so far the Metro Police's response seems very weak.
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So do you think ...
In fact I heard one of the looters interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered as she drank from the bottle she said she liberated from a shop in Lavender Hill. She said that the whole thing was the government's and rich people's fault.
The sad truth is that I doubt that anything will change as a result of this.
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Bad idea?
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Especially given the *fact* that the Prime Minister is not understanding WHY people are rioting.
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I expect an impinging of civil rights after these riots are quelled, and the UK is not going to be very pretty...
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Re: Bad idea?
No, it's not. Do you realize what this does on a massive scale? This means that the government is *furthering* the disconnect? I can't begin to tell you how bad this is!
Let's say you have a shop owner, that keeps a blackberry. He's being robbed. Well, the police deactivate all cell phones. How is he going to get out any type of message about his status? What is going to happen to him? More than likely, he would *join* the rioters in taking down the government, because it's now the government that is oppressing him from being able to speak to them!
That's what happened in Egypt. Taking away the internet, gave people more thoughts into what the government is doing. That leads to more calls to overthrow the government. All it does is make the rioters fight even harder and larger numbers.
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Re: Bad idea?
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"Not sure why the English are rioting, but I think it's because all their sandwiches have cucumbers in them." - Kimmel #LondonRiots
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Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.
... The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. ...
Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news.
So the politics matter. The background is a situation that has been ignored for decades, and has finally reached a boiling point. I'm concerned about this. By what is being said about "restoring order", it seems that the UK's elected officials may decide to get more violent with the protests, making this much worse. I truly hope I'm wrong in this.
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Generation Disrespect at full song.
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Re: So do you think ...
What this will do in the long run is remove socialism from the table politically. It will remove many of the things the government and elected officials takes for granted. Things like not being re-elected based on your promises and performance not your BS rhetoric. We have the ability and technology to rate politicians, it will happen soon.
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That's when the Premier Legaue starts, which is why the chavs are out looting: they want bigger tellies. Come the 13th, they'll want to stay at home and watch the games.
Even though I'm being sarcastic, there could be an element of truth to this...
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egypt
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Piracy is disrespectful, it is self-centered. Rioting and looting is disrespectful. It's a generation that just doesn't see respect as meaningful, except in the "don't diss me" stupidity of street gangs and thug life.
So no, there is no A == B going on here, only that some that are in A are also in B, and that they appear to share a common thread of disrespect and self-defeating actions.
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happened before
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I wouldn't doubt it either.
Your comment finally made me find that Star Wars piece about the Death Star memorial service.
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I don't see how piracy can be considered 'absolutely' disrespectful and self-centered. Both disrespect and self-centeredness(sp?) are internalized concepts and by making that claim you're suggesting that everyone pirates for the same reason. For example, you can pirate a song because you love an artist and wish to share it with others. Just because it's illegal doesn't mean you were intent on being disrespectful and self-centered.
Also, nothing personal, but you sound like a fuddy duddy. You should leave the internet for a while and go tell children to get off your lawn.
It may not be the generation's lack of respect but simply the older generation's lack of understanding. It's a continuous cycle. A few decades from now we may see a shift in ethics and morals that say otherwise.
Does thug life still happen? I was hoping the internet would curb the appeal of thug life. Maybe someone needs to start a charity that works towards getting thugs addicted to MMORPGs. That would clean up the streets.
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You know, since this is a legitimate way to do a protest in a civilised country and not just an easy excuse for some thievery, assault and vandalism.
I seriously doubt these rioters even know Mark Duggan's name.
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Just a bunch of tools
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Ummmmmmm.
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And the common thread in your comments is that you have no solutions (certainly none that stand a snowball in hell's chance of actually working).
All you do is make a self satisfied rant about how other people are the problem.
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That would be true only if Blackberries were the only form of communication being used.
"From a political point of view, that's going to create a lot of problems in the long run."
Since when has that stopped politicians from trying to make a name for themselves in the short term?
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This isn't political as such
Regarding the BB and other social media I have to disagree with you on this one Mike, the police are'nt saying that the tech is responsible, they're just stating that was what was used. They are also saying that the tech is useful to them to capture the yobs by posting pictures on Flickr and trawling through tweets etc. So far they've had 3,000,000+ vistors helping identify the culprits.
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Taping a song in his time was like lighting fireworks in Mrs Robinson's mailbox, a mere 4 on the disrespectful youngster/masochistic asshole (DYMA) scale. But downloading a song today is like burning down a church full of kittens and babies, a full 10 on on the DYMA scale.
There is only one way in which this new-found lack of respect can be explained: it is the result of a sudden and extraordinary mutation in the human genome. Based on evidence collected by the Geriatric Association of Landscaping (GAL), this mutation is exhibited by making the new generation instinctively enjoy the lamentations of the women of the previous generation, viz their mothers. This in turn leads their fathers to beat them over the head with their walking sticks. Of course, none of those behaviours can be explained by the fact that we are in the worst economic times ever, since there was no civil unrest during the great depression either -- none whatsoever.
The GAL also uncovered an indisputable link between the burning and pillaging during riots with the burning and pillaging by pirates on the high seas. Since infringers of copyright are also called pirates, it was evident that these behaviours are linked. Even to a non-expert, it should be abundantly clear that the physiological lack of respect shown by a frenzied rioting mutant youth is precisely the same lack of respect shown by a mutant youth pirating media on the Information Superhighway. Needless to say, in the good old times copyright law was always respected, and all disruptive technologies were respectfully ignored so as not to inconvenience anyone.
In fact, the good old days were just hunky-dory, because everyone sat around drinking tea all day. On more adventurous occasions they drank coffee. The mutant youths of today drink too much koolaid, download songs and some of them even set fires to things. The previous generations never did anything even remotely similar, no siree. There's no respect today. No respect at all.
For those reasons, the GAL lobby makes the following recommendations:
1) all mutant youngsters are subjected to surgical sterilisation;
2) koolaid is banned from circulation and replaced with organic green tea;
3) as a result of the mutation, the youngsters should not legally be considered human and should be made the property of their respective ancestors;
4) all lawn carers will cut no more than one third of the leaf length in each mowing;
5) a copyright levy of 42.3% of each mutant's income is collected and handed to a copyright association to compensate for lost sales and burning and pillaging costs; and finally
6) a small explosive device is implanted in the cortex of each mutant youngster, which will explode if they are beaten over the head.
The GAL believes that swift enforcement of these measures will kickstart innovation and will lead to the creation of 12 billion new jobs.
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Re: Bad idea?
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Good job pissing them off
.. not like it gonna happen the same in England, right?
Anyway, a poor choice IMO
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Perhaps you should consider why such large disparities exist in the first place.
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If there is one thing a government should do it is to protect people and their property from thugs. They have a duty to their citizens to crack down on the rioters.
Though shutting down RIM is not one of the things they should do in a democratic country.
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The number of people that are angry at the police for their actions?
All I'm going to say is that you might want to read the link a lot more on Laurie Penny's words.
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NO THERE ISN'T, these are just scumbag's who fancy some new trainers, tv's and free alcohol. They fancy a chance to show the police and the "rich people" (FYI rich person seems to be anyone who has worked hard, has a job/business, regardless of how big) that they run the streets.
Alot of the businesses that have been burnt down are small local family businesses (yes there are a load of big stores as well). We are now seeing communities coming together to protect their businesses and streets against the looting scumbag's.
There have been quite a few residents coming out and praising the Turkish and Curdish communities in London for banding together and projecting families, businesses and properties.
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A lot of social injustice is born from a fundamental disrespect as well. I doubt factories owners who used to chain their doors during working hours or maim underage workers in their poorly maintained machinery had any more respect for their employees than farmers have for their cattle. People seem to have forgotten the struggles of creating labor rights or even a decent wage that made joining the "middle class" possible in the first place. That's become rather convenient for the owners because they have been working to abolish those laws ever since they were created.
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Middle East - common problem/issue against the government, very little looting/burning of your own community
London - no common problem/issue against the government (some don't even know who's in power or whats going on in government) and lots of looting/burning of your own community
Quite frankly it is insulting to all the people fighting for increased democracy in the middle east to compare them with the scum looting in London
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Re: Re: Bad idea?
The talk is they plan to limit/shut down ONLY the blackberry messenger (I suspect with cooperation with RIM rather than..."yeah lets turn teh internetz off").
But its just talk, much like the talk about calling in the army (which will be a horrible idea given most of our army has been fighting for their lives in Iraq and Afganistan and are definitely not ready to be deployed in a non lethal use of force situation)
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So you have angry bored people with a huge sense of entitlement from years of money for nothing and a feeling they are above the law as even if they are arrested and charged they get a sentence they simply ignore. You have police pissed off because they feel hugely under-appreciated, constantly under the spotlight of the very critical media assured that if they use force and someone gets hurt they themselves will end up in court (Tomlinson) and are also getting cuts to their pay and pensions. (Read Inspector Gadget blog http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/ for a coppers point of view).
It is an explosive mix. The state cannot back down and suspend cuts as the country has high debt. Rioters must be cracked down on hard and the police must get the support of the state to do so. Rioting in a country like the UK for whatever reason cannot be allowed. Nobody is really starving. There is no police state (probably as far from a police state as you can get) and the poor living conditions of the type of people rioting is largely of there own making as they are sure that everything from educating their own kids to keeping where they live tidy is the responsibility someone else.
Something drastic must be done. The people need to learn that their lives are their responsibility. The need to be disciplined until they learn some for themselves, perhaps send them to the Army for a short sharp shock and real criminals need locking up.
Until then...
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What I think is a pretty good writeup on the riots
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Seriously? You are still running that old disingenuous pirate site moniker on a story about the UK's problems with a very valid disconnect of state and people?
*facepalm*
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Criminals
In South Carolina citizens have the right to protect their property with deadly force.
Shoot them, they are robbing and destroying private property and should be dealt with swiftly and surely.
On wait, the brits can’t bear arms…
And people want to take away our right to bear arms…
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copyrights/IP/patents supporters are some of most unbeliavbly disrespectful & self-centered people i have known, on top of being huge control freaks and extremely rude
so, you where saying?
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Means, Motives, Opportunities
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RIM Shot
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Re: Means, Motives, Opportunities
It's very depressing.
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Newspapers, and the 'general sentiment', (As far as I can tell), is that the protesters were just noisy hooligans, and where it didn't erupt into looting and arson, the newspapers appear to uphold "Our stellar police forces, who prevented a possible tragedy".
There appears to be, (I'm not sure, google translate was doing the heavy lifting for me), a controversy in one of the countries about how a newspaper printed pictures of the riot and other stuff . . . the day before the riot happened, (So that they had enough newspapers on hand to sell while the riot was happening).
(The printing factory/whatever they used was one of the first places hit during the actual riot, and the PR people for the newspaper were absolutely clueless to this occurrence when people started asking them questions how they could print the newspaper that fast).
So, regardless of whether it IS the same or not, I conclude that the general sentiment and newspapers/new sources from the effected region will generally always decry the riots as hooligans & looting.
So, regardless of your insistence of a difference that's not at all clear to me, I think I'll wait until after the riots, and after a few more facts come out, to see whether the majority or a small number of rioters were looters, what this would mean even if a majority were looters, and all that other good stuff.
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Generation Disrespect at full song indeed, just not the generation you seem to think it is.
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I find your depiction of poor people to very insulting and ignorant.
I have a longer spiel about this, an anecdote from my own life, and an amount of statistics, but somehow, I think it would probably be wasted.
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Re: happened before
UK, and the rest of the world, is broke because idiot voters are bribed with their own money, politicians make promises our kids have to pay for, and Keynesian morons think the solution to spending too much money is spending more money. Next time, vote for the middle-of-the road guy who says, "I'm not going to war and I'm not supporting public unions. I'm going to give you reasonable services for the cheapest price possible."
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No police state in britian? No one is starving? Poor people are poor because of their own making, not underlying economic conditions?
You cannot seriously think that a country with more CCTV cameras than citizens,a nd over 300 police killings in a decade with no convictions of officers involved isnt a police state. You cannot seriously think there is no one in England that goes without food. You cannot seriously think that everyone who wants employment has it, when there are 45 people applying for every 1 job in some london suburbs.
There is a world outside your convoluted head, and if you cannot understand such hardships that some of the less fortunate among us face, you are too ignorent for words.
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I'm not buying the shop owner who needs his blackberry to call the police argument. These people are burning homes, looting, and committing murder.
Call me a commie, but in this situation personal safety is more important than the communication rights of a bunch of thugs.
What if during the LA riots they were using SMS to coordinate, it would make sense to shut the sevice to those towers down now wouldn't.
Let's not let this idea of I can do whatever I want when I want get in the way of common sense.
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