Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion have made quite different responses to the prime minister’s call for them to play a greater role in preventing future riots on the British streets.
The three technology companies have been summoned before the home secretary to discuss a mooted scheme to block conspiring rioters.
“Among the issues we will discuss is whether and how we should be able to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality,” Teresa May, the home secretary, said.
Several people have already been arrested on suspicion of inciting violence using Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger, but these latest proposals push towards preventative action.
Earlier this week, RIM said it had “engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can” – a stance which prompted hackers to deface a BlackBerry blog in protest. It added on Thursday:
“We welcome the opportunity for consultation together with other companies in the technology and telecommunication industry. RIM continues to comply with both UK privacy laws as well as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which are of course the same laws that apply to other technology and telecommunications companies in the UK.”
Twitter struck a similarly cautious tone, saying only that it would be “happy to talk” to the home secretary.
Facebook, by contrast, tried to appear positively helpful. It said it had already put more people into its user operations team earlier this week to remove posts that explicitly incite violence or criminal behaviour, and would “look forward” to meeting the home secretary.
Existing UK laws already allow for co-operative technology companies to hand over some data about their users to the authorities, according to Mike Conradi, partner at London law firm DLA Piper.
For instance, RIM could tell the police that a BlackBerry user was sending a large number of BBM messages in a certain riot-struck area, allowing the police to obtain a warrant that would oblige the company to disclose the contents of the message.
Facebook’s terms and conditions may allow it to hand over information to the authorities because its users have granted consent, Mr Conradi said, while Twitter – being generally more open – may be less complex to monitor.
But blocking users after listening in on communications en masse is a different matter, Mr Conradi said:
“There is no power I’m aware of currently that would allow the government to do what [Mr Cameron] is seeming to ask them to do, which is trawl through the content of messages to uncover individuals that appear to be engaging in criminal activity.”
Facebook has hundreds of people around the world tasked with enforcing its ban on co-ordination of violence. A combination of keyword filters and users flag Facebook postings that might be of concern, which are then reviewed by hand.
Adding reinforcements to its user operations team is “standard practice” after big events such as the English riots or Norway shootings, it said, without saying precisely how many posts from groups and individuals’ pages that it has removed in recent days.
“Facebook has a very clear set of terms that we use for the service called our statement of rights and responsibilities,” Richard Allan, Facebook’s European head of policy, told the FT.
“That makes it very clear that people should not use the platform to make credible threats of violence or to promote illegal activity… Where we do get reports or are made aware of content that is in breach of the rules, the content comes down and depending on the seriousness of the offence the user may lose their account.”
That excludes legitimate political protest or joke posts, he stressed. A recent test case saw a “Third Palestinian Intifada” page, which started as a political protest but was shut down when it began making violent threats. Mr Allan said:
“We are confident the way we operate today does strike the right balance between allowing people to have a platform on which they can speak and socialise freely but make sure the platform is not used for criminal activity and violence. Our understanding of the UK law enforcement agencies is they are happy with the level of co-operation they get from us.”
On the other hand, Twitter’s strong leanings toward free speech are well known. In January, when Egypt’s tottering authoritarian regime was restricting access to Twitter and other networks, co-founder Biz Stone penned a corporate blog post entitled “The tweets must flow”. (The parallel has not been lost on opponents of Mr Cameron’s proposals.)
An account which broke the terms of press gagging orders by listing the affairs of several British celebrities who took out so-called “super-injunctions” is still live on the site, nearly three months after footballer Ryan Giggs went to court to try to unmask the anonymous tweeter.
But Twitter is not completely unmoderated or beyond the reach of the law. Its trust and safety team can remove tweets or accounts that breach its “content boundaries”. These rules include a ban on posting “direct, specific threats of violence against others”.
Twitter’s guidelines for law enforcement say that it does not release private user information unless “lawfully required by appropriate legal process”, such as a court order.
Even then, it only does so in compliance with US law and promises to inform its users about it before disclosure, when permissable. If the Metropolitan Police did take a request for information about hundreds of putative rioters to Twitter in the US, we’d probably hear about it.
So far, nobody in the British government has accused Google+ or LinkedIn of involvement in the riots – but at this point, perhaps we shouldn’t rule anything out.
