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By Dean Arrindell, August 12, 2011 4:15 pm

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Parliament is exploring ways to ban social media during situations of widespread emergencies like the riots that have swept the country for the last weeks.

Speaking in the House Of Commons on Thursday, he said:

Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media.

Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.

And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.

So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.

Logistically, it may be impossible and his statement may have just been “bravado,” but it’s a bad idea to suggest that stifling or banning communication over social networks is a good tool to fight crime.

Laws over speech and expression in the UK are different than in the US. The libel laws are much stricter, and you can’t even make fun of a session of Parliament even when they’re being complimented by comedians like Jon Stewart (see below). Those differences aren’t reasons for a Western democracy to restrict free speech like a dictatorship. Fighting and preventing crime is a priority in any country, but things get tricky when you’re dealing with speech. One person’s threatening language is another’s good idea.

Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis wrote this about Cameron’s suggestion to block social media: “When anyone’s speech is not free, no one’s speech is free…Censorship is not the path to civility. Only speech is.”

A clip from The Daily Show With John Stewart.

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By Kameko Jones, August 11, 2011 7:33 pm

This is a guest post by Kameko Jones.

Sitting by the computer after making the perfect cup of English tea, I am still amazed (for lack of a better word) at the breakout of riots across the UK. Over the past few days I have been scratching my head as looters took advantage of London neighborhoods like Brixton, Hackney, and Lewisham, and other British cities like Birmingham, Liverpool, and Leeds. I sit back in disgust and outrage as an American viewing from overseas, but also as a person who has lived and traveled throughout the UK.

The shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four, is what sparked the initially peaceful protest in Tottenham, London. People in the neighborhood were protesting unlawful and aggressive acts by police.  (It is now known that Duggan did not fire a shot at police.) Somehow, on Saturday, August 6, the protest turned violent and the people protesting started to assault police on the scene. The protest went from throwing sticks and bottles to lighting vehicles on fire and smashing the windows of shops.  I do not condone violence but there was definitely tension in the neighborhood between police and residents. The police did not take the right steps to calm the crowd.

Some chatter on Twitter by bloggers, journalists, and others has said that riots could start in the United States over the current situation plaguing our country. We have gun violence in schools, millions not covered by health care, rising unemployment, and a government caught up in its own nauseating partisanship fight. The victims in all of these are the working and middle class. So, why haven’t there been riots across the United States like those over in the United Kingdom? There are several reasons.

Continue reading 'Four Reasons There Aren’t Riots In The US Like Those In The UK'»