As planned since Monday, representatives from Facebook, Twitter and RIM met with the Home Office in the UK on Thursday to discuss the role of social media and mobile messaging in the chaotic riots that raged across London earlier this month. Freedom of speech is safe for now: as it turns out, the conversations ended up being more about keeping crime off social media as opposed to creating new restrictions.
Home Secretary Theresa May chaired the meeting, which was also attended by Minister of State Jeremy Browne, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the police.
(For oblivious Americans like myself, the Home Office is a governmental department in the UK charged with a wide range of responsibilities, from immigration to drugs policy to counter-terrorism, safety and beyond.)
Considering the participants in Thursday’s “social media meeting,” as they’re calling it, it’s not too surprising that restricting communication over social and mobile services wasn’t the focus of talks. After all, it was Prime Minister David Cameron who last week suggested that stemming communication might be a last resort for police and intelligence services, much to the chagrin of free speech defenders.
But Cameron wasn’t a part of the meeting.
“We found today’s discussion at the Home Office constructive and built on much of the work we are already doing with the UK authorities to ensure Facebook remains one of the safest places on the internet,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “We welcome the fact that this was a dialogue about working together to keep people safe rather than about imposing new restrictions on internet services.”
Based on a message from Facebook’s PR, it appears that the company had a lot of time to express how much it was doing to keep users safe and to axe any criminal activity taking place on the social network.
RIM echoed Facebook’s statement. As for Twitter, we have yet to hear their perspective.
‘The discussions,” said a Home Office spokesperson, “looked at how law enforcement and the networks can build on the existing relationships and cooperation to crack down on the networks being used for criminal behaviour.”
Whether that means police organizations in the UK have any plans of using social media to their advantage, as has been done in units around the US (with a recent example in New York), remains to be seen. We’ve reached out to the Home Office to see if they have a comment on this.
