British Discuss Limiting Social Media to Fight Crime | Hacker News Reader

British Discuss Limiting Social Media to Fight Crime

nytimes.com

This was in the news almost as soon as the riots started, with the media lapping it up as an opportunity to get some buzzwords in. I think they are also considering, or have already used, some mass phone record crawling.

The British government - either party - just doesn't seem to "get it" with respect to civil liberties. Poor logic comes up time and time again, the public don't really care much unless they read The Guardian. It makes me glad I left to a liberal cheese-eating European country ;)

At university a law student defended (regurgitated a professor's opinion) our lack of constitution by saying that all the important parts end up enshrined in law anyway and that the constitution's lack of flexibility causes problems as society/technology changes. I think there's more to it than that - the mindset that accompanies having a constitution (particularly in the general population). At least in the US encroachment tends to happen with extreme events and is duly challenged as unconstitutional.

afaik the contents of several days messages from the bbm was handed over to police to hunt for evidence.

"To look for evidence". This is frightening. Searching through something to look for incriminating evidence. It's the reverse of how the system is supposed to work.

Is this all that different than the police entering your house (with a warrant) to look for evidence?

I'd say they have reasonable cause to believe that they will find evidence in the messages.

That's a bad comparison. It's more like entering everyone's homes to look for evidence.

(and I think I'm right in saying that the courts were't even involved, so the warrant part doesn't work either)

It's not a perfect comparison, I agree. Probably I shouldn't have mentioned your house. It's more like the police getting a warrant to search a company's premises.

My thought process went a little like this...

Presumably the police could apply for a warrant to search RIM's premises for something along the lines of "records of messages used to organise a riot"? If they got that warrant, then they could go to the physical servers and search for the relevant data on site? AFAIK that's a perfectly feasible scenario and completely within the law - even though RIM haven't committed any crimes, I think they can still be the subject of a warrant. I'd guess something similar would happen in cases of fraud.

And if they can do that, then they could also ask RIM for permission to do it without a warrant. Which RIM might agree to if they believe that the police would get the warrant anyway.

And if they can do that, then it doesn't sound much worse to give the records to the police for them to search through using their own computer systems instead of going and searching directly on RIM's servers.

My worry is we aren't many steps from "and if they can do that, then why not host the data with the police anyway" and.. you can see where this goes.

The British government often comes up with poorly thought out policy ideas, but in fairness, these ideas rarely end up as actual laws - the obvious logic flaws are picked up on sooner or later. I suspect it's just a case that they needed give out some policy ideas to keep the journalists happy and this is the first thing they came up with.

Anyway, I can't see how removing access to social media would have had much influence on the riots - seems like SMS messages would be just as effective, for organising a riot. Social media just happens to be a cheaper option.

I think it was only 5 years ago that these new-fangled "SMS text messages" were being used to organise such events.

You're right though, such initiatives do not seem to commonly make it all the way through to law, but creeping standards is still a danger (as with the police searching all phone records).

They could ban shoes as well. That will teach those punk kids. Lets see how well they riot barefoot.

It would be about as relevant.

also other criminal types of clothing! http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article521620.ece

The idea that restricting the freedom of law-abiding people is an acceptable way to fight crime seems to be trending lately. I find this deeply disturbing. To quote Benjamin Franklin:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

If you want to make an effective argument, I'd suggest you find a new quote. I can't speak for everyone, but I swear that I see that quote invoked at least every other week, and usually incorrectly.

I personally haven't figured out how best to interpret the quote, but I believe there is a line somewhere, an understanding I have not reached... For example, would you argue that acquiescing to the ban on assault weapons falls under this quote? There are already a number of restrictions imposed on our Liberty- even on First Amendment rights- that most people seem to think entirely reasonable.

(Not expressing an opinion on the article, merely protesting what seems to be, though I can't put my finger on it, a constant misuse of Franklin's quote)

For example, would you argue that acquiescing to the ban on assault weapons falls under this quote?

Yes. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms, and I believe that right (reasonably) extends at least to infantry rifles and the like[0]. Aside from being the check of last resort on government power, military-style rifles are the most effective thing available to civilians for home defense and the like. While I will concede that those situations are rare, the use of weapons covered by assault weapons bans in crime is also exceedingly rare; criminals tend to use inexpensive, concealable pistols.

[0] Bans on "assault weapons" tend to list features like pistol grips and flash suppressors commonly found on military weapons and rare on target/hunting rifles. Incidentally, the only provision of any assault weapons ban I am aware of that actually affected the lethality of the weapons is the limitation on magazine capacity.

> military-style rifles are the most effective thing available to civilians for home defense

I'd always heard a large, well-trained dog was more effective against many threats, especially if you're not home or asleep.

I knew a lot of major gun enthusiasts back in California, and from what they talked about, you are allowed to own just about any gun with pistol grips or whatever you please, so long as you follow a certain set of rules which basically revolve around removal of full-auto and the limitation on magazine capacity you mentioned.

You mention military rifles- is now a good time to point out that old stock of the M1 Garand, with full-auto removed, is available to citizens at many gun stores?

rules which basically revolve around removal of full-auto

That's not quite right. Full-auto means that the gun can shoot more than one shot per pull of the trigger. These have been severely restricted by Federal law since 1934, requiring a $200 tax and registration. New registrations have been banned since 1986, driving prices in to the five-figure range for weapons that would otherwise be worth less than $1000.

What does enable you to have all the scary-looking features you want in California is not having a detachable magazine. A detachable magazine does actually have an impact on a gun's combat effectiveness (it makes reloading faster), but there are alternatives to that as well: guns like the SKS and M1 Garand have fixed magazines that can be quickly reloaded from an external clip. So in CA, you can have say... a Mini-14, which doesn't look scary, but is semi-automatic and equipped with a detachable magazine just like the AR-15 (a semi-automatic-only version of the US military's M-16) and just as deadly, or you can have a very military-looking SKS that takes a little bit more practice to reload quickly but is otherwise functionally similar to an AK-47. What, exactly has this law accomplished aside from making legal gun owners learn a bunch of very detailed regulations to ensure they're not committing a felony?

The M1 Garand is actually sold to civilians through the Civilian Marksmanship Program, sponsored by the Federal government. They also appear in gun stores on occasion. These guns were never full-auto, and removing full auto doesn't satisfy the ATF as far as the aforementioned registration requirement; that's the reason the CMP doesn't sell the later M14 and M16 rifles to civilians.

There are lots of people who would say that the right to bear arms is a constitutional right and produce stories of the person who COULD have stopped the criminal had they been able to bring the gun into the diner, but were powerless to do so. I guess there is no clear cut case you can make which everyone would accept, because liberty for libertarians is, in fact, just that.

A better argument regarding arms and liberty is that an armed civilian population is a lot harder to brutally repress than an unarmed civilian population.

However, it's well to note that an armed civilian population is also less stable, be they armed with guns or armed with means of mass communication. Of course, China's reason for censorship is "stability", so take that as you will.

  > the person who COULD have stopped the criminal
  > had they been able to bring the gun into the diner,
  > but were powerless to do so.

Just like the people that don't want to wear seat belts and always bring up the anecdotes about people being saved from death because they weren't wearing a seat belt and were flung from the car?

Off the top of my head, I can think of two mass shootings that were mitigated by armed civilians:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shoot...

I have found one article suggesting Franklin's use of "Temporary Safety" is analogous to "Tranquility", which suggests an interpretation essentially condemning appeasement; that is to say, giving up liberties to a power to placate that power, to further tranquility (for now).

I will have to read further, but I personally feel this is a much sounder interpretation of his quote.

If you want to make an effective argument, I suggest you get rid of quotes entirely. Benjamin Franklin was a great man, and his ideas deserve due consideration, but the fact is most people barely know the man and even fewer give two shits for any thought he ever had. Better to ask "does <x> work?" E.g. "did all the cameras across London do fuck-all to stop crime?" It would be nice if people would think critically about such things in advance, but that's not a realistic thing to expect. Instead you should get good at saying basically "I told you so" while staying instructive and not coming across as a dick.

Nothing highlights a generation gap like government policy makers failing to understand the world they now live in.

If legislation like this passed, I wonder how it would effect relations with the US and the US tech industry. Its all fine and good to try and subvert the Egyptian government during a revolution, but what happens if the tech companies try to subvert another first world country?

Ah, you noticed that too? I thought it was unusually clever: only if you attack civilians, we will bomb you; the civilians are rising up against you with tanks and guns; you fight back; we bomb you!

Media have tagged along as usual: massive glorification of the rebels without discussing many of the issues or history; implicit support as if treating events as a football match with the rebels being England.

US tech industry maybe, but the US government is totally on board with this sort of shit and looking into it themselves.

In this paper they make a pretty compelling case as to why limiting/censoring media would actually be counter-productive and make the riots worse. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1909467

I have yet to find any research that shows that censoring would have the desired effect, which to me shows how dangerous politicians can be. Proposing such extreme measures based on gut feelings rather than sound research could seriously blow up in their face.

How quirky that the British would consider even further erosion of what's left of civil liberties, but only allowed the police to use clubs and shields against looters. Being better armed than the mob one is seeking to contain would seem like a more focused way to deal with riots than by further marginalizing their citizens.

The British have had a problem with their teenagers for a very long time. I saw YouTube videos back in 2008 where a girl was like, "why do people cross to the other side of the street when they see young people? we don't all carry knives, we aren't ALL criminals. Why do they look at you like a criminal?" But the truth is, this problem hasn't really gone away.

And Britain taking a page from the egypt/libya/tunisia playbook of limiting social nets isn't gonna help matters.

It's too bad that at no point does it cross anyone's mind in the ruling class that there may be a reason for this unrest. It is the same in any regime, totalitarian or otherwise, that they have a mental block where it is inconceivable to them that anyone would have a legitimate reason to protest, that anyone would be disenfranchised enough to riot, that anyone would be disconnected from society to the point where they find it acceptable to loot. Just about every nation-state on Earth from Iran to Britain to the US is equal in this regard. Frankly I'm surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen more often, where 99.9% of humans have virtually no sovereignty at all.

Instead, all you get are law-and-order type responses. You can't have law or order when the law doesn't apply to everyone equally.

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