15 Sep 11 | Uncategorized
Following accusations that social media were used to play a key role in the social unrest in August, representatives from Research in Motion, Twitter and Facebook came under the spotlight at the Commons Home Affairs select committee this afternoon.
Stephen Bates, Managing Director of BlackBerry’s Research in Motion, Richard Allen, Director of Policy at Facebook and Alexander McGilvray, who is responsible for public policy at Twitter were questioned by the committee, chaired by MP Keith Vaz, regarding the role of social media in the riots which spread across the country in August, and the trio insisted that all three platforms were used as a force for good.
In the midst of the unrest, calls were made to shut down social networking, particularly BlackBerry messenger, as it was suggested that this was being used to organise violence. Cutting off Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry messenger in times of unrest seems no different to the censoring this kind of media experiences in China and oppressive countries over the world.
The committee heard that should it be necessary, all three of the representatives of the social media, who work within frameworks to condone with the law, would not resist closing down social media, but did not feel that it would be necessary.
Bates, Allen and McGilvray all said that throughout the unrest in August, social media were used in a positive way – to contact family and friends to advise that users were safe, to help clean-up in the wake of the riots, and perhaps most importantly as a tool of communication, used to quell and correct rumours. McGilvray said that most of the “retweets” that occurred during and after the riots were corrections of inaccurate tweets, spreading rumours and misinformation.
The representatives from the social media stressed that as long as technology keeps advancing, the police will have to continue to adapt their methods to deal with the situations. Allen compared the developments of social media with the creation of the car – “It took the police time to catch up when thieves began using cars, the same is happening now.”
A key issue addressed by the committee was responsibility. Bates admitted that BlackBerry messenger had been used in a malicious way to organise crime, but stressed the need for balance when addressing the issue.
Allen explained that their focus on identification meant there was an accountability relating to misuse of the platform but said that there were only a handful of cases where this had occurred during the riots. McGilvray said “People come to Twitter to say things publicly and that means there is a different kind of usage.” Allen and Bates advised that they were involved with communications with the police, and McGilvray advised that as Twitter is a public forum, it was not necessary on their behalf.
McGilvray said that to lock down social media in times of social unrest would be “horrible,” stressing once again the good things that arose from the use of social media in the times of unrest.
Keith Vaz advised that there may be times when closing down social media was necessary, asking “Why should the government not use the powers to close down these networks if there is mass disorder and this is the only way to stop it happening.”
15 Sep 11 | Uncategorized
Ilse Aigner, the Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, has issued a letter to all government ministries demanding that they cease any form of online connection with Facebook, including use of fan pages and the recently demonised “like button”. Continuing the debate over ‘privacy concerns’ and the social networking site, she issued a letter quoted in news magazine Der Spiegel as outlining “legal concerns” over government ministries’ use of any technology linked in to the platform.
Der Spiegel quotes the letter as saying: “Following an extensive legal probe I think it is essential that we should no longer use the Facebook button on all official government internet sites under our control.” The form that this “extensive legal probe” took is as yet unknown, although the letter claims that it threw up “justified legal doubts” about fan pages, which allow users to view information of an organisation via the social networking platform.
Aigner added that “logically enough”, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection has no fan page on the site or provides a link to it via the “like” button, which was recently banned by the state of Schleswig-Holstein over data storage concerns. Despite Facebook issuing a statement in reaction to the ban arguing that users “liking” the page results in their data being stored for the industry-standard 90 days, Aigner chose to ignore this and stoke the fires of paranoia.
She also seems to have ignored the idea of Facebook as a social networking platform for user-generated content. While fan pages may store data on a ministry, that data is submitted by the ministry themselves, as is the application to link through the “like” button. Therefore, not only is it another chance for that particular part of the institution to self-publicise (no Malcolm Tuckers needed), but it provides a platform for users of the service to communicate with the ministry.
Or it could do if used correctly — witness the general page for the German parliament, the Bundestag. The page contains some basic location information as well as a spirited review from a tourist stating that “its really a wounderfull [sic] place to be visited”. Probing it isn’t; frankly it’s underusing its social networking potential, using the site to flag up its existence and nothing more.
The demand that government departments and parliamentarians should “set a good example and show that they give a high priority to the protection of personal data” seems misplaced when here it is more concerned with institutional privacy. Data protection for individuals is a different concern to the openness of institutions, for whom the internet is undoubtedly the biggest facilitator when it comes to making internal information public and easily accessible. As exhibit B, take a look at the page for the US Department of Homeland Security. Even this department, to which openness is very much a foreign concept, has created a page where citizens are free to comment and spark discussions stemming from departmental press releases or documents. Simply put, the potential for web 2.0 applications such as Facebook to provide a previously unavailable forum for communication with government departments should be welcomed, not shied away from.
Even Der Spiegel linked Aigner’s letter to the “ongoing German concern that the social networking site threatens data privacy”, in a way which suggested that this particular form of hysteria is a legitimate complaint. Essentially, this taps into a vein of fear about social media and data collection in this country, stemming from a past where record keeping was the fuel of oppressive regimes. The horrors which were perpetrated through the surveillance society of the German Democratic Republic, where the Stasi (the Ministry of State Security) encouraged citizens to spy on their neighbours and all activities were tightly monitored and recorded are legendary, as immortalised in popular culture through the film “Das Leben der Anderen” (“The Lives of Others”). Any form of public record keeping is therefore treated with extreme suspicion; the Austrian cabaret artist Michael Niavarani is famously quoted as stating in an interview that “Facebook ist Stasi auf freiwilliger Basis” (“Facebook is people freely signing up to Stasi surveillance”).
Aigner’s letter is designed to appeal to this sense of free-floating public unease and distrust around social media, stoking this fear in a way that is both contradictory and to the benefit of government. Firstly, the idea that institutions need to “set an example” to prevent people from voluntarily sharing information is a protectionist attitude to prevent the populace doing something it is thus believed they don’t fully understand. This attitude is not so far from that of the Stasi, who believed their surveillance was for the protection of the populace. Secondly, telling people that this is about “personal” data is a fallacy, it is an example of the government playing on fears in order to avoid exposing likely mostly harmless data, and providing a light-hearted social forum with which to allow citizens to discuss government activity. The only people that Aigner’s letter is out to protect is the German government itself, not the populace whose fears it seeks to draw on.
12 Sep 11 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
Facebook has agreed to work with the German government on a code of conduct aimed at privacy protection. The code, agreed at a meeting on Wednesday between German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich and Facebook’s director of policy in Europe, Richard Allen, will cover issues such as media literacy and data transmission in accordance with German law. The agreement follows discussions around Facebook’s adherence to German data protection laws. Last month, Thilo Weichert, a data protection commissioner in Northern Germany, claimed Facebook’s “Like” button violated German data protection laws.
25 Aug 11 | Statements, Uncategorized
As Twitter, Facebook and Research in Motion prepare to meet the Home Secretary, Index on Censorship and other human and digital rights campaigners ask to be included in discussions on social media blackouts
Joint Letter to Home Secretary
