Social media monitoring helped the police thwart an attack on the Olympic ParkPhoto: The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games
Πηγή: silicon
By Jo Best
Despite accusations that social services such as BBM and Twitter were responsible for facilitating last week's UK riots, senior police figures have revealed they did not request that the services be switched off.
Prime Minister David Cameron last week said the government is examining whether to stop individuals using social media if they are plotting violence or crime.
However, the Metropolitan Police's acting deputy commissioner Tim Godwin told the Home Affairs Committee today that while the Met did mull over getting social networks temporarily closed down during the riots, it backed away from such a plan, citing questions over legality.
"[Switching off the likes of BlackBerry Messenger and Twitter] has been a matter of negotiation and debate. We did contemplate - and I contemplated - seeking the authorities to switch it off," Godwin said.
"The legality of that is very questionable and additionally it is also a very useful intelligence asset. We did not request that that was turned off but it is something we are pursuing as part of our investigative strategy," he added.
The Met's top brass also told the committee how BBM and Twitter had proved valuable for gathering intelligence during the disturbances.
"We used Twitter a lot and other social media sites [during the riots]," said Godwin, adding that assistant Met Police commissioner Lynne Owens had encouraged the force to make better use of Twitter and other social media services after the student tuition fee protests last year.
Owens - also at the committee hearing - said that using intelligence gathered through BBM and Twitter, the force discovered that Westfield shopping centres, Oxford Street and the Olympic site were to be targeted by rioters and was able to prevent any attacks.
"We were able to secure all those places and indeed there was no damage at any of them. We were able to respond because of our live-time monitoring of Twitter and BBM," she said.
However, both Godwin and Owens highlighted that despite the potential of Twitter and BBM as sources of police intelligence, separating the services' wheat from its chaff is an ongoing challenge for the Met.
"I think one of the challenges going forward is how we resource responding to [social media] in live time because one of the things we did see is huge amounts of - and I think the word intelligence is overused, I would use the word chitter-chatter - across BBM and across Twitter. Actually our capacity throughout this operation until very recently to keep up with the information on there was overwhelm[ed]," Owens told the committee.
Godwin added: "The only problem with it is, it is a massive amount of information that you need to synthesise and some of it is quite obviously wrong and rather silly."
The police are already working with RIM, Twitter and other social media companies over the riots, according to Godwin, who said he could not provide any details of what the collaboration entailed as it is "an investigative strategy".
By Jo Best
16 August 2011
Despite accusations that social services such as BBM and Twitter were responsible for facilitating last week's UK riots, senior police figures have revealed they did not request that the services be switched off.
Prime Minister David Cameron last week said the government is examining whether to stop individuals using social media if they are plotting violence or crime.
However, the Metropolitan Police's acting deputy commissioner Tim Godwin told the Home Affairs Committee today that while the Met did mull over getting social networks temporarily closed down during the riots, it backed away from such a plan, citing questions over legality.
"[Switching off the likes of BlackBerry Messenger and Twitter] has been a matter of negotiation and debate. We did contemplate - and I contemplated - seeking the authorities to switch it off," Godwin said.
"The legality of that is very questionable and additionally it is also a very useful intelligence asset. We did not request that that was turned off but it is something we are pursuing as part of our investigative strategy," he added.
The Met's top brass also told the committee how BBM and Twitter had proved valuable for gathering intelligence during the disturbances.
"We used Twitter a lot and other social media sites [during the riots]," said Godwin, adding that assistant Met Police commissioner Lynne Owens had encouraged the force to make better use of Twitter and other social media services after the student tuition fee protests last year.
Owens - also at the committee hearing - said that using intelligence gathered through BBM and Twitter, the force discovered that Westfield shopping centres, Oxford Street and the Olympic site were to be targeted by rioters and was able to prevent any attacks.
"We were able to secure all those places and indeed there was no damage at any of them. We were able to respond because of our live-time monitoring of Twitter and BBM," she said.
However, both Godwin and Owens highlighted that despite the potential of Twitter and BBM as sources of police intelligence, separating the services' wheat from its chaff is an ongoing challenge for the Met.
"I think one of the challenges going forward is how we resource responding to [social media] in live time because one of the things we did see is huge amounts of - and I think the word intelligence is overused, I would use the word chitter-chatter - across BBM and across Twitter. Actually our capacity throughout this operation until very recently to keep up with the information on there was overwhelm[ed]," Owens told the committee.
Godwin added: "The only problem with it is, it is a massive amount of information that you need to synthesise and some of it is quite obviously wrong and rather silly."
The police are already working with RIM, Twitter and other social media companies over the riots, according to Godwin, who said he could not provide any details of what the collaboration entailed as it is "an investigative strategy".
No comments:
Post a Comment