WIRED:IN RETROSPECT, I doubt either David Cameron's speechwriter or the operators of San Francisco's public transport system anticipated the reaction their actions would get this week.
In the middle of a 15-minute statement to British MPs responding to the country’s recent riots, Cameron buried a comment threatening to investigate “whether it would be right” to prevent some people from using social networks to incite violence.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) authority made no statement, but acted out of similar fears of disorder. Anticipating a protest over the shooting of a homeless man by transport authority officers last month, they flipped the switch and turned off mobile phone signals in their underground stations in downtown San Francisco.
The issues may have been straightforward and minor to the officials involved, but they quickly provoked an angry reaction online.
Critics in San Francisco and Britain were not slow to compare the suggestions with the actions of dictators such as Hosni Mubarak – Egyptian and US twitterers adopted the tag “MuBartak” to summarise the connection.
The Chinese state media made the same leap, applauding Britain’s new found commonality with official Chinese policy regarding “the headache of governance” the internet had caused, and hoping that, with an agreement to block some troublesome users, “Britain’s new attitude will help appease the quarrels between East and West over the future management of the internet”.
I’m sceptical that Cameron will follow through on any change in policy. British police already have extensive powers to prosecute incitement, prohibit individuals from “anti-social” practices online or off, and force websites to collect and hand over data to law enforcement.
I imagine this proposal will, if anything, merely accelerate recently shelved plans to centralise surveillance of internet users than to censor them actively.
The police and security services appear to be in agreement that it is better to have rioters blurting out their intentions than to play a whack-a-mole game of blocking. The fact that Cameron, in an otherwise strident speech, couched his internet plans in consultations and investigations hints that they will never see the light of day.
Bart, meanwhile, has chosen to double-down on its mobile phone interruptions. It defended its action as “one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform”, and uploaded to YouTube their own video of Bart commuters being asked if they supported Bart or the protesters.
If the plan was to dampen the online reaction, it has not worked. Bart attracted the attention of online protesters and, within hours, hackers had broken into at least one of its websites and published the user names and passwords of hundreds of Bart staff and travellers. Online groups have also promised to arrange their own protests.
It is inevitable that both the British government and the Californian transport agency’s actions will inspire a great deal of high-level moral debate about what is right and wrong online. Is mobile phone access a human right? When the kindling for demonstrations begins with shootings by police, who is doing the inciting?
In practice, though, the question is always: where do we draw the line?
Cameron’s government would not, I hope, prosecute and ban citizens from speaking on BBC television, or from using the telephone. Bart would never have considered blocking individuals from using its transport system, or applying to have protest organisers’ websites removed from the web.
Britain being (minority government) Britain, I suspect Cameron will see the outrage over his comments and retreat from them. The US being the US, we will see litigation over Bart’s behaviour define the US government’s future freedom of action. But, for now, we live in a grey zone, where officials and, I’m sure, many citizens feel there is nothing wrong with cutting off internet and phone access, while a growing number of users are disturbed by the possibility.
I’m sure we would not have thought a deliberate disruption of mobile phone services was that big a deal 20 years ago. Perhaps even a few years ago, banning someone from Facebook and Twitter would have seemed an unimportant if slightly ridiculous act of the courts. The upset both ideas now cause is an indication of where we are heading.
For once, we should get ahead of ourselves. When, as outsiders, we watched what was happening in Egypt and China, we understood the vital role communications play in protest, safety and public life. Most were shocked when they were censored or taken down entirely. The US and British governments have publicly criticised any act that challenged internet freedom.
But it is not just dictators who need hard and fast rules they cannot cross. We know ourselves and our governments too well to pretend that anything but a clear rule will simply get blurred and crossed the moment any unrest begins. We should make that our clearly demarcated new line to stand behind.
Governments should not censor and should not block a citizen’s right to speak, whether online or off. Turning off phones at a protest and arguing it is for public safety? Drawing up a list of individuals who cannot share their thoughts online? Both are steps too far – and the steps of authoritarian regimes in which we should not follow.
