UK Police Arrest 12 Over Facebook Use Inciting Riots 369
An anonymous reader writes "Scotland Yard vowed to track down and arrest protesters who posted 'really inflammatory, inaccurate' messages on Facebook, but it didn't stop at just two people. While two teenagers were arrested earlier this week in connection with messages posted on Facebook allegedly encouraging people to start rioting, 10 more have now joined them."
Re:Smells Like Desperation (Score:5, Interesting)
They've basically had magistrates working graveyard shifts to process arrested rioters. The government is already doing a lot. The initial failure, at least in London, was the Met basically taking the kindly modern-day tactic of letting the rioters do whatever they want within a contained area. Of course, at some point the people who lived in the Tottenham district kind of lost patience with this containment tactic, as did Britons in general, and after the riots spread and similar police tactics were used elsewhere, basically the public wants the government to untie the hands of the police so they can do a proper job of saving property and lives.
The Facebook arrests appear to be over incitement, an illegal activity. If these stupid assholes were just bullshitting on the Internet, well, I suppose they might be able to convince a judge, but I suspect the courts, who will see it as their duty to make sure that any kind of incitement, even by big-mouthed fucktards, gets duly punished, will do thusly to them.
Here's a hint. When there are riots going on, buildings burned, people being killed, you have to a special kind of idiot to post messages of incitement on Facebook. I say throw the book at 'em.
Re:Shouldnt scotland yard get its own shit in orde (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is, following De Menezes, following Tomlinson, following uncensured non-lethal police brutality attached to every protest of the past decade, people instinctively don't believe police reports.
The police do lie, do protect their own and don't apply the law equally to themselves. The IPCC's going to have to produce some pretty serious evidence that the police acted correctly in shooting Mark Duggan if they want to defuse those tensions.
Re:Arab Spring (Score:2, Interesting)
Because:
1) Britain has some pretty terrible social problems caused by rampant mis-management by both of the major political parties. The causes for this are debated, but we have ended up with a large chunk of society who have never contributed anything, never intend to, have no respect for anyone else and have a deep sense of entitlement. These people are widely described by the media as having been "failed" by the system, but since the system gave them a free education (which they spat on, choosing to spend their time doing drugs, each other and bullying anyone in the school who dared to try to attain an education), gives them free housing, free money and so on it is really hard to be sympathetic.
2) It was clear that the police had absolutely no control over the situation on the first night, leading to the belief of the people in (1) that they could do whatever they want and get away with it. Since they have no respect for anyone else and a strong sense of entitlement, that was all the prompting they needed.