Let’s be as disobedient as protest is required and as civil as progress is necessary !
Ornery is important and calm is crucial. Ben Franklin used people skills and social powers. All else denied. A talker, a schemer. Guile. Cunning. Persuasion.
But in England. So in England let’s look:
After riots spread across England in August, Cameron briefly raised the idea of giving British authorities greater power to disrupt the use of cell phone services or social networking tools during civil unrest.
The prime minister frets.
After the riots, Cameron summoned executives from Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry for crisis talks to disrupt cell phone services and social networks during disorder.
Police accuse young criminals of using Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry.
Governments “cannot leave cyberspace open to the criminals and the terrorists that threaten our security and our prosperity but at the same time we cannot just go down the heavy-handed route. The balance we have got to strike is between freedom and a free-for-all.”
The debate continues.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said the fact that criminals and terrorists can exploit digital networks is not “justification for states to censor their citizens.”
He asserts Britain must reject “the view that government suppression of the Internet, phone networks and social media at times of unrest is acceptable.”
The Internet. Let’s look at the Internet:
Russia and China are asking for tighter regulation of the Internet through binding international treaties.
America?
Yes. Let’s know what America is doing:
“What citizens do online should not, as some have suggested, be decreed solely by groups of governments making decisions for them somewhere on high,” said U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden.
Will government seek new powers to shut down the web in times of crisis?