nuclear-news

MONDAY 01 OCTOBER 2012

[…]

John Cooper QC said that police are monitoring key activists online and that officers and the courts are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to social media. But, speaking to The Independent, he added that he also expected that to drive an increase in the number of criminals being brought to justice in the coming months.

“People involved in public protest should use social media to their strengths, like getting their message across. But they should not use them for things like discussing tactics. They might as well be having a tactical meeting with their opponents sitting in and listening.

“For example, if antifascist organisers were discussing their plans on social media, they can assume that a fascist organisation will be watching. Social media sites are the last place you want to post something like that,” he said.

Mr Cooper QC’s warning comes after a New York court ordered Twitter to hand over messages posted on the site by a demonstrator belonging to the Occupy Wall Street movement in America. Malcolm Harris, 23, is accused of disorderly conduct after he was arrested on Brooklyn Bridge during a protest last October.

[…]

And that ruling came around five months after it emerged that City of London Police included the Occupy London movement on a leaflet warning businesses in The City about terrorist threats. The CoLP dismissed the inclusion of the protest movement alongside the likes of al-Qa’ida as a clerical error.

But, Mr Cooper QC said, social media are “far too much of an important tool not to be used but they need used in a less naïve way”.

He added: “When people are acting within their rights of public protest, which are important but often become the ‘Cinderella right’ because they are subservient to their siblings, they should be very careful indeed about what they post because I would suspect that key activists are being followed anonymously by law enforcement agencies

[…]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/activists-warned-to-watch-what-they-say-as-social-media-monitoring-becomes-next-big-thing-in-law-enforcement-8191977.html