14 DAY TRIAL // After intense meetings, social network media representatives have asked the government not to shut down their services if riots should occur.
Facebook, Twitter and RIM, owner of the BlackBerry Messenger, made their case in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee stating that no good can occur from shutting down their services during protest movements.
As we've recently seen in many countries, social networks are used by protesters to plan physical and verbal attacks against governments, but company representatives claim that it's not the case in the U.K., where more positive than negative things were advertised on their websites during outbreaks.
"When you have 30 million people in the UK using the tool to tell family and friends they are safe, to turn it off at that stage we think would not serve the public interest," said Richard Allan, director of policy for Facebook in Europe, as quoted by V3.
Twitter representative, Alexander Macgillivray, mentioned that it would be unfair to shut them down as their services were never utilized to instigate illegal activities.
RIM, whose image suffered the most because of the lately occurred riots, thinks “that communications in general and social media are a force for good,” and he agrees with fellow colleagues of the industry that a complete shutdown during protests is unwise.
"What we do see within the Communications Act is that the government has powers to suspend communications networks. That power already exists, so mechanisms are already in place should that be deemed necessary by the authorities," UK managing director of RIM revealed for the press.
Luckily for them, unlike Prime Minister David Cameron, home secretary Theresa May seems to be on their side as she was heard stating that social network media companies should not have to suffer because of a few people who used their services to instigate.
"[We had] very constructive meetings with the companies, and we discussed better ways in which these media can be made use of by the police, and to ensure these networks are not being used to incite criminality."