Chi Onwurah, Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and shadow innovation and science minister
Last month, I asked the solicitor general for England and Wales - a senior government legal adviser - why our legal system appeared to be on the back foot when it came to dealing with new technologies.
The solicitor general replied that Twitter was just like talking over the garden fence. This was on 5 July, the day that the story broke that the phone of the murdered child Milly Dowler had been hacked, which eventually led to the closure of the News of the World a few days later and the appearance of its owner, Rupert Murdoch, before a select committee.
I did not pursue the solicitor general's response with him. Now I wish I had. Because tweeting is nothing like gossiping over the garden fence. It is something like carving your thoughts onto mount Rushmore, then publishing them in every local newspaper in the world. Or shouting through a global megaphone, eternally. Tweeting is publishing. It is permanent. And it is instant.
Now that we have the prime minister and others calling for the police to be able to block social media services like Twitter as a way of preventing further riots, I assume the solicitor general has at the very least realised it is a pretty important garden fence. But I am also concerned that this government does not really understand technology - it tends to see it as a scapegoat, not as an opportunity.
Let's start with social media. It is telling that the solicitor general has admitted he does not tweet. I do not know how many of his colleagues are on Facebook. But that has not stopped them from portraying social media as dangerous practices which may need to be put in special measures.
This is nonsense. The government already has plenty of powers to intercept, monitor, investigate and shut down electronic communications.
Indeed the very first reference to the internet in the House of Commons was by Emma Nicholson, then a Conservative MP, in a debate on the Computer Misuse Bill more than two decades ago. At that time only 3 million people worldwide had access to the internet, mainly academics and the military, three-quarters living in the US. But Nicholson's main concern was the potential for abuse.
Twenty-one years later, with an estimated 2 billion regular internet users, it still seems that the approach of the Conservative party to technology is to mention it only when they can say it is up to no good. What positive references have we had to the great value of social media in bringing people together? The revolutionary use of social media in the Arab Spring? No instead, our prime minister manages to earn the praise of the Chinese for threatening further legal measures against people communicating.
Certainly the combination of law and technology can be a very complex one. Working for the communications regulator Ofcom as head of telecoms technology, I spent many hours with lawyers exploring the overlapping boundaries of law and technology.
But the important thing is to recognise and anticipate coming challenges; to ensure that the police and the legal profession have the resources and the qualifications to apply existing law to new technologies.
We need to champion technology and its uses. We want the twitterati to know what they're doing when they tweet. We want people to know just what Facebook friendship means. We want our citizens to be able to keep to the law and protect their privacy at the same time. That will not happen from fear, but from knowledge and understanding.
The prime minister does not help by constantly criticising information and communication technologies projects and police information technology departments in particular. In November last year the prime minister asked the House to guess how many people were involved in IT in Greater Manchester police. "Two hundred and twenty-five," he exclaimed gleefully, going on to say that proved there was room to cut police numbers and still protect the front line.
In the wake of the riots, not to mention hacking and cyber crime, isn't it time we acknowledged that technology should be part of our front-line defences? Does the prime minister want the police to despise computers so they will be more comfortable closing down social media networks instead of using them to beat the criminals?
I think it is time to recognise that networks don't break laws, people do. If that recalls the specious US gun-lobby arguments against gun control, it is deliberate. Because the gist of the comments is that social media are dangerous. But while guns are designed to kill, networks to bring people together. From roads, rail and canals to broadband and social media, the function of networks is to reinforce our individual humanity by connecting us with others.
Human beings are networking animals. Treating networks as potential weapons is wrong. The government already has the power to close down networks. The question is whether it would be reasonable and proportionate to do so at a time of civil disorder.
Personally I believe the real challenge is to make sure the police have the knowledge and the tools to monitor electronic communications when necessary and appropriate. We need a police force who are technologically ahead of the criminals, including the gangs who played a key role in organising the recent riots.
But, above all, we need to keep connected.
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