Introduction
It started with the Arab Spring protests in Egypt, in January, this year. It was reinforced during the London riots. And a few weeks back, a couple of incidents in the USA confirmed a new development that law-enforcement agencies would need to factor in, henceforth, when dealing with disturbances.
The new development was the social-media mediated mob, and what the above incidents represented were its use for positive and negative purposes: in the case of the Egyptian protests, organizing like-minded demonstrators against an incumbent autocratic regime; in the case of the London riots, organizing like-minded rioters to target commercial properties; and in the incidents in the USA, organizing like-minded acquaintances for criminal activities.
This brief looks at the implications of the above method of social communication and organization from the perspectives of maintaining law and order and of homeland security.
What is a social-media mediated mob?
A social-media mediated mob is a loosely-organized, typically ephemeral, social group that coalesces on the basis of a series of telecom- or Internet-based communications, with the express objective of executing a specific action, taking by surprise individuals present at the location where the action is executed.
Until recently, circa end-2010, the best known examples were flash-mobs, typically associated with artistic actions: for example, the staging of a choreographed dance routine or the group singing of a song. However, once groups and individuals figured out the power of social-media based groups, its appropriation for activities beyond the artistic was not long in happening. Although a distinction is made between flash-mobs and groups organized for political protests, it is not very clear-cut; with, perhaps, the sole differentiating factor being the duration of the existence of the social group.
From the perspective of homeland security or law-enforcement, the two activities that are of immense interest are political protests and opportunistic crime.
Political Protests:
The use of social media sites to organize the first round of protests against the then President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, was a gamble as the accepted wisdom till then was that social-media mediated mobs could not be organized in countries with low Internet-penetration rates; and that without television coverage, the demonstrations would flounder after a few days. However, accepted wisdom was mistaken in underestimating the power of mobile phone based networks to take over from where Internet-based networks handed over, and in overestimating the ability of the state machinery to ensure that no other point-of-view except its own could be disseminated to its citizens.
In the early days of the demonstrations, the demonstrators, organized through various social networking sites, were flash mobs; gathering for a demonstration at the start of the day, breaking off at the end of the day, and then starting anew, with perhaps a new group, the next day. However, once the demonstrations took hold of the popular imagination, they followed the traditional methods of sustaining and strengthening themselves: word-of-mouth/mobile communication and ideological proselytization.
What will be of interest to law and order agencies is the role played by the flash mobs in creating the spark that lights the fire of public involvement, and then fanning the sparks into a conflagration that eventually consumes the target(s) of the political protests. One person’s freedom fighter is another person’s anarchist, so it is left to the reader to decide whether this development – flash mobs as catalysts for political change – is positive or negative.
Opportunistic Crime:
The London riots and a couple of recent incidents in the USA (one where a group of 25 teens looted a convenience-store, and another where a mob of over 30 persons went on a rampage at a fair) have focused attention on the dangers of flash-mobs when a moral compass is missing or dysfunctional. During the London riots, youngsters used the mobile network to organize rioting sorties. The speed with which flash mobs would assemble, strike targets, and then disperse, initially surprised the local police, and it was only after putting more feet on the street and falling back on traditional policing methods, were they in a position to control the conflagration.
In the US cases, the attacks were apparently random and did not fit any pattern until the local police were able to arrest the perpetrators of the crime. In one of the cases, the local police used social networking sites to identify suspects involved in the convenience-store looting, based on surveillance footage of the incident, to bring them to justice.
The lesson from these incidents is that although police agencies may not be in a position to predict an illegal flash-mob activity, they can analyse evidence and use social-networking tools to target law-breakers.
Practices and Cautions
The increasing use of flash-mob tactics is a direct challenge to traditional approaches to law and order policing, and has implications for homeland security too; requiring new practices to be adopted, in order to counter this development. In addition, in attempting to monitor and control flash-mob tactics, law-enforcement agencies need to exercise caution, so that they do not end up preventing legitimate protest or harassing law-abiding citizens.
Practices
The increasing importance of the Internet in organizing dissent and executing programs that vent this dissent makes it imperative for law-enforcement agencies and homeland security departments to set up dedicated social media monitoring units at state police HQs. The responsibility of the unit will be to be active on social networking sites, monitoring chatter, carrying out analysis of the chatter, and attempting to predict flash-mob tactics.
An earlier brief, from May 2011 – Using Social Networking Sites and Tools for Intelligence-gathering – discusses approaches and tools the social media monitoring unit can use to achieve its objectives.
Cautions
In attempting to monitor and control dangerous flash-mobs, enforcement agencies need to exercise care that they do not adopt the extreme position of preventing all protest. The contours of what can and cannot be allowed are already being drawn, thanks to various cases of illegal flash-mob incidents in the West.
Invasion of the privacy of an individual, in the process of investigating planned flash-mobs or past flash-mobs has been a sore point in the West. However, given that personal privacy issues are not as sacrosanct in India as they are in the West, enforcement agencies have a lot more freedom with respect to this “cannot” than their Western counterparts.
Curtailing legitimate protest, however, is something that resonates more strongly in India. A recent incident in San Francisco, USA, where the metro-rail authority (Bay Area Rapid Transport) security department shut off mobile-phone transmission in the stations in order to prevent a planned flash-mob protest against the authority, has focused on what cannot and should not be done when trying to prevent a flash-mob. A genuine grievance, whether trivial or serious enough to raise fears of possible violence, cannot be restricted from being raised. Law-enforcement agencies will need to treat such a possible flash-mob as a standard demonstration.
Finally, given the potential for much larger damage that flash-mobs can inflict, governments tend to be far harsher when sentencing opportunistic-crime flash-mob planners. One of the sentences handed out, after the recent London riots, was of four years to a duo who set up a Facebook page aimed at getting together individuals interested in looting a London locality. Although the event did not happen, the intent to set up an opportunistic-crime flash-mob was seen as serious enough to warrant a heavy sentence. The jury is still out on whether the punishment befits the crime, or whether authorities, faced with new modes of social crime, have taken an extreme stance.
Conclusion
It is imperative that law-enforcement agencies in India work proactively in identifying and controlling flash-mob activities. This can be done only through investment (human and infrastructure) in analyzing and tracking social networking trends specific to the geography. It is not necessary that each and every policeman becomes Net-savvy and a social-networking expert. All it requires is one dedicated resource working effectively in this area.
