Riots in Tottenham after Mark Duggan shooting protest

[Mise]

Blech, they just have to look at the lack of rioting and looting in Tower Hamlets and Southall to see how wrong that is. I don't know about Salford or Birmingham, but I know for sure that the riots here in London aren't to do with recent immigration. It's not like the banlieue riots in Paris in 2005.

 

[Newbunkle]

I got a chuckle from this: An Open Letter to David Cameron's Parents

 

[Mise]

Rob Manuel of b3ta blogs about the now famous "Broom Pic": https://plus.google.com/u/0/117394585037652877373/posts/KyEgRPo4s9J

The Strange Propaganda of the Now Famous Broom Pic


I wanted to write something about the broom pic. I feel I have the right as I'm in it. You can just see my ginger head obscured by the guy with the dreads.

http://yfrog.com/kj5oewj

I also feel I have the right as everyone has been telling me what this broom pic means and I feel I've slipped into a parallel universe where reality is slippery and events can be moulded into whatever political narrative is convenient for the story teller. Sod it, you might as well have mine.

My motivations for going down there were simple. I'd been up half the night on Sunday checking twitter and seeing the riots moving closer and closer to my home. Camden was being trashed and Kentish Town is only 10 minutes walk away.

This made me a bit mad and paranoid. Obsessively checking twitter, the end of the world is nigh etc. At least I did better than my next door neighbour who honestly believed lions would jump through her window at any moment. They'd escaped from London Zoo, or so twitter had told her.

The next morning I felt overwhelmed. Too much news and I stuck something on Twitter about going to water my tomatos and got a reply saying I should help the clean up operation in Camden.

This sounded therapeutic. Fresh air. See the damage for myself. Maybe help a bit. I grabbed two black bin liners and got down to Camden.

Turns out I wasn't needed. Council workers had got up far earlier and the clean up was done, but my next door neighbours were milling about and suggesting I go down to Clapham Junction and help there.

Now I'm starting to feel better about the world. Camden isn't utterly destroyed. The damage had been hugely exaggerated on Twitter. The Electric Ballroom wasn't burnt down, mostly it was broken windows in Chalk Farm. Not great, but not the end of the world either.

Getting to Clapham there's a big crowd standing outside the station. I bump into three people I know, a couple of friends and some guy I'd once met at an agency talk. We're not allowed to clear up as the forensic stuff is still going on and I overhear people joking, "we'll all be picking up the same crisp packet!"

Time drags on people start mucking about with their brooms. Someone shouts "mexican wave!" and people start doing a broom mexican wave. It's an obvious photo opportunity and I fiddle with my phone and miss it.

Within minutes people are waving their phones around going shouting about the brooms going viral and it all seems quite silly but getting out, having some air, seeing some friends has cheered me up and the visions of the apocalypse have receded slightly.

Then I see that photo. It's not how I remember it. I remember giggling and the brooms going up and down in a wavelike a parody of a Bon Jovi concert. But this is something else, it looks strident, it looks threatening, it looks like a bunch of people who are going to take on riots by bashing them with brooms. It looks like a threat.

And this is of course how it's used by the media.

The Daily Mail call it Blitz Spirit and peps up the story with photos of women with "looters are scum" on their tight tops. Don't remember anyone like that there but hey, now it looks like we're a bunch of people calling young people scum. Classy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-Londoners-offer-help-clean-rioters-mess.html

The Telegraph also used voilent language, "They came to Clapham armed with brooms and they weren’t afraid to use them", although most people didn't use any brooms as only 100 out of over 500 people there were allowed to tidy up before I left.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...k-with-brooms-in-streets-of-Nappy-Valley.html

But for me one of the most extraordinary uses of the photo is "#riotcleanup or #riotwhitewash?" which presents the the event as an act of racism, and then and this is brilliant, crops out the black guys at the front because it's obviously inconvenient to the story. What goes through someones head when putting something like this together? "My gut feeling is that this is racist, the photos don't fit but damn it I'll make them fit." Classy.

http://universityforstrategicoptimism.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/riotcleanup-or-riotwhitewash/

At a guess in calling this out eventually I'll get a comment saying, "no! that's how I got the pic, I didn't know it was cropped!". Of course!

I tried to post something on their blog on this but it hasn't been approve yet. So I stuck it up on twitlonger: http://tl.gd/cago3o

Anyway. I'll get to my point. The photo was people arsing around. People twist it to mean all sorts of things it doesn't mean. The right wing press tell lies. The left tells lies. Everyone wants to use everything happening now for their own narrative. Events are building blocks to be arranged like Lego. Everyone wants you as a turnip in their dominion.

 

[Samson]

Calls for UN to intervene over 'violent suppression'

Having already offered to send an expert team to investigate human rights abuses amid the riots, the Iranian regime has gone one step further and called on the UN security council to intervene over the British government's handling of the unrest rocking the country.

Speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, condemned the British government for its "violent suppression" of the protesters and called for an end to what he described as the "killing and brutal beating" of "the opposition" angry with the government's financial policies.

"The real opposition are the people who are beaten up and killed on the streets of London, those whose voices are not heard by anyone," Iran's Irna state news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

This really makes me laugh. Of course he is just making a point, using similar language to that used against him when there was trouble on the streets.

 

[Shekwan]

Cheers for the info on the broom picture Mise.

Journalists keep harping on about the rise of social media but this just proves its just a tool that makes their job easier. The main use (in the west anyways) seems to still be to facilitate people meeting up and having a laugh.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Seumas Milne is good read. Not all "adults" in the UK are unsympathetic and cynical toward the youths ....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...-reflect-society-run-greed-looting?CMP=twt_gu

It is essential for those in power in Britain that the riots now sweeping the country can have no cause beyond feral wickedness. This is nothing but "criminality, pure and simple", David Cameron declared after cutting short his holiday in Tuscany. The London mayor and fellow former Bullingdon Club member Boris Johnson, heckled by hostile Londoners in Clapham Junction, warned that rioters must stop hearing "economic and sociological justifications" (though who was offering them he never explained) for what they were doing.

We can't be ordered to police in a certain way

Now is not the time for police to use water cannon and baton rounds, writes Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers
When his predecessor Ken Livingstone linked the riots to the impact of public spending cuts, it was almost as if he'd torched a building himself. The Daily Mail thundered that blaming cuts was "immoral and cynical", echoed by a string of armchair riot control enthusiasts. There was nothing to explain, they've insisted, and the only response should be plastic bullets, water cannon and troops on the streets.

We'll hear a lot more of that when parliament meets – and it's not hard to see why. If these riots have no social or political causes, then clearly no one in authority can be held responsible. What's more, with many people terrified by the mayhem and angry at the failure of the police to halt its spread, it offers the government a chance to get back on the front foot and regain its seriously damaged credibility as a force for social order.

But it's also a nonsensical position. If this week's eruption is an expression of pure criminality and has nothing to do with police harassment or youth unemployment or rampant inequality or deepening economic crisis, why is it happening now and not a decade ago? The criminal classes, as the Victorians branded those at the margins of society, are always with us, after all. And if it has no connection with Britain's savage social divide and ghettoes of deprivation, why did it kick off in Haringey and not Henley?

To accuse those who make those obvious links of being apologists or "making excuses" for attacks on firefighters or robbing small shopkeepers is equally fatuous. To refuse to recognise the causes of the unrest is to make it more likely to recur – and ministers themselves certainly won't be making that mistake behind closed doors if they care about their own political futures.

It was the same when riots erupted in London and Liverpool 30 years ago, also triggered by confrontation between the police and black community, when another Conservative government was driving through cuts during a recession. The people of Brixton and Toxteth were denounced as criminals and thugs, but within weeks Michael Heseltine was writing a private memo to the cabinet, beginning with "it took a riot", and setting out the urgent necessity to take action over urban deprivation.

This time, the multi-ethnic unrest has spread far further and faster. It's been less politicised and there's been far more looting, to the point where in many areas grabbing "free stuff" has been the main action. But there's no mystery as to where the upheaval came from. It was triggered by the police killing a young black man in a country where black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than their white counterparts. The riot that exploded in Tottenham in response at the weekend took place in an area with the highest unemployment in London, whose youth clubs have been closed to meet a 75% cut in its youth services budget.

It then erupted across what is now by some measures the most unequal city in the developed world, where the wealth of the richest 10% has risen to 273 times that of the poorest, drawing in young people who have had their educational maintenance allowance axed just as official youth unemployment has reached a record high and university places are being cut back under the weight of a tripling of tuition fees.

Now the unrest has gone nationwide. But it's not as if rioting was unexpected when the government embarked on its reckless programme to shrink the state. Last autumn the Police Superintendents' Association warned of the dangers of slashing police numbers at a time when they were likely to be needed to deal with "social tensions" or "widespread disorder". Less than a fortnight ago, Tottenham youths told the Guardian they expected a riot.

Politicians and media talking heads counter that none of that has anything to do with sociopathic teenagers smashing shop windows to walk off with plasma TVs and trainers. But where exactly did the rioters get the idea that there is no higher value than acquiring individual wealth, or that branded goods are the route to identity and self-respect?

While bankers have publicly looted the country's wealth and got away with it, it's not hard to see why those who are locked out of the gravy train might think they were entitled to help themselves to a mobile phone. Some of the rioters make the connection explicitly. "The politicians say that we loot and rob, they are the original gangsters," one told a reporter. Another explained to the BBC: "We're showing the rich people we can do what we want."

Most have no stake in a society which has shut them out or an economic model which has now run into the sand. It's already become clear that divided Britain is in no state to absorb the austerity now being administered because three decades of neoliberal capitalism have already shattered so many social bonds of work and community.

What we're now seeing across the cities of England is the reflection of a society run on greed – and a poisonous failure of politics and social solidarity. There is now a danger that rioting might feed into ethnic conflict. Meanwhile, the latest phase of the economic crisis lurching back and forth between the United States and Europe risks tipping austerity Britain into slump or prolonged stagnation. We're starting to see the devastating costs of refusing to change course.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I got a chuckle from this: An Open Letter to David Cameron's Parents

That is a very good read. It is always good to see politicians held to their own standards of what they consider to be acceptable behavior. Perhaps he needs a public spanking, or even a few weeks in jail, for taking so long to cut short his own vacation during this time of crisis.

It was the same when riots erupted in London and Liverpool 30 years ago, also triggered by confrontation between the police and black community, when another Conservative government was driving through cuts during a recession. The people of Brixton and Toxteth were denounced as criminals and thugs, but within weeks Michael Heseltine was writing a private memo to the cabinet, beginning with "it took a riot", and setting out the urgent necessity to take action over urban deprivation.

I have a feeling this incident will also be viewed quite differently a few weeks from now, since the immediate reaction of assuring the future of the country is now apparently over, at least in London.

 

[aelf]

Ooh, check out how this government is reacting to this problem:

England riots: Government mulls social media controls

The government is exploring whether to turn off social networks or stop people texting during times of social unrest.

David Cameron said the intelligence services and the police were exploring whether it was "right and possible" to cut off those plotting violence.

Texting and Blackberry Messenger are said to have been used by some during this week's riots.

Rights groups said such a measure would be abused and hit the civil liberties of people who have done nothing wrong.

The prime minister told MPs the government was exploring the turn-off in a statement made to the House of Commons during an emergency recall of Parliament.

Mr Cameron said anyone watching the riots would be "struck by how they were organised via social media".

He said the government, using input from the police, intelligence services and industry, was looking at whether there should, or could, be limits on social media if it was being used to spread disorder.

Under social media, Mr Cameron includes Facebook, Twitter and specific technologies such as text messaging. The semi-private BBM messaging system on the Blackberry is said to have been widely used during the riots.

Home Secretary Theresa May is believed to be meeting representatives from Facebook, Twitter and RIM (maker of the Blackberry) to talk about their obligations during times of unrest.

Civil liberty implications

In the statement, Mr Cameron said law enforcement was considering "whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality".

Questions about the technical feasibility and civil liberty implications of cutting off networks have been raised within the coalition, with many expressing scepticism about the proposal's workability.

Rights campaigners also criticised the idea. Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group, said events like the UK riots were often used to attack civil liberties.

He questioned who was going to decide whether texts or tweets were an incitement to disorder.

"How do people 'know' when someone is planning to riot? Who makes that judgement?" he asked.

"The only realistic answer is the courts must judge. If court procedures are not used, then we will quickly see abuses by private companies and police."

Any government policy to shut down networks deprived citizens of a right to secure communication and undermined the privacy required by a society that valued free speech, he said.

"David Cameron must be careful not to attack these fundamental needs because of concerns about the actions of a small minority," he said.

John Bassett, a former senior official at GCHQ and now a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told Reuters that the government should resist a clampdown.

"The use of social media in the unrest looks like a game-changer," he said. "But any attempt to exert state control over social media looks likely to fail."

Far better, he said, would be to encourage community groups and individuals to report when they see disorder brewing online and ensure police have the tools to extract intelligence from social media.

Link

What was that again about similar measures by Middle Eastern governments in response to the pro-democracy protests?

In contrast:

Cameron Rejects Calls to Review Police Cuts After Worst Rioting Since ’80s

Prime Minister David Cameron rejected opposition demands that he review cuts to spending on policing after Britain’s worst rioting since the 1980s.

Opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband called on Cameron during an emergency session of Parliament in London today to “think again” about reducing police numbers by 30,000 across the country as the government seeks to narrow the budget deficit. London Mayor Boris Johnson -- a Conservative like Cameron -- has also called for the policy to be reviewed.

The planned spending cuts are “totally achievable without any reductions in visible policing and a growing number of police chiefs are making that point,” Cameron told lawmakers. He said 7,000 trained officers are still employed in back-office jobs. “We will still be able to surge as many police onto the streets as we have in recent days.”

More than 1,500 people have been arrested around England and more than 500 charged since outbreaks of looting and arson began on Aug. 6 in the north London suburb of Tottenham. The unrest has heightened security concerns a year before London stages the 2012 Olympic Games amid the deepest budget cuts since World War II.

Heavy Rain

London’s Metropolitan Police has increased the number of officers on the streets of the capital to 16,000 from 6,000, and Cameron said numbers would stay at that level through the weekend. The extra police presence and heavy rain meant last night was largely peaceful across the country after four nights of disorder that spread to Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and other cities.

“If you ask me whether I think there is a case for cutting police budgets in the light of these events, then my answer to that would be no,” Johnson told BBC Radio 4 yesterday. “I think that case was always pretty frail, and it has been substantially weakened.”

The Metropolitan Police Authority, which oversees the London force, forecasts officer numbers will fall to 31,460 by March 2014 from 33,260 last year. Overall police budgets will decline by 14 percent in real terms over that period, the government forecast in its 2010 spending review.

Cameron said the disorder presented police with a “new and unique challenge” that they initially mishandled.

‘Far Too Few’

“There were simply far too few police deployed on our streets and the tactics they were using weren’t working,” he said. Officers initially “treated it too much as a public-order issue,” rather than as a criminal one.

“There were people who saw shop windows smashed and thought it would be OK just to go in and steal,” the premier said. “It’s not OK, and those people will have to face the consequences of their actions.”

Cameron said he would look at “whether there are tasks that the army could undertake that would free up more police for the front line” in the event of future disorder.

Home Secretary Theresa May ordered the cancellation of all police leave yesterday to counter the threat of further unrest.

Police will be given the power to ask people to remove face coverings if they think they’re being used to avoid detection during a crime, Cameron said.

Link

 

[Traitorfish]

Oh my god it's me!



(Only, y'know, more college professor liberal-y? I guess? )

 

[Formaldehyde]

I can't say I'm surprised. First, Cameron doesn't even feel the need to lose his deposit on his vacation by returning home early. And now he thinks that basic freedom and liberty should be restricted under the right conditions for a bit more state security, while the upcoming vacations of cops are being peremptorily canceled.

Perhaps Cameron should hire GWB to coach him how to best turn a democracy into a police state on the basis of the acts of a handful of people. Have they thought about creating a vast secret infrastructure to monitor all internet traffic for suspicious activity, while establishing a separate branch of the executive to properly assess the incessant threat to national security? Or is all that already in place? If not, forget about all that talk about austerity cuts...

 

[Bamspeedy]

Many of the rioters who were caught were white and led 'respectable lives'.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/08/11/ukriots.accused/index.html

Shock over 'respectable' lives behind masks of UK rioters

London (CNN) -- Before they started appearing in court, most people assumed London's rioters and looters were unemployed youths with no hope and no future.

So there was much surprise when details of the accused began to emerge, and they included some from wealthy backgrounds or with good jobs.

Those passing through London's courtrooms on Tuesday and Wednesday -- some courts sat overnight to cope with the numbers -- have included a teaching assistant, a lifeguard, a postman, a chef, a charity worker, a millionaire's daughter and an 11-year-old boy, newspapers reported.

The tabloid Sun newspaper wrote in its opinion page on Thursday of the "sick" society described by Prime Minister David Cameron: "The sickness starts on welfare-addicted estates where feckless parents let children run wild."

But its front-page headline told a different story about the accused: "Lifeguard, postman, hairdresser, teacher, millionaire's daughter, chef and schoolboy, 11."

The Daily Mail reported: "While the trouble has been largely blamed on feral teenagers, many of those paraded before the courts yesterday led apparently respectable lives."

The upmarket Daily Telegraph devoted its page three to the case of Laura Johnson, the 19-year-old daughter of a company director who pleaded not guilty to stealing £5,000 ($8,000) of electrical goods, under the headline: "Girl who has it all is accused of theft."

The newspaper said she lived in a converted farmhouse in the leafy London suburb of Orpington, Kent, with extensive grounds and a tennis court, had studied at one of the best-performing state schools in the country and now attends the University of Exeter.

Reporter Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Daily Telegraph: "Here in court, as David Cameron condemned the 'sickness' in parts of British society, we saw clearly, for the first time, the face of the riot: stripped of its hoods and masks, dressed in white prison T-shirts and handcuffed to burly security guards.

"It was rather different from the one we had been expecting."

He added of the defendants at Highbury Magistrates Court in north London: "Most were teenagers or in their early twenties, but a surprising number were older.

"Most interestingly of all, they were predominantly white, and many had jobs."

Most newspapers highlighted the case of Alexis Bailey, a 31-year-old learning mentor in an elementary school, who pleaded guilty to burglary with intent to steal at an electrical store in Croydon, south of London.

It was reported that Bailey surrendered to police without stealing anything.

The youngest defendant so far -- an 11-year-old boy -- also gained much attention in newspapers.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, from Romford, east of London, admitted stealing a £50 ($80) trash can from a department store, the Guardian reported.

The Daily Mail highlighted the cases of Barry Naine, a 42-year-old charity worker charged with burglary; postman Jeffrey Ebanks, 32, and his student nephew Jamal Ebanks, 18, allegedly caught in a car stuffed with electrical goods near a looted Croydon store.

It also reported that Jason Matthews, a 35-year-old new father arrested in a Tesco supermarket, told police he "was not one of the bad ones" and needed diapers for his baby; and that Christopher Heart, a 23-year-old scaffolder and father of two, shouted "sorry for the inconvenience" and broke down in tears after admitting burglary at a sports shop in east London.

Lifeguard Aaron Mulholland, 30, wept as he appeared in court accused of joining thieves in a cell phone shop, the Daily Mail reported.

The Sun reported that an organic chef, Fitzroy Thomas, 43, and his 47-year-old brother Ronald, denied smashing up a branch of the Nando's chicken restaurant chain.

The Metropolitan Police in London said on its website on Thursday that 401 people have been charged so far.

Greater Manchester Police said five men aged between 46 and 23 had already been jailed for their part in the disorder.

West Midlands Police said 26 people, including a 44-year-old man, had appeared before an overnight court session in relation to the disorder in Birmingham.

 

[Traitorfish]

Perhaps Cameron should hire GWB to coach him how to best turn a democracy into a police state on the basis of the acts of a handful of people.

Dude, he's a Thatcherite. He's got this.

 

[Quackers]

and that Christopher Heart, a 23-year-old scaffolder and father of two, shouted "sorry for the inconvenience" and broke down in tears after admitting burglary at a sports shop in east London.

Morality is what you do when you think nobodies looking.
Somebody looked and he feels awful!

 

[Mise]

Yeah, the left wing dudes on my twitter feed got all excited about how this might result in fewer cuts. But this is Britain. We have a Conservative government, with a rampant right wing press calling for a return to the death penalty even before the riots. There's no way that this isn't going to mark a swing to American-style retributive "justice".

Ironically, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the things that the Daily Mail-ites demand bear a striking resemblance to punishments under Sharia Law... Cutting off fingers of theives, stoning people to death, a return to fundamentalist religious moral values mandated by a patriarchal state...

 

[RedRalph]

Do old people in england still use the term 'coloureds'?

 

[Shekwan]

Darkies was the prefered term for my grandparents. Literally speaking its more correct than coloureds...

 

[Mise]

Truly outstanding blog by the Telegraph's chief political commentator, lambasting the hypocrisy of the political, social and economic elite. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/p...r-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.

I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted.

...

The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: “We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.” He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.

...

Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that “everybody deserves a second chance”. It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.

Definitely worth reading the whole thing, even if it's written by a Tory. Crucially, he's neither excusing the rioters with a "and you lynch negroes" argument, nor spuriously claiming that theft at the top is the cause of theft at the bottom. He's accurately lambasting the hypocrisy of the political and social elite.

 

[Traitorfish]

Yeah, the left wing dudes on my twitter feed got all excited about how this might result in fewer cuts. But this is Britain. We have a Conservative government, with a rampant right wing press calling for a return to the death penalty even before the riots. There's no way that this isn't going to mark a swing to American-style retributive "justice".

Yeah, I think that some people are feeding off the Poll Tax Riot mythology, which is off on just about every possible level. The left in this country seriously needs to get over that kind of Pavlovian stupidity.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Face matching software and irate neighbors are being used to identify rioters and looters:

http://www.abc12.com/story/15249413/apnewsbreak-facial-recognition-in-use-after-riots

LONDON (AP) - Facial recognition technology being considered for London's 2012 Games is getting a workout in the wake of Britain's riots, a senior police chief told The Associated Press, with officers feeding photographs of suspects through Scotland Yard's newly updated face-matching program.

Chief Constable Andy Trotter of the British Transport Police said Thursday the sophisticated software was being used to help find those suspected of being involved in the worst unrest London has seen in a generation.

But he cautioned that facial recognition makes up only a fraction of the police force's efforts, saying tips have mostly come from traditional sources, such as still images captured from closed circuit cameras, pictures gathered by officers, footage shot by police helicopters or images snapped by members of the public. One department was driving around a large video screen displaying images of suspects.

"There's a mass of evidence out there," Trotter said in a telephone interview. "The public are so enraged that people who wouldn't normally come forward are helping us - especially when they see their neighbors are coming back with brand new TVs."

At an emergency session of Parliament summoned to discuss the riots, Cameron said authorities were considering new powers, including allowing police to order thugs to remove masks or hoods, evicting troublemakers from subsidized housing and temporarily disabling cell phone instant messaging services. He said the 16,000 police deployed on London's streets to deter rioters and reassure residents would remain through the weekend.

A law enforcement official told the AP that to use the technology "you have to have a good picture of a suspect and it is only useful if you have something to match it against. In other words, the suspect already has to have a previous criminal record."

I'm sure the police only have photos of convicted criminals, and not those considered to be "troublemakers"...

Meanwhie, a google group is coming under attack for trying to identify perps through their own facial recognition efforts:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/a...using-facial-recognition-to-id-london-looters

As Scotland Yard rolls out facial-recognition technology to identify alleged London rioters, some U.K. Web developers are trying for the same results with off-the-shelf software.

They’ve created an application using face.com’s API, a tool that allows developers to build face tracking into their own programs, to help name suspected troublemakers.

But success has so far eluded them, and the project has landed the developers, loosely organized as a Google group called “London Riots Facial Recognition,” in ethically-iffy territory.

The technology is rarely effective with fuzzy images, such as those taken from CCTV cameras, which is what the group has been using, said a programmer who asked not to be identified.

While testing their app, “it got a monkey mixed up with a person,” said another developer, who also declined to be named. He pegged the accuracy of matches at less than 40 per cent, adding that the group’s members all have other jobs and don’t have the time or money to properly develop the app.

International tech blogs have labelled the group “creepy” and “vigilantes.” The developer calls it undue attention.

“I’m just a hobbyist developer,” he said, adding that some people only joined the group to learn the API technology. Others wanted to help the investigation, but they intend to turn in any results to police.

Group members have received threats from people who believe — falsely, he adds — that they’re working for the Metropolitan Police. The threats prompted them to make the Google group private while they continue tweaking the app. At this point, “we’re just trying to see if we could have a bit of fun learning a new technology,” the developer said.

Some Britons have taken it on themselves to start sites like Catch A Looter, which “collates all images of alleged looting” and encourages those who recognize the faces to call police.

http://catchalooter.tumblr.com/

It is interesting how nearly all the photos seem to be of blacks and other minorities.

 

[Quackers]

Jesus why are people looting poundland?

haha found some good ones:

Bottom of the gene pool? XD

I know what ya thinking. Basmalti rice - lucky guy!