TechCrunch Europe reports: Over the weekend parts of London descended into chaos as riots and looting spread after a protest organised around the yet unexplained shooting of a man by Police. Of course, there was huge amounts of chatter on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, with the latter coming under enormous amounts of criticism from the UK press for fuelling the fire. But while Twitter has largely been the venue of spectators to violence and is a handy public venue for journalists to observe, it would appear the non-public BlackBerry BBM messaging network has been the method of choice for organising it.
The background to the current riots are convoluted. In 1985 a notorious riot on the Broadwater Farm Estate after Cynthia Jarrett, an African Caribbean woman, died during a police search of her home, later saw a Policeman, PC Keith Blakelock killed. That lead to years of mistrust between Police and local communities, not helped by the fact that parts of North London, around Tottenham remain to this day areas of ongoing economic deprivation.
The latest incidents over the weekend appear to have been sparked after a peaceful protest outside Tottenham’s police station over the fatal shooting of local man Mark Duggan, killed during an alleged gunfight with police on Thursday, was reportedly hijacked by thugs and looters.
But while Twitter and Facebook became the venues for public protests around public spending cuts it is the affordable BlackBerry handset and its near free BlackBerry Messenger network where group chats take place, which appears to have fuelled these riots. To communicate, BBM users have to exchange their phones’ PINs, making their messages are private, but PINs can be spread by any means – including, of course, Twitter and other social networks – but also via (still non-public) SMS.