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New software being trialled during the Olympics to predict where and when crime and social disorder may take place could be adopted by police in Scotland, England and Wales
Details emerged on the anniversary of last summer's riots breaking out in London and follow recommendations for a central hub to analyse patterns such as heightened tension across social media sites.
"We all need to understand the impact that social media has. We have no choice but to develop the anticipatory aspect to this."
Last week a British teenager was arrested on suspicion of "malicious communication" after sending abusive tweets to the UK's Olympic high diver, Tom Daley.
DCC Scobbie added: "There is a big issue around those people who are trolling and hiding behind fake or anonymous accounts.
"I can understand why this is necessary in countries where freedom of speech is restricted but in the UK I think if you've got something to say – as long as it's respectful – there is no need to be anonymous.
A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said: "The Metropolitan Police Service has procured the appropriate technology to monitor social media use in the police intelligence arena.
"This technology was introduced shortly after last year's summer disorder. It will continue to be used during and after the Olympics."
Right... Me thinks its time activists like me self dropped off the radar! Heads up!
"I can understand why this is necessary in countries where freedom of speech is restricted but in the UK I think if you've got something to say – as long as it's respectful – there is no need to be anonymous.
As part of the Home Office's communications data bill, internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone companies will be obliged to collect communications records and keep them for a year, writes Channel 4 News Technology Producer Geoff White.
The government has insisted that the actual content of messages won't be stored, but until now it has not been clear how communications companies will be able to separate content from "header data", such as the sender and recipient of a message, and the date it was sent.
It has now emerged that the Home Office has held meetings with the UK's largest ISPs and mobile network operators, and has given them information about the hardware which companies will have to use to monitor traffic flowing through their systems.
When an individual uses a webmail service such as Gmail, for example, the entire webpage is encrypted before it is sent. This makes it impossible for ISPs to distinguish the content of the message. Under the Home Office proposals, once the Gmail is sent, the ISPs would have to route the data via a government-approved "black box" which will decrypt the message, separate the content from the "header data", and pass the latter back to the ISP for storage.
'Black boxes' to monitor all internet and phone data
The government will be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK under new legislation set to be announced soon.
Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time.
The Home Office says the move is key to tackling crime and terrorism, but civil liberties groups have criticised it.
Email and web use 'to be monitored' under new laws
With Cision Social Media monitoring services – winner of the CODiE Award for Best Social Media Aggregation Service – you’ll receive real-time social media monitoring and analysis reports on over 100 million blogs, social networking sites and microblogs, tens of thousands of online forums, and hundreds of video and image-sharing sites. Source
It says the application should collect "open source" information and have the ability to: Provide an automated search and scrape capability of social networks including Facebook and Twitter. Allow users to create new keyword searches. Display different levels of threats as alerts on maps, possibly using colour coding to distinguish priority. Google Maps 3D and Yahoo Maps are listed among the "preferred" mapping options. Plot a wide range of domestic and global terror data. Immediately translate foreign language tweets into English. The FBI document says the information would be used to help it to predict the likely actions of "bad actors", detect instances of people deliberately misleading law enforcement officers and spot the vulnerabilities of suspect groups. Source