Syrian troops 'in new crackdown'

14 September 2011 Last updated at 15:14 GMT Robert Ford (right) was among several diplomats to join mourners in Damascus Syrian security forces are reported to have launched a new operation against opponents of Bashar al-Assad's regime in the north-west of the country.

Activists said troops entered at least 10 villages or towns in the Jabal al-Zawiya area firing machine-guns.

Security forces had earlier fired tear gas at people who had been mourning the death of a rights campaigner in a suburb of Damascus, activists said.

The US ambassador had joined the mourners shortly before the incident.

Robert Ford was accompanied by other diplomats to mourn the death of Ghiath Matar, a rights advocate who was killed last week, reportedly under torture.

Activists said security forces fired tear gas at a tent where the mourners had gathered, but no-one was hurt.

Earlier visits by Mr Ford and his French counterpart to restive parts of Syria have angered the authorities, who have been engaged in a six-month campaign to quash opposition to Mr Assad's rule.

On Monday, the EU condemned Mr Matar's death "in the strongest terms", calling it "yet another sign of the brutality with which the regime responds to the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people".

It called on Syria to release all detained protesters, "in particular Yahya Sharbaji, Amer Matar, Najati Tayara, Shadi Abu Fakher and Omar al-Assad".

Correspondents say the EU publishes the names in an attempt to protect the detained protesters.

'Roads cut'

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said soldiers swept into villages in the north-west on Wednesday.

"The roads connecting the villages have been cut, checkpoints erected and security forces are making arrests," the group said.

Activists say at least 19 people were killed on Tuesday in raids against anti-government protesters, mainly in the restive city of Hama.

Also on Tuesday, the Arab League called for an immediate end to the bloodshed and appealed to the army to pull out of Syrian cities.

According to the UN, more than 2,200 people have been killed in Syria since anti-government protests began.

The government says hundreds of its personnel have been killed.

Foreign reporters have been severely restricted in their coverage of Syria, so news organisations are largely dependent on unverified amateur video and reports by rights groups.

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UK anti-tech crackdown? Not bloody likely

Five sentences in UK prime minister David Cameron’s 2,700-word address on the London riots are causing an Internet meltdown.

"Cameron threatens to block rioters from social media," "UK prime minister’s anti-tech crackdown: Stupid, useless, and wrong," and inevitably, "Anonymous will act against UK web shutdowns." Those were sorts of headlines inspired by the five lines that came about halfway through his speech.

Even a whisper of a government controlling, monitoring or shutting down any form of communication and speech always meets with outrage — and recent events in Egypt and elsewhere remind us why.

Within context, Cameron’s vague statements about social media show no hint of an entire region’s Internet access getting shut down, as Egypt experienced in January. True, BlackBerry is cooperating with the British government to identify those who coordinated violence via BBM —but it’s not handing over full access as was demanded by Saudi Arabia and UAE. And as to the Internet outrage over those five sentences, there is no way UK citizens would stand for anything close to China’s iron-fisted Internet control. These are a people not afraid to riot.

"I'm not too worried," Graham Linehan told Technolog over Twitter. "I'm hoping it's just a harmless exercise in looking-like-you're-doing-something." 

As creator of the UK-famous show "The IT Crowd" (which enjoys cult status in the U.S.), Linehan is also a renowned tech and social media smarty pants. As such, he's one guy in England who has a pretty good perspective on this subject. With more than 122,000 followers on a Twitter account he seemingly helms 24/7, Linehan is currently peppering his nonstop Twitter stream about tech, comedy and other geek fetishes with tweets and retweets about the riots. You know, just like everyone else in the Western world.

Linehan says he doesn’t fear an "anti-tech crackdown" in the UK, "because I think this Gov are actually proving to be quite good on digital rights," he tweeted Technolog.

The UK government’s ongoing reform in digital policy and rights focuses strongly on free exchange of intellectual property and Internet copyright law to benefit innovation and business. Research into this growth was commissioned by the prime minister himself. Notably, this is a different issue from a social media crackdown, but let's review Cameron’s five incendiary sentences in his House of Commons speech:

Mr. Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.

So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.

Cameron went on to say that police officers are now authorized to remove face coverings with reasonable suspicion — many of the vandals and looters caught on the government-run closed circuit TV are wearing hoodies pulled over their heads and scarves up to their eyes. He also spent considerable time talking about victim support. Consider the UK olds, freaking out over this new-fangled social media inspiring roving bands of thugs. Won't somebody please think of the olds?! Cameron is essentially saying, "We'll get those kids off your lawn!"

Cameron and UK authorities no doubt understand this sentiment tweeted by Cambridge, Mass. blogger "Debcha":

Certainly, the benefits of social media won't be lost on the UK government, nor UK police officers who are using social media to calm Londoners and quell troubles. For example, this tweet from Eastbourne Police:

"The riots seem to have woken them up to the possibilities of social media in connecting with the public," Linehan tweeted Technolog.

The Greater Manchester Police, for their part, have understood the power of social media for some time. They used it to great success last year to bring attention to impending budget cuts by tweeting every 999 call (the UK version of 911) the department received in a 24-hour period.

"There’s been a lot of concerns about social media in the current situation; on the other hand it is a very valuable tool in getting information out there," Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Peter Fahy told Sky News, addressing Cameron’s statements and the subsequent outrage.

"It’s not just about social media. We’ve seen people on mobile phones, texting and those sorts of things. So it is a wider issue, and I think clearly there has to be a balance here."

The Greater Manchester Police are among those charged with getting those kids off the lawn, and social media is a tool that helps them do it.

 More on social media and the London riots:

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+.

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Mo. teachers protest Facebook crackdown

COLUMBIA, Mo. — As they prepare lesson plans for fall, teachers across Missouri have an extra chore before the new school year begins: purging their Facebook friend lists to comply with a new state law that limits their contact with students on social networks.

The law was proposed after an Associated Press investigation found 87 Missouri teachers had lost their licenses between 2001 and 2005 because of sexual misconduct, some of which involved exchanging explicit online messages with students.

But many teachers are protesting the new restrictions, complaining the law will hurt their ability to keep in touch with students, whether for classroom purposes, personal problems or even emergencies.

The new law forbids teachers from having "exclusive access" online with current students or former students who remain minors, meaning any contact on Facebook or other sites must be done in public rather than through private messages.

Lucinda Lawson, an English teacher at Hartville High School in southern Missouri, expects to purge nearly 80 current and former students from her Facebook account, and she worries that doing so could leave some students vulnerable.

Private messages give "truly supportive teachers the chance to get help for them when they're in dangerous or compromising situations," Lawson said.

Lawson once called a state child-abuse hotline after a private online conversation revealed dangerous drug use by a student's adult family member. She encouraged a pregnant teen to remain in school and helped the girl tell her parents. Another student confided that his attendance woes and classroom struggles were caused by the financial and emotional stress of caring for a mentally ill parent.

Lawson has no qualms with other provisions in the law to monitor teachers accused of sexual misconduct, such as conducting annual criminal background checks and requiring districts to share information about employees who are fired or resign in sex-abuse cases.

Still, she says, teachers often use Facebook and other online forums for legitimate educational purposes — and to help students with personal troubles they might not be willing to discuss in more public settings.

In Joplin, where 160 people died and hundreds more were injured by a historic tornado in May, several teachers relied on Facebook to track down missing students in the storm's immediate aftermath.

"I am not a pervert and don't wish to be treated as one," Joplin middle school teacher Alana Maddock wrote in an email to Gov. Jay Nixon in June, not long before he signed the legislation. "I am very responsible with my Facebook pages and don't appreciate being assumed to be a danger to my students."

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The law, which takes effect Aug. 28, does not outright prohibit teachers from interacting with students on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other sites. Instead, it requires local school districts to create written policies by January that outline "appropriate use of electronic media such as text messaging and Internet sites for both instructional and personal purposes."

It will be up to individual districts to define "exclusive access," but in general the law holds that any contact must be made in the public sphere rather than through private messages. So teachers can set up public Facebook pages or Twitter accounts but can't reach out to their students as friends or followers, or vice versa.

State Sen. Jane Cunningham, who sponsored the proposal, said many educators who have spoken against the new rules misunderstand them. The legislation had backing from education lobbyists and organized teacher groups and enjoyed unanimous support from lawmakers.

"Any teacher who is really working hard with a student privately would want to have a parent or administrator know how hard they're working," said Cunningham, a Republican from suburban St. Louis. "The only problem is if there's something they want to hide."

Despite its earlier support for the measure, the Missouri State Teachers Association now says it plans to seek changes when legislators return to the Capitol in January.

"The problem is the bill is so vague," said Todd Fuller, a spokesman for the statewide teachers' group. "There is a lot of interpretation left up to a local school district."

Many school districts already have such policies in place, and individual teachers have their own internal guidelines, Fuller added.

Nate Smith, a debate coach and history teacher at Lee's Summit High School near Kansas City, said he already declines students' Facebook friend requests to maintain personal and professional distance. He worries that some overzealous districts will go even further than the limits spelled out in the new law.

"You'll have a lot of school districts that will ban all forms of social media communication with students," he said. "There could be some really good educational opportunities lost."

In Hartville, Lawson isn't the only member of her household who needs to amend her Facebook settings. Her husband is also a teacher, and their 14-year-old daughter, Olivia, relied on Facebook to communicate with her English teacher to discuss school projects.

Olivia Lawson said she spends several hours a day on Facebook. And like her mother, she recalls examples of friends and classmates who shared concerns with teachers online that they would not dare discuss in person.

"In person, there's always the chance of someone else hearing you," she said. "Sometimes you don't really want your friends to know what you're talking about with a teacher."

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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