Technology aided British rioters

The London police say that technology helped fuel the looting and violence that engulfed many parts of the UK for several days after the death of a Tottenham resident last week that triggered one of the worst riots in recent British history.

The London police have discovered that the Blackberry smartphone with its Blackberry messenger (BBM) service along with social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook aided the rioters in fuelling riots and looting.

Although Twitter and Facebook did play a role in the unrest in the capital, the riots that initially engulfed central London and Tottenham and then spread to Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester are thought to have been heavily orchestrated and coordinated by rioters using the BBM.

BBM became the tool for rioters to coordinate attacks at a certain place and time, which has lead to calls from UK lawmakers to suspend BBM services.

But many have questioned why the London police have mainly targeted the BBM service. Technology commentators have come up with the answer -  BBM is virtually free and instant, and because it protects privacy, it is hard to track down by law enforcers.

David Lammy, the member of parliament for Tottenham from where London's worst riots in decades erupted on Saturday, has called for the suspension of the service, while Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday said his government was looking into ''whether it was right'' to stop people using social media to ''plot'' further disorder.