This week has seen a particularly interesting story rise to the top of the UK social media scene. Nothing to do with the latest startup, new gmail feature (although the themes are pretty cool, by all accounts), or story about how Silicon Valley is losing jobs faster than an army of snakes sheds skins.
No, it's the BNP list that's causing this furore, or more accurately what should be done with the data on that list.
To me, the answer is simple - avoid it, leave it alone, don't get involved and have respect for other people's privacy. Not only has the point of law not been assessed on accessing this data, but at the end of the day this is a matter of respect and common decency.
Now, we could say that BNP members have very little of both of these characteristics, but that doesn't mean that we have the right to invade their privacy and use the data for our own personal ends. As my Mum used to say to me when I was a kid "two wrongs don't make a right", and dipping into this data puts us onto the road of abhorrence that the BNP is on. We don't want that.
But, to me there is something weirdly fascinating about the BNP and it's members though. As hideous as their views are, I'm just a little curious to know who would want to associate themselves with such a political party. What kind of person holds these views, why and what do they think they'll gain from it? Are they just ex-NF members who got a little older and less able to get into their 32 hole Doc Martins?
Sorry, veering into personal opinion there (although that is what a blog is for) but, I just wanted to say that I'm curious.
But I'm not curious enough to violate their privacy. On twitter on Monday night, the tweets were flying around as people hunted for a download location for the 'list'. One of my followers (twitter isn't a cult) said that they "can't find the list" and I even replied that "neither could I" but I couldn't because I wasn't looking for it...but my curiosity was being piqued.
Later on, someone tweeted a download link. Go ahead...download it, read it and find out if any of the people in your town are on it, said the devil on my shoulder.
I didn't, but I'm sure that lots of people did.
In fact I know they did, because there are countless mashups of this data and Google Maps.
Some are fairly tame - like the Guardians 'members by constituency mashup' or the slightly more provocative 'BNP Near Me' site that shows peculiar clusters around postcodes, or this by location. These, I suppose, are harmless enough - nobody is 'outed' as being a BNP member, their addresses are not revealed and personal data confidentiality isn't breached.
But others have gone further. One mashup inaccurately placed pins on a Google Map that roughly corresponded to the address of a BNP member...ummm, excuse me, but what if you happened to put that on my house? Am I going to get vigilantes knocking on my door incorrectly accusing me of being a racist?
To this end, Techcrunch UK editor, Mike Butcher, tweeted:
Starting to see some really evil shit being done with that BNP list now. If you're a geek building this stuff, think twice & stop, seriously
And the BBC have reported that people are getting threatened. Hideous views or not, that's wrong - and remember what my mum said!
Yet now there is nothing we can do with this situation. The list has broken into the public domain and into the hands of social media types and others. We can now no longer trust whether the list is accurate as amended versions are now circulating on bittorrent.
The true power of social media is being revealed in a disturbing way, one that forgets that we all have a right to privacy, that nobody is breaking the law by being a BNP member (unless you're a service Police Officer, that is) and shows blatant disregard and a lack of respect.
However, it's not all bad. Now that we have the mainstream media giving us a rough indication of where BNP membership is high, can we now look at using that data for good - to try and understand why these clusters exist?
I could never agree with anything that the BNP have to say, let me make that clear and as much as I advocate that social media is a power for good, let's also learn to spot when it's being used for the not so good.
Don't download that file. You'll feel dirty if you do.
-pc.
Very interesting post, Paul.
I did not know that the list had been mashed-up and used in this way. I guess now that there was some inevitability about it as soon as the list had been published.
A shame.
I must also say that I did not realise that the Police were barred from BNP membership. I can see the logic, though this is a heavy step for a democracy to take.
In general, I hope that with social media and Obama & all, we are into a new age of dialogue. Dialogue generally does good, as we have seen in Northern Ireland. So, I hope that the many of us who are hoping that Obama opens a new dialogue in the Middle East also understand and hope for a new internal dialogue in the UK with the BNP. I don't think that they are very significant socially or politically, Britain does better than most of its continental cousins on this issue, but where they arise, let's talk! They are wrong, even often stupid, but not evil.
And their right to privacy is as great as mine.
And the need to protect data and its control it is never taken seriously enough. The ICO gets high profile prosecutions into the press. But thats the tip of the problem. The point is if you hold a 'thing' you also hold the consequences if 'the thing' escapes. Perhaps the view taken should be to do anything you want, but above all 'do no harm'.
Sadly thats not always possible as society is a book case with two ends. And those ends are a long way from each other making a very wide range of views possible. Care needs to be taken when one of the books falls off to make sure it does not hit you on the head! Beacuse the soft words on the pages do not make the blow any softer or hard words any harder. It will still hurt. and a book case with millions of copies of identical books, makes for a very dull read.
The BNP are part of a book that will always be with us, but the cover warns us about the contents, and I will not bother reading it. But recycling it into toilet papaer may be my own personal choice and one I may choose, but then its choice we seek to defend.
Updated by Peter Kawalek
Nov 24, 2008 14:00
I think that in order to be a member of the BNP one needs a very concrete view of what nationality is and how any given nationality has come about. In other words, it 'elps to be a bit thick! Another important point is that Britain is relatively free of support for far-right politicians: we should remember this. This is a post-war (relative) success, as overseas visitors to the University often remind me. For example, I don't think the BNP has earned the right to appear in this Guardian article. It just is not anywhere near as significant as what we see in France, Austria, Italy, Denmark and other places.
That all said, as Michael Collins's elegant book points out (refs below), the denigration of the white working class is one of the allowable prejudices in polite society. At today's dinner parties you cannot say impolite things about many groups, but you are usually on safe ground with (1) Americans (2) the white working class. In both cases, (1) and (2), this is clearly wrong.... More about Americans later, for now staying with the white working class, as Collins's personal history tells, this group has only rarely had institutional representation in Britain through politics or media. In this light it is good that the Communities Secretary is talking about political failure. One can clearly see that an opportunity for the BNP is to target this nation's forgotten white estates and neighbourhoods, and to develop a grassroots, community-service operational model to bring support into their fold. One does not have to look far for nations where extreme or relatively extreme politics has flourished because of an opportunistic marriage with community service.
Leaving these difficult and detailed issues rather under-developed, I think two more points can usefully be introduced. The first is that immigration is, first and foremost, an honour contract on both sides. It can be done well or done badly by both immigrant and host community. Over time, when it is done well by the incomer, he or she naturally expects and should be given indigenous status. The process reaches a crescendo & the nation gains another prize, another riband, another member of its national family. That curious term 'naturalisation' covers the institutional element to this process - I remember my Dad going through it, and he hated it, maybe felt demeaned by it, yet still went through it - but the greater part of the process is lived out at community level, as one more face stands outside the school-gates, in the shops, at work & at play.
Finally, what I think is really important to realise is that, in some ways, 'nationality' is anyway a kind of dinosaur concept. There are huge forces at play in the world today, and the concrete-headed little folk would do well to not play Canute in their face. As I have argued before in TALK (1), (2), the real asset of migration comes with the social capital it builds across the globe. This is good for peace & understanding and the emergence of a better world. If world-peace isn't cause enough, its also good for the number of bucks in your wallet. Once, maybe, some folk considered themselves kind to have allowed the Indians, Pakistanis & Chinese in their midst. Now with the East rising quickly, let's hope that they welcomed them warmly. For suddenly the little fella with the "Paki shop" is the uncle or brother (or auntie or sister) of someone with a multi-million pound investment decision to make. In the new landscape, where the East has the better industries as well as the better cricketers, we might rely more than we yet realise on little ties of friendship & sentiment.
That's a lot of material that I have introduced here, and we started by talking about data security!! Sorry! But I will end with some other big themes, as all of this reminds me of what fortunate people we have been to live in the age of America. I'll write a separate blog entry about this. For as its power wanes, we will find it easier to see its post-war failures in a bigger context. What America taught the world was that a reject and failure in one nation could be gold in another. The huddled masses who crowded the immigration aisles of New York became builders, booksellers, Hollywood producers, miners, architects, authors, lawyers, politicians, cheese-makers, pipe-smokin' grandpas, hectorin' school teachers, foresters, fishermen & folk-singers. One great nation made up almost entirely of the flotsam and jetsam of other nations; nations that had briefly thought themselves greater.
History is a wicked teacher. Wicked, as in 'good.'
(For Michael Collins's book, look here. For equally elegant counterviews, look here and here).
And other countries are also grappling with these themes in different ways. Ireland, for the first time is looking at immigration, after many years of emigration of its people.
Absorption of the 'New Irish' into Irish society has begunhttp://www.history.ac.uk/docs/0812/CFP_acis.pdf http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7144216.stm http://www.metroeireann.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Ireland is a very important model because of two things. (1) The tragedy and hardship of its diaspora in the 20th century, over time, gave it a huge social capital - making 'Irishness' one of the West's dominant cultural threads. (2) The Good Friday Agreement and the constitutional amendments that followed separated the concepts of land and people giving it arguably the first national constitutional attuned to a globalized, networked economy. Article 2 of Bunreacht na hÉireann (Constitution of Ireland) was amended in 1998 to read "[f]urthermore, the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage."
That said, emigration was one challenge (see On Being a Nation In An Age of Networks), immigration is another (see Human Fibres of the Networked Age). But a human test applies: if a migrant can come and do good in a new country and thinks well of that country and his/her experience there, then that is one single byte of positive human experience that can reverberate through the many social experiences of the networked world, and can help create many more similar positive experiences.
An interesting side topic of this reporting is the way people's professions have been used in the Media coverage
Please read this link to the BBC (a public service broadcaster) report on Privacy Issues for the BNP. - BBC - BNP
There are a number of insinuations relating to people's professions.
The highlighting of Prison Officer's and Teachers as members of the BNP both public servants though no mention of any other public servants - does this mean that the article has put a value on these public professions above others, and by doing so belittling the value of say the refuse collector or cleaner who is a member of the BNP.
The article also ranks professions such as web designers and owners of IT companies as the types the BNP will be happy to be associated with yet not with the Karate instructor.
What does this imply?
The writer of the article obviously knows as little about Karate - (see the section on Philosophy), as the member of the BNP who practises Karate does. It also states that a member a CCTV installer "could perhaps have been used to improve the party's internal security" this is no more daft than implying that the Conservatives would use a member who is a fitness instructor to improve the health of it's MP to gain an advantage........(ed: - not a bad idea, "Be fit, think fit" )
The general reporting of this data loss and miss use (the real story), has been hijacked for sensationalist reasons to provoke a debate about who should be allowed to be a member of the BNP and inadvertently re-emphasised the social hierarchies that the media love to perpetuate.
This behaviour is not far removed from the 'jobs for the boys' culture I think the majority of the nation want to disappear, and until we start to see people's professions as their job and not a symbol of their status we will not be able to understand the emotions and feelings they have of being constantly undervalued.
by 'eck lad, i down't think thar Guardian joorrnalist meant t'cause offence...
this is a good line: "until we start to see people's professions as their job and not a symbol of their status we will not be able to understand the emotions and feelings they have of being constantly undervalued." I heartily agree. And their cars as their transport, not as a symbol of status. etc. etc.
.... the truth is that a helluva lot is still pre-determined by the circumstances of our birth. Maybe there is no way of changing it, but we should not presume that a lawyer has travelled further than a cleaner. It all depends on where the starting line was.