[stoney]

The British government often comes up with poorly thought out policy ideas, but in fairness, these ideas rarely end up as actual laws - the obvious logic flaws are picked up on sooner or later. I suspect it's just a case that they needed give out some policy ideas to keep the journalists happy and this is the first thing they came up with.

Anyway, I can't see how removing access to social media would have had much influence on the riots - seems like SMS messages would be just as effective, for organising a riot. Social media just happens to be a cheaper option.

[sambe]

I think it was only 5 years ago that these new-fangled "SMS text messages" were being used to organise such events.

You're right though, such initiatives do not seem to commonly make it all the way through to law, but creeping standards is still a danger (as with the police searching all phone records).