London Calling, Texting, Tweeting Or Posting

British PM David Cameron has found his scapegoat for this week's deadly UK riots:  social networking.

Saying the "free flow of information" can sometimes be a problem, Cameron's government has summoned those two social-networking sites, as well as Research In Motion, makers of the BlackBerry, for a meeting to discuss their roles during the violent outbreaks.

"Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social media," Cameron said Thursday during an address to Parliament. "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."

Cameron said that government officials are working with authorities "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."

If this sounds familiar, it's the same logic oppressive regimes fighting the Arab Spring revolution used in order to justify cutting off social networking services and internet access to citizens in countries like Egypt in January and in Libya in February.  Now, six months later, Britain is considering the same types of actions.

Cameron also wants the cooperation of social networking giants like Blackberry maker Research in Motion, Twitter, Facebook and Google to help them identify those who may have used these services to foment unrest this week in order to pursue legal action against them, as well as possibly taking action to prevent those convicted of crimes in the past from using social networks at all.  Needless to say, that's not sitting well with people.

"It may be tempting to smother that kind of speech when a government feels it is under siege, as Britain seems to feel that it is," wrote Matthew Ingram of tech blog GigaOm. "But doing this represents nothing less than an attack on the entire concept of freedom of speech, and that has some frightening consequences for any democracy."

Ingram questioned whether the government would be cracking down on telephone use or people talking about the unrest at their local pub if social media didn't exist. "That seems unlikely (although not impossible). But the British government's apparent willingness to consider shutting down or blocking access to Twitter and BlackBerry's BBM falls into the same category."

On ReadWriteWeb, writer Curt Hopkins said Cameron "joins the long line of powerful men who totally miss the point of social media."

"Banning those convicted of crimes from accessing social networks (the idea being that they used such access to organize criminal activities) is no different than banning the same criminals from accessing goose quills and ink pots," Hopkins wrote. "It will have zero effect on crime, aside from criminalizing social media itself."

The larger story is that Cameron is using social networking and social media in general as the scapegoat for this week's riots.   If British lawmakers allow Cameron to do that, it's only a matter of time before our government decides that maybe it would be a good idea to do that too.  I wonder which GOP governor or presidential candidate will be the first to say that convicted felons should lose their right to use Twitter, Facebook and text messaging?

I don't think that will be far off at all.