Social Media and the Law... again!

Tween pop sensation Justin Bieber caused a riot at Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island, NY this past week when he was scheduled to appear for an autograph signing.

While you probably don't care, the story does get interesting since the use (or lack thereof) of his Twitter account lead to the arrest of James Roppo, a representative from Bieber's record Label.

According to the Associated Press, a huge crowd had formed to catch a glimpse of the mini-star and crowding/shoving was becoming a safety issue.

Police asked Roppo to help disburse the crowd by sending out a Twitter message notifying fans that Bieber would not be allowed into the mall until things calmed down. When Roppo refused, he was arrested on several misdemeanor charges, including "failure to cooperate with police".

Despite this strange request, two Tweets were seen on Bieber's Twitter account at 4:30pm and 4:33pm first asking the crowd to calm down and leave, then stating that one of his people had been arrested.

I really don't care for Bieber or this article, but the fact that refusing to send a Tweet contributed to a man's arrest is something worth discussing. Just recently, I posted a blog about how a man's Facebook status saved him from jail. Now we're seeing the other side of the spectrum.

There is no doubt that Social Media is becoming more and more important in our lives but I really struggle with this particular incident. Even if Roppo had agreed to send out the Tweet, the police were going on the assumption that a large majority of the existing crowd would see it instantly and just pack up and go.

Twitter is a great way for an artist to keep in touch with his or her fans by letting them have some insight into their life or by notifying them of upcoming events. It is not a method of crowd control.

It will be interesting to see how this - and future cases - progress when Social Media comes into play.

The Dark Side of Twitter

Technology is a double-edged sword. It can help us, entertain us and enhance communication; but with every upside, there is usually a downside, which often comes in the form of people looking to abuse or exploit the technology.

Twitter has become a great way for people to keep in touch. Both individuals and corporations are using this simple blog to engage in conversation with friends, family or consumers. Everything seemed to be going great until earlier this week when Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks discovered a number of Twitter accounts that were using 'tweets' to control a Botnet.

After digging into the Tweets, Jose realized they were actually Base64 encoded commands. It seems the Bot was programmed to receive the RSS feed of the Twitter account (along with other micro-blogging sites) and used these commands to carry out functions.

Further research suggests that the Bot is an info-stealer that has infected a few hundred PCs - mostly in Brazil.

While I certainly don't agree with or support malicious hacking, I have to admit that this is a pretty brilliant concept. I suspect that Twitter et al will be putting filters in place to shut down this type of activity in order to prevent it from going mainstream, but you gotta hand it to the hackers... they're pretty damn creative!

This just goes to show that no matter how harmless a technology may seem, someone will always find a way to exploit it.