Dear RIM;
You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all, the Police are looking to arrest as many people as possible to save themselves from embarrassment … if you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it, we have access to your database which includes your employees information; e.g – Addresses, Names, Phone Numbers etc. – now if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters…. do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps? Think about it…. and don’t think that the police will protect your employees, the police can’t protect themselves let alone protect others….. if you make the wrong choice your database will be made public, save yourself the embarrassment and make the right choice. don’t be a puppet..
p.s – we do not condone in innocent people being attacked in these riots nor do we condone in small businesses being looted, but we are all for the rioters that are engaging in attacks on the police and government…. and before anyone says “the blackberry employees are innocent” no they are not! They are the ones that would be assisting the police.
The hackers said they defaced the website “in response” to this statement made by RIM on Monday: “We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.”
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast urged the British government to order the police to stop their violent confrontation with the people, IRNA reported in the early hours of Tuesday.
Mehmanparast asked the British government to start dialogue with the protesters and to listen to their demands in order to calm the situation down.
The Iranian official also asked independent human rights organisations to investigate the killing [of Mark Duggan] in order to protect the civil rights and civil liberties
13.25 Fascinating New York Times pieceon what the bloggers who chronicled the Egyptian protests are making of events in the UK:
As she switched between coverage of London’s riots on CNN and Al Jazeera, Zeinobia wrote: “To be honest I do not understand why protesters would set shops and houses on fire … I am sorry but you do not loot to object the murder of a young man; you are using his murder.”
12.35 Guardian journalist Lisa O’Carroll has a story about one of the most memorable images of the unrest so far:
Amy Weston, the photographer who took the shot of the woman leaping out of a burning building in Croydon, has told of the mayhem when she took the shot.
“I was told there were fires in the Church Street area, near Surrey Street Market.
“By the time I drove towards it, I could already see the fires from my windscreen,” said Weston who works for the London-based WENN agency.
“There were six or seven people screaming and crying outside, and they looked like they lived at the flats that were burning. The flats were above small independent shops. A man in a white shirt was screaming that a girl was at the window and that she was ready to jump. He ran towards her but riot police had appeared and pulled him back, and they went to her instead.
“As soon as she dropped, the crowds pushed back and there was no way to see what happened to her. I remember hearing people screaming that there were more people in the building. The crowds started getting angry with each other, with one group blaming another group for starting the fire.
“There were warnings of gas cylinders being fired into the crowd from riot police so I got out of there. I couldn’t get to my car so I had to walk, wrapping my camera in my clothes to avoid being mugged.”
Compilation of london riot footage 08/08/2011
