A group of university computer geeks has created a mobile interactive mapping system to spring protesters out of police kettles. Only two months old, the?Sukey.org?idea faced and passed its first big test Jan. 29 of 2011, during student demonstrations around England, says spokesman Tim Hardy. ?London was the only one we covered and the only one with no trouble and no kettling,? he told the?Star?on Friday. ?We think it helped keep it peaceful.?
Kettling is the police practice of surrounding and corralling protesters in one area,?as Toronto police did for four soggy hours?at the intersection of Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave. on the Sunday night of the G20 summit. ?Yes, we know about the Toronto incident. It?s an issue going on around the world,? said Hardy.
Using Kettling the police can have a watchful eye?on demonstrators to prevent worse from happening, or?by containing them to let them leave?the area one by one and be able to?arrest some people from such a group. The tactic is controversial because even ordinary bystanders may end up in such a group and could get?injured. In March 2012 Kettling was authorized as a method by the European Court of Human Rights, after a legal dispute.
Sukey is basically an online interactive map fed with Twitter information. It was spawned in the Jeremy Bentham Room at?University College, London,?on Dec. 9 by two Sams: Carlisle, 23, and Gaus, 19. Computer-programmer humour from the first laborious manual data-input test (I?m in the square and Godzilla is in the Thames) inspired the green monster mascot. An English nursery rhyme inspired the name: ?Polly puts the kettle on, Sukey takes it off again.?
?What we?re doing in a king of reputation management,? explained Hardy. The interactive map uses GPS to plot an individual and utilizes data from conventional and social media to plot what parts of the map are dangerous and what are safe. Using computer algorithms, the programmers filter up to 1,000 messages a minute ? including tweets from police ? by which ones have a higher probability of being true or false. ?If it?s good data, their reputation rises. If they?re dishonest, their credibility is ruined,? Hardy said. ?In that way, we avoid kettling but not in a simplistic way. We reduce the need for kettling.?
The Met Police can confirm there are no containments in place at this time #march26 #TUC #march26march #Demo2011 #sukeyData
? MPS Events (@MetPoliceEvents) March 26, 2011
Hardy created?beyondclicktivism.com?early last year to examine ?the power of technology to move political and social change.? The Sams, though, came to political activism only with the idea of solving a problem: generally peaceful protesters getting hurt or trapped because of lack of information. Sukey is in its embryonic stages, but there are plans to make it more sophisticated and keep testing it at protests.
Sources: Wikipedia, Wired, BeyondClicktivism, TheStar, Guardian, BoingBoing