The phrase “kill the messenger” comes to mind. There was a big meeting on Thursday in London between British officials and representatives of Twitter, Facebook, and Research In Motion, makers of BlackBerry. The British Home Office said the purpose of the meeting wasn’t to discuss blocking any of the social media technologies but rather to figure out how criminals are using them. The NYT says: But the discussion, according to those present, was still aimed at reeling in social media and strengthening the hand of law enforcement in gathering information from those networks. In the wake of revolutions that have seen widespread calls for freedom and democracy, free-speech advocates have said, the British government is considering similar policies to those it has criticized in totalitarian and one-party states.
One of the ideas discussed was to mandate real names being used on Twitter.