The Open Rights Group are organising a petition against moves to censor, block and snoop on social networks.

[Cameron] announced on Thursday that the government would investigate if they should be able to close networks or user accounts if law enforcement suspect they are being used to organise rioting or looting.

Even Jim Killock writes as if these networks are some kind of public service that the Government has every right to control. They are not. They are owned by private citizens in pursuit of their own happiness. The only control that the Government can have over them is by interfering with those citizens’ pursuit of happiness and forcing them to co-operate to set up systems that enable state control of their products. A non-trivial exercise that directly harms the person expected to do it – moral cannibalism. This casual interference with private property is wrong, whatever the needs of those citizens’ own customers.

Nevertheless the needs of Facebook and Twitter users are also in jeopardy:

Suspending networks or services is grossly naïve: so much so, we hope the plans will be swiftly dropped. After all, people in danger or trying to deal with the problem may be using the same networks. They have a right to communicate – it’s called freedom of expression – and no government or business should interfere with the rights of innocent people.

Suspending accounts could be very dangerous. Companies can close anyone’s account they like: and if they start taking action on the advice of the police, then justice and accountability disappear. Account suspension should only ever be done through a court order.

We think new snooping powers are the biggest danger of all. When the Home Office work out that suspending services is difficult and unpopular, they will remind Cameron and Clegg of their plans to snoop on everyone’s SMS, email and Facebook messages – and maybe think of some new mass snooping powers while they are on a roll.

Mass surveillance is meant to be prohibited by human rights law. Cutting communications is such a dire idea that we expect only the worst dictators to contemplate such censorship. Yet ideas like these may soon be heading for the UK statute book. Please sign our petition!