Polly put the kettle on, Sukey take it off again

A group of tech-savvy campaigners has released a range of mobile phone applications which provide protesters with real-time information about police tactics during demonstrations.

As ‘a tool for non-violent demonstrations,’ the software – aptly named Sukey – is designed to keep protesters informed about police strategy during protests. Launched on 29th January, it has been developed by a team of students and workers to be compatible with all phone platforms.

“We are fundamentally about peaceful protests and freedom of movement,” says Sukey’s Tim Hardy. “We are outraged by kettling – this whole thing has grown out of disgust at the way that police have been treating peaceful protesters. But we just believe that kettling is a terribly repressive, anti-democratic, illegal act by the police and that – if we can help people keep moving safely and avoid those kettles – that’s brilliant.”

Stemming from the occupation of UCL at the end of last year, a 7-strong team are constantly tweaking the Sukey software to ensure its security.

The application relies on the SwiftRiver platform, which was originally designed to operate in war and disaster zones which involve filtering enormous amounts of crisis data. Instead of crisis data, however, Sukey collates information from social media like Twitter and Facebook, but also via email and text.

“We algorithmically work out which messages are the most likely to be reliable based on whether the user has been reliable in the past, the degree to which the messages corresponds to other messages,” Tim explains. “It’s the same sort of technology that goes into Spam filters so we can, for example, reduce 1000 messages down to 10, and then we – as a group of human beings – act as the sort of editorial team and look at those messages and make a judgement.”

The team have also been offered support by Richard Stallman, the US computer programmer who leads the international free software movement.

The role of social media has not been underestimated in fomenting protests around the world; in a Youtube interview in January, U.S. President Barack Obama named social networking amongst the “core values” of freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

In a 2011 report, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) conceded that police in Britain have been unprepared for this shift towards social media, which is now a quotidian resource for organising demonstrations. The report began; “The character of protest is evolving in terms of: the numbers involved; spread across the country; associated sporadic violence; disruption caused; short notice or no-notice events, and swift changes in protest tactics.”

In bridging this communication chasm between police and protesters, Sukey believes it precludes the kind of violence seen at previous student protests.

“We know that we were instrumental in reducing panic on at least two occasions and we very strongly believe that we forced to police to stick to their word because when we endorse a message from someone, if they then turn out to have lied, we no longer endorse messages from them. We are not going to give them anyone’s data – that remains private.”

For Tim at Sukey, this social evolution also tackles a hierarchical imbalance; “You can’t stop an idea – I personally believe that we’ve just reached a certain technological point where the old structures of society are just inevitably going to have to transform because we have so much power as individuals to disseminate our ideas that this has to have social and political consequences… I think we will see more fluid protests, we’ll see greater communication and if it’s not Sukey, it’ll be something else.”

Metropolitan Police confirmed that they had used the software to communicate with protesters, though they remained indifferent about its importance in the future: “Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service met with representatives of the ‘Sukey’ website last month. As a result of this we hash tagged Sukey from our Twitter account during the demonstration on the 29th January with information about the policing operation.

“We are currently reviewing the way we communicate with protesters, the public and other interested parties during demonstrations and will consider the benefits of this tool as part of that process.”

John Graham, Director of the Police Foundation, an independent think-tank, believes it’s too early to appraise the relationship between technology and protesting; “With any police technology it’s not simply a case of whether it’s either dangerous or not – it’s a question of who uses it and how it’s used. All technology has to be used within a framework of accountability to ensure it’s used to help to enforce the law and to protect people from crime and public disorder.

“The principles of necessity and proportionality are the two key tests; you could probably add a third test of fair and humane. These stem from the concept of human rights. Providing human rights are not breached, then the use of technology in protests is probably being used in the right way. There is an issue as to whether kettling may in itself constitute a breach of the right to protest and there may eventually be a case placed before the European Court, but the jury on this is out at the moment.”

For Tim at Sukey, kettling is a very real concern; “You have instances like Westminster Bridge on the last day of the tuition fees debate when a group of students was told by police that they could exit over Westminster Bridge – they go onto the bridge and the police close it on both sides and started squeezing in. And they were kettled in freezing cold temperatures; horses were pushed in as well to intimidate them.

Looking forward, Sukey are looking to expand their availability. “What we want to do is send free text messages for people who don’t have Smartphones. That’s going to cost tens of thousands so we’re looking for ways to fund that.”

“We’ve had a huge amount of interest in Germany were the environmental movement has suffered very badly from pre-emptive kettling, and huge interest from CanadaG20. Ultimately, we’d like to make this vast enough so that we could take this to somewhere like Egypt. But the model we have at the moment is great for a democracy; if we’d want to run it in an authoritarian regime then we’d need really bulletproof security in every sense of the word.”