Social media companies are not properly co-operating with international police forces, the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has said.
Chief Constable Jon Boutcher and newly-appointed Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly gave the George Quigley lecture in Queen’s University Belfast, which is the first time the two police chiefs on the island have appeared together on the same stage.
“They are not being helpful,” said the Chief Constable of the social media companies. He pointed to the riots that began in Ballymena in June and spread across Northern Ireland sparked by the alleged rape of a minor by a Roma youth.
A significant volume of online traffic about the disturbances was tracked by PSNI officers, “some of which we were able to see, some of which we weren’t able to see”, he said: “When we looked at it, it did not come from this jurisdiction.”
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The disturbances were heavily influenced by social media actors not living in Northern Ireland, the Republic or, indeed, Britain, he told the Queen’s gathering, hosted by the Centre for Cross-Border Co-Operation.
The influence of such people can be life-changing, he said, noting the conviction of a young Ballymena man “with no past convictions”, who has been given a four-year sentence for his role in the riots, with two years of the sentence suspended.
The Garda Commissioner noted the role played by international social media actors in the recent disturbances at the Citywest Hotel, following the alleged sexual assault of a 10-year-old.
One Canadian podcaster travelled overnight to Dublin after the first incidents outside the hotel, during which some protesters had threatened to burn it, and broadcast from there live on the second night, the Commissioner said.
Broadcasting from a Canadian airport before leaving for Ireland, the podcaster had said that he was coming to Dublin to investigate this and to report on it for his many, many thousands of followers.
“He actually did get on a plane. He was in Dublin for the second night and then live streamed from there. So, you can see the challenges that we’ve had with all this,” he told the audience.
Meanwhile, the Chief Constable said the growth in the number of digital crimes now taking place, from scams to seizure of identities, raises questions about the accuracy of all national crime figures.
The majority of physical crimes from car thefts, burglaries or attacks on the person are falling, he said, but a large number of crimes committed by digital criminals are never reported to police.
Giving an example from his own life, he said his 93-year-old mother living in Derby, who is “far more skilled digitally than I am” receives several fraud attempts online every week, such as efforts to get her to share her banking details.
Every police force would make every effort possible to help people like his mother if they were physically robbed of £50, but most fail properly to offer the same level of care to victims if their losses have been suffered online.
The police chiefs agreed co-operation between the Garda and the PSNI is good along the Border and between headquarters.
The Chief Constable said the level of co-operation North and South is far superior to the sharing taking place between forces in Britain.
