Minutes of the meeting between Sukey and Metropolitan Police

Minutes were taken by Sukey and approved for publication by Met Police

These minutes are not a verbatim copy of the discussions. They contain all main points as raised but may miss minor details and may not be phrased exactly as originally discussed.

• Date: 28/1/2011
• Location: Room 713, New Scotland Yard
• Start Time: 1240 PM

Present:

SukeyB	Sukey B (Sukey)
SukeyT	Sukey T (Sukey)
ES	Emma Stroud - Press Officer (Metropolitan Police Service)
MB	Sgt Mark Bradford (Metropolitan Police Service)
CM	Constable Jim McAllister (Metropolitan Police Service)
DH	Supt Chief of Staff David Hartshorn (Metropolitan Police Service Public Order Branch)
JP	Supt Julia Pendry (Metropolitan Police Service Public Order Branch)

Minutes

JP was unavailable for the early part of the meeting and those present agreed to start without her.

SukeyB explained that he’d like to minute the meeting and proposed that minutes would be sent to the Met to confirm veracity/avoid misunderstandings, and after agreement would be made public on the Sukey Website.

DH & ES Agreed to the proposal.

SukeyB Gave a short slide presentation setting the agenda, explaining what Sukey seeks to achieve, who is behind it, and what the Sukey teams objectives were for the meeting. He explained that Sukey would not be available for the police to use for intelligence gathering, but was being offered as a communications tool that would allow the met to better communicate with demonstrators, which in turn would provide the met with more ‘soft’ options in dealing with issues arising during the demonstrations. He went on to give fictional examples of the types of messages that Sukey would want to transmit (described as ‘helpful to the demonstrator’) and those that Sukey would not transmit (described as ‘didactic or failing to provide information the demonstrator would find useful’).

SukeyB completed his presentation with some facts and figures that demonstrated the reasons for his confidence of succesful takeup of Sukey for the student protests scheduled for the 29th. He stated that the UCL Occupation twitter account (managed by members of the Sukey team) had over 4,500 followers, many of whom would be attending the protest, and that in the ten hours since the Sukey website had been launched it had attracted over 6,000 visitors, the vast majority of whom went on to view the website in depth. He stated that the original target of 2,000 users at the start of the protest and 4,000 by the end had now been revised upwards to 4,000 at the start rising to 5,000+ by the end.

The slide presentation given by SukeyB is attached to these minutes as sukey1.odp

SukeyB demonstrated the application using the Roar walkthrough from the Sukey website (http://sukey.org/tutorial)

JP joined the meeting during the walkthrough.

SukeyB Explained the difference between Sukey Roar and Sukey Growl - He explained that Sukey Roar is the ‘smart phone’ version and that Sukey Growl runs on any phone capable of sending and receiving SMS text messages.

SukeyB summarised the part of the meeting that JP had missed and discussed how important it will be for the Sukey userbase to understand the form and content of any meetings the Sukey team have had with the met police. He explained that it was important to the Sukey team that discussions between Sukey and the met were kept open and transparent to Sukey users and that minutes would be published on the Sukey website for this reason.

JP asked whether the Sukey team were hoping to reach agreement in time for the fees protest on the 29th.

SukeyB confirmed that it was one of the objectives.

JP explained that the decision making process on such issues could not be resolved in time for the 29th but reaffirmed that any help with communications is of interest to the met.

ES agreed with JP and added that messages must be helpful not didactic.

JP stated that reaching more people has to be a good thing,

ES said that the ability to reach people in a specific area is also likely to be useful.

DH asked what the name “Sukey” means and why had it been chosen.

SukeyB replied that “Polly put the kettle on and Sukey took it off”.

JP stated that although the met prefer the word ‘containment’, they recognise that among demonstrators it is known as kettling and so we may as well use the term “kettle” for the meeting.

DH asked what benefit Sukey brings over the existing approach of using the met’s existing twitter accounts. He also asked if Sukey were looking for the met’s endorsement.

SukeyB said that Sukey were not seeking endorsement from the met, and that Sukey addressed a need that would ensure its success without the need for such an endorsement. He then voiced his opinion that Sukey would immediately attract a far wider audience than the met could hope to achieve alone.

DH asks how process might work from the point where the met decide what message they want to send to the point where the message was broadcast.

SukeyB explained that the met would not have direct access to the system but that messages could be relayed to a contact in Sukey’s back office team.

JP asked what Sukey’s users think of Sukey talking to the met and whether a sample had been polled for opinions.

SukeyB answered that they have concerns but the Sukey team hoped and expected to work these out. SukeyB also said that a joint press release might be part of the way in which the concerns were addressed.

ES explained that such a press release would be unlikely in the immediate future.

JP pointed out that any message the met might want to send through Sukey must not be modified in any way.

SukeyB proposed that a set of guidelines for messages would be agreed (eg Must be perceived by the reader as helpful), and suggested that any proposed message sent to the Sukey contact would be checked by a Sukey team member against those guidelines. Messages that were adjudged by the Sukey team to have passed the criteria would be immediately broadcast, messages that didn’t pass would be returned to the met with an explanation of why the message was rejected, for the met to reword and resubmit.

JP asked for the opinion of others in the room.

DH stated that it appeared to have good potential.

DH and ES stated they were wary of committing to an opinion without first taking time to think things through in detail.

DH suggested that the Sukey team picks up and rebroadcasts C011 tweets for the fees protest.

SukeyB stated that the Sukey team could certainly pick the C011 messages up and offered to ask the technical team whether it was possible to make the infrastructure changes required to integrate them into the Sukey feed in time for the protest.

SukeyB proposed that the met use the #sukey tag in their tweets which would enable the existing Sukey setup to detect and rebroadcast messages as a minimum for the 29th

MB stated that it was possible but unlikely.

DH and MB Asked if Sukey will be used for other demonstrations.

SukeyB explained that after the 29th the intention is to release the software as ‘open source’ for anyone to use.

JP asked who will control the software once it has become open source.

SukeyB explained that there will always be a group controlling the system and helping others to maximise benefits of using it - but that they are unlikely to be involved in the day to day running of the software for every demonstration at which it is used. He gave an example of the Sukey team having already received requests to configure the system for use in Egypt and said that if it were to be used in Egypt then it would probably be hosted and operated by Egyptian nationals.

Note: SukeyT – I don’t remember this bit very well but it’s probably key for the met – any chance you could expand on it?

SukeyB : met reviewers – if you have better recollection of below then please amend/expand. Otherwise I’ll keep it in the published minutes with a note to the effect of: “The minutes are a little unclear here but the gist was a discussion that explained how messages received by Sukey from new contributors are read by the Sukey team and ranked and scored prior to transmission until the point where that contributor has been adjudged to meet the Sukey “Not A Troll” threshold, after which their incoming messages are routed through to publication without intervention”

JM – Asks if we would you be uncomfortable sending out messages to certain groups

DH – Asks if it depends on the message

SukeyB – Explains that we do not let all messages through

SukeyT – Explains that we use a scoring system that ranks sources on trust

JP – Explains that the met would like to be trusted and that if something external to a demonstration happens that affects safety they would like it communicated as effectively as possible

DH asked how Sukey is funded.

SukeyB explained that it isn’t funded and that the team are all volunteers and give of their time freely. He explained that Sukey has, for example, been donated free web hosting and London office space to work from.

JP stated that although full agreement is not achievable for the 29th it would be foolhardy, in the event of an emergency (eg building collapse) to not use Sukey to communicate evacuation instructions.

SukeyB agreed that we must be able to communicate in case of emergency at a minimum

SukeyB mentioned Sir Hugh Orde’s comments in yesterday’s Guardian which stated that the met are falling behind on the use of social networking and the internet and Sir Hugh’s statement that things must change.

DH and JP commented that they know the met is behind on using social networking, and that they want to move ahead but in the right way. The met believe that they may have made mistakes in their approach in the past.

ES asked how Sukey would deal with a confrontational situation.

SukeyB answered that he did not know at this point, but that one of the Sukey team’s objectives is to try to preempt and isolate confrontational situations, keeping moderate protesters ‘sensible’ and uninvolved through the use of good communications.

JP explained that the met is aware it has communications issues and is falling behind the times. She stated that sometimes communications can be embarrassing as sometimes by the time the wording has been approved and readied the communication is already out of date, the spokesman knows it’s out of date and yet still has to stick to the approved wording.

JP asked if Sukey will be used in Manchester on the 29th

SukeyB answered that it was the original intention to have it available for both but the Sukey team ran out of development time and so are not yet ready to work with simultaneous demonstrations.

DH asked about Sukeys use at smaller scale regular demonstrations such as UKuncut

SukeyB answered that it is not likely to be of use in such a situation and that communications must be accurate.

Note: This bit doesn’t seem to hang together – is something missing or in the wrong order? – SukeyB

No. The topics kept changing at this point in the meeting, I have listed them in the order they came up. – SukeyT

SukeyT described his perception of a @CO11metpolice tweet on the 9/12/10 that had stated toilets were available in a containment area. The information was untrue and so helped fuel mistrust of the demonstrators in C011 tweets.

DH explained that demonstrations move rapidly and that although operational communications are fast, messages sent out to the public are slower than they would like

JP described an interview she gave for Sky on 9/12/10 in which she had said that protesters could leave via Whitehall. By the time the information was broadcast the information was no longer correct and the next opportunity on Sky to correct it was an hour later

SukeyB explained that Sukey would not suffer from these problems and would be more responsive as people in the crowd will be able to see that the situation has changed and will communicate the changes back to the Sukey application in real time.

JP agreed and stated that slow communications have caused problems in the past.

JP asked how many people follow the met on twitter.

SukeyT replied roughly 3500

DH stated that twitter was a big success for the met at Notting Hill Carnival

JP restated that at a minimum we have a way of communicating on the 29th

SukeyB and DH swapped contact details.

JP stated that they should follow us on twitter and use Sukey on the 29th, and asked if they followed UCLoccupation on 9/12/10

SukeyT stated that they did.

SukeyB stated that Sukey is not just for those in a demonstration but for those following from outside

MB asked how quickly Sukey can put information out from the time that information is received

SukeyB answered that there is no latency.

JP asked how information coming in is prioritised

SukeyB explained that Sukey prioritises senders based upon trust, not on the content of messages. Certain people known to Sukey are highly trusted and their messages are transmitted without review. Others have their earlier messages verified and earn trust until the point where their messages are also forwarded without review.

ES described a recent issue on twitter concerning the misunderstanding of a message about a “shooting” on Oxford street

JP agreed that the shooting tweet caused chaos which the met had to deal with

MB asked if messages from the met will be sent out verbatim or modified

SukeyB said that they will be verbatim, but if the messages, in the opinion of the Sukey team, do not meet the agreed criteria they will be returned unbroadcast with an explanation.

JP commented that they would want the people prioritising messages to be as unbiased as possible, to ensure vital met messages are not impeded by any individual’s political views.

MB suggested that if it goes well a police officer could sit in with the Sukey team

JP suggested that we should keep in contact on the 29th and that too many messages can also cause problems.

SukeyB said that a police officer sitting in is unlikely and that Sukey ranks messages on trust to stop inaccuracies going through

JP explained that the met are very careful about putting out messages as they do not want inaccurate messages to go out. They must have all the facts behind them

ES said that the met can only put out a full message with full facts

SukeyB asked if everyone thought we were at a suitable point to wrap up the meeting

JP agreed and said that full cooperation is not possible for the 29th as it must be considered at a higher level

JP asked what will happen with the notes of the meeting

SukeyB explains that we want meetings to be transparent to our users to ensure Sukey retains their trust so they will ultimately be published on the Sukey website. He stated he would send a copy to the MPS to check before publication

The meeting finished at 1405 PM