The media have been talking about how some rioters in London have been using smartphones and social media sites to coordinate their movements to avoid being caught by the authorities. Zack Whittaker at ZDNet wrote that while some people are using Facebook and Twitter, one of the tools of choice is the BlackBerry Messenger, which encrypts messages so they can’t be read by third parties.

For its part, Research in Motion (RIM), BlackBerry’s parent company, said it would cooperate with the authorities to identify people alleged to have participated in the riots, though according to the BBC the police have to prove they know the identities of the phones’ owners under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act before they can acquire the records, rather than searching messages for people using riot-related keywords in text messages, e-mail and social media posts. Charles Cooper at CNET wrote yesterday that RIM’s blog was hacked by a group called Team Poison. The group claimed it would release BlackBerry’s database if the company worked with the police to identify would-be rioters — Team Poison said it has concerns that innocent people could be charged with crimes they didn’t commit.

After reading news like this, people might get the idea that the technology itself is to blame for the behavior of the rioters. One TechStuff listener named Michael wrote to us yesterday to express his concerns that social media sites are being cast in a negative light, and that the technology can be put to many positive uses as well. It doesn’t take long to identify an example. An article on the BBC News Web site this evening points to an artist named Dan Thompson, whose Twitter account @riotcleanup has more than 86,000 followers as of this writing. There are localized groups from other areas that have their own Twitter accounts, as well. People are working together on Twitter and Facebook to coordinate cleanup efforts and discourage other rioters from striking their areas. And these efforts are lifting people’s spirits and giving them hope, which in my opinion is a wonderful use for social media.